J.G. Ballard - The Wind From Nowhere

Harrod's department store lay in ruins, brownstone facing tiles lying thickly across the roadway, the wind picking like a thousand vultures at the tangle of girders and masonry, detaching fragments of furniture and tattered drapery and carrying them away in its fleeting clasp.

Shaking his head ruefully, Maitland left the window and searched for his cigarettes. He was taking out the pack when the half-track braked sharply. For a moment it hesitated and then began to tip backward and rolled slowly down a shallow incline that had opened in the roadway under the rear section of the vehicle.

Above the din of the wind Maitland could hear the driver shouting into his radio. He felt the Centurion throw its engine into a lower gear, trying to pull them out of the subsidence. The weight of the carrier had apparently caved in a shallow sewer traversing the road. Tilting at a ten-degree angle, the carrier's tracks raced and skated. Gradually it slid helplessly down the incline, pulling the Centurion after it. Finally it rooted itself immovably. The driver raced his engine, flogging the gears like a maniac, while the Centurion jerked and thrust helplessly. Then both engines stopped, and for a few minutes the drivers bellowed into their microphones.

Through the window Maitland could see the sides of a six-footdeep ditch. Behind was the ragged edge of the asphalt roadway, ahead the massive outline of the tank, its rear track wheels still on the road.

The driver opened his communicating door and came swarming aft, furious with what had happened, waving his arms and shouting: "Off, off, off! Don't sit here like a lot of helpless sheep."

The flight sergeant bridled, wondering whether to pull his rank on the corporal, then thought better of it.

"What do we do now, mate?" he asked.

The driver kicked the suitcases out of the way, shouted scornfully, "Walk, what else? I'm bloody well not going to carry you back!"

He unlocked the rear doors, pushed them open. The Centurion switched on its rear lights, flooding the interior of the carrier. To the left on the pavement above, Maitland could see the gray humped back of a pedestrian tunnel. Part of it had collapsed into the ditch, affording a convenient access point. The driver pointed to it.

"Take that back to Knightsbridge Underground," he barked at them. "Follow the Piccadilly Line to Hammersmith and you'll be picked up there. Got it?"

Maitland hesitated, then began to crawl along the bottom of the ditch toward the aperture in the tunnel. The wind drove overhead like an express train, sucking at the low-pressure space in the road, and he clung to the damp soil like a limpet. Reaching the tunnel, he pulled himself in, then helped the others who came after him.

When they were all inside they saw the Centurion roar into life and move sharply away from the ditch, its lights flashing, then swing round and drive off down the street.

The tunnel had originally been six feet high, but the wind pres… sure and the successive shells of reinforcing materials added during the past week had lowered the ceiling to little more than five feet off the ground. Here and there, at 50-yard intervals, a storm lantern cast a fitful glow over the dripping bags.

Crouching down, they moved forward, Maitland in the lead. it was only half a mile back to Knightsbridge, and luckily the tunnel was unbreached at any other point. A few people lay about in makeshift sleeping bags by the storm lights-claustrophobes, Maitland assumed, who were more terrified of their basements and the Underground than of the wind, and who preferred the surface tunnels with their long corridors and spaced lights. Tripping over abandoned clothing and cooking utensils, they reached the station in five minutes. The entranceway had been heavily fortified with reinforced concrete by the army. Two armed policemen in black wind suits checked their passes, then directed them to the signals unit set up in the ticket booth.

After the deserted, darkened streets, the station was a blaze of lights, packed with thousands of people huddled about on the upper level with their bundles of luggage, walling off crude cubicles with blankets and raincoats, cooking over primus stoves, queuing endlessly at the latrines. Sleeping figures and parcels of luggage crowded the floor. They picked their way over the outstretched limbs, trying not to disturb the fretfully sleeping children and older people, till they located the two signalers operating the radio transmitter.

After five minutes they contacted the Hammersmith control point and confirmed the driver's arrangement that a carrier from Brandon Hall would pick them up in a couple of hours' time.

People were sitting all the way down the stationary escalators, huddled against each other's knees, blankets wrapped around them, plastic bags at their feet containing gnawed loaves of bread, a few meagre cans and battered thermoses. Stepping past them, Maitland's group made their way down to the lower platforms, where some semblance of order had been enforced. Women and children had been allocated the westbound platform, while the men and service units occupied the eastbound. Wooden partitions had been erected and police patrolled the exits and entrances.

They were steered onto the platform, jumped down between the rails and began to walk along to the next station, South Kensington. Electric bulbs strung along the tunnel shone down onto the track. On the platform above them a throng of soldiers and other men lay in their sleeping packs, most of them asleep, a few watching impassively, their eyes dull.

They had nearly reached the end of the platform when someone ahead sat up and waved to Maitland. He turned around, recognized the hall porter from the apartment block.

"Dr. Maitland! Spare a minute, will you, Doctor?"

He was sitting back against a large expensive suitcase to which Maitland guessed he had helped himself in one of the deserted apartments.

"Doctor, I wanted to tell you. Mrs. Maitland's still up there."

Maitland stiffened. "What? Are you sure?" When the porter nodded, he clenched his fists involuntarily. He had overestimated Susan's resourcefulness. "Crazy fool! Couldn't you make her come down here?"

"I told her, Doctor, believe me. She was there only yesterday. Said she wanted to stay and watch the houses falling."

"_Watch_ them? Where is she? In the basement?"

The porter shook his head. "Up in your flat, Doctor. The windows are all smashed and she's living in the lift now. It's stuck on the sixth floor."

Maitland hesitated, looking over his shoulder. His two companions were just disappearing around the first bend in the tunnel. They would reach Hammersmith in 45 minutes, probably have more than an hour to wait before Brandon Hall got around to picking them up.

"Can I still get to Lowndes Square?" he asked the porter. "The tunnels are standing?"

The porter nodded. "Follow the one down Sloane Street, then cut through the Pakistan Embassy garage. Takes you straight into the block. Watch it though, Doctor. There's big stuff coming down all the time."

Maitland jumped onto the platform and retraced his steps up the escalator. He reached the entranceway and pressed through the late arrivals pushing in from the tunnel, even less well equipped than those already there. Many of them were without bedding or food, holding a milk bottle full of water as their sole rations for the next few weeks. Maitland checked each one of them carefully in case Susan had decided to take shelter, then crouched down and entered the tunnel.

Crude signposts had been put up at junction points within the tunnel system. Turning right into Sloane Street, he ran with his head down, feeling his way along the irregular corridor of bursting sandbags. A few cracks of light added to the scanty illumination provided by the storm lanterns. Gusts of air poured in, spuming white cement dust like escape valves blowing off steam.