'48 by James Herbert
‘No, they didn’t hit me,’ I told her. I heaved myself up and the effort seemed to be getting harder each time I made it.
The light, weak though it was, hurt my eyes and I pushed the flashlight away. In its beam I could make out more bodies filling the passageway and I wondered if the girls would have the nerve to journey among them. Even though the stench was nowhere as bad as I thought it would be, I decided not to tell them they didn’t need the masks. Their vision would be restricted through the lenses, especially in this poor light, and the gas masks might even make them feel insulated from what lay around them. I had no idea if my thinking was correct, but what the hell, it didn’t matter.
‘Let’s get away from here, fast as we can,’ I said to Stern, taking the flashlight from him. Like before with the gun, there was some resistance, but it was minimal and quickly over.
‘Are they following us?’ he asked, his mask, with its stubby filter unit and big circular eye-pieces making him resemble a creature from another world.
‘No, they won’t come down here,’ I said, looking at the two girls.
‘How can you be sure?’ His voice was distant behind the mask, but his anxiety was plain enough.
‘Maybe they’re afraid of ghosts,’ I replied. Stupid. The girls clutched each other. ‘Come on,’ I added hastily, ‘let’s get away from the noise.’
In fact, the Blackshirts had already given up shooting, although we could hear their shouts, hollow and mocking, drifting down and finding us where we hid. I moved on, the others in tow, negotiating a passage through the tangled heaps and ignoring the noises from behind us. We soon came to a steep stairway, more bodies strewn over the steps.
‘Where are we going?’
The question might have come from Muriel, but it was difficult to tell with the masks. Besides, I was ahead of them, concentrating on finding space for my feet on the steps. For the moment I didn’t want to answer her.
When I reached the bottom I shone the light back at the trio, keeping it at their feet so they could find a way through. A leathered head, shrunken and brown, seemed to follow their passing with empty eye sockets; an arm, only remnants of dried gristle clinging to its hand and wrist, slithered down a step or two, disturbed by their progress, a single grey finger pointing the way. I tried to keep these sights from them, but they needed the low light so they wouldn’t trip, wouldn’t fall headlong into the human garbage around them.
Cissie was in the lead, sensible flat-heeled, crêpe rubbersoled shoes shifting through the debris, arms raised and fists clenched for balance. For the first time I noticed she was wearing dark slacks – blue, I think – and that while not as slim as the other girl, her figure was trim enough, attractive even. Jesus, I had been too long on my own – this was hardly the moment for that kind of appreciation. I guess I must have lost concentration, because the light wavered and Cissie lost her footing. With a tiny yelp she came toppling towards me.
I caught her easily and held her there in my arms until her panic subsided. She held on to me too and seemed reluctant to let go.
She touched my face. ‘Why aren’t you wearing a mask?’ she asked, voice muffled and eyes vague behind the misted glass of her own mask.
I made a decision. It’d be tougher for them, but we’d all make better headway if they could see more clearly. ‘You can take your gas masks off,’ I said, pulling her aside so that I could direct the beam back onto the stairs. I still held on to her with one arm.
‘What did you say?’ Muriel was frozen there in the light.
‘I said you can take off the masks,’ I repeated more loudly.
‘But the…’ Cissie shook her head.
‘It isn’t so bad. These bodies decomposed a long time ago.’
She pulled off her mask and stiffened when she breathed in the stale, tainted air. The snood at the back of her hair had come loose with the mask and she pulled it away entirely, shaking her head so that her locks swung free around her face. By the time Muriel joined us, Cissie had become more used to the atmosphere; or at least, had become less tense. Fortunately, beyond the circle of light from the flashlight it was too dark for her to take in very much. Muriel tugged off her mask as well and I watched her face wrinkle as she gasped in the air.
‘Some light would be helpful.’ The German, his gas mask already removed and hanging by his side, was watching us from midway down the stairs. He came down swiftly when I swung the beam in his direction.
