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JAMES HERBERT

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Also by James Herbert

The Rats

The Fog

The Survivor

Fluke

The Spear

The Dark

Lair

The Jonah

Shrine

Moon

The Magic Cottage

Haunted

Sepulchre

Creed

Portent

The Ghosts of Sleath

‘48

Others

Graphic Novels

The City

(Illustrated by Ian Miller)

Non-fiction

By Horror Haunted

(Edited by Stephen Jones)

James Herbert's Dark Places

(Photographs by Paul Barkshire)

JAMES HERBERT

Domain

MACMILLAN

TIME: 12: 37

DAY: Tuesday

MONTH: June

YEAR: The not too distant future…

PLACE: LONDON

ONE: ADVENT

They scurried through the darkness, shadowy creatures living in permanent night.

They had learned to become still, to be the darkness, when the huge monsters roared above and filled

the tunnels with thunder, assaulting the black refuge - their cold, damp sanctuary - with rushing lights and

deadly crushing weight. They would cower as the ground beneath them shook, the walls around them

trembled; and they would wait until the rushing thing had passed, not afraid but necessarily wary, for it

was an inveterate invader but one which killed the careless.

They had learned to keep within the confines of their underworld, to venture out only when their own

comforting darkness was sistered with the darkness above. For they had a distant race-memory of an

enemy, a being whose purpose was to destroy them. A being who existed in the upper regions where

there was vast dazzling light, a place that could be explored safely only when the brilliance diminished and

succumbed to concealing and pleasurable blackness. But even then the darkness was not absolute;

different kinds of individual lights pierced the night. Yet these were feeble, and created shadows that

were veiling allies.

They had learned to be timid in exploration, never moving far from their sanctum. They fed on night

creatures like themselves, and often came upon food that was not warm, that did not struggle against the

stinging caress of the creatures jaws. The taste was not as exciting as the moist and tepid moving flesh,

but it filled their stomachs. It sustained them.

Yet in this, too, they were cautious, never taking too much, never returning to the same source, for they

possessed an innate cunning, born of something more than fear of their natural enemy; it was an evolution

accelerated by something that had happened to their species many years before. An event that had

changed their pattern of progression. And made them alien even to those of their own nature.

They had learned to keep to the depths. To keep themselves from the eyes of their enemy. To take

food, but never enough to arouse unwelcome attention. To kill other creatures, but never to leave

remains. And when there was not enough food, they ate each other. For they were many.

They moved in the darkness; black, bristling beasts, with huge, humped hindquarters and long, jagged

incisors, their eyes pointed and yellow. They sniffed at the dank air and a deep instinct within craved for a

different scent, a scent which they did not yet know was the sweet odour of running blood. Human

blood. They would know it soon.

They tensed as one when their keen, long ears picked up a distant wailing, a haunting whining they had

never heard before. They were still, many risen on haunches, snouts twitching, fur stiffened. They listened

and were afraid, and their fear lasted for as long as the sound lasted.

Silence came and it was more frightening than the sound.

Still they waited, not daring to move, barely breathing.

A time passed before the thunder came, and it was a million times louder than the giant rushing things

they shared the tunnels with.

It started as a low rumbling, quickly becoming a great roar, shaking their underworld, rending the

darkness with its violence, tearing at the walls, the roof, causing the ground to rise up and throw the

creatures into scrambling heaps. They lashed out at each other, clawing, gouging, snapping frenziedly with

razor teeth.

More thunder from another source.

Dust, fumes, sound, filled the air.

Rumbling, building, becoming a shrieking.

More. More thunder.

The world and its underworld shivering.

Screaming.

The creatures ran through the turbulence, black-furred bodies striving to reach their inner sanctum

within the tunnel network. Fighting to exist, deafened by the noise, squealing their panic, desperate to

return to the Mother Creature and her strange cohorts.

The man-made caverns shuddered but resisted the unleashed pressure from the world above. Sections

collapsed, others were flooded, but the main body of tunnels withstood the impacts that pounded the

city.

And after a while, the silence returned.

Save for the scurrying of many, many clawed feet.

The first bomb exploded just a few thousand feet above Hyde Park, its energy release, in the forms of

radiation, light, heat, sound and blast, the equivalent of one million tons of tnt. The sirens that had warned

of the missile and its companions' approach were but a thin squeal to the giant roar of its arrival.

Within two thousandths of a second after the initial blinding flash of light, the explosion had become a

small searing ball of vapour with a temperature of eighteen million degrees Fahrenheit, a newborn

mini-sun of no material substance.

The luminous fireball immediately began to expand, the air around it heated by compression and

quickly losing its power as a shield against the ultraviolet radiation. The rapidly growing fiery nucleus

pushed at the torrid air, producing a spherical acoustic shock-front which began to travel faster than its

creator, masking the fireball's full fury.

