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butane gas lamp stung his red-rimmed eyes. Afraid to breathe and more afraid not to, he staggered towards the conning tower. It took all his strength to climb the few rungs of the ladder and he rested just beneath the hatch, head swimming, barely inflated lungs protesting. Several moments passed before he was able to raise an arm and jerk open the locking mechanism.

Thank God, he thought. Thank God I'm getting out, away from the evil sodding ginger cat. No matter what it's like out there, no matter who or what else has survived, it would be a blessed relief from this bloody stinking shithouse.

He allowed the hatch to swing down on its hinge. Powdered dust covered his head and shoulders, and when he had blinked away the tiny grains from his eyes, he uttered a weak cry of dismay. He now understood the cause of the crash just a week before: the remains of a nearby building, undoubtedly his own house, had finally collapsed. And the rabble had covered the ground above him, blocking his air supply, obstructing his escape exit.

His fingers tried to dig into the concrete slab, but hardly marked the surface. He pushed, he heaved, but nothing shifted. Maurice almost collapsed down the ladder, barely able to keep his feet at the bottom.

He wailed as he stumbled around the bunker looking for implements to cut through the solid wall above, the sound rasping and faint. He used knives, forks, anything with a sharp point to hammer at the concrete, all to no avail, for the concrete was too strong and his efforts too weak.

He finally banged dazedly at the blockage with a bloodied fist.

Maurice fell back into what was now a pit and howled his frustration. Only the howl was more like a wheeze, the kind a cat might make when choking.

The plastic-covered bundle at the far end of the shelter did not move but Maurice, tears forcing rivulets through the dust on his face, was sure he heard a faint, derisory meow.

'Never liked cats,' he panted. 'Never.'

Maurice sucked his knuckles, tasting his own blood, and waited in his private, self-built tomb. It was only a short time to wait before shadows crept in his vision and his lungs became flat and still, but it seemed an eternity to Maurice. A lonely eternity, even though Mog was there to keep him company.

They thought they would be safe in the vast sunken chamber which had once been the banqueting hall of the hotel close to the river. They could almost feel the pressure of thousands of tons of concrete and rubble above them, bearing down, threatening to break through the ceiling and crush them. By rights, that should have happened when the first bomb had dropped, but because of some quirk in the building's structure, or perhaps because of the way the mighty building had toppled, the ceiling had held. The great chandeliers had fallen, impregnating those early diners seated below with a million shards of fine glass; and most of the huge mirrors had tumbled or cracked. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed, rubble descending in grinding, crushing avalanches, the openings soon sealed by more debris from above. Most of the hall's stout pillars had withstood the pressure.

Darkness followed within seconds, and the rumbling, the shifting of the earth itself, continued. As did the screams, the cries for help, the sighing moans of the mortally injured. When the city's death rattle terminated, the other sounds went on.

Those in the banqueting hall who had survived the

eruption, or who had not been knocked senseless by falling masonry and glass or rendered immobile by shock, cowered on the floor, many beneath tables and chairs, others against pillars. A strange calmness fell upon them, a still numbness not uncommon in times of massive disaster, and those who could crawled towards the helpless injured, drawn by whimpers and pleading, lighters and matches were lit. A waiter found candles and placed them around the devastated dining hall; there was no romance in their glow, just a dim appraisal of human and material damage.

It did not take long to discover there was no apparent escape route from the hall: all exits had been blocked by rubble and there were no outside windows. There was access to the kitchens and, mercifully for many, to the bar, but no exit from them. The dining hall and its smaller annexes were buried beneath thousands of tons of rubble. They were trapped, the price paid for not heeding the warning sirens and fleeing with those less composed than themselves. Most of those not transfixed by sheer funk had realized that if nuclear warheads really were about to fall, then there was virtually nowhere in the capital that could be deemed safe. It would be better to take the last sip of wine, to taste the last expensive morsel of food, in elegant surroundings, and with grace. For just a few, even conversation continued in a light vein.

The blast and its consequences had dispelled all such fanciful affectations.

Cut and bruised, dazed and fearful, those who could examined the candlelit stronghold around them.

