THE H-BOMB GIRL

by Stephen Baxter

  Maybe it won’t go any further. But even on Luxembourg there isn’t any news.

  Have to speak to Dad.

  “You aren’t in this,” she said to Agatha.

  “No. This is how things were, before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I came back. The first time you lived all this. I wasn’t here. There was just you and your mum and your friends, hiding in a cellar from the war…”

  Saturday 1 p.m. We came up in Whitechapel, in the city centre. Boarded-up stores. Some of them burned out. Nobody about but scuffers and looters playing ticks. Rivers of beer and pee flowing down the gutters.

  Managed to call Dad from a phone box.

  Dad said it was all an accident, in Cuba. Thousands of nervous Americans and Russians standing around with guns. All it took was one shot, to kick it all off. We’ll probably never know who fired first.

  But they’re still fighting.

  Dad says it’s got worse during the morning. The Russian army has moved in Europe. They came over the wall and took West Berlin in minutes. Now they are marching into West Germany. The Americans are trying to stop them with battlefield nuclear shells.

  “The Davy Crockett,” Dad said. “The M-388 nuclear bazooka. Six-inch nuclear shells. You’d have to be mad to fire the thing because you’d be inside the blast radius. But the soldiers are firing them even so. What do you think of that?”

  So they’re using nuclear weapons.

  Even so maybe it won’t go any further.

  I was going to ask Dad about using the Key. But he was cut off.

  When I came back to our cellar Mum had run off. Maybe she’s gone back home. The others wouldn’t let me follow.

  I tried to help Mum. I hope she forgives me.

  *

  9 p.m. Cold and dark. Got to try to sleep.

  Maybe it won’t go any further.

  *

  Sunday 22th October. 9 a.m.

  OK. OK. Write it down, Laura.

  We heard a siren about 8 a.m. And the church bells started ringing.

  We came up to see. Well, you had to.

  People running everywhere, screaming, trying to get indoors.

  We all looked west, towards the docks, where we thought the bomb would fall on Liverpool. Only Nick looked east. I think he was trying to be funny. His head was killing him. He even, took his glasses off to see better.

  Well, the flash came, not from the west, from the east, like a huge light bulb being switched on, and off. We all saw our shadows stretching in front of us.

  “So much for the four minutes,” Joel said.

  We all turned around. In the east, a huge black cloud was rising up, above the roofs of the houses. It wasn’t like a mushroom, really. More like a huge hammer. The only noise was people screaming, and the sirens, and the church bells. No noise from the bomb.

  “They’ve only gone and done it,” Bern said.

  “That was Burtonwood,” Joel said. “The air base. They’re taking out military targets first.”

  That meant Mort was almost certainly dead.

  And Dad. Almost certainly dead. Already. That was what pad had always said. Dead, as soon as the bombs start falling.

  “Maybe it will stop there,” I said.

  Then Bernadette screamed, “Nick!”

  I hadn’t looked at him. He was just standing there. His mouth was stretched wide open, but no noise came out. There was this stuff running down his face. He had looked into the blast. His eyes had melted.

  Bernadette tried to grab him. But he punched her, and just ran off.

  Joel held her back. “We have to get back in the hole. The blast.”

  I saw a sort of wall of smoke coming down the street. It was still far off shop windows were popping. I saw people being thrown up in the air. And a car, up in the air tumbling.

  We all scrambled back into the hole.

  The noise came with the blast. It was like a huge wind that passed one way, then got sucked back the other.

  Maybe it won’t go any further.

  Dad is dead.

  It still isn’t real when I write it down.

  *

  Sunday 10:30 a.m.

  We’re at the Jive-O-Rama now. But nobody’s jiving.

  When the blast had passed over, Joel said we had to get out of there. If a second wave of strikes came, against the cities, we would be too close to the “epicentre.” We’d be baked alive. Jimmy’s cellar out in the suburbs and away from the city centre, would be a better bet.

