She hadn’t had to persuade the others to follow her. They’d just piled in behind her, fewer than she’d expected, and blundered around in the dark until someone had found the way up.
It had been almost too late: the naked metal grille they’d had to pass, which led back out to the tunnels, had been glowing cherry red, and the heat had been almost too great to bear.
She couldn’t remember if there’d been more than five of them at that point. Perhaps they’d lost someone else between then and now, too frightened, too tired to carry on.
There were five. And shortly there’d be more.
She moved to the back of the group, holding her glow stick high. There was a little door in the wall at the end of the short corridor where they were huddling, and just as she reached it, it opened at her.
She shrieked, and that brought a cry of shock from the other side. A bright white light struck her full in the face, and she raised a hand to shield her eyes.
‘Point it somewhere else, you fucking idiot.’
‘Sorry.’
The torches turned their aim toward the ground: the damage was done, though. Night sight ruined, Mary couldn’t see anything.
‘How many of you are there?’
‘Two. There’s two of us.’ The voice that spoke seemed very proper, very English, despite the hoarseness. ‘How many are you?’
‘Five.’ There’d been twenty of them when they’d started. How could there be only five left? ‘What’s happening? Why is everything on fucking fire?’
‘Do I look like I know?’
She couldn’t tell what he looked like, but someone with that accent ought to know.
‘Well, do you?’
A voice behind the first man spoke. ‘Miss? Please move out of the way. We would like to come in.’
She shuffled to one side, and two dark shapes edged past. They headed towards the remains of the cleaning crew, leaving her with the door. Noises◦– bad noises◦– echoed from below, grinding and groaning and booming, as if a monster was loose in the tunnels.
Perhaps there was a monster loose in the tunnels. It made as much sense as anything.
She pushed the door shut, and leaned on it for a moment’s rest. Then she realised that the men would try and leave through the emergency door to street level, and she hurried to stop them.
‘Wait, wait.’
Her sight was returning slowly. One of the men, the shorter, wider one, had already turned his torch off, and was indicating to his taller companion that he ought to do the same.
With the bright lights extinguished, and only the steady green glow from the sticks, it became easier to see.
Easier also to tell that the way out, the door that led to the pavement outside, was outlined in an inconstant red.
Stepping over the legs of the other women, the three of them stopped at the heavy fire door with its push-bar mechanism. Bolts secured the door top and bottom, but there was a slight gap at the edge of the frame.
‘We can’t go this way, and there’s no other way out,’ she said. ‘The whole street’s on fire. I mean, where’s the fucking fire brigade when you need it?’
The taller man◦– he had something on his head, a bandage of sorts, that made him look taller◦– risked putting his eye to the crack and peering out.
‘It’s burning. Everything’s burning.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘I thought we were—’
The other man checked for himself, taking his time. ‘We cannot stay here. All we can do is choose when we leave.’
Mary reached forward and poked the man. ‘Oi. We can’t go out in that.’
Even in the gloom, she could feel his ire, and she drew her hand back.
‘Listen,’ he said, and she prepared herself for a lecture.
But he said nothing, and she decided that she would listen.
Over the close-by panting and soft moans, behind the more distant, tortured noises rising up from beneath, she could hear a dull roar, like a static hiss. That was new. And it was getting louder.
When she’d had her fill, she asked him, ‘What is that?’
‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘but I do not want to be here, in this tiny corridor, when it finds us. Also, the building above us will be on fire. At some point it will collapse. We have to leave before it falls on us.’
She looked around. Everyone was watching them.
‘Do you want to die here?’ he growled.
‘I don’t want to die out there.’ She realised that she might not have a choice. ‘There must be someone coming for us?’
‘London is on fire! If we are going to live, we have to save ourselves, as we already have done, as we will do again.’ He spoke past her, to the others. ‘On your feet! Up! We must be ready.’
He didn’t wait. Before Mary could stop him, he brought up his foot and landed it squarely on the push-bar. The bolts banged back, the door swung open.
The narrow street was burning. Fire poured from the shattered windows in the building opposite. A line of cars, wreathed in thick orange flame and black smoke, were parked along the kerb, sitting on their steel rims, reduced to metal shells. The twisted shapes merging into the molten river of tarmac could only be bodies.
As the wall of heat drove them back, the taller man reached out, straining for the push-bar, to drag the door shut again. Instead, he fell into it, and it began to swing out wide.
The air itself seemed to tear in two.
Instead of fire, there was water.
A wave slapped through the open doorway, and a gust of wind blew into the smoke-filled corridor, dragging a spiral of soot outwards and away. It curled into a blue sky studded with clouds shaped like torn sheets, and a bird◦– a seagull◦– darted by at head-height. It wheeled back for a second look, before flapping once and soaring towards a tall headland of jagged black rocks.
The bottom of the cliff was strewn with boulders that extended out in a line as far as the door, and the sea washed over them, hissing and foaming, then drawing down with a rattling gurgle.
The light was bright and clean.
Another wave spilled across the threshold, and the tall man◦– not wearing a bandage, but a turban◦– struggled back in from where he’d fallen, half in and half out the door. The lower half of his orange boilersuit was already soaked and dark.
Mary looked behind her. It was the same corridor, the same smell of heat and burning, the same taste of smoke and ash, the same sound of failing steel and masonry. The same people she’d cheated death with, filthy, dirty, wild-eyed and desperate.
Then she tried to take in what was beyond the door: the land, the sea, the sky.
‘What the fuck have you done with London?’
She pulled the guy with the turban behind her, and hung out of the doorway, fingers clinging to the frame.
She felt the wind and the waves against her face. The spray was cold, a sudden shock after the heat, and she wiped her sleeve against her cheek. It came away wet.
Mary was afraid. The fire, the burning buildings, the cindered bodies: she’d been expecting that, had steeled herself to see it. But not this, this wide-open vista, nothing recognisable, no sign of brick or glass or plank or metal or dressed stone.
‘Mama? Mama, can you see this?’
Mama roused herself enough to sit up. She’d fared badly. Her feet and hands were raw and, where not raw, blistered.
‘Mary, girl. I see it. I see it.’
‘What do we do?’
From below them, a boom sounded, rattling the walls, shaking the ceiling. Tiles and brickwork cracked and flew, tiny pieces of shrapnel that cut and stung.
The man with the shaven head and broad bouncer’s shoulders stared out at the line of rocks that pointed towards the shore. His face was set, his body tensed.