Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

Hidden the people were, but as we walked, occasionally children would peek out from an alley or the doorway of an abandoned shop, with grimy, rat-like faces, and big eyes. The soldiers threw them bits of chocolates , even a few cigarettes. ‘For your mum and dad!’ The children would grab the treasures and scuttle back into the shadows.

‘Poor little mites,’ Gray said neutrally. ‘After years of this they don’t know whether to fear us or the Martians.’

Ted Lane growled, ‘I had family living around here – came to London to make their fortunes, if you can believe it – all evacuated now. A summer’s day like this isn’t so bad, but the winter’s a misery. Nobody dares burn a fire, see, for fear of the Martians seeing the smoke. The sooner we put a stop to this business the better.’

‘No one will disagree with you there, Sergeant,’ said Ben Gray.

We reached Stratford, an area I did not know well. It seemed to me that the stroke of the Heat-Ray must have been heavy here. The streets were mere mounds of rubble in rows, with the names picked out by hand-painted wooden signs, if at all. In some places the damage was such that the very cobbles had been smashed and lifted. But life persisted, as it always does, and green sprouted in the lee of the broken walls. I remember particularly rose bay willow-herbs standing proud in the wreckage of parlours and kitchens.

We came to a manhole cover.

The file broke up from its rough marching formation, and the NCOs gave brisk orders to the men to disperse – to find cover in the safer of the surrounding buildings, to take a sip of water from their canteens and to have a fag. ‘If you’ve any tanks that need emptying, do it now. Then we’ll be going down the rat-hole one at a time, so get ready.’

It was the work of a moment for a couple of men, hastily volunteered, to brush the cover clear of debris, and to get it lifted. Beneath, I saw rusty rungs leading down into the dark.

I faced Lane and Gray, who were both grinning at me. ‘Is that -?’

‘A sewer,’ Gray said. ‘A marvel of Victorian engineering.’

Lane sniffed. ‘And a couple of winters’ rain will have sluiced it nice and clean.’

‘There is that.’

I glared at them. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

They glanced uneasily at each other.

‘Well,’ Lane said hesitantly, ‘I suppose we thought – if you’d known—’

‘What, I would have had a fit of vapours? Just as Major Eden decided I had to be tricked into my mission. Oh, for God’s sake—’ I pushed my way to the open manhole mouth, grabbed an electric torch from a startled corporal, and looked down into the pit. ‘Tell me where this goes.’

Lane explained, as best he understood it himself. This great drain was part of the Bazalgette system, devised and built in Victoria’s reign to clean up London. Once London’s drains, all along the course of the river, had flowed more or less direct into the Thames by the shortest route. It was when the filth and stench had driven even the Parliamentarians indoors – the water was foul well upstream of Westminster by then – that it had been determined something must be done.

‘So,’ Lane said, sketching maps in the dirt. ‘Bazalgette drove great transverse “intercept” sewers from west to east, running parallel to the river’s course and cutting across all the other big north-south conduits. The idea being, you see, that the flow of water should be diverted east, so that the big discharges into the river itself would come much further downstream – further than Westminster anyhow. One of these transverse channels runs from Chiswick eastward. But the big one, the high level sewer, runs from Hampstead to Hackney to Stratford – to here .’

I glanced at the unassuming manhole, and then westward. ‘So if you plod upstream, so to speak—’

‘You’ll get all the way to Hampstead, deep underground and out of sight of any snooping Martian. And from there it’s only a few miles to Uxbridge and the Cordon. And then – well, you’ll see when we get there. It’s a circuitous route we’ve followed, I know, to go east afore heading west again, but it’s the safest passage we have.’

‘Anyhow, that’s the good news,’ Gray said wryly. ‘The bad news is the day is too far advanced for us to make it all the way to the Trench today.’

‘The Trench?’

‘You’ll see.’

I glanced around at the ruins. ‘There’s barely an intact roof to cover us. Where will we spend the night?’

And Lane and Gray glanced at each other, and at the manhole at our feet.

Albert Cook would have approved, I thought grimly. Londoners running in their own sewers – just as he foresaw during the First War. And yet, despite my bravado before these overbearing men, I felt a deep dread at descending into the clammy dark – indeed, a dread that had gathered as I had worked my way, step by step, closer to the heart of the Martians’ dark empire on the earth.

In the sewer, just under the manhole, there was an equipment cache: sets of leather waders like an angler’s, and gauntlets, and protective caps for the head, rather like a pilot’s. There was an immediate fear among the men that there wouldn’t be enough of the stuff to go around, a fear that proved all too justified, but as the stock was broken out Ted Lane made sure I got a set.

Once we were kitted out it took some time to get us all down that hole, one at a time – there were dozens in the party. It was a vivid experience for me when it was my turn, with Lane below me and Gray coming after. I remember how greasy the rungs of the ladder were, perhaps some measure against rust. As I descended I looked up at the diminishing circle of day, which by that time was already fading, and wondered what kind of landscape I would see when next I emerged into the light.

Then I was in the water, which was thick and muddy. By the light of electric torches we moved away from the manhole. The tunnel in which I found myself had a profile like an egg-shape, perhaps to give it structural strength. The bricks seemed to sweat, glistening with damp. I could feel shingle on the floor, through the thickness of the waders and my shoes. We were walking against the current, but the water was not quite waist-high, and the current was no more than a gentle push. And I was relieved it was nothing but water, as far as I could see, with none of the horrors I had imagined: no waste, no dead rats – or worse, live ones.

Even so it was tiring, and we soon fell silent as we plodded into the dark, one step after another, with only the pools of light cast by the torches of those ahead visible, their distorted shadows making them seem hulking, like inhuman forms. We did not speak much, though at first a few noisy fellows whooped to get an echo. And the jokers had a go: ‘Just think, lads. One quick rainstorm and we’ll all be flushed out like turds, all the way to the North Sea!’ But they soon shut up.

I could not track the time, with one gloved hand gripping my torch and the other skimming the greasy wall for balance. It was one of those experiences when you simply have to put your head down and endure, for counting the seconds won’t make it go by any faster, and you’re better off trying to forget where you are, what you are doing – who you are, if you can.

So I got through it, as did we all.

It was a huge relief when the walls opened out around us, and we came to a more open chamber. It was a cylindrical cave, the walls and flat roof more roughly finished than those of the sewer itself, and I surmised that this place was more recently built – constructed, indeed, since the Martians had arrived. The walls had been cut back at an angle so there were places where you could sit and lift your feet out of the water, or even lie down if you were lucky. This peculiar architecture was sustained by pillars of clay that had been left uncut to support the roof above us.