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Really, oh good gracious, people are funny, aren't they? Makes you wonder what the world's coming to, just what on earth you'll read next. Manners, Samuel, hand before mouth.'

She scraped away surface mould from a drooping slice of bread and bit into it 'Don't let your tea get cold, pet,' she lightly scolded her husband, Barry. "You've got all day to read the newspaper. I think I'll have a lie down in a little while; I'm not feeling too well today. Think I've got flu coming on.'

The woman glanced towards the shattered window, a warm breeze ruffling the thin hair straggling over her forehead. She saw but did not perceive the nuclear-wasted city outside.

Her attention drifted back to her family once more and she watched the black fly, which had fully explored the surface of her husband's face by now, disappearing into the gaping hole of his mouth.

She frowned, and then she sighed. 'Oh, Barry,' she said, 'you're not just going to sit there all day again, are you?'

Tiny, glittering tear beads formed in the corners of each eye, one brimming over leaving a jerky silver trail down to her chin. Her family didn't even notice.

They had laughed at him, but who had the last laugh now? Who had survived, who had lived in comfort, confining though it might be, while others had died in agony? Who had foreseen the holocaust years before the Middle-East situation finally bubbled over to world conflict? Maurice Joseph Kelp, that's who.

Maurice J. Kelp, the insurance agent (who knew better about future-risk?).

Maurice Kelp, the divorcee (no one else to worry about).

Maurice, the loner (no company was more enjoyable than his own).

He had dug the hole in his back garden in Peckham five years ago, much to the derision of his neighbours (who was laughing now, eh? Eh?), big enough to accommodate a large-sized shelter (room enough for four actually, but who wanted other bodies fouling his air, thank you very much). Refinements had been saved for and fitted during those five years, the shelter itself, in kit form, costing nearly £3,000.

Accessories such as the hand- and battery-operated filtration unit (£350 second-hand) and the personal radiation-measuring meter (£145 plus £21.75 VAT) had swollen the costs, and fitted extras like the fold-away wash basin and the own-flush toilet had not been cheap. Worth it though, worth every penny.

The prefabricated steel sections had been easy to assemble and the concrete filling-in had been simple enough, once he had read the instruction book carefully. Even fitting the filter and exhaust units had not proved too difficult, when he had fully comprehended what he was supposed to be doing, and the shelter duct connections had proved to be no problem at all. He had also purchased a cheap bilge pump, but mercifully had had no reason to use it. Inside he had installed a bunkbed with foam mattress, a table (the bed was his chair), a heater and Grillogaz cooker, butane gas and battery operated lamps, storage racks filled with tinned and bottled food, dried food, powdered milk, sugar, salt - in all, enough to last him two months. He had a radio with spare batteries (although once below he'd only received crackling noises from it), a medical kit, cleaning utensils, an ample supply of books and magazines (no girlie stuff - he didn't approve of that sort of thing), pencils and paper (including a good stock of toilet paper), strong disinfectants, cutlery, crockery, tin

opener, bottle opener, saucepans, candles, clothing, bedding, two clocks (the ticking had nearly driven him crackers for the first few days - he didn't even notice it now), a calendar, and a twelve-gallon drum of water (the water never used for washing dishes, cutlery, or drinking, without his Milton and Mow's Simpla sterilizing tablets).

And oh yes, one more recent acquisition, a dead cat.

Just how the wretched animal had got into his tightly-sealed shelter he had no way of knowing (the cat wasn't talking), but he guessed it must have crept in there a few days before the bombs had dropped.

Rising tension in world affairs had been enough to spur Maurice into final preparations stage (as four or five similar crises had since he'd owned the shelter) and the nosy creature must have sniffed its way in as he, Maurice, had scurried back and forth from house to shelter, leaving open the conning-tower hatch (the structure was shaped like a submarine with the conning-tower entrance at one end rather than in the middle). He hadn't discovered the cat until the morning after the holocaust.

Maurice remembered the doomsday vividly, the nightmare impressed onto the back of his brain like a finely detailed mural. God, how frightened he'd been! But then, how smug afterwards.

The months of digging, assembling, equipping - enduring the taunts of his neighbours! - had paid off.

'Maurice's Ark' they had laughingly called it, and now he realized how apt that description was. Except, of course, it hadn't been built for bloody animals.

He sat bolt upright on the bunkbed, nauseated by the foul smell, but desperate to draw in the thinning air. His face was pale in the glare of the gas lamp.

