Domain (19 page)

They'd have done more damage, made a bigger mess,' said McEwen.

'He's right,' Fairbank agreed, but there was still a nervousness to him. 'Let's grab as much as we can carry and get out.'

Thought you wanted a new shirt?'

'I can live without it.' He began to stuff chocolate bars into his overall pockets.

Wait a minute.' Culver stayed Fairbank's hand midway between counter and trouser pocket. 'If it's not vermin it may be something more important.'

'People?'

Culver shone his torch along the litter-filled aisles. The store's interior stretched a long way back, opening out halfway down in an 'L' shape. No light came through the collapsed ceiling in the far corner, off to his left. The smell that assailed them had become all too familiar over the past hour or so, and Culver had no real desire to investigate further. Unfortunately, conscience told him he had to. Maybe a morbid curiosity added its weight, too.

His footsteps sounded unnaturally loud in the store that had now become a vast cavern.

Fairbank shrugged and went after him, still snatching goodies from the counter as he passed and squeezing them into his already full pockets. He spied a set of shelves containing handbags, holdalls and -

even better - suitcases, and made a mental note to grab one on their way back.

McEwen found the idea of being left alone in the shadowy consumer grotto unacceptable and swiftly caught up with the other two.

Culver in the lead, they drew near the corner where the store widened. An electrical department came into view, plastic-coated wires hanging loosely from their spools like

oversized cotton thread, light sockets, switches and lamps lying scattered as if swept from their displays by angry hands. Beyond that, the record and hi-fi department looked as if the choices had not been appreciated: album sleeves littered the floor, stereo equipment lay scattered. Bodies, some still moving, lolled in the mess.

Damp fingers, disembodied by the darkness, curled around Culver's wrist.

He recoiled by instinct, the others intentionally, for they had seen the hideous figure just before it had touched him.

Culver wrenched his arm free and staggered back against a nearby counter, but the figure went with him, unbalanced, claw-like hands clutching at Culver's clothes. The man fell to his knees, preventing himself from sinking further by hanging weakly on to the pilot's leather jacket.

The man's voice was a thin, rasping sound. 'Help ... us...'

Culver stared down at the emaciated face with its wide, staring death-camp eyes, the torn lips, cracks filled with dry blood, gums exposed and teeth decayed brown. A few sparse tufts of hair clung to the man's scalp. His skin was puckered with fresh sores and there was a thin line of dried blood trickling from both ears. Fright gave little room for pity in Culver.

The man groaned, although it was more of a throat-singed croak. He seemed to shrivel before them.

Overcoming his revulsion, Culver caught the collapsing figure, and gently lowered him to the floor. The man's clothes were torn and bedraggled; they smelled of excrement.

'Please ...' The voice was weaker this time, as though the effort of seizing Culver's wrist had taken most of his remaining strength.'... help ... us.'

'How many are left alive here?' Culver said, his mouth close to the dying man's ear.

'I... don't...' His head lolled to one side. 'Don't...'

Culver looked up at his two companions. 'Radiation sickness,' he said unnecessarily. 'He won't last much longer. Try the geiger, see how bad it is in here.'

McEwen switched on the machine and they jumped when its amplifier discharged urgent, burring clicks. The needle jumped wildly before settling just beneath the quarter-way mark.

Too many rems,' McEwen told them hastily. 'It's dangerous, we've got to leave immediately.'

'I'm on my way,' Fairbank said, beginning to turn.

Wait!' Culver snapped. Take a look at the others. See if we can save any of them.'

‘You gotta be kidding - oh shit, look...'

They followed Fairbank's gaze and saw the shuffling shapes emerging from the shadows, most of them crawling, some stooped and bent, stumbling as if with age, a whining coming from them that was more frightening than piteous. In that moment of abject fear, it was hard to think of these unsteady, shambling figures as fellow humans, wretches who had had no time to shelter properly from the disaster and its disease-carrying aftermath, for they came at the three survivors like lepers escaping their colony, like hunched demons rising from unhallowed earth, like the undead reaching out to embrace and initiate the living ...