  All that CND stuff is paying off for Joel. At least he knows what’s going on.

  So we came up and ran east, away from the city centre. That huge cloud from Burtonwood still hung over everything, directly ahead of us.

  Nobody around. Everybody in hiding, I suppose. Every shop window was broken. Joel says probably every window in Britain is already smashed.

  Joel says it’s no accident they struck when they did. It would have been about three in the morning in Washington. JFK asleep, everybody at their lowest.

  I stopped at a few phones. I wanted to try phoning Dad, or maybe the Key numbers. None of them worked. Joel just hurried me along.

  Now we’re in Big Jimmy’s Inner Refuge. Under the doors. Joel always said it would be useless, but it’s the best we’ve got.

  Big Jimmy is missing Little Jimmy.

  *

  Sunday 11:00 a.m. Waiting. Busting for a pee.

  *

  Sunday. 11:30 a.m. Siren. No no no.

  *

  Sunday. 2 p.m. OK. OK.

  So they dropped the bomb on Liverpool.

  The light first. Even in a cellar even under the doors and mattresses, even through my closed eyelids, I could see it.

  Then the blast. It was a great door slamming down. The whole place shook. There was a roaring. Then a whoosh like the sea over pebbles. That was the noise of Jimmy’s house breaking up, all the bricks washing down on top of us.

  The wind just went on and on.

  Then it stopped. But it started to get hotter and hotter.

  Bern was getting crazy. She wanted to go up to see what was happening. Joel tried to stop her, but he didn’t have a chance.

  I followed her. Joel too.

  The house was flattened. We were lucky Jimmy’s cellar wasn’t blocked in.

  We looked west, towards the city centre. All the houses that way seemed to be burning. There was stuff whirling up in the air from them. Dust. Soot. Ashes. A black cloud gathering up over it all, with fire at its base. It was very hot up there.

  “They hit the docks,” Joel said. “They’ve taken out the military sites. Now they’re going for economic, industrial, civilian targets.”

  “Shut up,” Bern said.

  “The Russians will have fired off all their missiles while they had the chance, before the Americans can knock out their bases—”

  “Shut up!” Bern started hitting him, like it was his fault. I had to pull her off.

  A great wind started blowing, towards the pillar of smoke and fire. And rain started to fall. Big dirty drops the size of marbles.

  “We have to get back inside,” Joel said. “That’s the firestorm.”

  “The what?”

  “And the fall-out is going to come, in an hour or so. Radioactive muck.”

  We went back, to where Jimmy was cowering in the dark.

  *

  Sunday 4th November.

  Seven days since the bomb.

  I’ve decided I should save paper.

  It’s dark and cold.

  Jimmy’s sick.

  We’re still in the shelter. Joel says we have to stay here for two weeks, until the fall-out is over. Jimmy agrees. The leaflet he used to build this Inner Refuge says two weeks as well. Good of him to let us in and share this. More than good. Saintly.

  What the leaflet didn’t say was how the four of us are all supposed to get on, under these stupid doors. We haven’t killed each other yet. That’s about all you can say.r />
  Jimmy had planned the shelter just for him and Little jimmy, for fourteen days. We ran out of food on Tuesday, water on Thursday.

  On Thursday Jimmy went out to fetch some more food and water. Joel said he shouldn’t go at all, but somebody had to, and Jimmy said it was going to be him as he was the oldest and had a duty to protect us. Especially Bern with her little one.

  As I said. Saintly.

  He brought back bottled water, and crisps and bread and stuff from the Jive-O-Rama larder.

  The power’s off, he says. And the water. And the phone.

  He peeked outside. He says it looks as if the city is still burning. But there’s a vast black lid of cloud over the sky. All the dust from the burning cities I suppose. You can’t tell if it’s day or night. No wonder it’s cold.

  Since then Jimmy has got sick. He has a hot fever. His hair is falling out. He has diarrhoea. You can imagine what that’s like to live with. Joel says it’s the fall-out, and he shouldn’t have gone outside.

