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guns onto the bridge and into the river, while the third manoeuvred its draught to push the boat with its three human occupants away from the bridge.

The same word kept forming on Dealey's lips: 'Incredible-incredible-incredible!'

Culver stumbled over him and grabbed his shoulder. 'It's not over yet!' he shouted close to Dealey's ear. They're still coming aboard! We've got to keep fighting them off!'

As if to prove the point, two rats appeared just in front of them, sliding over the side. The two men acted as one, kicking out at the beasts and sending them toppling back into the water. But more leapt onto the boat, using it as a place of refuge from the rainstorm of lead. Culver and Dealey attacked them before the bedraggled vermin had a chance to recover. There were still too many, though. More and more clambered over onto the benches and deck.

'It's no good, we can't hold them!' Dealey shouted, once again panic-stricken.

'Get onto the cabin roof!' Culver told him over the roar. He leapt onto the engine covering, Dealey following suit. The older man awkwardly climbed onto the small roof while Culver picked up the unconscious girl. It was difficult, but Culver managed to pass her up to Dealey, who dragged her to momentary safety. The pilot kicked at three rats that had mounted the box, one managing to grip his jeans and tear off a shred as it fell back into the well of the deck. Culver sprang up onto the cabin roof and knelt there, ready to swing at anything that followed.

Dealey, half-sitting because standing would have been too precarious on the rocking boat, tapped Culver's shoulder and pointed.

Culver looked up at the giant shadow that filled the sky above them. A man was being lowered down to them.

Culver thanked God that the Puma helicopters had been fitted with both machine guns and winches.

Feet dangled just above their heads, and then the man was down, Culver and Dealey helping to steady him.

'Not a great time for a pleasure-boat ride' the winchman yelled, and saw the two men were too weary to speak. 7 can only take one...' He noted the rats below, the man with the axe still striking at those trying to reach the cabin roof. 'Okay, I can stretch it to two, but we'll have trouble up top! Let's get the girl into the harness!'

They could hardly hear his words, but guessed his meaning. Together they lifted Kate and secured her in the harness loop, the helicopter maintaining a steady hover above them, skilfully following the motion of the boat. 'All right, one of you get behind and put your arms around my shoulders! You'll have to hold tight, but we'll soon get you up there!'

Culver indicated at Dealey to do just that. Dealey shook his head.

'You go!' he yelled.

'Don't be bloody stup—' Culver began to say.

7 don't have the strength to hold on! I'd never make it!'

'Come on, either one of you,' the winchman shouted impatiently. 'One of the other choppers will pick up whoever's left. I'm signalling for lift now before those bloody monsters start chewing my toes!'

Dealey slapped Culver's shoulder and took the axe from him. He even managed a weary smile.

Culver barely had his arms gripped over the winchman's shoulders before a thumb was offered skyward and their feet left the cabin roof. They soared upwards, moving rapidly and steadily away from the boat. He looked down anxiously and held his breath when he saw the black shapes swarming onto the white roof. Dealey was standing, swinging the short

axe with both hands, knocking the vermin aside, sweeping them overboard or back down onto the deck. But for every one ejected, another took its place. He saw Dealey's ever diminishing figure go rigid with pain as his thigh was bitten into. Another rat scurried up his back, forcing him to reach behind to dislodge it, the weapon falling from his grasp.

'Dealey!’ Culver shouted uselessly.

The second Puma swooped in, a winchman already swinging at the end of the wire. His feet never touched the cabin roof; he scooped up the blood-soaked man and pulled the rat from his back all in one movement. They swung away from the craft, two black forms still clinging to Dealey's legs. Their own weight sent the rats crashing back into the river, flesh and material stretching then parting under the pressure. Culver closed his eyes as the two figures were winched upwards. The third helicopter hovered low, using up its ammunition on the vermin. Gunfire ravaged the boat and the mutant rats that filled it, and when the bullets burst through its fragile hull, reaching the fuel tank, the little craft exploded into a thousand pieces. Culver opened his eyes in time to see the pall of black smoke billow up into the air, a miniature replica of the explosions that had destroyed the city so long, so very long, ago.