It was too much for Fairbank and McEwen, one trauma too many in that day of traumas. They backed away.

The ravaged faces, fully revealed in the torches' combined glare, pleaded for pity, for compassion, for relief from their suffering.

'Culver, there's too many of them. We can't help them all!' Fairbank's voice was shaky with its own special pleading.

"We can't stay here,' McEwen added from further away. The radiation count is too high! If we don't leave now we'll end up like these people!'

One figure, a woman, finding some last vestige of strength, lurched forward and clung to Fairbank.

'... nnleasennnnnn ..' she implored.

He reflexively pushed her away and she fell to the floor, a weak cry escaping her. Fairbank took a step towards her as if instantly regretting his action, a hand reaching out. The moans of others changed his mind.

'It's no good, Culver,' he said wearily. "We can't help them. There's too many.' He turned and broke into a stumbling run towards the front of the store, chocolate bars and sweets tumbling from his overloaded pockets.

A hand scraped against Culver's cheek. He flinched, but did not pull away from the feverish man he knelt beside.

'Don't... leave us ...' the man whispered.

Culver took the hot trembling fingers from his face and held them. There's nothing we can do for you right now,' he told him, and added lamely: We've got a doctor among us. If she's agreeable, we'll bring her back; she may be able to do something for you.'

The man's grip suddenly strengthened. 'No ... no ... you can't...' His other hand, wavering but determined, clutched at Culver's collar.

Another weight fell across the pilot's shoulders.

Culver toppled onto his side, the other person bearing down on him, the man beneath pulling, refusing to let go. Culver groaned, a sharp, harsh sound, almost one of pain, and he struggled against them, quickly shrugging the weight

from his shoulders, grabbing the other man's wrists and slowly prising the hand away from his jacket.

The man's other hand, still gripping his, was less easy to dislodge and for one insane moment Culver considered using the gun. It would have meant instant release for him and instant relief for the radiation victim. But whatever it took for such an act, it was not in him. Not yet.

He squeezed the man's wrist unmercifully, and the claw-like fingers gradually opened. Culver broke free, rising to his feet, almost stumbling over a figure that had crawled up from behind. He avoided the grasping hand.

Tm sorry!' he shouted, and then he was running, staggering after the others, his only thought to be away from this dark limbo between life and death and away from these poor wretches whose best hope was to die sooner rather than later.

He heard their wailing cries, and he thought he heard footsteps coming after him, but he did not stop to look around until he was at the foot of the slope. His two companions were already through the narrow opening at the top, Fairbank reaching back to help him, his face a confused mask of fear and shame.

This is crazy, Culver told himself. They're just people, our own kind, injured and disease-ravaged; not lepers, not unclean, and not dangerous. Why then were he, Fairbank and McEwen so afraid? He looked back and the answer was there. The shuffling, imploring figures were the incarnation of extreme human distress, the material results of the long-awaited, feared and fearful holocaust. The nightmare come true.

And who could face their own nightmare?

Culver leapt at the slope, Fairbank grabbing his hand and yanking him upwards. He was through the opening, warm

rain and grey light enveloping him as he rolled down the other side, not stopping until he had reached the bottom, and even then rolling to a crouched position, facing the store as if expecting the dream to follow. Only Fairbank came sliding down to join him. McEwen stood a few yards away, poised to run.

'I guess there were just too many, right?' Fairbank said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Culver shuddered. ‘Yeah, too many.' He straightened. We'll get back to them. Dr Reynolds can give them drugs, medicines, anything to ease it for them.'

'Sure,' Fairbank replied.

'Maybe one or two will pull through.'

Fairbank wiped rain from his forehead and nose. He spat into the muddied dirt at his feet. We'd better get to the shelter.'

He walked away leaving Culver staring up at the few visible letters of the store name and the narrow gap beneath. The mausoleum's name was wort.

