first time Bryce saw something more in this somewhat laconic stranger who had arrived in their midst so dramatically just a few weeks before, something he realized Dealey had appreciated from the beginning. Dealey had tried to use Culver during their time of self-enforced internment, had tried to gain his confidence, make him part of the 'officials' team, but Culver would have none of it. Neither would he side with the others, those whom Dealey secretly referred to as 'the civilians'. He remained his own man and, as such, was trusted by both parties, if not accepted. Bryce thought that Culver could not have cared less, mistaking his attitude for apathy; now, for the first time, he saw that Culver's impassivity paradoxically covered an intensity of feeling which only a moment such as this could unveil. Once seen, you were aware that it had always been there and was the quality that made you feel slightly uneasy in his presence. It was a subtle thing and Bryce guessed only extremes made it recognizable. He could not understand why this sudden revelation had assumed a special importance to him, but Bryce was somehow relieved to know the man was far more complex than he had been given credit for. Strangely, he felt safer in his company.
Culver was pulling at another body, this time a man whose eye socket was enlarged as though something had bored
straight through. Fairbank moved forward and helped the pilot lift the body onto the makeshift slide. As he did so, he glanced upwards towards the top of the escalators, a movement catching his eye.
'What's that?'
The others followed the direction of his gaze. A black shape was moving towards them, sliding down in the same manner as the corpses they were disposing of. It gathered momentum as it drew nearer.
Fairbank backed away from the handrail, fearing the worst. McEwen drew his revolver.
Culver raised a hand as if to stop the ROC officer firing. 'It's okay, it's a body.'
Fairbank gave a quick sigh of relief and stepped towards the handrail again, hands outstretched to catch the sliding figure.
'Let it go,' Culver said quietly but urgently.
The engineer raised his eyebrows in surprise and withdrew his hands. As the sliding figure went by he understood Culver's command. The corpse was headless.
This time he staggered back from the handrail. They all followed the descending body with their torch beams.
What could have done that?' Fairbank asked breathlessly.
The same that did all this,' Culver said, waving his torch at the carnage above and below them. 'Come on, there's room to get through now.' He stepped over two corpses, using a handrail for balance.
Wait a minute,' said Bryce. They could still be up there. Something caused that body to move.'
Culver went on, his pace quickening. 'Maybe we disturbed it,' he called back over his shoulder. 'It could have been resting on the handrail and movement down here made it shift. Or maybe it just rotted itself free.'
The three men left behind glanced anxiously at each other, then moved as one after Culver. McEwen kept the .38 clear of its holster.
There were two more human blockages before they reached the top and these were cleared quickly and with little thought. Bryce wondered how soon the mind adapted itself to circumstances, how quickly it impersonalized itself from such enormous tragedy. The aching sickness was still there, but they were gradually becoming anaesthetized to the horror. Not completely, but enough not to be distracted by it.
At last they were at the barriers leading to the escalators. They shone the lights around the circular ticket hall and their spirits sank still further as the nightmare was reinforced.
The round chamber, sunk just below the city streets, was nothing more than a huge open grave. Culver rejected the idea: it was more like a slaughterhouse.
There were two entrances where a steady torrent of rain poured through, diffusing the greyish light of day. The tangled shapes before them could have been hewn from rock, so still, so colourless, were they.
Many of the blast survivors had obviously staggered or dragged themselves down into the station, seeking refuge from the killer dust they knew would soon fall. He remembered those whom he and Dealey had met fleeing from the tunnels; had they thought it safe to linger here in the ticket hall, that their very numbers would keep the vermin away? It would have been packed with the injured, the dying. The smell of fresh-flowing blood would have been overpowering, attracting the creatures below.
There were doors leading off from the hall - he and
Dealey had entered one when they had first fled from the holocaust - and several were jammed open with the bodies of those who had tried to escape. He wondered how the station worker who had told him where to find the flashlight had fared, and turned the torch on that particular door. It was off its hinges.
Fairbank had walked over to the ticket office, a long isolated booth near the centre of the round hall, careful to step over husk-like corpses and brushing away flies that buzzed greedily over them. He detested these swarming parasites as much as the creatures who had wrought such slaughter. And almost as much as the men who had sent the missiles.
The office door was open, a man's body sprawled half-out as though he had tried to flee from something inside. Fair-bank pushed at the door until it nudged against something solid on the other side.
The gap allowed him to see all he wanted to.
Terrified survivors must have cowered inside when the vermin had attacked, assuming they would be safe, that the creatures would not be able to break through the booth's toughened glass. But he saw that two panes were completely shattered while others had cracks from top to bottom. The explosions above had probably caused the cracks, weakened the glass, to break through must have been relatively easy for the rats.
He wrinkled his nose at the smell spilling from the confined space and saw something that momentarily stopped his breathing, if not his heart.
'Jes - hey, over here!'
The others, preoccupied with their own disturbing observations, turned towards the booth. He waved them over.
They crowded into the doorway, their combined lights showing every detail of the carnage inside the ticket office. They soon spotted what had taken Fairbank's breath away.
The black rat was huge, almost two feet in length. Its scaly curved tail offered at least another eighteen inches. Its fur was stiffened, dull and dry with death, its massive haunches still hunched as though the rodent was ready to leap. But there was no life in the evil yellow eyes, no dampness to the mouth and incisors. Yet still it emanated a deadliness, a lethal malevolence that made three of the men shudder and back away, even though its neck was twisted at an awkward angle, its skull indented unnaturally.
Only Culver moved forward.
He stooped and examined the dead beast closely. Someone had fought back, had battered the rat to death. That person was probably also dead, killed by the creature's companions, but at least he or she had not given in easily. Possibly there were other dead vermin out there, lying among the bodies of the humans they had attacked, corpses of both species decaying together.
There seemed to be little weakness in the creature, even in its present state. Yet the skull was caved in.
How hard had it been struck? He touched the outer rim of the dent, and the bone beneath his fingers moved inwards. It was brittle and thin. And there was no sign of blood. The blow had not even broken the skin, yet it had presumably caused the rodent's death. Culver turned the body over and found no other wounds. So possibly the vermin had paper-thin skulls - at least, this one had. Where did it leave him? Nowhere. It might be feasible to win a battle with one or two of these creatures by crushing their heads, but they moved around in packs - large packs.
He straightened and coldly kicked the bristle-furred corpse before leaving the booth.
His companions were watching the booth warily as Culver carefully picked his way towards them. He slapped
