away flies and other insects, averting his eyes as they landed in the open wounds of the dead and laid their eggs. How fast would these insidious insects multiply now they had no opponents? And what epidemics would they carry and spread among those left to survive? Once the rain had stopped, this other, tiny-sized menace would take to the air to breed, develop and devour. Only winter would stem their tide, and then only temporarily.
Culver faced Bryce. 'How many of these vermin have been living in the sewers and tunnels? And for how long?'
The Civil Defence officer had to look away; once again the glint in Culver's eyes was intimidating. The voice was low, controlled, but the anger was barely suppressed.
'I don't know,' he answered, frightened by everything around him and frightened by Culver's tone.
There were no reports of them that I know of.'
'You're lying. They're too big and too many to have stayed concealed for this long.' His face was only inches away from Bryce's. The other two men looked on, themselves interested in the answers.
'I swear I know nothing of them. There were some rumours, of course ...'
'Rumours? I want to know, Bryce.'
'Nothing more than that! Just hearsay. Stories of large animals, perhaps dogs, roaming the sewers.
Nobody gave the stories any credence. In fact, the reports were that rats were becoming scarcer down there in recent years.'
‘Yeah, ordinary rats. Didn't anybody stop to wonder why?'
You ... you mean these creatures drove the others out?'
'It's possible. Come on, Bryce, you're a government man - you must know more. Were there any disappearances, sewer workers and the like going missing?'
That's always happened, Culver, you must understand that. There are hundreds of miles of tunnels beneath the city, and the sewers have always been dangerous through flooding, cave-ins. And animal life has always existed down there. God alone knows what has prowled the tunnels through the decades...'
'Bryce...'
'I'm telling you the truth! I work for Civil Defence, nothing more! If anyone knows something, it'll be Dealey.'
Culver stared at the older man for a few more moments before the tenseness left his body. 'Dealey,' he said, almost as a sigh. He suddenly remembered again the flight into the tunnels just after the nuclear bombs had detonated, when he had told Dealey, then blind, that there were huge rats around them.
Dealey asked if they were black-furred, and had said something like, 'No, not now,' as if he knew of them. He might just have been referring to the previous times when the mutants had rampaged; or he might have known they were still in existence.
'Maybe he'll do some explaining when we get back,' Culver said and turned away from Bryce. 'Let's see what's left upstairs.'
Together they clambered over the dead, each man keeping a wary eye for any black moving shapes among them. They saw one or two rat carcases lying among their victims, but Culver noticed something more. He looked around at Bryce and their eyes locked. Something passed between them, a sensory acknowledgement, and neither one mentioned their observation to the other two who were more interested in the opening ahead.
The rain bounced hard off the metal-edged steps and fallen masonry, sending up a low splattering spray. The sound was intense, almost violent.
They've destroyed the skies, too.'
It was a strange and poignant thing for Fairbank to say, and it sent a shiver through each of them. They stood by the opening, becoming damp with reflected rain, even though not exposed to its full force.
Bryce spoke to the ROC man. 'Check the geiger. In here first, then outside.'
McEwen switched on the machine hanging over one shoulder by a strap, realizing he should have checked the atmosphere for radiation at each stage of their exploratory journey. Too many shocks had overwhelmed such a precaution.
Brief, separate clicks came from the ionization instrument's amplifier and McEwen quickly reassured Culver and Fairbank. 'It's normal. It's just picking up very high-energy particles natural to the atmosphere. See - it's irregular, weak, nothing to worry about.'
'Care to take a shower?' Fairbank pointed with his thumb at the pouring rain.
McEwen looked less sure of himself. He took the geiger counter from his shoulder and pushed it out into the downpour.
'It's warm, the rain's warm!' He quickly withdrew his arms and brushed off droplets as though they were acid.
'It's all right,' Bryce quickly said. 'Nothing's registering on the counter.'
Then why is it warm?' Culver asked, regarding Bryce suspiciously.
The older man shrugged. Who knows what's happened in the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere.
Perhaps the rain is cold around the equator now.' He became a little angry. ‘You keep treating me as though I'm in some way to blame for all this. I'm just a tiny, insignificant cog in a huge government wheel, Culver. My job has always been to protect lives, not destroy them, and as such I've had more battles with Whitehall ministers than I'd care to relate to you. The Civil Defence Corps was due to be scrapped totally just a few years ago, until we roused public opinion enough to prevent it.'
Culver was about to respond when Fairbank interrupted, nodding towards the rain-soaked stairway and saying in a no-nonsense voice: 'I'd like to take a look up top.'
Culver's smile was slow in coming, and his eyes neither changed expression nor left Bryce's. ‘Yeah,' he said. 'I think we'd all like to see what's left.'
He stepped out into the rain.
It felt good, so good. A cleanser, a purifier. He turned his face upwards, closing his eyes, and the heavy raindrops pelted his face. McEwen was right; it was warm, unnaturally so. But it was alive and it was wonderful. He climbed the steps, the others close behind.
Culver reached the top and stopped while the others caught up with him. They looked around, their faces white with shock, the warm rain battering their bodies, its sound the only sound.
It was Bryce who fell to his knees and cried, Wo, no, no...'
Many years before, when Culver was no more than a boy, someone had shown him a sepia print of Beaumont Hamel, a small town in a sector of the Somme front. The old photograph had been dated November 1916 - the time of World War I - and the image had stayed frozen in his mind ever since.
The battle long over, just thin trees remained, bare and stunted, without branches, their tops jagged charcoal. No grass, not one solitary blade poking from the solid mud. No buildings, just rubble. No birds. No growth. No life. Only desolation, total, unremitting. And unforgiving.
If he could have stepped into that picture, if he could have actually stood in that granite mud, breathed the charred and gas-tainted air, he had known that nothing would have stirred, the scene would have remained a frozen still, the reality imitating the reproduced image.
He had just stepped through that frame and found the concrete equivalent to the sepia waste.
The ruined city lay humiliated and crumbled around them, nothing moving except the relentless rain.
Not every building had been completely demolished, although none had escaped anything less than excessive damage; those remaining stood like broken monoliths amid the mountains of rubble, misshapen parodies of man's construction powers. Some rose up
with innards exposed, gigantic doll's-houses with one wall removed so that furniture and decor could be viewed; all that was missing were the tiny dolls themselves. Of others, only skeletal frames were left, the steel girders twisted, buckled, yet still proclaiming their resistance to whatever forces their makers could thrust upon them. There appeared to be no definite order by which one building had collapsed completely while another had remained partially erect, although the damage seemed worse in the distance, as it the power of the Shockwaves had reduced as they swept outwards, each preceding office block or dwelling absorbing a fraction of the force,