For some it came to represent an impregnable shelter where they could wait until rescue came, sustained by a carefully rationed food supply from the kitchens, heartened by the ample stock of alcohol from the bar; for others, more pessimistic, it represented a vast inescapable prison.

They learned to live a frugal existence, caring for the injured, endeavouring to ease the way for the dying. Corpses were wrapped in tablecloths and deposited, after all drink was removed, inside the bar area, the double doors tightly sealed afterwards. It was decided that no tunnelling through the debris would be attempted until at least two or three weeks had passed, for only radiation fallout would welcome their release. They knew that precious air was seeping down to them, for the candle flames were strong even days after the explosion, and often stirred with secretive breezes. And when water began to trickle through the debris and they guessed it to be rainwater from outside, they knew there were gaps that could be followed and widened by rescue teams with correct equipment.

So they waited in their newfound community where title held little authority, wealth had no use, and the shared ambition was to survive; a thrown-together cooperative with no social and soon no moral barriers

- although as to the sexual aspect of the latter, some discretion was still practised: such encounters, enhanced by Death's skeletal shoulder-tapping, were undertaken in the more remote and darker nooks of the dining hall. Dysentery became rife, despite precautions, and claimed several lives; food poisoning (not to mention alcoholic poisoning) almost took more; infected wounds led to fevers; and suicides reduced their numbers by four. When nobody came to rescue the survivors after three weeks, anxiety mounted. At the end of the fourth, with supplies rapidly depleting, carefully rationed candles running low, and the floor awash with water, it was decided an attempt on their own part to reach the outside had to be made. A tunnel was to be dug.

The stronger of the men collected any tools they could find to dig with - broken table legs, long carving knives,

even heavy soup ladles - and selected a point where the water appeared to flow more forcefully than others. They cleared what they could with bare hands, then struck at the more resisting blockages with their implements. They were soon forced to try elsewhere, the barrier before them too solid, and then had to abandon the next 'dig' when more debris than they had displaced collapsed in on them. More headway was made with their third attempt.

The earlier tunnels had been tried near the wide entrances to the dining hall; the latest one was where a section of ceiling had caved in, leaving a barely noticeable fissure. The gap was swiftly widened and, although the earth was damp, no water ran from it. The first man, who used to be a waiter in the once renowned and rather grand hotel squeezed through, pushing a candle before him. It was claustrophobic, but then their very existence had been so over the past month. He pressed on, digging at the rubble with a short-bladed butcher's chopper scavenged from the kitchen. Shouts of encouragement came from behind and he grinned in the gloom, sweat already clogging the dust that settled on his bare arms and shoulders. His enthusiasm almost caused another fall and he forced himself to be more patient when the danger had passed.

He stopped again when he heard something ahead of him. He listened, sure it was not from behind, the sound of others following his path. Perhaps he had been wrong, for now he heard nothing. He began to dig again, pulling brickwork away and burrowing through powdered rubble. Then he was certain he heard noises from ahead.

He called for his companions to be quiet and he waited there. The scraping noise did not seem too far away.

The ex-waiter gave a gargled whoop of joy and shouted back to the others that he was sure rescuers were on the

way, digging to meet them, obviously careful not to disturb the debris too much with their digging machines lest more danger was created.

He called out, and the others behind called with him. There was no reply except a scratching sound. He frowned. Now it sounded like ... like ... gnawing.

Scraping, slithering. Definite movement. He pushed forward.

Presently he came to another blockage and he almost wept with frustration. But then, no, he saw it was only wood, a partition, a screen or perhaps the back of a fallen wardrobe amid the jumble of masonry and rubble. He could see only a small section of the blockage, for it was framed by the rough tunnel itself.

He heard more scratching and wondered why the rescuers did not just punch a hole through the wood.

He called out again and the noise stopped.

He spoke eagerly and the scratching resumed and the wood bulged, only there was no comfort in the sound this time, for it was not human digging, it was more like the sound of claws scrabbling to break through and that high-pitched squealing was not human, but was the sound of animals, animals with sharp, scratching claws and with enough strength to push the wood inwards, to make it bulge and crack and ...

He began to back away and the man behind wondered what he was playing at, cursing the shoes that scuffed his face, the others behind him demanding to know what was going on.