How many would be alive out there? How many neighbours

had died not laughing? Always a loner, would he now be truly alone? Surprisingly, he hoped not.

Maurice could have let some of them in to share his refuge, perhaps just one or two, but the pleasure of closing the hatch in their panic-stricken faces was too good to resist. With the clunking of the rotary locking mechanism and the hatch airtight-sealed against the ring on the outside flange of the conning tower, the rising and falling sirens had become a barely heard wailing, the sound of his neighbours banging on the entrance lid just the muffled tapping of insects. The booming, shaking, of the earth had soon put a stop to that.

Maurice had fallen to the floor clutching the blankets he had brought in with him, sure that the thunderous pressure would split the metal shell wide open. He lost count of how many times the earth had rumbled and, though he could not quite remember, he felt perhaps he had fainted. Hours seemed to have been lost somewhere, for the next thing he remembered was awaking on the bunkbed, terrified by the heavy weight on his chest and the warm, fetid breath on his face.

He had screamed and the weight was suddenly gone, leaving only a sharp pain across one shoulder. It took long, disorientated minutes to scrabble around for a torch, the absolute darkness pressing against him like heavy drapes, only his imagination illuminating the interior and filling it with sharp-taloned demons. The searching torch beam discovered nothing, but the saturating lamp-light moments later revealed the sole demon. The ginger cat had peered out at him from beneath the bed with suspicious yellow eyes.

Maurice had never liked felines at the best of times, and they, in truth, had never cared much for him.

Perhaps now, at the worst of times (for those up there, anyway), he should learn to get along with them.

'Here, moggy,' he had half-heartedly coaxed. 'Nothing to be afraid of, old son or old girl, whatever you are.' It was a few days before he discovered it was 'old girl'.

The cat refused to budge. It hadn't liked the thundering and trembling of this room and it didn't like the odour of this man. It hissed a warning and the man's sideways head disappeared from view. Only the smell of food a few hours later drew the animal from cover.

'Oh, yes, typical that is,' Maurice told it in chastising tones. 'Cats and dogs are always around when they can sniff grub.'

The cat, who had been trapped in the underground chamber for three days without food or water or even a mouse to nibble at, felt obliged to agree. Nevertheless, she kept at a safe distance from the man.

Maurice, absorbed more by this situation than the one above, tossed a chunk of tinned stewed meat towards the cat, who started back, momentarily alarmed, before pouncing and gobbling.

Tes, your belly's overcome your fright, hasn't it?' Maurice shook his head, his smile sneering. 'Phyllis used to be the same, but with her it was readies,' he told the wolfing, disinterested cat, referring to his ex-wife who had left him fifteen years before after only eighteen months of marriage. 'Soon as the pound notes were breathing fresh air she was buzzing round like a fly over a turd. Never stayed long once the coffers were empty, I can tell you. Screwed every last penny out of me, the bloody bitch. Got her deserts now, just like the rest of them.' His laugh was forced, for he still did not know how secure he was himself.

Maurice tipped half the meat into a saucepan on the gas burner. 'Have the rest later tonight,' he said, not sure if he was talking to the cat or himself. Next he opened a small can of beans and mixed the contents in with the cooking meat.

‘Funny how hungry a holocaust can make you.' His laughter was still nervous and the cat looked at him quizzically. 'All right, I suppose you'll have to be fed. I can't put you out, that's for sure.'

Maurice smiled at his own continued black humour. So far he was handling the annihilation of the human race pretty well.

'Let's see, we'll have to find you your own dinner bowl. And something for you to do your business in, of course. I can dispose of it easily enough, as long as you keep it in the same place. Haven't I seen you before somewhere? I think you belonged to the coloured lady two doors along. Well, she won't be looking for you any more. It's quite cosy down here, don't you think? I may as well just call you Mog, eh? Looks like we're going to have to put up with each other for a while ...'

And so Maurice J. Kelp and Mog had teamed up to wait out the holocaust.

By the end of the first week, the animal had ceased her restless prowling.

By the end of the second week, Maurice had grown quite fond of her.

By the end of the third week, though, the strain had begun to tell. Mog, like Phyllis, found Maurice a little tough to live with.

Maybe it was his weak but sick jokes. Maybe it was his constant nagging. It could have been his bad breath. Whatever, the cat spent a lot of time just staring at Maurice and a considerable amount of time avoiding his stifling embrace.

