Domain

The rats were already inside the shelter,' he said quietly. They were inside, waiting. Don't you see?

There are sewers below here, miles of underground tunnels, weirs that control the flow of rainwater and effluent. The rats must have roamed the network for years, scavenging where they could, feeding off the city's waste. Oh dear God.' His other hand slowly went to his forehead and he seemed to sink within himself, his shoulders shrinking. 'Food is kept below the main shelter level, a huge cold-storage chamber. It was rarely exchanged, only added to. Hardly any of it was perishable, you see? Any that was, was kept nearer to hand where it could be easily replenished. For years the rats have had an ample food supply.'

'Surely it was checked from time to time?' Culver asked incredulously.

There was no need, it was considered safe from harm. I suppose it was given a cursory examination at regular intervals, but you would have to see the vastness of the store itself to realize much was left unseen. All foodstuffs were tightly sealed, as was the storeroom itself; the thought of entry by vermin was hardly considered.'

'Not considered at all, it appears,' ventured Ellison, shifting in his seat to ease the stiffness of his ribs.

'Poisons were laid and traps were set. Nobody would have realized the unique cunning of the scavenger they were dealing with.'

'Obviously not.'

Culver was still puzzled. There had to be some evidence of these creatures. Somebody must have noticed something.'

Dealey looked up and shrugged. 'Why? These headquarters have never been occupied. Certainly maintenance work has been carried out, new, more-advanced technology installed as the years have gone by, and inspections have always been made at regular intervals; but it's obvious that this breed of rat has kept well-hidden. Its own instincts would have warned it of the treatment it would receive from its old enemy. Remember, too, the extermination of these mutant

creatures over the past decade has been carried out ruthlessly and on a grand scale. There have been pogroms against them, if you like.'

'Not ruthlessly enough by your earlier account.' The others looked at Culver with curiosity.

'What do you mean by that, Steve?' Kate asked.

'When I had my little private chat with Dealey yesterday, he told me there was considerable scientific interest in the mutant Black rat. So much so that they tried to breed them in laboratories.'

'I said that there were rumours, nothing more. But that has nothing to do with these creatures in the sewers. Nobody could have known they existed.'

Fairbank was scratching his temple with the snub-nosed muzzle of the Ingram. 'All right, so how come these bloody things didn't attack the maintenance guys or whoever did the checks on this place?'

'I told you: they were probably deeply afraid of men and much too wily to reveal themselves.'

Fairbank swept the gun around the room below. They got over their shyness fast.'

'After the bombs dropped, yes. It could be they sensed they had the upper hand. Perhaps their numbers had grown to encourage that belief, also. Another point: they may have considered the mass evacuation into the shelter as an invasion of their territory. My theory is that all these elements were involved.'

They were threatened, so they attacked.' Kate's statement was flat, toneless.

'It's all we can assume.'

They went up against firepower,' said Fairbank. 'And against an awful lot of people. They must have felt pretty confident.'

'Or they had a stronger motive.'

Once again, all eyes turned to Culver.

He shook his head. 'I don't know, it's just a feeling I've got. There's something more, something we don't know about.'

Ellison was impatient. 'I still don't understand how it was possible for the rats to overwhelm them.

Doors could have been sealed, the rats could have been contained, or closed out of any number of different sections.'

'Remember the doors where all those vehicles were housed? The big metal doors to the ramps? They didn't function. Like most things around here, apart from the lighting and ventilation, they were inoperative. I'm sure if we examined the main power switching area we'd find machinery or wiring destroyed, either by the trapped survivors when they used guns to protect themselves, or by the rats gnawing through vital cables. It's not unusuaclass="underline" it's a speciality even of normal vermin. There are all kinds of safeguards in this complex that need power to function.'

"Why the lights and ventilation, then?'

They're on completely different systems which obviously haven't been harmed.'

Dealey slumped back in his chair, wiping both hands down his face, the Browning placed in front of him on the table. 'It's my belief that the survivors were attacked very soon after the first bombs had dropped, when the people were in mortal fear and disorganized. Can you imagine the scenes inside this shelter at the time? Panic, remorse, total disorientation. Even the trained military personnel would have been traumatized. The survivors were confused and almost defenceless.'

'How many ... how many would have been here?' Kate's gun was held rigid in her lap as though she were afraid to

release it even for a moment. She wanted to leave immediately, but like the others she was totally drained of strength. And they needed answers before they ventured further into the shelter.

'It's impossible to say,' Dealey told her. 'Hundreds, possibly. We've seen enough dead to know there were a large number of people. Not everybody who had access would have reached the shelter by the time the bombs exploded, and of course, many - many - may have escaped when the rats attacked.'

Culver was hesitant. The, er, apartments we passed in this part of the complex: you said they were meant for certain persons.'

Dealey nodded. That was why I was so relieved that they appeared to have been unoccupied. I'm sure the Royal Family were evacuated from London long before the crisis finally erupted.'

'And the Prime Minister?'

'Knowing her, she would have remained here in the capital, inside these headquarters, from where she could direct operations.'

'Do you think there's a chance she and her War Cabinet got out?'

There was a long silence from Dealey. He lifted his hands from his lap and let them drop again, making a muffled slapping sound of despair. 'Who knows?' he said. 'It's possible. It depends on how much they were taken by surprise, or how well they were protected. I have no intention of examining all these bodies to find the answer.'

Culver found the irony of the situation incredible. A failsafe refuge had been constructed for a select few, the rest of the country's population, apart from those designated to other shelters, left to suffer the full onslaught of the nuclear

strike; but the plan had gone terribly wrong, a freak of nature - literally - destroying those escapers just as surely as the nuclear blitz itself. The stupid bastards had built their fortress over the nest, the lair -

whatever the fuck it was called - of the mutant Black rats, the very spawn of earlier nuclear destruction.

If there really were a Creator somewhere out there in the blue, he would no doubt be chuckling over mankind's folly and the retribution paid out to at least some of its leaders.

Fairbank had risen from his seat and was staring down at the ghastly scene below. Among the human remnants were inanimate black-furred shapes. He rested his hands on the balustrade. 'I don't understand.

They managed to kill a lot of rats down there before they were overwhelmed. But take a close look at some of those animal carcases. They're unmarked, and they're not in such an advanced stage of decomposition as the others. A lot of these fuckers died more recently.'

Culver joined Fairbank, interested in the engineer's speculation. 'Hell, you're right,' he said.