Fairbank had tried to grab at the man who had fallen from just above him and in the process had lost the precious blade. He studied the seething foam below with consternation, blood spurting from the froth in scarlet geysers.
Culver looked down into Strachan’s wide, pleading eyes, the pupils completely surrounded by whiteness. The engineer was screaming, the sound too soft to be heard over the clamour. One hand gripped a rung while the other reached towards Culver, fingers outstretched and twitching, a gesture of entreaty.
Culver started to descend, ignoring Fairbank’s warning not to.
Strachan sank lower, forcing Culver to climb down further. He crouched on the ladder, legs bent, clinging with one hand and reaching for Strachan with the other.
Their fingertips touched and slipped into each other’s palms. They gripped.
A rat, seeming to grin as it emerged from the water behind the engineer’s shoulder, sped up Strachan’s arm and onto Culver’s as though their joined hands were nothing more than a ship’s mooring chain. It was on Culver’s shoulder before he had a chance to react.
By instinct alone, he had turned his head away as the mutant reached him. Teeth sliced through his ear and cut into his temple. He cried out as he let go of Strachan, pushing against the rat’s underbelly, lifting it clear and throwing the animal away from him in one swift movement.
The rat twisted in the air, emitting its strange infant cry before it splashed back into the disturbed water.
Strachan’s shoulders were almost under the surface when, with a supreme effort, he hauled himself clear again.
Culver felt faint when he saw the mass of black, feeding shapes covering the engineer’s back, torso and lower limbs. The water was red beneath him.
It seemed that Strachan was almost smiling as he dragged himself upwards, but the smile became frozen, the eyes resumed their fearful stare, as he realized there was no hope for him. He began to slide down again, the weight of the vermin dragging him back into the glutinous, heaving throng.
His shoulders went under. His chin. His face turned upwards just before he sank. His eyes remained open as water covered them. His mouth did not close as water rushed into it. His face became a white blur beneath the surface, a pale, screaming ghost. It faded in a cloud of deep vermilion.
A hand clutched Culver’s shoulder and his head jerked around.
‘There was nothing you could do,’ Fairbank said. ‘Now let’s get going before they come after us.’
Culver nodded after the briefest of pauses, and both men resumed their ascent, soaked boots constantly slipping on the already wet iron rungs. As they passed a duct set in the wall by the ladder they heard scuffling sounds, and something pressed from behind the grid, scratching furiously to get at the climbing men. Fairbank spat into the opening. Culver could not take his eyes away, but nevertheless kept moving.
Lightning flashed just before Culver climbed through the trapdoor in the wire mesh at the top. He looked down into the deep well, the thrashing sounds still loud, spiralling up the shaft with the squealing, the shrill cries of the mutant vermin.
He closed the opening on the unholy place as if it were the gateway from hell itself. The creatures would climb the ladder, but not before they had finished their underwater feast.
Thunder boomed again as he crawled to the narrow opening in the tower where Fairbank waited. He looked out into the driving rain, seeing nothing else because of it, only the lights shining upwards from below.
Lightning flashed and he was able to see that the buildings had collapsed all around the ventilation shaft, and their bulk had protected the tower from the blast. The tower itself was contained in some kind of stockade, the walls mostly broken now and covered in debris. The rubble was just twelve or thirteen feet below, an easy drop.
He nodded to Fairbank to go first, the night shuddering with thunder, and the engineer grinned, his expression just visible in the shining beams from outside. Fairbank clung to the sill for a moment before releasing his grip.
Culver watched as lightning forked the sky, a lightning the like of which he had never before seen, for it streaked the blackness in five different places simultaneously, the landscape of destruction frozen in monochrome. Electricity charged the air, yet it was vibrant, infinitely preferable to the dank decay beneath him.
He slid from the edge and dropped out into the dark, rain-filled night.
