vermin which skimmed towards them. One of the engineers held what looked to Culver like a submachine gun and was desperately fiddling with its mechanism as though unable to understand how it operated, while a rat stealthily crept along the top of a bank of lifeless television monitors behind him.
Culver shouted a warning, but the man was too far away and the noise too great for him to hear. The rat's front paws slid over the edge of the monitors and it quivered there, held by its huge hindquarters, tensing itself to leap. It sprang, jaws open and aimed at the back of the engineer's exposed neck. The jaws closed almost completely as the incisors crunched into the cervical vertebrae.
The man's mouth opened in a scream, the scream lost in the clamour of other sounds; his back arched and his arms were thrown outwards. The gun, too late, fired. Bullets sprayed, thudding into the ceiling, tearing into machinery, causing minor explosions and spark showers. The firing continued as the man sank into the water, reaching lower targets, his fellow engineers and one or two women who were among them.
The water frothed as he disappeared, the submachine gun becoming silent once more. The man rose just once, his back crimson with his own blood, the rat still clinging fiercely, before sinking to his death.
Only the rodent's snout broke
surface again, thwarted of its prey by the lack of air; it glided off in search of fresh victims. Of whom there were plenty.
Light abruptly faded, returned, faded again, then remained a dim twilight for long, terrifyingly long, seconds. Something shattered in the complex machinery, an explosion of glaring light and blue smoke.
They saw the flame lick and looked aghast at each other.
This place is finished, Culver!' Fairbank shouted. We've got to get out – now!'
The lights revived, then flickered before they resumed their normal brightness. Culver saw the dark shapes gliding from the narrow passageway they had themselves used only minutes before.
'Onto the catwalk, quick!' He grabbed Kate and pushed her ahead of him, wading through what had now become a wild bubbling waterway.
Fairbank noticed the rats - three, four, five, oh Christ, six of them! - swimming from the gap. Had he looked up he would have seen many others crawling through the wires and machinery behind them. He raced after Culver and the girl, taking big strides in the current, arms outstretched to maintain his balance.
Kate reached the metal ladder leading up to the catwalk and Culver, with a brusque push, urged her to climb. He looked to see if Fairbank was with them and drew in a breath when he saw the closely-packed group of rats bearing down on the engineer.
Clinging to a lower rung of the ladder, Culver stretched out his other arm towards Fairbank. 'Hurry!' he yelled.
The engineer must have seen the warning in Culver's eyes, for he made the mistake of turning his head to look behind. He staggered when he caught sight of his pursuers.
A deluge of water surging from the opposite direction saved him.
Culver realized that someone, in an effort to escape the flooding shelter, had opened the door to the railway tunnel allowing more floodwater to pour in. Now they did battle with the contraflow, a fresh sweeping tide that met and pushed back at an opposing force, creating a violent meshing, a rolling turbulence.
He just managed to grab Fairbank's outstretched hand before the tidal wave submerged him. The vermin were swept back, twisting and squealing in the foam, kicking out frantically with useless paws as they were smashed into machinery and tossed like flotsam along the wide corridor.
Culver tugged at the dead weight, its pull nearly wrenching him from the ladder. Water cascaded over him, taking his breath away, blurring his vision. Resolutely he drew the floundering engineer towards him while Kate watched helplessly from above. Fairbank half swam, half waded towards the ladder, his feet constantly slipping from beneath him, but aided by Culver's firm grip. He gratefully grabbed a ladder rung when he was within reach and hauled himself forward until he was able to cling there without Culver's help. Bald patches showed through his soaked hair and there were deep lines in his face that had never been evident before. There was a bulbous quality to his eyes that registered shock, yet still he managed a panting grin. He uttered something that Culver couldn't catch and pointed with his eyes to the top of the ladder.
'You first!' Culver yelled and Fairbank did not argue.
Kate, already on the catwalk, helped him up the last few rungs. He lay there, gasping for breath, like a floundering fish just hooked from the river. .
Culver watched as other bodies were swept past, their
impetus too great for him to reach out and pull them in. The floodwater wasn't too deep yet - perhaps just below chest level - so they would have a chance provided they were not knocked unconscious by unyielding objects. The waters should settle down to a degree once both flows had ceased to fight against each other. The big question was, how flooded would the underground shelter become? Would it be completely filled, or would the level gradually subside? He wasn't keen on waiting to find out.
He climbed the ladder, perching on the edge of the opening for a few moments to catch his breath.
Looking back, he saw the water still raged along the corridor from the section where the tunnel door was housed. Anything loose was flowing with it, and that included more bodies. Culver clambered to his feet and pushed his arm through the jacket sleeve that was still hanging loose.
The catwalk was narrow, just wide enough to take one person at a time, the railing on the outside single and frail-looking. The grilled walkway beneath them trembled with their weight.
Fairbank was already up, but still gasping. He squeezed past Kate and began to make his way along the catwalk, heading in the direction of the Operations Room. Culver wiped strands of hair away from the girl's frightened eyes, then nodded after Fairbank. She moved, clutching at the railing with one hand, her fingers never losing contact with it. Culver followed, gently urging her along, his eyes constantly alert.
He shouted a warning when he saw the creeping thing on the conduits above Fairbank's head.
The rat dropped, but the engineer was ready. He caught the creature in mid-air, its weight sending him back against the wall of instruments, slashing teeth just inches away from his face. Fairbank heaved the abomination from him, his
strength gained from sheer fright, and the rat hurtled over the railing into the waters below.
There were more dark shapes crawling through the pipe network and wires in the ceiling, and the three bedraggled survivors wasted no more time in moving along the thin, precarious platform. Ahead, they heard the sound of machine-gun fire.
Dr Clare Reynolds had just finished her third cup of coffee and fourth cigarette when the water had poured into the canteen. Sick and tired of reasoning with the rebel engineers, who were now adamant about leaving the refuge despite the dire warnings, dismayed at the continuing duplicity of Dealey - a small example of this was his insistence that there were ample drugs and medicines to provide for virtually any situation, any illness or epidemic that might break out among them, all of which was blatantly untrue; yet he had persuaded her to keep quiet over the inadequacies of the medical supplies 'for the good of all', as he put it - Clare had forsaken her rigid rule of cigarette rationing for the moment. What the hell, if the shelter was abandoned, there would be a glut of tobacco among the ruins upstairs and never enough people to smoke it all. She supposed it wasn't much of an example for someone in her profession to be setting, but that had never bothered her in the past, so why now? The message would have to read differently from this point on: danger:
GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING: CIGARETTES AND RADIATION can seriously damage your health. And hydrogen bombs can burn you from existence, disease and malnutrition can give you time to think while you fade. She had stubbed out half of her cigarette and lit another.
The powdery ash in the small dish before her seemed
symbolic of all that was left. She stirred it with the glowing tip of her cigarette and it was insubstantial, a miniature pulverized waste. Like her own shattered life.