As the shock-front spread, its progenitor followed, quickly dispersing a third of its total energy. The

fireball grew larger, almost half a mile in diameter, leaving behind a vacuum and beginning to lose its

luminosity. It started to spin inwards, rising at an incredible speed, forming a ring of smoke which carried

debris and fission-produced radioactive isotopes.

Dust was sucked from the earth as the swirling vortex reached upwards, dust that became

contaminated by the deadly,

man-activated rays, rising high into the skies, later to settle on the destroyed city as lethal fallout.

The angry cloud with its stem of white heat was more than six miles high and still rising, banishing the

noonday sun, when the next missile detonated its warhead.

Three more megaton bombs were soon to follow...

Miriam stood transfixed.

What was happening? Why the panic? And that dreadful wailing noise of just a few minutes before.

The sirens of World War Two. Oh no, it couldn't be happening again!

She was too stunned, too frightened, to move. All around people were pushing, shoving, running in

fear. Of what? Aeroplanes with bombs? Surely that didn't happen any more. She should have paid more

attention to the news. Should have listened more closely to her neighbours. Miriam recalled hearing

something on the radio about tension in the Middle East; but she'd been hearing that for years and years.

It didn't mean anything any more. It was just news, words, items read out by smooth-voiced young men

and women. It had nothing to do with shopping at Tesco's and washing dirty sheets and spoiling

grandchildren and living in Chigwell. And nothing to do with her.

Sixty-seven years old, wide-eyed and bewildered, Miriam stood on the corner of Oxford Street and

Marble Arch. It should have been such a lovely day: hot, sunny, June; a day out, a special treat. A whole

day just wandering around the shops looking - though not intensely - for a suitable present for Becky's

wedding. Beautiful grand-daughter, nice sensible chap she was marrying, a wonderful match. Arnold,

God rest him, God forgive him, would have approved. The boy - not

handsome, true, but life was never too bountiful - had good manners and business sense. Becky would

supply the beauty in the match, and if she, Miriam, knew her daughter's daughter, the driving power

behind the man. A match made in heaven maybe not, for certainly the connivance of prospective (and

prospecting) in-laws had laid the foundations. Call it an old-fashioned arrangement, but there were a few

good families still left who followed the old ways.

What to buy? Not to worry - money was the main present. No forced thin-lipped thank-yous with

such a gift. Something in glass or something practical for the wrapped present. Both. A set of crystal

glasses, that would be ideal. She had smiled at her own solution.

The smile had vanished when the wailing began.

A young couple collided with her, knocking her back against a window. The girl went down and her

companion roughly jerked her to her feet, one hand pushing against Miriam's chest. He shouted

something, but Miriam could not understand, for her heart was beating too loudly and her ears were filled

with the cries of others. The young couple staggered away, trails of mascara on the girl's cheeks

emphasizing the blood-drained whiteness of her face. Miriam watched them disappear into the crowd,

her breathing now coming in short, sharp gasps. She silently cried for her late husband: Arnold, tell me,

tell me what's happening. There were no more wars, not here, not in England. Why are they so

frightened? What were they running from?

The sirens had stopped. The screaming had not.

Stepping away from the wall, Miriam looked towards the lush green park. She had planned such a

lovely, leisurely stroll through those grounds, a journey to the lake where Arnold had taken her so many

years before. Had it been their first time of walking out? Such a silly woman: who used

such an expression nowadays? Walking out! But it was such a nice term. So ... so innocent! Had life

been so innocent? Not with Arnold, God rest his devious soul. In other ways, a good man though. A

generous man...

A push in the back almost sent her to her knees. No manners these days, no compassion for the

elderly. No consideration. Worse. Rape the elderly, slash the baby, were the latest perversions. Such

things!

The people were swarming down into the Underground station. Is that where I should be going?

Would it be safe there? They seemed to think so. If only I knew what I should be safe from. Let them go;

no sense in an old woman like me joining them. I'd be crushed and they wouldn't care. Tears began to

form in her eyes. They wouldn't care about an old woman like me, Arnold. Not these people today, not

these, these...

Something made her look at the sky. Her eyes were not too good, but was there something falling? An

object, moving so fast; was that what they were afraid of...?

She blinked because her tears had stung her pupils, and in the time it took for that movement, Miriam

and the milling, petrified ‘Yourists and shoppers around her ceased to exist. Their clothes, their flesh,

their blood, and even their bones no longer were. Miriam had not even become ash. She had been

vaporized to nothing.

The garage had always sold the most expensive petrol in town, yet it had always been one of the

busiest. The owner, now busily stuffing his pockets with notes from the till -mostly tenners and fivers;

pounds were no good for buying petrol in these oil-starved times - knew that position was all, that a

prime location was the best asset any shop, pub or

garage could have. His Maida Vale address and corner position were expensive assets rates-wise, but

in business terms they could not be beat.