Three: Domain
The black creatures moved easily through the ruins, seeking human prey, a keen, feverish excitement running through them in the knowledge that food was abundant and easily obtained. They sensed their victims’ helplessness and showed no mercy; man, woman and child falling to their slashing teeth and claws, weakened bodies finding little strength against the vermin’s vicious might. Even the new-formed communities afforded the survivors little protection against the sudden and overwhelming attacks, for the rats were instinctively aware of the shift in power, the balance so abruptly and unexpectedly in their favour. They had found a huge source of food near the Mother nest, a warm, living supply that had sustained them for many days and nights; but as that flesh had putrified the vermin had sought fresher nourishment, meat that was still moist, succulent with juices, filled with blood that had not dried solid, and inside the skulls, the saporous organ that had not yet been liquefied to slimy pulp by death’s decay. The vermin grew bolder in their seeking, more daring in their gluttonous fervour, still preferring the night but less timid of the daylight hours. They ruled the lesser rodents, their cunning and strength so much greater than that of their inferior kin; and they in turn were ruled by others: strange, obscene creatures that skulked in the darkness below, that slithered on gross, misshapen bodies among bones and rotted corpses, communicating in high-pitched mewling, protected and fed by the giant Black rats, mutants among mutants, the grotesque among the hideous. Weaker than their sleek Black army yet dominating them, feared and favoured, obeyed and exalted as though they held some progenitive secret within their ill-formed shapes, these monsters quivered with a new excitement, an expectancy; sluggish bodies restless, deformed limbs and snouts occasionally thrashing the filthy earth they existed in, the mewling noise reaching a frantic peak before slowly subsiding, finally abating.
They would look towards a far corner of the inner chamber within the dark underworld they inhabited, many of them with sightless eyes or no eyes at all, and the fervour would build inside them for long moments, dissipating gradually, sinking but not fading completely.
They waited and received the thoughts of the Mother Creature, sensing its anguish, feeling its pain. They waited and, in their way, they rejoiced.
20
The cold water trickled to a halt and the woman clucked her tongue. She twisted the tap off and placed the meagrely filled kettle on the electric stove. She left it to boil on the stone-cold ring.
Walking through to the hallway, the woman picked up the telephone receiver and flicked open the book lying beside it on the narrow hallstand. She found a number and dialled.
‘I’ve already complained twice,’ she said into the mouthpiece. ‘Now the water’s gone off completely. Why should I pay my water rates when I can’t have bloody water?’
She flushed, angry with herself and the noiseless receiver. ‘You’ve made me swear now, that’s how angry I am,’ she said. ‘Don’t give me any more excuses, I want someone round today to sort it out, otherwise I shall have to speak to your supervisor.’
Silence.
‘What’s that you say? You’ll have to speak up.’
The phone remained dead.
‘Yes, well that’s more like it. And I’ll have you remember that civility costs nothing. I’ll expect your man later this morning, then?’
The earpiece could have been a sea-shell for all the noise it made.
‘Right, thank you, and I hope it isn’t necessary to call again.’
The woman allowed herself a humph of satisfaction as she replaced the receiver.
; ‘I don’t know what this country’s coming to,’ she said, pulling her unkempt cardigan tight around her as a breeze – a warm breeze – flowed down from the stairway. She went back into the kitchen.
As she rinsed the teapot with water from the cold kettle, the woman complained to her husband seated at the pine kitchen table, newspaper propped up against the empty milk bottle before him. A fly, its body thick and black and as big as a bee, landed on the man’s cheek and trekked across the pallid landscape. The man ignored it.
‘. . . not even as though water’s cheap nowadays,’ his wife droned. ‘We have to pay the rates even when it’s off. Should never have been allowed to split from normal rates – it was just their way of bumping up prices. Like everything else, I suppose. Money, money, it rules everything. I dread doing the monthly shop. God knows how much everything’s gone up since last time. Afraid you’ll have to give me more housekeeping soon, Barry. Yes, I know, but I’m sorry. If you want to eat the way you’re used to, you’ll have to give me more.’
