The Fall of Man

Part II chapter 22

Chapter 22

Four hours later, Doctor Marsh approaches Noah where he is slumped in an armchair in the same sub-waiting area. She takes a seat next to his. Her straight back, the profile of her nose, and her long slender hands are all reassuringly familiar sights.

“I’m sorry, Noah.”

He doesn’t speak. Outside, the big guns fire every few minutes. On a small soundless TV screen hung in the corner of the room, the skyline over the city is lit up with gold flakes like the vaulted mosaic ceiling of a Byzantine chapel.

She sighs. “You know, it was very bad luck for Gwen to be given contaminated blood, but there is so little available these days. There was nothing anyone could have done.”

“Is she going to be ok?” Noah’s wide eyes and quivering lower lip are those of a nine year old boy.

“I don’t know, Noah.” She rests a hand on his. “She’s not well. We’ll just have to wait and see. We need to hold on to the baby, until we know more about Gwen’s prognosis. It may take some time for her condition to stabilise. Where will you be?”

“Here. I’ll wait here…”

Minutes pass slowly. The ward is eerily quiet. Nothing happens in the waiting area. The room is just another windowless box deep in the hospital complex. The clock on the wall is the only thing recording the passing of time, and every clinical click of the second hand grinds slower and louder than the last. Noah keeps thinking back to the figure under the station, and to the feeling that eyes were watching from every shadow. If people are surviving underground, are somehow managing to scrape together an existence buried in the tunnels and the basements of the city, they must surely be under the hospital too. God knows how many could hide away in the miles of corridor down there. It shouldn’t take long to do a cursory check, and get back to Gwen’s side before anything else happens. He has to know…

The warren-like maze of tunnels is imprinted on Noah’s brain from his nightly ramblings, and he navigates his way quickly through the upper basement levels. From there, he follows the clanking hot water pipes as they lead through ever smaller, darker places towards the central boiler room. In the belly of the building, four stories below ground, the stale air becomes uncomfortably warm and humid.

Eventually he arrives at a steel door. It hangs ajar in its corroded frame. The heavy door opens reluctantly with a theatrical creak, and he peers from his claustrophobic corridor into the large open space beyond. Along one wall stand three giant rapeseed oil burners. A ragged flue spouts from the top of each, and steam hisses from the taped joints and gaps in the insulation. At the far side of the room stands one of the hospital generators, a relic from another age. An open fire blazes with an intense red heat through a small opening at its centre. A flicker of movement catches Noah’s eye, but it is gone before it is anything.

Noah steps inside the sweltering room gingerly. The air burns his lungs each time he inhales, and the heat is almost unbearable. His torch is of little use against the glare from the fire, but it illuminates the darkest corners of the empty space. He is about to turn around and head back for the surface when he notices a manhole. Located in the centre of the floor, it is displaced slightly and sits out of alignment with the surrounding tiles. He presses a foot to the loose cover and it rocks in its frame. Cautiously, he drags it to one side. It is heavy, and the room is filled with the sound of iron grinding on steel. The void beneath is pitch black.

With the torch in his mouth, he lowers himself into the hole. Another large room, the same size as the one above. The metal floor may have been installed at a later date, to break one cavernous space up into two smaller ones. This one is full of machinery – all shapes and sizes. Judging by its condition, it has all been used-up and then discarded. A dust mote causes him to cough and he loses his bite on the rubbery shaft of the torch. He curses as it plummets nine feet down to land soundlessly on the concrete floor below and he is plunged into darkness.

Dropping to the floor below, he squats on his knees, searching with his fingertips for the torch. He finds the barrel. A moment later, he finds the threaded head a few feet to the right, but no batteries. Then he looks up. Surrounding him in every direction are pale discs, glowing with the luminous light of reflective lichen. One pair blinks and he realises that there are ten, possibly twenty, pairs of eyes staring back at him. A few of the closest pairs sway slightly, as though evaluating their next move.

Silently, his fingers scour further afield for the lost batteries. He prays to himself that nothing else fell from the torch when it landed. Batteries found, he rotates each in turn between finger and thumb, fingertip searching for the male contact, before sliding them back into the barrel. The torch head snaps back into place with a click. Immediately a hiss starts off to his right. It echoes around the room, bouncing from wall to wall, getting louder with each reverberation. He snaps the torch lamp on, and it throws a beam of light into a grey face just inches from his own. Startled, the shadowy figures spring behind the cover of the oil-stained machinery. Noah kicks over the nearest unit, and springs off it for the hatchway above his head. Feet cycling maniacally in the air, he hauls his body up through the opening, and heaves the protesting cover back across the hole.

By the time Noah gets back to the ward and presses his hot face to the vision panel separating the waiting area from Gwen’s theatre, it is almost over. The attending doctor backs out through the saloon doors, hands raised in an empty apology. Inside the tiled room, she has lost her statuesque composure. The shock of red hair is dishevelled and clings in clumps to her forehead. Blue veins trace across her deathly pale skin. Black encircles her eyes and her breathing is ragged. Another racking cough and she opens her eyes. The corners of her mouth, tinged with red, turn up when she sees his face pressed against the screen.

“Noah.        What time is it?” She mouths her words.

“A few minutes to midnight. I’m sorry, Gwen. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”

“That’s ok,” she coughs again, almost inaudible through the glass. “I know you – have been working on something. I hope it’s a good plan.       I never really had much of a chance.           It’s better this way.               You have to look out for Evie now.”

“Evie?”

“Evelyn. My mother’s name.        You’re all she’s got, Noah.          Look after her for me…”

A few hours later, Gwen dies.