Nothing should have shocked me by now - three years of living among sights that were the stuff of nightmares should have conditioned me - but the skull-head that returned my stare, with its black hollow eyes and gaping grin, made me jump back in fright. Stupidly, I'd expected the train to be empty. Of course passengers had been travelling on the Underground network all over the city when the disease had struck, the Blood Death drifting down into the tunnels, seeking out its victims like some predator roaming the burrows of the earth, and the Dead Man's Handle had jammed on as soon as the train driver had slumped over, cutting the circuit so that the carriages had come to a halt, to remain locked there in the darkness as one by one their occupants keeled over. How many had escaped? I wondered. How many of the ABnegs - if there'd been any on board -had managed to crawl out into the tunnels and make their way back to the surface, only to wish they'd died with their fellow travellers below?
The skull resting against the window still wore a driver's cap, its peak tilted by the glass to a rakish angle so that, with its unrestricted grin, the skeleton appeared to have kept its sense of humour. I didn't get the joke though, and was ready to unravel as I went back to the others. I was about to tell 'em to keep their eyes low when they passed by the carriages, but I never got the chance.
The flash that swept through the tunnel was like sheet lightning, its glare bleaching everything white before blinding us with its brilliance, the thunderclap that followed a split second later shaking the walls and deafening us all. Searing air blasted around us, but we were protected by the carriages we cowered behind, only our legs feeling a deflected part of the heat. The world may have become silent to us as we fell to our knees, but it continued to spasm and shake, causing us to sprawl between the tracks, bodies stretched, hands over our heads.
I'm not sure if I felt or sensed the train lurch, but an instinct sent me scrabbling forward onto the girls, using my weight to hold them still until the wheels shuddered to a stop. As I blinked to clear my dazzled eyes, I became aware that the air was suddenly cleansed, the smoke and filth pushed back by the blast; but even as I rubbed at my eyes and my hearing began to return, grime and dust, along with brickwork, started to fall from the ceiling and walls. Head still reeling, senses floating, I guessed what had caused the explosion further down the Tube line, but now was not the time to mull it over - although we'd been shielded from the full force of the blast, we were now in a worse predicament than before. And unfortunately our chances of survival were getting slimmer by the second.
I staggered to my feet, grabbing the fallen but still-burning lamp as I rose, then swung round to squint into the flickering shadows behind us. The shadowy figure of the German was leaning against the train, his head jerking from left to right as if he were trying to shake some sense back into it; and beyond him the train itself was burning, the flames further along the carriages contained by the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, but spreading fast towards us. Stern was swiftly lost from sight as great clouds of smoke swept between us.
The very air felt scorched, dried out, and suddenly it was hard to draw breath.
'Back!' I managed to squawk, but I doubt any of the others heard me.
I pushed the girls, herding them away from this new threat, and Stern wasn't slow in figuring it out for himself. He was soon alongside us as we staggered through the smoke and falling dirt. He held Muriel's arm while I hung on to Cissie, and as a tight group we stumbled back along the track, not thinking ahead, fear and heat forcing the retreat, the thick, choking smoke swilling around us, increasing our panic, until it was exhaustion, not common sense, that slowed us after a hundred yards or so. Muriel dropped to her knees first and Cissie followed her down.
Stern attempted to drag Muriel up again, but she was bent double, gagging on fumes, her body a dead weight.
I crouched close to Cissie. 'Come on, we'll choke to death if we stay here.' Even to me my voice sounded faint after the explosion, kind of trapped inside my own head, but I think she heard me. She tried to tug herself free.
Her voice was distant too, but I caught what she was saying. 'Where can we go?' she asked. 'We're between two fires, you bloody fool, and it's your fault You made us come down here.'
She had a point. But hell, what other choice had there been?
I looked around, up the tunnel, down the tunnel, and wasn't encouraged. Out of the fire and into the inferno, I told myself. Some days were like that.
The German, his back against the wall, was coughing so violently I thought his gut might burst, and Muriel's arched figure was heaving, her throat rasping as she fought to draw in poisoned air. Back there the whole tunnel was alight, clouds of rolling smoke softening the blaze, and in the other direction, towards the station, even more smoke tumbled towards us, a thick, curling torrent of it, so dense it looked solid.
I hauled myself up, but my legs barely supported me. My energy was sapped and my head was dizzy from lack of pure oxygen. A veil seemed to be drawing over my mind, and it wasn't unpleasant; no, it seemed like an escape, a retreat from the horror all around us in this black stormy hell. I fought it though, because fighting against things that were not right, legal and fair was in my nature, always had been. That was why I'd gotten into the stinking rotten war before most of my compatriots in the first place. Sure, I was a fighter - life, and death, had made me that way - but this looked like the final battle.
I raged against it, even lifted a weary fist in defiance, but I knew I'd lost. There were no options. Like the girl said, I'd led them into a trap of my own making, and the price of that foolishness was death. We were gonna die alongside the scorched vermin.
And as the black smoke closed in and that flimsy veil floating across my mind thickened, something happened that sent a last reserve of adrenaline rushing through me.
5
EVEN THROUGH THE SMOKY mists this new light was bright enough to dazzle. It seemed to come straight from the tunnel wall itself, only a few yards away, and it swept over us, taking us all in, its beam defined by the smoke. The speaker was invisible behind the glare, but his voice was clear enough.
'You're a sorry sight, the lot of yer.' The voice was low, gruft a little peppery, as if the guy wasn't excessively pleased to find us. 'You'd better get yourselves inside,' it went on in that growly way, 'unless you want to choke to death. Come on, in 'ere, ladies first'
The German was on his feet, but the two girls remained sprawled across the tracks, heads raised and looking towards the light I figured we were being offered sound advice so I dragged Cissie up by her armpits, croaking out to Stern to help Muriel at the same time. Every muscle in my body ached and my shoulder stung from the nick it had taken earlier, but I managed to haul Cissie over to the light source, the lamp I'd been using left by the tracks. We must have looked quite a sight, covered in filth, clothes a mess, faces blackened and tear-stained, all of us coughing so much smoke we could hardly speak. Blasts of heat swept over us in waves and we could hear the sound of popping glass as the train's windows fractured. There were other noises too
- the roof over the train falling in, old brickwork crumbling with the heat, and a deep rumbling, like an earthquake, going on way below our feet. Between coughing fits, the girls were crying out, floating ash and smoke creating a storm around us, and I swallowed hard before lending my own voice to the racket by shouting at the man behind the light to quit blinding us.