She stirred the tea and quickly sucked her finger when cold water splashed and burned it. Putting the lid on the teapot, she took it over to the kitchen table and sat opposite her husband.
‘Tina, are you going to eat those cornflakes or just sit and stare at them all day?’
Her daughter did not even shrug.
‘You’ll be late for playschool again if you don’t get a move on. And how many times have I told you Cindy isn’t allowed at the table. You spend more time speaking to that doll than you do eating.’
She scooped up the dolly that she herself had placed in her daughter’s lap only minutes before, and propped it up on the floor against a table leg. Tina began to slide off her chair.
The mother jumped up and pulled the child erect again, tutting as she did so. Tina’s small chin rested against her chest and the woman tried vainly to lift it.
‘All right, you go ahead and sulk, see where it gets you.’
A small creature with many eyelash legs stirred from its nest in the little girl’s ear. It crawled out and scuttled into the dry white hair of the child’s scalp.
The woman poured the tea, the water almost colourless, black specks that were the unbrewed tea leaves collecting in the strainer to form a soggy mould. Silverfish scattered from beneath the milk jug as she lifted it and unsuccessfully tried to pour the dots of sour cream into the cups.
‘Sammy, you stop that clattering and finish your toast. And will you put your school tie on straight; how many more times do I have to tell you? At ten years of age you think you’d be old enough to dress yourself properly.’
Her son silently gazed at the green bread beside his bowl of cornflakes, the cereal stirring gently as small creatures fed beneath. He was grinning, a ventriloquist’s dummy, cheek muscles tightened by shrinkage. A misty film clouded his eyes, a spoon balanced ungripped in his clawed hand. A length of string around his chest tied him to the chair.
The woman suddenly heaved forward, twisting her chair so that the ejected vomit did not splatter the stale food. She retched, the pain seeming to gut her insides, her stomach jerking in violent spasms as if attempting to evict its own internal organs.
The excruciating pain was in her head too, and for a brief second it forced a flash of lucidity. The moment of boundless thunder, the quietness after. The creeping sickness.
It was gone, the clearness vanquished, muddy clouds spoiling her mind’s fleeting perspicuity. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sat upright. The hurt was easing, but she knew it would linger in the background, never far away, waiting to pounce like Inspector Clouseau’s Chinese manservant. She almost managed to smile at the memory of old, better times, but the present – her own vision of the present – closed in on her.
She sipped the tasteless tea and flicked with an impatient hand at the flies buzzing around Tina’s head. Her husband’s pupil-less stare from the other side of the table irritated her, too, the whites of his eyes showing between half-closed lids a silly affectation he assumed to annoy her. A joke could be taken too far.
‘What shall we do this morning, everyone?’ she asked, forgetting it was both a work- and school-day. ‘A walk to the park? The rain’s finally stopped, you know. My goodness, I thought it never would, didn’t you, Barry? Must do some shopping later, but I think we could manage a little walk first, take advantage of the weather, hmm? What do you say, Sammy? You could take your roller skates. Yes, you too, Tina, I wasn’t forgetting you. Perhaps the cinema later. No, don’t get excited – I want you to finish your breakfast first.’
She leaned across and patted her daughter’s little clenched fist.
‘It’ll be just like old times, won’t it?’ Her voice became a whisper, and the words were slow. ‘Just like old times.’
Tina slid down in her chair once more and this time disappeared beneath the table.
‘That’s right, dear, you look for Cindy, she can come to the park, too. Anything interesting in the news today, Barry? Really, oh good gracious, people are funny, aren’t they? Makes you wonder what the world’s coming to, just what on earth you’ll read next. Manners, Samuel, hand before mouth.’
She scraped away surface mould from a drooping slice of bread and bit into it. ‘Don’t let your tea get cold, pet,’ she lightly scolded her husband, Barry. ‘You’ve got all day to read the newspaper. I think I’ll have a lie down in a little while; I’m not feeling too well today. Think I’ve got flu coming on.’