Reaching hands helped them into the helicopter, Culver hauled in first, then the girl, the winchman climbing in last.

Culver was quickly guided to a seat and he sank down gratefully into the cool shade. The big door slid shut, the interior of the helicopter still noisy but less than before. He watched as Kate was carefully lifted onto a fixed cot-stretcher and another officer, a medic he assumed, examined the stump of her arm. The man did not flinch; he had obviously treated worse injuries during the past few weeks. From a case, he swiftly took out a small phial which he broke open

to extract a syrette. Expertly, and without cutting away her jeans, he plunged the needle into a muscle in Kate's thigh, holding the syrette there for a few seconds while its fluid drained. He noticed Culver watching.

'Morphia,' he explained. 'She's lucky we got to her before she came out of shock. Don't worry, she's going to be okay - it looks like a clean severance. I'll dress it and release the tourniquet for a while. Does she have any other wounds?'

Culver shook his head, tiredness beginning to overtake him. 'Cuts, scrapes, that's all. Oh yeah ...' he remembered, '... we've been exposed to pneumonic plague.'

The medic raised his eyebrows in surprise. 'Okay, I'll give her a quick once-over. How about you?

Need some sedation?'

Again Culver shook his head. He gazed at Kate's wan face, its lines softened already as the drug began to take effect; he wanted to go to her, comfort her, beg her forgiveness for what he had had to do, but she would not hear. There would be time later. He knew there would be much more time for both of them. He turned away, looking at the tiny windows in the door, the hazy blue beyond. Another face appeared before him: the winchman.

'Flight Sergeant MacAdam,' he introduced himself.

Culver found it difficult to speak. Thanks,' he finally said.

'Pleasure,' came the reply.

'How...?'

"You were spotted early this morning.'

The plane?'

The winchman nodded. We thought you might have been from government HQ. Were you?'

'No ... no, we were trying to get into ... into it.'

The man looked keenly interested. 'Did you manage to? Christ, we've had no word from headquarters since this whole bloody mess started. What the hell happened down there?'

'Didn't... didn't anyone get out?'

'Not a bloody soul. And nobody could get to the HQ from the outside - all the main tunnels are down.

Those bastards hit us harder than anyone expected. Some of the survivors may have got out into the city, who knows? We haven't been able to search, first because of fallout, and then the freak rainstorms.

We've been patrolling this stretch of the river ever since word got back that your party had been seen.

But there was supposed to be more of you. Where're the others?'

'Dead,' Culver said flatly, thinking of those who had escaped the Kingsway shelter as well. He suddenly remembered Ellison. Torchless, weaponless. Inside the shelter. 'All dead,' he reaffirmed.

'But what did you find down there? What was inside?'

The medical officer intervened. 'Let him rest, Sergeant. He can be questioned when we get back to Cheltenham.'

The winchman still looked questioningly at him.

'Rats,' Culver said. 'Nothing but big bloody rats.'

MacAdam's face was grim. We've heard stories...'

'People managed to get out of London?'

'Oh yeah, plenty got out.'

Culver sank further back into the seat. 'But where to? What to?'

The winchman's face was still grim, but it held a humourless smile. 'It isn't quite as bad as you obviously think. The lunacy was stopped, you see, stopped before everything was destroyed. Sure, the main capitals are gone, the industrial cities, many of the military bases; but total destruction was brought to an abrupt halt when the separate powers realized the mistake ...'

'Sergeant,' the medic warned.

What mistake?' Culver asked.

You rest now; you need it. We'll soon have you back at

base where you'll be taken care of. You'll find it's still chaotic, but some order is beginning to return under military rule. And they say a new coalition government's about to be formed any time ...'

The sergeant stood, patting Culver's shoulder. ‘You take it easy.' He turned to go.

Who started it?' Culver shouted after him. Who started the fucking war? America or Russia?'

He wasn't sure if he heard right, the noise of the rotor blades almost drowning the reply. It sounded like

'China'.

The winchman was standing at the cockpit opening, the same humourless smile on his face. Culver thought he heard him say, 'Of course, there isn't much left of it any more.'

