Free Vampires Overhead by Alan Hyder Page A

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