The woman glanced towards the shattered window, a warm breeze ruffling the thin hair straggling over her forehead. She saw but did not perceive the nuclear-wasted city outside.
Her attention drifted back to her family once more and she watched the black fly, which had fully explored the surface of her husband’s face by now, disappearing into the gaping hole of his mouth.
She frowned, and then she sighed. ‘Oh, Barry,’ she said, ‘you’re not just going to sit there all day again, are you?’
Tiny, glittering tear beads formed in the corners of each eye, one brimming over leaving a jerky silver trail down to her chin. Her family didn’t even notice.
They had laughed at him, but who had the last laugh now? Who had survived, who had lived in comfort, confining though it might be, while others had died in agony? Who had foreseen the holocaust years before the Middle-East situation finally bubbled over to world conflict? Maurice Joseph Kelp, that’s who.
Maurice J. Kelp, the insurance agent (who knew better about future-risk?).
Maurice Kelp, the divorcee (no one else to worry about).
Maurice, the loner (no company was more enjoyable than his own).
He had dug the hole in his back garden in Peckham five years ago, much to the derision of his neighbours (who was laughing now, eh? Eh?), big enough to accommodate a large-sized shelter (room enough for four actually, but who wanted other bodies fouling his air, thank you very much). Refinements had been saved for and fitted during those five years, the shelter itself, in kit form, costing nearly £3,000. Accessories such as the hand- and battery-operated filtration unit (£350 second-hand) and the personal radiation-measuring meter (£145 plus £21.75 VAT) had swollen the costs, and fitted extras like the fold-away wash basin and the own-flush toilet had not been cheap. Worth it though, worth every penny.
The prefabricated steel sections had been easy to assemble and the concrete filling-in had been simple enough, once he had read the instruction book carefully. Even fitting the filter and exhaust units had not proved too difficult, when he had fully comprehended what he was supposed to be doing, and the shelter duct connections had proved to be no problem at all. He had also purchased a cheap bilge pump, but mercifully had had no reason to use it. Inside he had installed a bunkbed with foam mattress, a table (the bed was his chair), a heater and Grillogaz cooker, butane gas and battery operated lamps, storage racks filled with tinned and bottled food, dried food, powdered milk, sugar, salt – in all, enough to last him two months. He had a radio with
spare batteries (although once below he’d only received crackling noises from it), a medical kit, cleaning utensils, an ample supply of books and magazines (no girlie stuff – he didn’t approve of that sort of thing), pencils and paper (including a good stock of toilet paper), strong disinfectants, cutlery, crockery, tin opener, bottle opener, saucepans, candles, clothing, bedding, two clocks (the ticking had nearly driven him crackers for the first few days – he didn’t even notice it now), a calendar, and a twelve-gallon drum of water (the water never used for washing dishes, cutlery, or drinking, without his Milton and Mow’s Simpla sterilizing tablets).
And oh yes, one more recent acquisition, a dead cat.
Just how the wretched animal had got into his tightly-sealed shelter he had no way of knowing (the cat wasn’t talking), but he guessed it must have crept in there a few days before the bombs had dropped. Rising tension in world affairs had been enough to spur Maurice into FINAL PREPARATIONS stage (as four or five similar crises had since he’d owned the shelter) and the nosy creature must have sniffed its way in as he, Maurice, had scurried back and forth from house to shelter, leaving open the conning-tower hatch (the structure was shaped like a submarine with the conning-tower entrance at one end rather than in the middle). He hadn’t discovered the cat until the morning after the holocaust.
Maurice remembered the doomsday vividly, the nightmare impressed onto the back of his brain like a finely detailed mural. God, how frightened he’d been! But then, how smug afterwards.
The months of digging, assembling, equipping – enduring the taunts of his neighbours! – had paid off. ‘Maurice’s Ark’ they had laughingly called it, and now he realized how apt that description was. Except, of course, it hadn’t been built for bloody animals.