Maurice soon began to resent the avoidance, unable to understand why the cat was so ungrateful. He had fed her, given her a home! Saved her life! Yet she prowled the refuge like some captive creature, shrinking beneath the bunkbed,

staring out at him with baleful distrusting eyes as if ... as if ... yes, as if he were going mad. The look was somehow familiar, in some way reminding him of how ... of how Phyllis used to stare at him. And not only that, the cat was getting sneaky. Maurice had been awakened in the dead of night more than once by the sound of the cat mooching among the food supplies, biting its way into the dried food packets, clawing through the cling-film-capped half-full tins of food.

The last time Maurice had really flipped, really lost control. He had kicked the cat and received a four-lane scratch along his shin in return. If his mood had been different, Maurice might have admired the nimble way Mog had dodged the missiles directed at her (a saucepan, canned fruit - the portable own-flush loo).

The cat had never been the same after that. It had crouched in corners, snarling and hissing at him, slinking around the scant furniture, skulking beneath the bunkbed, never using the plastic litter tray that Maurice had so thoughtfully provided, as though it might be trapped in that particular corner and bludgeoned to death. Or worse.

Soon after, while Maurice was sleeping, Mog had gone onto the offensive.

Unlike the first time when he had awoken to find the cat squatting on his chest, Maurice awoke to find fierce claws sinking into his face and Mog spitting saliva at him, hissing in a most terrifying manner. With a screech, Maurice had tossed the manic animal away from him, but Mog had immediately returned to the attack, body arched and puffed up by stiffened fur.

A claw had come dangerously close to gouging out one of Maurice's eyes and an earlobe had been bitten before he could force the animal away from him again.

They had faced each other from separate ends of the bed, Maurice cringing on the floor, fingers pressed against his deeply gashed forehead and cheek (he hadn't yet realized part of his ear was missing), the cat perched on the bedclothes, hunch-backed and snarling, eyes gleaming a nasty yellow.

She came for Maurice again, a streaking ginger blur, a fury of fur, all fangs and sharp-pointed nails. He raised the blankets just in time to catch the cat and screeched as the material tore. Maurice ran when he should have used the restraining bedcovers to his advantage; unfortunately, the area for escape was limited. He climbed the small ladder to the conning tower and crouched at the top (the height was no more than eight feet from hatch to floor), legs drawn up and head ducked against the metal lid itself.

Mog followed and claws dug into Maurice's exposed buttocks. He howled.

Maurice fell, not because of the pain, but because something crashed to the ground above them, causing a vibration of seismic proportions to stagger the steel panels of the bunker. He fell and the cat, still clutching his rear end, fell with him. It squealed briefly as its back was broken.

Maurice, still thinking that the wriggling animal was on the attack, quickly picked himself up and staggered towards the other end of the bunker, wheezing air as he went. He scooped up the saucepan from the Grillogaz to defend himself with and looked in open-mouthed surprise at the writhing cat. With a whoop of glee Maurice snatched up the bedcovers and raced back to the helpless creature. He smothered Mog and thrashed her body with the saucepan until the animal no longer moved and tiny squeals no longer came from beneath the blankets. Then he picked up a flat-bottomed cylinder of,

butane gas, using both hands to lift it, and dropped it on a bump where he imagined Mog's head to be.

Finally, he sat on the bed, chest heaving, blood running from his wounds, and giggled at his triumph.

Then he had to live with the decomposing body for another week.

Not even a triple layer of tightly-sealed polythene bags, the insides liberally dosed with disinfectant, could contain the smell, and not even the chemicals inside the Porta Potti toilet could eat away the carcase. In three days the stench was unbearable; Mog had found her own revenge.

And something else was happening to the air inside the shelter. It was definitely becoming harder to breathe and it wasn't only due to the heavy cat odour. The air was definitely becoming thinner by the day, and lately, by the hour.

Maurice had intended to stay inside for at least six weeks, perhaps eight if he could bear it, all-clear sirens or not; now, with no more than four weeks gone, he knew he would have to risk the outside world. Something had clogged the ventilation system. No matter how long he turned the handle of the Microflow Survivaire equipment for, or kept the motor running from the twelve-volt car battery, the air was not replenished. His throat made a thin wheezing noise as he sucked in, and the stink cloyed at his nostrils as if he were immersed in the deepest, foulest sewer. He had to have good, clean air, radiation-packed or not; otherwise he would die a different sort of slow death. Asphyxiation accompanied by the mocking smell of the dead cat was no way to go. Besides, some pamphlets said fourteen days was enough for fallout to have dispersed.

Maurice rose from the bed and clutched at the small table, immediately dizzy. The harsh white glare from the