Howard turned sharply when a car in the forecourt tooted its horn. He couldn't believe his ears or eyes.

The warning sirens had ceased and, if it wasn't a false alarm, within a few minutes the city was going to

be blown to smithereens. So this bloody fool wanted petrol! He waved an irate hand at the motorist who

waved back and pointed at his fuel tank.

Howard banged the till shut, leaving loose change in there. Hell, it was only money. He stamped to the

door as the horn sounded again.

'Excuse me, can you fill her up please?' The motorist had wound down his window.

'Are you fucking serious?' Howard asked incredulously.

People were running past the garage, cars were bumper to bumper trying to move out of the

machine-clogged city. He could hear the rending of metal as vehicles collided.

'I'm nearly empty,' the motorist persisted. 'I haven't got enough to get home.'

Take the bloody train, mate,' Howard shouted back at him as he ran to his own car. He pulled open

the door, then thought better of it. No way out in these jam-packed streets. Better to get below ground

somewhere. Find a basement. Not much time. Shit, I knew it was going to be a bad day.

He ran back past the motorist who looked at him pleadingly. 'Please,' the man said, the word rising to a

whine.

'For Chrissake, help yourself.'

Where to go, where to run to. Oh shit, nobody thought it would ever happen. Nobody ever really took

it seriously. Everyone knew we were on the brink, but nobody considered it would really happen. It had

to be a false alarm. Had to be!

'Leave the money on the counter,' he called back to the

motorist who had left his car and was holding the pump nozzle, studying it as though not sure of its

function.

Howard looked right and left. Any building would do, anything with a basement. Wasn't that what they

told you? Get downstairs. Paint your windows white, barricade yourself in with sandbags, get into the

cellar, build a shelter, stock yourself up with food and water and stay down there until the all-clear

sounded. All in the matter of four or five minutes. Oh Christ, if he only had the paint!

He reached a pub doorway. That would do, they had a big cellar, had to store the beer. He pushed at

the door, but it did not budge. Bloody hell, they couldn't close, it wasn't calling-time yet! He tried the

public bar and banged at the glass in frustration when he found this door, too, was locked tight.

'Bastards!' he screamed, then turned to look back at his garage. The motorist seemed to have found

out how to work the pump.

Howard cursed himself for having wasted time emptying the till. Edie was always calling him

tight-bloody-fisted; maybe she was right. He should have been tucked away in some nice little basement

by now. Still, it could be a false alarm. Nothing had happened yet. Yeah, that was it, he reassured

himself. They'd made a mistake, bloody idiots. If anything was going to happen, it would have before

now. He checked his watch and shook it. Couldn't have stopped, could it? Seemed a long time since the

sirens had started. He grinned. What a mug! He'd acted like everyone else, running, panicking, telling

God he was sorry. He tried to chuckle, but it came out as a choking sound.

Well, I'll tell you what, matey, you're gonna pay for that petrol. Howard began to walk back towards

his garage, his little empire, shaking his head in resigned bemusement at

the people rushing by. His two attendants, who had fled without his authority as soon as they had heard

the sirens, were in for a rollicking when they returned. Huh! He could just see their sheep's faces now.

The motorist was climbing back into his car.

'Hold up, Chief!' Howard called. ‘You owe me ...'

The blinding flash stopped his words. His legs felt suddenly weak and his bowels very watery. 'Oh no

...' he began to moan as he realized it actually was the real thing, there had been no mistake; then he, his

garage, and the motorist, were scorched by the heat. The petrol tanks, even though they were below

street level, blew instantly and Howard's and the motorist's bodies - as well as the bodies of everyone

around them - were seared to the bones.

And even those hurled through the air began to burn.

Jeanette (real name Brenda) stared out from the eighth-floor window of the London Hilton, her gaze

upon the vast expanse of greenery below. She casually lit the cigarette dangling from a corner of her

lipstick-smeared lips while the Arab and his two younger male companions scrabbled around the suite for

their clothes - the older man for his pure white robes, the other two for their sharply-cut European suits.

The buggers deserve to panic, she thought without too much rancour, a stream of cigarette smoke

escaping her clenched lips. According to the newspapers, they were the cause of all this, holding the

world to ransom with their bloody precious oil, sulking at the merest diplomatic slight, doling or not doling

out the stuff as the mood took them. Acting like a spoilt kid in whose house the party was going on: you

can have a cake, Amanda, but you can't, Clara, 'cos I don't like

you this week. Well now they'd all paid the price. The party was over.