Close to me, he said: ‘What is your plan? Do we wait here until they are gone?’
His English was almost perfect, but again that v instead of a w, so aggravatingly consistent, had the muscles in my chest tightening, my anger boiling towards eruption. I barely held it in check.
But it wasn’t only hatred for this German, this relic of the Master Race, that kept me silent. I didn’t want to make decisions for these people. I was too used to being on my own, making choices for myself (Cagney was of an independent kind of nature). I didn’t want anyone depending on me.
‘Hoke, come on, tell us what we should do.’ Cissie was tugging at my jacket.
I mentally cursed them for coming into my life, even though they’d saved it. ‘We could wait them out,’ I said finally, ‘or we could go into the tunnels.’
‘No!’ Muriel’s reaction had a lick of hysteria to it. ‘We can’t go any further. I won’t. The platforms…’
We all knew what she meant.
‘I’m with her,’ Cissie agreed. ‘God, this is bad enough, but what else could be in there?’ She indicated the platform entrance.
Only plenty more of the same, I was about to say when something happened that took away any choice. From a distance, up the stairs and back along the passageway, there came the sound of breaking glass instantly followed by a kind of muffled whoomph. Then another: same sound, smashed glass followed by that shushed explosion of air. As soon as a bright orange glow lit up the top of the stairs I knew what those sounds were.
‘They’re using gasoline bombs,’ I said almost to myself.
The Blackshirts had tried to flush me out before with these home-made bombs of bottles filled with fuel, a rag stuck into the neck, then set alight, but I’d always been lucky – and too fast. They’d either made them quickly, scavenging bottles from the street or shops, syphoning off gasoline from fuel tanks of vehicles, or they’d brought the cocktails ready-made with them. I thought I heard their taunts, their voices carrying easily down the funnel of the stairway, but the fire had already taken on its own life, passing from one dried husk-like body to the next, incinerating each one as it went along, its muffled roar coming our way. Popping sounds reached us, sharp, explosive reports, as bones cracked and gases ignited. The fire had an abundance of fuel to feed on, a trail of kindling that led directly to us.
‘Okay, there’s your answer,’ I told them. ‘We can’t stay here.’
‘But where can we go?’ Cissie wasn’t fooling anybody – we all knew where.
‘Like I said, into the tunnels.’
I turned away, tired of the argument It was their decision now.
A huge billow of black smoke swept down the stairs towards us and as I glanced up I saw the flames were not far behind. Reflections flickered on the walls and waves of heat washed over us. Almost as an afterthought I checked the big enamel route map at our backs, the flashlight hardly necessary, and it told me what I needed to know. The girls began coughing as more smoke spilled down the stairway, rolling off the ceiling and curling down the walls.
‘Put your masks back on,’ I ordered, and they did as they were told, following me as I backed out onto the platform. But the German had dropped his mask on the stairs and instead of finding another – there were plenty of masked corpses around us – he went back to retrieve it. A few strides took him halfway up the stairs, and as he grabbed it the first real flames appeared above him. Bodies around him appeared to twitch and flinch in the unstable light, as if the advancing firestorm was making them uneasy. An illusion
I gave Stern a warning shout, but it was already too late. As he straightened, pulling on the gas mask as he did so, there was an explosion of fire behind him, trapped gases and flammable material joining forces to give the inferno a special boost. I’m not sure if the German jumped instinctively, or the blast of scorching air threw him forward, but suddenly he was airborne, arms outstretched, back arched.
He was lucky – the flames never got the chance to engulf him completely. He landed on the floor, his jacket alight, and I rushed forward to roll him over, pinning him against the tiles and smothering the flames. Stern didn’t struggle; he seemed to know exactly what I was doing. If he hadn’t been a Kraut, I might have admired his nerve.