Culver caught up with the others as they squeezed between a bus, all its windows smashed, red paint in the front blistered and flaky, and a sky-blue van, the bottom of its side panels already showing rust. He tried to avert his eyes from the rotted corpse of the bus driver, thrown back in his cab, hands still on the driving wheel as though he had insisted upon carrying his passengers right up to the very doors of eternity. Culver tried not to look, but eyes can be skittishly curious. Glass shards impaled the figure, gleaming from the body like diamonds in an underground rock face, the largest segment neatly dividing the man's face in half. Something low in Culver's stomach did a mushy backflip and he forced himself to concentrate on the two men in front. McEwen was walking unsteadily, using the bonnets and tops

of cars for support, geiger counter slapping against one hip, rain-soaked shoulders hunched forward.

Fairbank, who had turned to see if Culver was following, was white-faced, deep creases stretching from cheekbones to jawline making his normally broad countenance seem suddenly thin, almost gaunt. He opened his mouth to speak, but a distant muffled krumpf had them all staring towards the west.

Less than half a mile away, the remains of a partly-demolished building were collapsing completely, the exposed floors tumbling in on one another like a card-player's thumb-shuffle. Clouds of dust billowed into the air, the rain only slowly beating them back to earth, the building becoming a pile of concrete and rubble amid a landscape of similar piles. Anything could have caused its surrender - an explosion of gas, the last rending of twisted and overloaded metal, the exhaustion of its own concrete structure. The building's final acceptance of the inevitable was like a death-knell.

The urge to return as quickly as possible to their sanctuary was strong within them, for more than ever it represented a form of survival. They hoped.

Skirting a five-car collision that resembled an artist's metal sculpture, they climbed another hill of debris and were relieved to see the Chancery Lane underground sign once more, a section of its blue and red symbol missing.

'It ain't much, but it's home,' Fairbank said weakly, in an effort to shake off his own despondency.

'Can you see Bryce?' Culver peered at the cars below, rain bouncing off their roofs forming misty haloes.

Fairbank shook his head. 'He can't be far - he looked pretty done-in when we left him.'

Culver noticed that McEwen was visibly trembling. ‘You going to make it?' he asked.

'I just want to get away from here, that's all. It's like ... like one massive graveyard.'

'Pity some of the dead won't lie down,' added Fairbank in unappreciated black humour.

Culver ignored the remark. They all had different ways of coping; Fairbank needed to make jokes, no matter how lame, nor how tasteless.

There he is.' Fairbank pointed, then frowned. 'At least I think it's Bryce.'

They descended warily, not risking a fall on the unstable slope.

'Over here,' the engineer said, leading the way through the tangle of machinery. Culver spotted the Civil Defence officer on the entrance platform of an empty double-decker bus. His feet were in the road, his body hunched forward over his lap, oblivious to the pounding rain. He appeared to have stomach cramps, but as they drew nearer, they realized he was clutching something.

McEwen caught sight of a familiar form sheltering in a doorway not far from the Underground entrance.

For the first time that day he managed to smile. There wasn't much left of the building above the doorway, for the blast had sheered off the roof and upper floor but, although wrecked, the shops below remained, and it was here, in an open doorway, that the dog shivered over a scrap of food lying at its feet The mongrel - McEwen was no expert, but it resembled a German Shepherd mostly - looked forlorn and weak, its fur bedraggled, almost colourless with grime, ribs showing like struts through stretched canvas. Saliva streamed from its mouth, soaking the meagre rations it had managed to salvage from somewhere, and McEwen's heart went out to the

dishevelled animal. After witnessing so much human suffering, the dog's plight stirred deep emotions in him for, unlike its masters, this creature was blameless, having no say in its own destiny, innocent of all guilt for the destructively sick world it inhabited. McEwen squeezed between two cars and made towards the animal.

The dog's head was bent low, too concerned for the raw meat at its feet to notice the man's approach.

Poor little bastard, the ROC officer thought. Half starved and probably still bewildered by everything that had happened.

He watched it wolf down one of the sausage-like scraps between its front paws. The food was red, bloodied, and McEwen wondered where it had found such fresh meat.

'Good boy,' he said, moving forward cautiously, not wishing to frighten the animal. 'Good old boy,' he repeated soothingly.

The dog looked up.