Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

“It’s another raid!” Josh shouted at her.

The roaring of aero-engines was enormous now. It seemed to blot out everything: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and any sense of logic. Josh felt as if he were drowning in it.

“There’s nothing we can do!” Petty screamed at him. “This is as safe as anywhere else!”

They heard whistling, not far away. That dreadful, triumphant wheeeeeeee! Then the sticks of bombs began to land, fifteen or sixteen at a time, running up St Martin’s Lane and Charing Cross Road in a series of minor earthquakes. They heard a gas main explode. They heard tons of masonry falling into the road. They heard bells, and bells, and more bells.

“Oh Mary Mother of God protect us,” prayed Petty.

“Are you a Catholic?” asked Josh.

She frowned at him. She was still naked, and there were red wrinkled marks from the sheets on the side of her left breast, where she had been sleeping.

“Yes, I’m a Catholic. What difference does it make?”

“It doesn’t.”

A huge explosion at the lower end of Drury Lane made the whole house shake. Josh heard windows bursting and bricks collapsing, and it sounded as if a whole truckload of bricks had been unloaded on the floor right above their heads.

“Oh please God don’t let us be buried alive,” begged Petty.

Josh didn’t say anything, but was thinking the exact same thought. Of all the deaths that he could imagine, being buried alive was the one that filled him with the greatest dread.

Another bomb hit Drury Lane, much closer this time. The impact made Josh’s ears sing, and almost threw them out of bed. Josh lay on top of Petty and pulled the blankets over his head, while even more masonry dropped on to the floor above them, and brick dust sifted down from every crevice in the ceiling.

Under the blankets, they clung to each other, sweaty and hot, but both of them praying to survive. They heard another whistle, much louder this time, and growing louder, as if a train were hurtling toward them, and Petty held him so tight that she almost suffocated him. “Whatever happens,” she breathed in his ear, “remember that I love you.”

“How can you love me? You don’t even know who I am.”

“I know. But you’re going to be holding me tight when I die. I can’t ask any more than that, can I?”

She lifted her head and kissed him. Her mouth tasted of gin and cigarettes, but all the same it was warm and soft and she obviously wanted him. At the same instant the world seemed to come to a stop. Josh felt an enormous compression in his ears, and the next thing he knew he was flung out of bed across the cellar, hitting his head on one of the armchairs and landing upside down in the kitchen, scattering cans and cartons and cutlery. Petty was hurled against the cellar steps and lay hunched up with her head in the corner as if she were playing turtles.

Tons of rubble dropped on top of the cellar. The lights went out, and they were left in choking darkness. Josh stayed where he was for a while, his feet up in the air, trying to get his breath back. Then he called out, “Petty?”

Petty didn’t answer. Josh managed to roll himself sideways, bringing down another clatter of pots and pans, and crawled on his hands and knees across the grit-strewn floor. “Petty, can you hear me, is everything OK?”

He caught his hand on a protruding nail, and he could feel the blood running down his forearm. “Petty?” he called. “Petty, for God’s sake, talk to me.”

Groping sideways, he managed to find the bottom of the stairs, and then Petty’s right foot. He felt his way up her body until he reached her head. Her hair was thick with dust and thousands of tiny fragments of glass. She might have been bleeding, but it was impossible for him to tell because his own hand was bleeding, too, and everything felt sticky and wet.

“Petty,” he urged her, turning her over on to her back. “Petty, for God’s sake say something.”

She remained floppy and cold and unresponsive. Josh could feel a pulse, but it was very thready. He felt for her mouth and stuck his finger into it, to make sure that it wasn’t obstructed. Then he leaned over and gave her mouth-to-mouth. A huge explosion like that could have compressed her lungs, or filled them with dust.

“Petty,” he said, between breaths. “Listen to me, Petty, you’re going to be fine. The worst of it’s over. They won’t be coming back. Not tonight, anyhow. Come on, Petty, you have to breathe here, baby. You have to use your lungs. There’s one thing for sure, I’m not going to let you die, whatever it takes.”

He kept up mouth-to-mouth for nearly twenty minutes. He massaged her heart, too. The cellar remained totally dark and he couldn’t see her at all.

“Petty, you’re going to make it. You’re going to be fine. If you don’t die, I’ll take you with me when I go back to London. I promise. And you’ll have all the food you want and all the dancing you want and enough clean knickers to stretch from here to Sausalito.”

There was still no response. Josh leaned over her and gave her one last kiss of life – and then gave her a kiss. “I’m sorry, baby. I did what I could. Take care of yourself, wherever you’re going. I love you.”

He stood up, reaching for the handrail to steady himself. As he did so, he thought he heard movement. A slight shifting, nothing more.

“I was waiting for you to say that,” said Petty, her voice clogged with dust. “Those are the magic words.”

Feeling around in the darkness, Josh managed to find her arm, and then her shoulders, and lift her on to her feet. “I’m OK,” she said. “I was knocked out, that’s all. That was a bloody close one, wasn’t it? Must have hit the building next door.”

“We need some light,” said Josh.

“That’s all right. I’ve got loads of candles. Under the basin, there’s a whole box of them. Christ, my head. I feel like somebody’s been sitting on it.”

Josh groped his way around the room until he located the sink. Underneath it, he found a brown-paper package filled with candles. He took out two to light up the cellar, but he also took another six, cramming them into his coat pockets, just in case he needed to cross through any of the doors, looking for the London he had left behind. In the darkness, he damned Nancy’s independent spirit. He loved her, and he was proud of her, but where had it got them both? He didn’t even like to think what she was doing right now, while he was trapped in this bombed-out cellar with Petty.

He flicked his butane lighter and lit one of the candles. Petty looked like a ghost, a voodoo duppy, her face white and her eyes black and her lips blood-red where Josh had been kissing them. Her hair had turned into dreadlocks, crammed with dust and debris, but glittering with glass. She had a crimson lump on her forehead, and superficial cuts and bruises, but no serious injuries. The blood that was criss-crossed all over her naked body was Josh’s.

Josh looked down at his own hand. The cut was L-shaped, deep in the muscle just below his thumb. He picked up a tea-towel from the kitchen floor, snapped it in the air to shake off the dust, and wrapped it tightly around his wound.

Petty managed to climb to her feet. Josh helped her across to the bedroom area and sat her on the bed. She coughed and spat dust, and sat with her shoulders hunched, wheezing like an asthmatic, trying to get her breath back. But at last she reached for her bra and her dress, and painfully began to dress herself.

Josh heard an ominous lurching sound from the ceiling. “We have to get out of here, Petty. It sounds like the whole goddamn house is coming down.”

Petty nodded, but she was too choked up with dust to say anything. Holding the candle high, Josh led her back across to the stairs, and the two of them climbed up together, until they reached the door. Josh took hold of the door handle and tugged it, but the door was jammed solid.