The ex-waiter found he could retreat no further, that the next man was blocking his retreat. He stared beyond the candleflame at the cracking wood, a slow scream beginning.

A sliver of wood broke inwards with a crack. A talon-like claw gripped the edge of the newly formed hole. More

splinters fell away. A long pointed snout appeared and yellow teeth gnawed a bigger opening. The rat's head and gleaming eyes were the most heart-wrenching manifestation of evil he had ever seen.

His scream escaped as the rat pushed through and closed the short distance between them with a swift, scuttling movement. The light vanished as the candle was dropped and he could only feel the creature eating into his face, his hands useless against the thick, hairy body.

The vermin had known there were humans close by, their keen sense of smell, their acute instincts, attracted by the distinct aroma of living flesh and human excrement. The digging noises had alerted them and given direction.

They poured through the opening, some eating their way through the body of the first man, others tunnelling their way around him, finding more humans, aroused to an intense frenzy by their own bloodlust. They swept along the tunnel, killing and feeding until they reached the huge cavern where the people waited.

The survivors tried to hide in the darkest corners of the dining hall as the black hordes swept down. At first they did not understand what these creatures were, seeing only a flowing devil's spawn, an invasion of demonic beasts, perhaps returning to their hell's womb in which they, the survivors, had been incarcerated. The desperate screams of the tunnel-lers had forewarned of the irruption, petrifying the people in the dimly lit hall. They scattered and hid as the dark beasts scampered through the narrow opening and descended the rubbled slope, their traumatized minds unable to cope with this new nightmare, to recognize the demons for what they were. The fear would have been no less if they had.

Only when their very flesh was being shredded by flailing teeth and claws did they fully realize that vermin were to be

their final adversity, not radiation poisoning, not disease, not hunger and not despair. They hid, but the rats sought them out; they barricaded themselves behind upturned tables and chairs and the vermin squirmed their way through. The kitchens offered no refuge and those who hid in store cupboards only prolonged the waiting, lengthened the torment as razor-sharp incisors gnawed away the barriers. Those who escaped into the walk-in freezer store with its rancid meat might have found some protection had not others belatedly tried to gain entry, pulling open the big metal door and allowing their attackers to storm through.

One elderly man hid inside an oven, cramming his body in, pulling the door closed, holding on to it for dear life, panting and sobbing, legs drawn up in foetal position. Unfortunately for him, the enemy was within. His old heart had given warning twice in the past and it finally lost patience with its host who would not avoid excitement. The old man suffered an undignified death, stuffed in an oven, now his coffin, his feet and arms feebly beating at the iron walls.

An elderly woman pushed open the double-doors to the bar, the stench of the more-recentiy dead of no concern, and slammed them shut behind her. She stood alone in the total darkness with her back to the doors, listening to the frightening noises outside, her frail legs barely able to hold her weight. A bump against the door made her start; something slid down the other side. More bumping at the base of the doors as though someone was struggling there. The woman stumbled away, hands groping the blackness, heading for the mound of old and new deceased who were wrapped in tablecloth shrouds.

She fell against something and her probing hands found the nose, an open mouth, of an upturned face beneath its thin covering of cloth. She crawled onto the pile of bodies,

burrowing down, pulling them around her, flinching as cold hands brushed her arms, as rigid lips kissed her cheek, as the receptive cadavers crowded in on her, hugging her close as if to steal her warmth. Like the corpses, she tried not to breathe lest the sound give her away, but it seemed that her heart beat loud enough for them all. Encased in the stifling bundles, she waited, silently mouthing prayers not remembered since childhood, corpses tight around her as if conspiring to keep her hidden. She might well have eluded the attention of the predators had not other fugitives burst through the doors. The voracious rats quickly overwhelmed them, dragging them to their knees. The concealed woman tried to close her mind to the shrieks.

A quietness eventually fell. Most of the people had been swiftly killed; those still alive could only moan helplessly as the vermin fed.

The woman thought she was safe. Until she heard the rummaging among the mound of corpses in which she lay, the scrabbling of claws, strange childlike sounds. Weight shifted around her. Something nuzzled against the loose fat above her hip. Something began nibbling at the side of her neck.