And if she'd still been alive at the time, she'd have been proud, proud as hell.
I didn't realize it, but I was smiling at the warden.
'Nothin funny about it, mister. Yer could've got these young ladies killed takin them down into the tunnels. The most precious things we've got left and you go riskin their lives.'
He was still riled, but his eyes had softened, become tear-blurred. I didn't know what he was talking about and my expression must have shown it.
It was the German who put me in the picture. 'Women are now the world's most precious commodity, my friend,' he said.
Vimmen and vorld. That just irritated me (and I noticed Potter giving him an odd, sideways look) but the
'my friend' bit really got me hopping. If I'd had the strength I would've been at his throat.
But it was Cissie who was really stomping. 'Oh, sure we are! Who else is going to give birth to more chumps like you two so they can grow up and start a whole new war just to finish off what's left of the human race?' She'd been sitting upright on the stairs, stiff as a board, and now she pushed herself to her feet 'I don't want to stay here any longer. I want to see sunlight again.'
The warden hurried over to her, his face big and anxious. 'Don't you worry, miss, well get you out of here. Once we've climbed these stairs well be safe.' He stooped to help Muriel rise, but held on to her when she turned to climb. His other hand gripped Cissie's wrist 'Look now, you ladies,' he said almost apologetically. 'You're not goin to like what well find up there, but try and close your minds to it. I had to put 'em somewhere, y'see, and I couldn't bury 'em all. 'Sides, there was others out there already, people who'd tried to get away from the poison. There's hardly any smell now, so that won't bother yer, and you can keep your eyes closed if yer like...'
'What are you talking about?' Muriel was shaking her head, too tired to understand.
I picked myself up and walked over to them, explaining as I went 'He dumped the dead bodies from this place outside the back door. I wondered what was missing from inside the shelter.'
'I had to, you can understand that,' said Potter, appealing to me. 'I had to make this place fit enough to live in.'
'Listen, you did right,' I reassured him. 'And nothing could be worse than what we found inside the Underground station.'
'At least there were no flies,' he said as if it made a difference. 'The bodies just rotted away, like. No maggots and not much stink after the first few weeks.'
Yeah, no flies and no maggots. In fact, hardly any insects at all. I suppose we had to at least be grateful for that small mercy. God knows what kind of diseases could've wiped out the rest of us in the aftermath.
Distant rumbling from beyond the iron door and dust drifting down from the stairway's slanted ceiling got us moving again. Potter went first, lighting the way, and Cissie and Muriel followed close behind. I guess both were eager for that sunlight. The German, who'd remained on one knee, stood erect, the motion almost fluid, as if his steam had already been restored. I let him go on ahead of me - enemy at my back, and all that - then got going myself. Something heavy slammed against the door behind us, but none of us bothered to look back.
Christ, it hurt to climb those stairs - every muscle in my body was now stiffening up - and I favoured my injured leg, using the rough wall to lean on. My shoulder didn't bother me that much but the rest of my arm felt like a lump of lead. Nothing was broken though, I was sure of that, so considering the punishment I'd taken that morning, I figured I'd gotten off lightly. If these strangers hadn't picked me up in the square when they did I'd've been not just dead, but dried meat, by now. And if the old guy, Albert Potter, hadn't rescued us from the burning tunnel, we'd all be cooked meat - yeah, choked, smoked and goddamn coked.
At the top of the stairs Potter was dipping into his overalls pocket, the others squeezed up behind him, so I waited further down, rubbing some life back into my arm. I heard a clink as he drew out a large metal ring, at least a dozen keys attached to it. The one he chose unlocked the door immediately and he pulled it inwards so that a gust of air rushed through. He disappeared outside and I wondered why it was still dark up there. I soon knew the answer.
The almost pitch-black place we stepped out into was bigger, much bigger, than the Tube tunnels further below, and huge, monolithic shapes loomed over us in the gloom. When the light from Potter's paraffin lamp fell on the nearest one, I realized those shapes were passenger vehicles, tram-cars that ran on embedded iron tracks with electric cables overhead supplying the power, and the hangar-like place we'd escaped into was a large tunnel, a kind of under-passage beneath the city streets. It occurred to me as we stood there that those trams would be full of withered corpses.
There were hints of daylight coming from what must have been overhead airshafts along the tunnel's length and at the far end we could just make out a greyish hue that might have been the sloped entrance/exit. As our eyes grew accustomed to this new level of darkness we began to discern other forms lying in the roadway and across the sunken tracks, small black mounds, hundreds of them, and we were aware that they could only be the remnants of those who'd perished down here. Many, we assumed, were the remains of Civil Defence workers, laid there by Potter, himself.
Stern and the two girls lingered in the oasis of light, as if frozen there, afraid to move on. One of the girls
- Muriel, I think, began to weep. What lay around us was no more horrific than anything we'd found inside the Underground station and tunnels - far less so, in fact - but the quietness of the place must have stirred something deep within them - sorrow, dread, an interweaving oppression of emotions -that held them there, shocked and grief-stricken. I guess the fact that they suddenly had time to reflect had a lot to do with their paralysis, but it was nothing new to me, nor to the old warden.
His gruff East End voice cut through the mood. 'It's as good a tomb as any,' he said, no pity, no remorse, in his tone, only a sepulchral hollowness caused by the high walls and ceiling lending any reverence to his words. 'I've said a prayer over 'em,' he went on, 'which is more than most of the world's dead ever got, I expect,'
'Let's just find our way out of here,' said Muriel quietly, and the calmness in her voice surprised me. In the dim light I could see the glistening of tears on her cheeks.
Cissie, on the other hand, had channelled her sadness into anger. "Bloody well right! I can't breathe down here!' She looked towards the distant light and took a fierce step towards it, ready to march off in that direction. I caught her arm.
'No. It's too close to Holborn Station that way.' I'd figured it out, finally got my bearings. The incline had to be the northern approach to the under-passage and I remembered how near that was to the station.
'The Blackshirts could have left the entrance guarded, just in case we came out that way,' I explained quickly as Cissie tried to pull herself free.
'He is right,' Stern agreed. 'They will be waiting.'
Cissie ceased struggling and turned her head, looking in the other direction, towards a stifling blackness that seemed to go on forever. 'Wait a minute,' she said warily. 'You're not suggesting.. .'
'There's no choice,' I told her, not for the first time. And when I followed her gaze towards that eerie inkiness, I knew the day's nightmare wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot 6