Vampires Overhead (9 page)

The padlock wrenched from its staple, but I was scared to open the gate wide.

IV

The River Through the Dead City

‘BINGEN!’

My shout brought him running up the tunnel to dart into the yard like a rat with a terrier on its tail.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing, except that we’re free,’ I answered. ‘Come out in the yard and explore.’

‘Garry!’ Bingen shot the words out and halted, ready to dive back into the security of the tunnel. ‘Garry, there’s one still there.’

‘Where?’

He pointed shakily.

Picking up the sword, I walked across the yard to where a great stone lintel had fallen from above the entrance. Protruding under the beam was the head of a Vampire, and its eyes, as I approached, held mine bleakly. The tip of its wings were free, but the whole of its body, pressed under the beam, must have been squashed flat, and the thing lived, with no sign of pain, no hint of death. The sword fell, and the pursed muzzle quivered at the leather of my boot even as the live head rolled away from the dead body. No blood or moisture came from the neck. Rather, it looked like darkened cotton-wool intertangled with shreds of black thread. A protruding spinal cord showed dully black, greying as I watched. The head with the long, mouthless muzzle rolled to a stop, and on the forehead still beat a thin pulse. The expressionless eyes stared up at me. I kicked the thing into a pile of ashes.

‘For God’s sake,’ Bingen whispered huskily, ‘let’s try the watchman’s hut and see if we can get some beer.’

Behind the hut, one wall of which stood, burned buildings crumbled in a heap of fallen bricks between two high gables tottering precariously above ashes which glowed redly beneath a grey surface. Over by the tall entrance gates, flat now on the cobbles, was an unexpectedly clear space. It looked as though it had been covered by some fireproof material during the conflagration, and centrally in that space lay two bodies.

‘It’s old Dad,’ Bingen said in answer to my gesture. ‘The other’s the manager.’

‘That’s the car he came back for.’ I motioned towards a tangle of twisted metal by the gate, and with a sudden inspiration comprehended the reason for that clear space about the bodies. ‘Bingen! The clear space round them is where those things were heaped!’

We were silent.

‘They must have been covered in the middle of the fire, and any falling ash or bricks fell on to the Vampires. Then, when the things flew away, they swept the debris clear from the circular space.’

I could imagine the filthy things rising like a cluster of scavenger flies from refuse, and forced myself to stoop and examine the two bodies closely.

‘Every drop of moisture’s been drained from them,’ I whispered. ‘They’re nothing but dried skin and bone. All these little red pin-prick marks all over them are where . . .’

‘For God’s sake come away,’ Bingen cried. ‘Come away.’

The blue sky above was a mockery, with those two at my feet.

Sucking muzzles dissolved flesh to moisture and pumped it away through minute apertures. Afterwards, we discovered that this draining away of flesh and blood, to leave only a skin-enclosed skeleton, let men and cattle lay where they had fallen under the Vampires, for weeks, without any appreciable sign of decomposition. Only when the bodies soaked in rain did they begin to smell, to decay. And for months we had no rain. Those two, the first of so many, left me sick in the stomach when I rose from stooping over them.

‘Garry! Garry!’

Beyond the watchman’s hut I could see Bingen delving excitedly amid the ashes. He stood in a moment, then tilted a bottle to his lips. I went towards him.

Warm beer gurgled soothingly down my throat, washing the heat away. How good it tasted! And it endowed me with fresh courage, for on an empty stomach it reacted strongly. Bingen emptied his bottle and searched afresh, but there was no more, for which I was glad. I did not want Bingen on my hands, drunk.

With courage from the bottle, he looked across at the body of the watchman and spoke hesitatingly:

‘Let’s put him somewhere safe away from . . . I shouldn’t like to be left like that.’

‘Not much use bothering about them now. They won’t be touched again, even if the things come back, and pray God they won’t. What we’ve got to do, is to look after ourselves.’

It sounded callous, but it was true. The watchman and the manager were but two out of Heaven knew how many.

‘What we’ve got to do, is get away. We wouldn’t stand a chance among all that glowing ash if we tried to get out this way. The streets are white-hot. We must attempt the river. We’d be better off on the water if they came. We might be able to shelter at the bottom of a boat with something over us.
At least we’d drown. I’d sooner drown than burn or . . .’

I pointed towards the bodies, and Bingen shuddered.

‘Is there a way down to the river through the buildings?’

‘There is, but I’m not trying it. Not through that,’ said Bingen, indicating the mass of grey and red embers. ‘You used to be able to get down the lift in the store, but the store’s gone. The only way is to go back through the tunnel, and force the gate down there.’

‘That’s what we’ll do,’ I agreed, staring about the yard until the wavering, rising heat made my eyes smart. ‘Going through there would just shrivel us up. We’ll have to get down to the river through the tunnel.’

‘Bring the sword along. We’ll be able to force the padlock off the gate with it.’

For the last time we passed into the tunnel, and I for one breathed a prayer of gratitude to its dank walls. God knows what it had saved us from.

The rusted gate forced open easily, and we went out on the mud-flat by the barges.

‘Down-river I think,’ I said. ‘Neither of us want to go under there.’