Culver returned his gaze to the small windows, eager for their light, surprised, but too weary to be further shocked. The gloom of the Puma's interior depressed him; there had been too many sunless days.

His mind roamed back, seeing images, scenes he would never be free of.

And he thought of the final irony. The slaying of those who had long before plotted out their own survival while others would perish, choiceless and without influence. The slaying of a weakened master-species by a centuries-repressed creature that could only inhabit the dark underworld; mankind's natural sneaking enemy, who had always possessed cunning, but now that cunning - and their power -

enhanced by an unnatural cause. He thought of the giant, black-furred rats with their deadly weapons, their teeth, their claws, their strength. And again, their cunning. He thought of the even-more-loathsome, bloated, slug-like creatures, brethren to and leaders of the Black monsters of the same hideous spawn.

And he thought of the Mother Creature.

The medic, intent on treating the girl's wound, glanced around in surprise when he heard the man laughing. He

quickly began to prepare a sedative when he noticed tears flowing down Culver's face.

Culver thought of the Mother Creature and her offspring, her tiny, suckling litter. The government headquarters had been attacked so ferociously because the Black rats had believed their queen to be under threat. The poor fools had been wiped out as soon as the shelter became occupied, the mutant vermin disturbed by the terrible sounds of bombs, alarmed at the sudden invasion. The onslaught had been instant and merciless.

Culver tried to stop laughing, but he couldn't. It was all too ironic. And the greatest irony of all was the Mother Creature's children. The little creatures who fed at her breasts.

He wiped a shivering hand across his eyes as if to wipe out the vision. He and Fairbank had been distraught with the discovery. Through their shock, the possibilities had assailed them, the implications had terrified them.

For the small, newborn creatures had resembled human ... human! ... embryos. They had claws, the beginnings of scaly tails, the same wicked, slanting eyes and the humped backs. But their skulls were more like the skulls of man, their features were those of grotesque, freakish humans. Their arms, their legs, were not those of animals. And their brains, seen clearly through their tissue-thin craniums and transparent skin, were too large to belong to a rat.

His shoulders shuddered with the laughing. Had mankind been created in the same way, through an explosion of radiation, genes changed in a way that caused them to evolve into walking, thinking, upright creatures? Another dreadfully funny notion: had mankind evolved not from the ape, as the theorists, those wretched interpreters of it all, thought? Had mankind . . had mankind evolved from these other foul

creatures? And had that same course of evolution been unleashed once again?

He wanted to stop laughing, but he could not. And neither could he control the tears. It drained him, it nauseated him. And presently someone was leaning over him, aiming a needle, anxious to release him from the hysteria.

The rats went back.

They swam to the Embankment and leapt from the water, black skins glistening in the bright sunlight.

Others, those on the bridge, ran squealing from the thunderous, death-dealing creature in the sky. They gathered in the open, trembling, confused by the violence against them and by the loss of the beasts below who had ruled them. And something else was gone. The Mother Creature and her strange litter, the new alien breed that the Black rats had yearned to destroy, for they were not of their kind, no longer existed. The difference of these newborn was beyond understanding and had sent fear coursing through the black mutants.

But they had not been allowed to kill them. The Mother Creature was all-powerful, controlling their will, ruling them and allowing no dissent. Her own special guard had dealt with those who rebelled. And the guard had been felled by the sickness.

Still the rats had protected their matriarch, governed and conditioned by her thoughts. Now those thoughts were no longer in their heads. And their numbers had grown small.

They returned to the gloomy underworld, safe there below the ground, away from the sun. They soon found the human who hid among them in the darkness, his burbling anguish - his smell of pungent fear -

drawing them to him. They scratched on

the door he hid behind. Then began to gnaw at the wood. They took pleasure in his screams.

When there was nothing left of him, they roamed the dark tunnels, content to stay, to rest, to procreate.

When they were hungry, they left the dark, ever-nocturnal underworld, silently creeping into the open where the night sky and fresh breezes soothed them. They slithered among the rubble of the old city, seeking sustenance and easily finding it.

And only when the first haze of dawn broke did they slink back into the holes, back into the tunnels below, reluctant to leave this new, free territory. This new world that was to become their domain.