The heat from the stairs was unbearable as I dragged him over bodies out onto the platform, the flames above us spreading under the roof, rolling down like a raging river of fire, the ceiling its bed, its torrent of boiling yellows and reds and blacks fierce enough to scorch the eyeballs. It had a kind of terrifying beauty as it hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs and curled to the floor, devouring the dead things lying there before rearing up again in a huge fireball that ballooned outwards.
‘Get back!’ I yelled, and we all hit the deck together as the flames poured out at us.
I felt my hair crackle as I sprawled among the corpses filling the platform. Smoke created its own menace, blinding and choking, billowing from the opening as the flames retreated for the moment, falling back to consolidate, to feed before progressing. Now it was Stern helping me, pulling me up and away from the worst of the smoke, his mask giving him the advantage. I was retching, lungs filled with the black stuff, eyes streaming, and I felt other hands grab me.
A gas mask was tugged over my head and, although still coughing smoke dust, I caught the faint whiff of old disinfectant under the stink of rubber. I blinked my eyes rapidly and saw the blurred image of Cissie standing in front of me. She was pointing down the platform, her other hand on my arm, and I nodded in an exaggerated way, bowing my shoulders as well as my head. We moved off awkwardly, me still limping, going as fast as we could, like survivors of a subterranean battlefield, the conflict long over, only smoke and the dead left behind. We passed by cots pushed close to the curved platform wall, and bedding laid out on the concrete floor itself. Among those rumpled rags, filling every space, was all kinds of domestic stuff kettles, fold-away chairs, suitcases, books, even a wind-up gramophone. A small wooden clotheshorse still stood, its hanging rags once a screen for some modest family and probably, like other carefully placed items along the platform, a marker for regular users of the shelter, a sign of territorial claim. A kid’s doll, eyes wide as if still terrorized by the carnage around it. A crushed bowler hat, a single boot lying on its side, a pair of spectacles, lenses still intact. There were even one or two tiny portable gas or paraffin cookers, the kind used for ‘brew-ups’ or warming babies’ bottles, smuggled in by families who enjoyed their home comforts. An accordion propped up against a cot bed, a baby’s gas mask, oversized and ugly, like a deep-sea diver’s helmet, lying empty on a blanket next to it. Newspapers strewn across huddled bodies, faded headlines as irrelevant as the advertisements for gin or Brylcreem they shared the page with.
And the corpses. Avoiding them, stumbling over them, pulling them aside when they blocked our way. Thousands of them it seemed, there in the flickering light. Empty shells that had once been living beings, most of these people fleeing here when the rockets fell from the skies and others around them – in the streets, the cafés, the offices, the buses and trams and cars – started dying before their eyes. A good many had probably neither seen nor heard the vengeance weapons fall, but the Blitz had conditioned them to seek shelter whenever the sirens sounded. Yet when they did, when they sought refuge in the street shelters, the park trenches, and even deep down in the subways, the Blood Death had followed, hunted them out, touching every one and poisoning their life’s flow so that it hardened, congealed, became like concrete in their veins.
Only a special few escaping. Others living on, but for a limited time; succumbing, just taking longer to do so.
We hurried through all this, each of us holding on to our emotions, following the dim white safety lines painted along the platforms, four feet and eight feet from the edge, all of us observing but cold to the horror, more than just panic overriding our compassion. Skull faces, eyes long since liquefied, the skin tight and dark like stretched parchment, torn in places – we saw it all, but quickly learned to focus on nothing.
I led the way, never allowing the weak flashlight beam to linger in one place too long, moving it away from the worst sights, finding a path through the slaughter, always aware that the fire was stealing up on us, progress helped by the body heaps. Its advance scout, foul, swilling smoke, threatened to overwhelm us despite our gas masks and I quickened the pace, aware that the train tunnel was not far. The smoke would follow us into the tunnel, but there would be fewer corpses to slow us down (and less material to burn). The flashlight showed more bodies lying on the tracks below and I quickly gave up the idea of using that level as an easier route.