  Bern won’t help us with Jimmy. Even though he took us in. She won’t even touch him, in case she gets contaminated. She’s hard inside. She’s thinking ahead about her own survival. And the baby’s.

  *

  Tuesday 13th November. Evening.

  The two weeks are up.

  Jimmy was bleeding from his gums. And he was sort of bleeding from his skin, even though he wasn’t cut anywhere. He was asleep most of the time. But he was incontinent.

  So today we decided to take Jimmy to Broad Green Hospital. It was our first big trip outside.

  We had to walk Jimmy between us, me and Joel. Bern still won’t touch him.

  The sky is still black. OK, it’s November, but it’s so cold.

  Half the houses around here are gone, burned or collapsed. Even the ones that stayed up are wrecks.

  Bodies everywhere. Huddles in coats. Rats all over the place. We avoided them. Everybody alive is still hiding in holes in the ground I suppose.

  All the food shops, if they’re still standing, are smashed open, gutted.

  We passed a Co-op. A big sign had been stuck over its doorway. REGIONAL COMMISSION. FOOD DISTRIBUTION CENTRE. There was a riot going on. A big mob faced a line of soldiers and scuffers standing in front of the store. That was the only time we saw a scuffer or a squaddie, guarding the food, not the people. I heard one shot fired. We went on.

  The hospital was open. It even had lights. Joel said it probably had its own generator.

  The crowd of people around it was just vast. Like the streets around a football stadium on a big match day. A noise like a football crowd too, a sort of murmured shout. Except people were limping, or being carried on backs or in wheelbarrows.

  We just had to wait and join the crush.

  Eventually we came to a scuffer. He took one look at Jimmy. He pinned a big amber star with a number 2 on Jimmy’s jumper. Then he showed us which way to take him. Not a nurse or a doctor, a policeman, making medical decisions.

  The scuffer looked very young, no older than Nick, say. He wore a cloth over his face. And he was dog tired, with black rings around his eyes. He told us they were calling the war the “Sunday war.” Over and done in one day. Joel asked him who won. The scuffer just laughed.

  We left Jimmy in the car park. Just on the tarmac, no beds or stretchers. There were hundreds like him, all with amber stars, lying there in rows.

  Everybody sort of stumbles around. I don’t seem to feel anything, about Jimmy or Nick or even Mum and Dad. I suppose we’re all in shock.

  *

  Wednesday 21st November.

  I’ve been working at the hospital.

  I’m working with a porter called Fred. He’s about fifty, I think. We lug people around, tend simple wounds, that kind of thing.

  They need help. Fred says there are three hundred and fifty casualties for every doctor. No drugs left, no bandages, nothing. They used up everything on the first day.

  I’m fit enough to do it. And I have a Brownie badge for First Aid. Which is more than most people have got. I had to lie about my age though.

  Bern thinks I’m mad to work here. Joel too.

  Well, it isn’t “Emergency Ward Ten.”

  They call it triage. As soon as you “present,” as the doctors say, they take one look at you and put you in one of three categories. Green, amber, red, like the traffic lights.

  In Category One, green, there’s a chance you will live and they treat you.

  In Category Two, amber, they leave you in a “holding section,” a bit of the car park. If you recover you get moved to Category One. Otherwise you die.

  Jimmy died.

  They take Category Three, red, to a corner of the car park, and the scuffers shoot you. The doctors say it’s kinder that way. They’re making a big heap of bodies there.

  I’ve had to carry bodies to the heap. When we do things like that, Fred makes me look at his face, and he smiles, and makes jokes or sings hymns, so I don’t have to look at what we’re doing.

  Fred is an Irish Christian Brother. As it happens he used to work at Saint Edward’s, the school where the woodbines played. Now the school’s been taken over as an army base. Lots of them around now, army bases. Fred doesn’t wear his dog collar. He says people sometimes attack priests or monks, as if it’s all their fault, or God’s.