She studied the scurrying people in the street below, the riders spurring their horses along Rotten Row,

the lovers running hand-in-hand through the park. There were some, resigned like her, who were just

lying down in the grass, waiting for whatever was on its way. Jeanette flinched when a pedestrian trying

to cross the traffic-filled Park Lane was tossed over a car bonnet. The person - no telling whether it was

a man or woman from that height - lay by the roadside, not moving and with nobody bothering to help.

At least he or she was out of it.

Behind her the Arabs were screaming at one another, pulling on trousers, shirts, the old, fat man the

first to look decent because he only had his long frock to wriggle into. He was already heading for the

door, the other two hopping half-undressed behind him. Fools. By the time the lift came up it would be all

over. And they wouldn't get far down the stairs.

At least the sirens had stopped. They were more frightening than the thought of the oblivion to come.

Jeanette drew in on the cigarette and enjoyed the smoke filling her lungs. Forty a day and it wasn't

going to kill her. Her laugh was short, sharp and almost silent. And her looks would never fade. She

glanced around the empty hotel room and shook her head in disgust. They lived like pigs and they

copulated like pigs. How would they die? No prizes.

Still, she'd met a few on her Park Lane beat who were real gentlemen, who treated her with respect

and a certain amount of gentleness. They were a bonus. These days she had learned to be less choosy.

Her best years, although they hadn't fulfilled the ambition, were what she termed the 'up-

and-down years'. It had worked for a celebrated but unrated actress acquaintance of hers, a woman

only famous for being famous, for being recognized because of the big wheelers she slept with. The

strategy had landed that particular lady with a millionaire husband, who had soon divorced her, making

the venture highly profitable. Countless pop stars and name photographers had added to her notoriety

and bank balance. The technique was simple, although it could prove expensive.

The hotel Jeanette had used (as had her 'actress' friend) was further along Park Lane, its flavour more

English than the Hilton. She had booked into the cheapest room possible (which wasn't cheap) and spent

most afternoons and evenings riding the elevators. Down the guest lift (from the top) through the huge

reception area or lounge, a short walk round the block to the service lifts, up to the top again, then back

down via the guest lift.

She nearly always scored when just one man, or maybe two, occupied the elevator with her. A small,

shy smile from them, a word about the weather, an invitation to take tea, or a drink in the bar, perhaps

dinner, and that was it. She was home and dry. Of course it didn't take long for the hotel staff to cotton

on, but any such establishment, no matter how high-class, allowed a certain amount of licence in such

things. So long as there was no trouble, the hookers weren't obvious, no money went missing, the

management turned a blind (yet watchful) eye. Jeanette had never got the live one, though. Plenty of

almosts, but never the McCoy. Now it was just a little bit too late; her looks were not as fresh, the bait

not as succulent. Hence the Park Lane/Mayfair 'beat'. Assignments were often made by phone, but

nowadays it paid to pound the pavement. She could do without these sessions with

three or more participants, though; they were a little too exhausting.

She turned back to the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. The cries from those

below drifted up and her eyes began to moisten. Is this all it amounted to? Is this where it all led? Eight

floors up in a hotel bedroom, naked as the day I was born, sore from the abuse to every orifice in my

body by the three clients. Some climax, some joke.

Jeanette pushed herself off the window pane, stubbing out the cigarette on the glass. Maybe there was

something better waiting. Maybe there was nothing. Well, even that was better.

She tried to blink when the world became a white flash, but her retinas had already shrivelled to

nothing. And her body and the glass had fused into one as the building fell backwards.

As the heat wave spread out from the rising fireball, everything flammable and any lightweight material

burst into flame. The scorching heat tore through the streets, melting solids, incinerating people or

charring them to black crisps, killing every exposed living thing within a radius of three miles. Within

seconds, the blast wave, travelling at the speed of sound and accompanied by winds of up to two

hundred miles an hour, followed.

Buildings crumbled, the debris released as deadly missiles. Glass flowed with the winds in millions of

slicing shards. Vehicles - cars, buses, anything not secured to the ground - were tossed into the air like

windblown leaves, falling to crush and maim. People were luted from their feet and thrown into the sides

of collapsing buildings. Intense

blast pressure ruptured lungs, eardrums and internal organs. Lamp standards became javelins of

concrete or metal. Broken electricity cables became dancing snakes of death. Water mains burst and

became fountains of bubbling steam. Gas mains became part of the overall explosion. Everything became

part of the unleashed fury.

Further out, houses and buildings filled with high-pressure air and, as the blast passed on to be

followed by a low-pressure wave, the structures exploded outwards. Anyone caught in the open had

their clothes burnt off and received third-degree burns from which they could never recover. Others were

buried beneath buildings, some to die instantly, many to lie beneath the rubble, slowly suffocating or

suffering long lingering deaths from their injuries.

One fire joined another to become a destructive conflagration.

James Herbert - Domain

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