Right about then a scream grabbed my attention.
I turned, swinging the flashlight around, and found Muriel on the floor, body stretched out but head and shoulders raised, supported by her elbows. She wrenched off her mask and began to scream even louder.
I was an idiot, but I guess it was a natural reaction: I shone the light on the cause of her hysterics.
The small body was lying beside a suitcase – I think the case must have concealed the child as I’d walked by, Muriel’s outstretched arm knocking it over when she fell – and only tattered rags still clung to what was left of it. It was easy to tell that the little girl’s eyes had been pulled out rather than dissolved, because hard ridges that were the remnants of tendrils trailed down her sunken cheeks; and where her belly should have been there was only a gaping, empty hole, all the organs gone, and although I didn’t look too hard or too long, I couldn’t help but notice that other parts of her were missing too, only stained bone left behind. I closed my eyes for a second or two, but the sight was replaced by a memory – a terrible, sickening memory – and I opened them again.
Oddly – Jesus Christ, bizarrely – Muriel reached forward to touch the long dull, hair that lay around the remains of the child’s face, as if to stroke it, a gesture of pity and regret, I guess. But the hair came away in Muriel’s hand and that was when her screams became wilder and her body began to shudder.
Taking her by the arm, I eased her away, lifting her so that Cissie could hold her, comfort her, and as the cries echoed around the Underground station I tore off my mask and quickly ran the light over the mounds of human remains nearby. I saw what I had dreaded.
Partially consumed corpses were nothing new to me, yet revulsion – and yeah, hatred, sheer bloody hatred for the scavengers who’d done this thing – filled my gut and set my own body shaking. I controlled it though, controlled my emotions and my shivering limbs, despite what lay around us, despite those torn and mutilated victims, their wounds – their ruptured skins and absent parts – not at first obvious in the altering light of the fire and swirling smoke, so easily missed among the shifting shadows.
Shifting shadows…At first I thought that’s all they were. Little movements among the human remains and the litter. But they were too furtive, sometimes too brisk. And here and there tiny bright reflections shone back.
‘Come on, we can’t stay here!’ I shouted at the others, jerking the light away, aiming its beam towards the end of the platform. ‘D’you hear me? The fire’s getting closer! Let’s move on!’
I grabbed Muriel’s wrist and pulled her away from Cissie, leading her onwards, not gentle at all, but let’s say determined, channelling my horror into anger. I held the flashlight high, keeping its light off the floor, stumbling through the wreckage, b
I threw a hasty look over my shoulder, but there was too much smoke and my eyes were too teared-up for me to see any more than a blustering hellfire filling the station. By then we were nearly at the end of the platform and obstacles were fewer. Dense smoke curled against the facing wall, but I could see the black hole of the tunnel next to it, a ramp leading down. Letting go of Muriel I wiped my eyes with the grimy fingers of one hand, then squinted into the dark. There were bodies blocking the ramp, more of them lying between the tracks below.
‘Help me with her,’ I shouted at Cissie as I stood at the platform’s edge. I shone the weak light into her face for a moment, and beyond the windows of the mask her eyes widened. I thought hysteria might overwhelm her too, but she just nodded, steering Muriel closer to the tracks, then holding her there. Hand on the platform’s lip, I hopped down, trying not to land on anything mushy, wincing when I landed on my damaged leg. There was less smoke at that level and, before reaching up for Muriel, I aimed the beam into the tunnel. The light didn’t stretch very far, enough only to reveal more victims scattered there, dim heaps that were more rags than human remains.
Cissie guided Muriel into my upstretched arms and I lowered her onto the tracks. She leaned against me, her slim body racked by coughing, as I turned back for Cissie, who followed without hesitation, first sitting on the platform and swinging her legs over before dropping down next to me. The German was crouched on one knee, looking even more alien behind his mask, and he held something towards me, something he’d found among the platform clutter.