  People come walking out of the city centre, even now, looking for help. They’ll hold their arms up, to ease the pain in their tight burned skin. Sometimes you see patterns, like shadows where clothes had been, bra straps or belts. You see women with shadows of flowers on them, patterns from their dresses burned into the skin.

  Fred says that the people are like snapshots of the bomb. Wherever you happened to be sitting or standing or running at that moment, 11:32 a.m. on Sunday 28th October is preserved in your body, your skin.

  I’m no saint, to be working here. We get paid in food. Everybody’s hungry. The only grub is in the government centres, and there’s precious little of that. You can forget ration cards. They keep the fact that we get food secret, or everybody would want to be a nurse.

  Also I’m hoping that Mum will turn up in the hospital. Where else could she go?

  But she hasn’t shown up.

  One mad woman tried to tell me a horror story, about a little boy she saw lying on his back in pale street. His little fingers were burning like candles. Fred shut her up.

  *

  Monday 24th December.

  Over eight weeks since the bomb.

  We’re burning the bodies. The doctors are getting worried about epidemics now. Typhoid, cholera. The priests make the Sign of the Cross over the big open graves. The scuffers have to stand around with guns to stop relatives trying to drag Mum or Dad or little Johnny back out again.

  This greasy black smoke goes up from the pyres. You can smell it for miles.

  Joel is working with one of the reconstruction squads. A hundred “volunteers” under a fireman. It’s awful work. Pulling down ruined buildings, by hand. Opening up cellars where people were baked under the firestorm. Flies buzzing. That sort of thing.

  Joel hasn’t got much choice. If you work, if you’re strong enough, you get food. If you can’t work, you don’t get food. That’s the way it is.

  Some people are still dying of the radiation sickness. It works itself out in all sorts of ways. For instance, you might lose the lining of your stomach so you can’t absorb liquids. You just dry out. You see all types in the hospital.

  One doctor told me that a third of the population of Britain probably died when the bombs fell. Since then another third will have died from the radiation poisoning. And we, the last third, will have poison in the air and in the fields, in our blood and in our bones, for the rest of our lives.

  Today, Fred and I drove into the city centre with an ambulance crew. One precious doctor. From Queens Drive we drove down Edge Lane. Army bulldozers had been down there before, to clear away the burned-out cars and rubble. We all wore masks and gl
oves. We carried buckets of paint to mark where the healthy people are, or where there are bodies, or where there is cholera or dysentery.

  On the way in we saw a lot of people heading away from the city. All walking. Even if your car survived, there’s no petrol. Some have suitcases, wheelbarrows, supermarket trolleys piled up. The men carry weapons, like cricket bats. Nobody much younger than me, nobody much older than Fred. The doctors say the radiation sickness and the epidemics and the hunger and the cold are taking the babies and the old people first.

  A mile or so inside Queens Drive you can start to see the effects of the firestorm, where the big fires all joined up. Even so, bits survive. Houses here and there, almost untouched. Spared by chance.

  In the heart of the city, the catholic cathedral, Paddy’s wigwam, is a skeleton on its crypt, its big stained-glass funnel melted. Some of the big classical buildings, like Saint George’s Hall, are still standing. Roofs bashed in, columns fallen. They look like Roman ruins. In Whitechapel and Church Street the shops got shaken to pieces. Glass everywhere. Melted shop window dummies. NEMS is gutted, burned out, stacks of pop records turned to black sludge.

  A lot of the telephone poles are still standing. They are all blackened on one side.

  And the flash was hot enough to scorch brick and concrete. You can see shadows, outlines of cars or buses, caught in that second, burned into the walls. In one place I saw the shadow of a little boy with his leg outstretched, and you could see the football a yard in front of his toe. Of the boy and the ball, nothing is left.

  The Pier Head is destroyed. The docks are rubble, miles of them. One Liver Building tower is still standing. The clock stopped at 11:34. It must have been a bit fast. Bern laughed at that when I told her.