48

benignly; somewhere along the way we had rounded a slight curve in the tunnel.

Abruptly, the flashlight dimmed even more, revived, then settled at a weaker level than before. The batteries were fading fast. I brought my little troop to a halt

'Let's take a look at that lamp,' I said to the German.

'By all means.' Stern came forward and passed me the square-shaped oil lamp. 'And perhaps you will now tell us where this tunnel leads to and how long our journey will be.'

His English was almost perfect, but the will sounded like vill and the where like vare - he spoke like Conrad Veidt in one of those Nazi spy propaganda movies - and it steamed me up plenty. I held tight though, biding my time.

Lifting one of the glass windows at the side of the lamp I shone the light directly at the wick inside. It looked okay, enough there to burn. As I passed the flashlight over to Stern and searched for my Zippo with my free hand, I told them about the tunnel and where it would take us.

'And how do you know these people who chased us will not be waiting there for us to emerge?'

Vaiting there. My jaw muscles clenched.

Cissie surprised me by speaking up. 'They wouldn't know which tunnel we took. Plenty of Tube lines run through Holborn - we could come up anywhere.'

'She's right' I found the lighter and flicked it on. 'Besides, they probably think they got us with the fire.' I held the small flame up to see their faces. Muriel looked about ready to fold.

'But how long is this tunnel?' she said in a quiet voice. 'I don't know if...'

'You'll make it. It's the shortest route we could've taken.'

'For a Yank you seem to know your way around.' There was still some resentment in Cissie's voice, as well as some breathlessness.

'I had a good guide once. Someone who was proud of her city.'

Silence then from the girls; I guess they'd caught something in my tone. But the German was becoming agitated.

'Then, as you say, we must keep moving. This place is not good.'

I ignored him, tilting the lamp and touching the lighter flame to the wick. Before it had the chance to ignite, faint sounds came to us, too distant to make out what they were. The sounds were growing louder though.

We all looked in the direction of the fire.

I'd heard this kind of noise in the past, but couldn't remember where or when. The volume was turning up, as if the source was drawing closer. A hand closed around my arm and I found Muriel beside me, body tensed rigid, the whites of her eyes shining dully in the gloom. Then it came to me, where I'd heard such a racket before.

Although there were fewer animals kept in the London Zoo during the Blitz years of the war, the more dangerous kind even being put down in case they escaped while an air raid was in progress, Sally had taken me there more than once when I was on leave, enjoying the sight of some of those exotic creatures more than I did, I think. One time we'd wandered into an aviary and something had set the birds off - a low-flying aircraft, as I recall. The explosion of noise was incredible, all those different species of bird splitting the air with their gabble - a bedlam medley of panic, anger, fright, and maybe just plain comfort calls to their partners, who knows? We'd clamped our hands over our ears, but the hullabaloo had still come through, so we ran out of there laughing - we laughed at a lot of things in those days - leaving the birds to their riot. Even from a distance we could hear them, kicking up hell, screeching their tiny lungs out.

And that was the kind of sound I was hearing now. Not the same, because birds didn't live in underground passages, never did, never would. No, these sounds were similar, but different. Someone ran an ice cube up my spine.

Muriel pressed against me and I felt her draw in a sharp breath. Cissie moved closer to the both of us.

Squealing, that's what it was. Not birds' chittering. Squealing. Like high-pitched screams. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them.

The light down the tunnel grew brighter. Fluttered, kind of. And then the first few appeared.

Small fireballs coming our way. Little units of run-amok blazes. Lighting the darkness as they came.

4

'WHAT ARE THEY?'

Muriel's hold on me was painful, but I ignored it 'Move back!' I yelled, following my own advice and dragging the girl with me. It was hard to take our eyes off the fiery horde - there was something mesmeric about these miniature infernos, some of them rising up the walls and falling back when they got so far, others spinning in the air to land on the tracks where they burned like tiny beacons, but most streaking towards us as if launched from some ancient war machine - and soon we were tripping over the human remains hidden in the darkness. That's when we wised up and ran like hell, with Cissie and the German in the lead. An anxious backward glance told me it was a race we could never win - the fireballs were nearly on us. I'd thought we could outrun 'em, that they'd be consumed by the fires that rode their backs long before they could catch up with us, but I was wrong, they kept coming and we kept running.

Dirty water splashed at our feet as high-pitched squeals mocked our flight. In the unsteady and almost useless light of the flashlight carried by the German I could see shadows here and there along the tunnel walls; it didn't take long for me to figure out they were safety recesses used by Underground workers to slip into whenever a train went by. Stern had noticed them too; he suddenly stopped and threw himself into one.

It would have left us almost blind if the other lights hadn't closed in on us. I reached forward for Cissie, caught hold, and pushed both her and Muriel into the nearest opening, crowding in with them and pressing them against the back wall. I could feel them trembling, and Christ, I was shaking some myself.

The little burning creatures sped by, screeching their agony, the water they rushed through too shallow to douse the flames on their backs. Some of them rolled over so that steam and smoke hissed from their hides; they squirmed in front of us, shrieks echoing around the brick walls, until their roasted bodies gave up and lay still, the occasional twitch nothing more than their final death-throes. Muriel turned away and Cissie buried her head into my shoulder when they both realized what these creatures were.

But I took pleasure in watching the rats burn. I may have even smiled there in the flickering shadows as their fire-ravaged bodies writhed and their thin screams tore through the darkness, and their sharp, ugly snouts stretched and their jaws yawed, exposing razor teeth, and their clawed limbs quivered until they crisped and flamed and became twisted, blackened stumps. Yeah, I'm sure I smiled, and I remembered too, remembered what these surviving scavengers had done, what they'd fed on all these years...

Some died in front of us, others scurried onwards, still aflame, dying as they ran, lighting the tunnel ahead as if showing us the way. I kicked out at one that came too close, sending it toppling backwards, flames turned to smoke by the black water, but extinguished too late to save it. The rat spasmed, twitched, and I wanted to blast it with the Colt -I wanted to blast all of them - not out of mercy but out of revulsion, loathing, hating the creature in the way I hated the German, both of them species of the same kind, vermin who'd lost the right to walk this earth.

But I held still, closing down my emotions. It wasn't easy - it never had been - but I coped.

Pretty soon the rats' death-wails became fainter, faded altogether, and their thrashing lessened, finally stopped. Their bodies lay scattered along the tracks, small funeral pyres that slowly dimmed, burning themselves out until only a few feeble blazes sputtered there in the dusk. We could still hear the distant sounds of those which had fled further into the tunnel, but eventually only the stink remained. Hell, the air down here was foul enough, all ventilation systems long since quit and no trains left to push out the staleness as they passed through; now, with drifting smoke and the stench of cooked meat, the atmosphere was almost unbreathable.'

I felt Muriel sobbing behind me, the sounds suppressed but the body jerks uncontrolled, and the other one, Cissie, lifted her head from my shoulder and leaned back against the side of the alcove.

'It's all right, Mu,' she said, rubbing her friend's back with a comforting hand. 'We're safe now, it's all over.'

There was no point in persuading her otherwise.

The German stepped back into view, the flashlight in his hand not much more than an orange orb,' its beam