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and reds and blacks fierce enough to scorch the eyeballs. It had a kind of
terrifying beauty as it hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs and curled to
the floor, devouring the dead things lying there before rearing up again in a
huge fireball that ballooned outwards.
'Get back!
' I yelled, and we all hit the deck together as the flames poured out at us.
I felt my hair crackle as I sprawled among the corpses filling the platform.
Smoke created its own menace, blinding and choking, billowing from the opening
as the flames retreated for the moment, falling back to consolidate, to feed
before progressing. Now it was Stern helping me, pulling me up and away from
the worst of the smoke, his mask giving him the advantage. I was retching,
lungs filled with the black stuff, eyes streaming, and I felt other hands grab
me.
A gas mask was tugged over my head and, although still coughing smoke dust, I
caught the faint whiff of old disinfectant under the stink of rubber. I
blinked my eyes rapidly and saw the blurred image of Cissie standing in front
of me. She was pointing down the platform, her other hand on my arm, and I
nodded in an exaggerated way, bowing my shoulders as well as my head. We moved
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off awkwardly, me still limping, going as fast as we could, like survivors of
a subterranean battlefield, the conflict long over, only smoke and the dead
left behind. We passed by cots pushed close to the curved platform wall, and
bedding laid out on the concrete floor itself. Among those rumpled rags,
filling every space, was all kinds of domestic stuff: kettles, fold-away
chairs, suitcases, books, even a wind-up gramophone. A small wooden
clotheshorse still stood, its hanging rags once a screen for some modest
family and probably, like other carefully placed items along the platform, a
marker for regular users of the shelter, a sign of territorial claim. A kid's
doll, eyes wide as if still terrorized by the carnage around it. A crushed
bowler hat a single boot lying on its side, a pair of spectacles, lenses still
intact. There were even one or two tiny portable gas or paraffin cookers, the
kind used for 'brew-ups' or warming babies' bottles, smuggled in by families
who enjoyed their home comforts. An accordion propped up against a cot bed, a
baby's gas mask, oversized and ugly, like a deep-sea diver's helmet, lying
empty on a blanket next to it.
Newspapers strewn across huddled bodies, faded headlines as irrelevant as the
advertisements for gin or
Brylcreem they shared the page with.
And the corpses. Avoiding them, stumbling over them, pulling them aside when
they blocked our way.
Thousands of them it seemed, there in the flickering light. Empty shells that
had once been living beings, most of these people fleeing here when the
rockets fell from the skies and others around them - in the streets, the
cafes, the offices, the buses and trams and cars - started dying before their
eyes. A good many had probably neither seen nor heard the vengeance weapons
fell, but the Blitz had conditioned them to seek shelter whenever the sirens
sounded. Yet when they did, when they sought refuge in the street shelters,
the park trenches, and even deep down in the subways, the Blood Death had
followed, hunted them out, touching every one and poisoning their life's flow
so that it hardened, congealed, became like concrete in their veins.
Only a special few escaping. Others living on, but for a limited time;
succumbing, just taking longer to do so.
We hurried through all this, each of us holding on to our emotions, following
the dim white safety lines painted along the platforms, four feet and eight
feet from the edge, all of us observing but cold to the horror, more than just
panic overriding our compassion. Skull faces, eyes long since liquefied, the
skin tight and dark like stretched parchment, torn in places - we saw it all,
but quickly learned to focus on nothing.
I led the way, never allowing the weak flashlight beam to linger in one place
too long, moving it away from the worst sights, finding a path through the
slaughter, always aware that the fire was stealing up on us, progress helped
by the body heaps. Its advance scout, foul, swilling smoke, threatened to
overwhelm us despite our gas masks and I quickened the pace, aware that the
train tunnel was not far. The smoke would follow us into the tunnel, but there
would be fewer corpses to slow us down (and less material to burn). The
flashlight showed more bodies lying on the tracks below and I quickly gave up
the idea of using that level as an easier route.
Right about then a scream grabbed my attention.
I turned, swinging the flashlight around, and found Muriel on the floor, body
stretched out but head and shoulders raised, supported by her elbows. She
wrenched off her mask and began to scream even louder.
I was an idiot, but I guess it was a natural reaction: I shone the light on
the cause of her hysterics.
The small body was lying beside a suitcase - I think the case must have
concealed the child as I'd walked by, Muriel's outstretched arm knocking it
over when she fell - and only tattered rags still clung to what was left of
it. It was easy to tell that the little girl's eyes had been pulled out rather
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