We headed away from Hungerford Bridge, where those trains, with their ghastly passengers, hung like dead snakes through the twisted girders.

Warily out to the water edge we went, our eyes searching. Smoothly the river ran through a City of Dead. At every point of the compass fire belched smoke to the heavens, walling the river along its length with an embankment of red, grey, and white heat. Two terror-stricken survivors in hell, we flinched from the fire, staring at each other hopelessly.

‘We can’t get past there.’ Bingen indicated the red shore. ‘We can’t go along the bank. We’ll have to get a boat or something and get past the fires in the middle of the river.’

We went so far as we could, walking in water to our waists, stooping to duck sweating bodies, passing the hotter places, until we could go no farther. We stood peering miserably up and down the river.

‘There’s a boat!’ It was though in answer to a prayer. ‘Bingen, I’ll go in after it. It is a boat, isn’t it?’

From behind a partly sunken ship to which it was made fast, a dinghy swung slowly into sight on the tide not more than fifty yards from where we stood.

‘It’s broken loose,’ Bingen said. ‘It’s floating away.’

Wading into the river, I swam towards it and, foolishly, for some time, tried vainlessly to heave myself over the side, failing through sheer weakness until Bingen called to me to push the boat ashore. He waded out to meet me.

‘The water’s hot,’ he said, as he pulled both boat and myself to the bank. ‘It’s hotter than hell, and gets more like hell every time I look at it.’

‘I must have a rest before I pull this out in the stream. Unless you can row, Bingen?’

‘Not those kind of oars!’

But for a deep burn in her gunwhale, where something had dropped and flamed before falling into the river, the dinghy was intact. Astern floated a burned rope. It was Providence that rope had held, to sever at the very moment we wanted her.

‘Downstream with the tide. The rowing’ll be easier and we might as well go this way as the other,’ I said, after shipping oars and pulling out to midstream. For a while I sat panting, resting, then recovered my breath to pull away from the tunnel and Hungerford Bridge. Bingen crouched in the stern staring around dazedly, shooting quick nervous glances skywards. ‘Get hold of the rudder lines and keep your eyes on the clouds as much as the banks.’

The rowlocks creaked noisily, and we went steadily along the river of the dead between the fiery banks.

‘I’ll have my work cut out to row this thing very far unless I get some grub. I feel just about dead beat.’

‘Oh, we’ll soon get somewhere where there’s grub,’ replied Bingen offhandedly, anxiously scanning the sky. ‘We’ll soon get amongst people now.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Look out!’ he shouted, and leant to heave frantically on a rudder line. ‘God! We’re going right into the flames.’

With my head over my shoulder, I loosed one oar to heave on the other with all my might, but still the boat drifted towards the flames, until I saw that Bingen was tugging idiotically on the wrong line.

‘Let go that damned rudder and leave it to me!’

With heart bursting in my breast, I pulled the boat away from a line of barges with cargoes blazing terribly on the water. We missed them by no more than a foot, and I had to shield my face with one arm while pulling with the other. Bingen crouched helplessly in the stern, his arms about his head. A tongue of flame licked a blistering weal across my shoulders, as we passed.

‘For Heaven’s sake don’t trouble so much about things in the sky,’ I enjoined him. ‘Leave the rudder be, but watch where we’re going and tell me the direction.’

‘Pull us out of here.’

‘I’ll pull us out all right so long as you don’t let us run into anything else like that.’

From both sides of the river came a white heat which made the distance dance and shimmer. Ash eddied about in whirling columns, sparks burned in the air, now and then came explosions to stay the oars momentarily and set me pulling with renewed vigour. And, eternally in our ears, was a thundering crackling roar, as the ruins of London burned away.

Under the one remaining arch of London Bridge we spurted, for it was hot, and a great mass of stuff flamed fiercely, sending out streamers of fire to drop about our boat. Then we were in the Pool, where great vessels’ burned red sides leant drunkenly against smouldering wharves, and mast-heads pointed from the water, marking sites of sunken ships.

‘Garry!’ Bingen’s voice yelped at me, vicious with fright. He leaned across the boat to clasp my arm. ‘What . . .’

There was a roar, and from the shore came hurtling, for all the world as though it were thrown directly at us, a glowing length of wood. It dropped across the dinghy with a thump, and one end steamed, sizzled in the river.

‘What the hell!’

I stood erect, searching the bank to see who had thrown it until I understood. Then I went on rowing.

‘It’s all right, Bingen. It must have been shot out of that exploding building. Push it overboard—quick, you fool.’

The timber slid overboard and we went on.

‘You look as if you could do with a wash and brush up, Bingen.’

‘Aw! This is no time to joke.’

Bingen certainly looked to be in a sorry plight. He was black from smoke, with great stripes of grey running down his body where he had smeared the running sweat. Both of us were now stripped to the waist, and I suppose that I resembled him. I know that I was dry. The roof of my mouth was so parched my tongue stuck to it. I had to stop every while to scoop water up in handfuls, until Bingen discovered a baling tin under the seat. He flung water over us in turn, to find that he was filling the boat and had to bale until he perspired again.