James Herbert 48

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sorrow shone in those grey-blue eyes as she waited to hear the tragedy that
was about to unfold. Cissie's eyes were a little unfocused, as if tears were
about to roll.
'The public didn't know for sure,' Potter went on, 'but the rumours spread
almost as fast as the plague itself. Some said the Royal Family was dead
within the first hour of those rockets landin. Others said the whole lot of
'em, includin old Queen Mary, was given cyanide pills by the King's Physician
when reports came in of how horrible the Blood Death was and how fast it was
spreadin. But I'd got into the
Kingsway shelter when I found out what was happenin out there, and I heard the
true story first-hand, because even though the Civil Defence personnel were
droppin like flies all round us, reports were still comin through on the
wires.'
'You really know?' Muriel was leaning forward, hands clasped over her knees.
'Yes, miss, I think I do. On that terrible day the Royals was rushed down to
Windsor and as soon as the authorities knew what was goin on, a single-engine
aeroplane was sent to take 'em out of harm's way.
There's a wide and very long road that runs through the park up to Windsor
Castle itself; the public was never aware, but it was there as an emergency
runway in case the country was ever invaded.
'They got on the plane all right and, so we heard, they even took the Crown
Jewels wrapped up in newspaper with 'em. But the plane had barely took off
when it came crashin down again, explodin into houses outside the town.'
There was a tiny, shocked gasp from Muriel and I saw that Cissie had closed
her eyes.
'Radio contact broke off just as the pilot was reportin a safe takeoff, and
the authorities reckoned he'd been struck down by the disease right at that
moment No other explanation, y'see. 'Course they was all killed, bodies burned
in the wreckage, but there was no public announcement Hell's bells, there was
enough occurrin without demoralizin the people completely.'
I could've smiled, I could've wept, at the absurdity of his last remark. But
it was Stern who broke the silence that followed.
'Do you know what happened to your Winston Churchill?' he said, and I could
see the ' inston'
V
annoyed Potter as much as it did me. He glowered at the German.
Then he raised his empty glass in salute and said, 'Old Winnie.' He shook his
head, looking down at the floor. 'They say he topped hisself, shot hisself
dead. All too much for him in the end, y'see. He'd put everything into winnin
the war for us, and he'd finally done it, it was almost finished. Then Hitler
sent his secret weapon over and had hisself the last laugh. It would've been
too much for any man.'
And that quietened us a whole lot more. Tears were running down Cissie's
cheeks and Muriel had her head bowed. Potter rummaged among the bottles on the
coffee table for fresh whisky and Stern sat
stiff-backed, his face a mask. Me, I just poured another Jack Daniel's.
Grief is only finite, you know? Sure, over the past years I'd thought a lot
about death and those I'd lost, about the major players, the little guys too,
friends, acquaintances, kids I'd gone to High School with, good pilots I'd
fought battles with. You don't forget, but you hold down the memory; or at
least, the emotion that goes with the memory. After a while it fades, the
emotion, because the soul can only take so much. The numbness eventually sets
in, although, if you're really lucky, that can happen right away.
Generally though, it'll take months, maybe years, before you begin -and only
begin
- to pull through and start to think straight again. In my case I only had two
people to really grieve over, because my folks were dead before the war even
started, Ma in '38 of cancer, Dad soon after in '39, of heart disease. I
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had no brothers or sisters, and other relations were too distant to cause much
concern. Those two people closest to me, wiped out by the Blood Death, took up
most, if not all, of my mourning.
As I looked at the strained faces around me, I realized my new and unwanted
companions were still in a state of shock. The girls had been cloistered from
the worst excesses of the disease for some time, and the warden had taken his
own mental route for dealing with the situation. Now Cissie and Muriel had
ventured beyond the confines of the sanatorium and local villages to witness
the full horror of the V2s'
legacy for themselves, and Albert Potter had finally come into contact with
other survivors, and their sanity, such as it was, had to be nagging at his
own delusions. As for the German, well, even he had to have had family, people
to weep for, so he had to be suffering too. Maybe guilt - it was his
countrymen who had unleashed the final holocaust -figured in his emotional
state also; race responsibility for such annihilation would have to lay heavy
on any man. Unless, of course, the only person he really mourned over was his
Fuhrer, whose actions he considered to be both appropriate and heroic.
I watched Stern and tried to guess what was going on behind that mask; he
remained inscrutable though, despite hitting the juice and chain-smoking along
with the rest of us. Funny thing is, he never got soused, nor maudlin, no
matter how much he drank. But then, neither did I that evening.
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