Frank Baker Read online

  Around me, people fought their way out. I held firmly on to a pillar in order to maintain my balance, for I saw that if I fell to the ground, I was lost. Struggling fiercely to escape were the two stal­wart, masculine-looking nurses; I saw them push aside an old woman in their path who was slobbering hysterically. When I tried to help her, she snarled at me like a wounded cat who wants to be alone.

  Standing firm and secure in this wild knot of struggling figures was the cadaverous man who had been seated next to me. He seemed impervious to what went on; he was thin, tall, like a dark statue, and an evil smile curled in his white face, like smoke in a flameless fire. He saw me holding on to the pillar.

  “I’m safe, you see,” he said, “I’m safe. They can’t touch me.” I turned away from his smile, so corrupt and malignant. Again I asked myself where I had seen the face before, and again I could not remember. I did not understand why he should be one of the few to escape. But now I think I do. . . .

  Suddenly the birds in the dome, who during the last few minutes had done nothing but contemplate this shocking scene in dismal and abstracted silence, swooped down in one unanimous drive and broke up over the heads of the scattering people.

  It is hard to speak of what happened. . . .

  Nobody cared now for anybody else. Hundreds were trampled to death, and those who ran screaming, with hands over their eyes, were soon brought to the ground by the pursuing birds and either torn to pieces or smashed to pulp under a stampede of heels. To attempt to rescue a single person from this turmoil was a task beyond me or any one. It would need all my power of control to save myself and somehow get to my mother and Olga. I knew that I should not be attacked by the birds; but I stood in as much danger as any one else of being trampled to death. There was only one thing to do: to retreat to some hidden corner of the building and there wait till the crowd had thinned; it was madness to try to approach the doors at present.

  So I attempted this. As I came cautiously away from the pillar, a gigantic bird whirled past me and buried his talons in the face of one of the nurses. I tried to avoid looking; it was a shameful thing that anybody should witness what I had to witness. I saw again the man with the evil face, smiling triumphantly, unmolested by any bird; and a deathly terror filled my heart.

  I forced my way towards the chancel. I saw the Lord Mayor with a bird strangely like his three-cornered hat, fighting and shrieking up in one of the stalls. As I came near the pulpit, the pale figure of the Archbishop rose for a moment and held out his arms as though trying to speak. On his face was an expression of pure ecstasy like that of a blind man who sees for the first time, and knows that the world is lovelier than he had ever been told. Then his body shivered and he sank to the ground.

  I got into the chancel. Lying over the choir stalls with sheets of music and books scattered amongst them, were the senseless, bloody forms of young boys, priests, and choirmen. I saw one fat old priest running round and round in insane little circles up by the high altar, crying pitifully as a great bird darted above, playing with him as a cat with a mouse. On the altar the two massive candles had toppled sideways; from one of them the hot wax sent a noose of thin blue smoke into the air. I stood between the choir stalls, not knowing where to go or what to do. Some aldermen of the City came running towards me and I drew aside to avoid them.

  Suddenly, as I stood there, not knowing what to do, I was startled to life by a mighty, cacophonous burst of sound from the organ, as though all the notes had been depressed at once with every stop drawn. The sound went on, a gasping and wheezing of a thousand pipes. I could not bear it. It seemed to me the most terrible noise of all. Even the shouting, the screaming, the wailing of the wind, and the cries of the birds were not so hopeless a sound as the last savage lament of this dying organ. I thought of the organist lying over his keys, sounding his own death music with his lifeless body.

  By now the chancel was almost empty. I stood looking down the nave where people still fought their way out, with birds, black as night, swarming after them. I began to feel cold. I was alone. Was there nobody else who sought and could obtain freedom as I did?

  Standing there, with the organ crying like a tortured and infuri­ated beast, with that forlorn figure, the Prince of the Church, lying dead in the pulpit, I pressed my hands to my eyes, to my ears, trying to ignore all this horror. “There is nothing left,” I told myself—“nothing left of the life you knew; it is all wiped away, and you, you have to go on living.” And for a moment I was not sure whether I wanted to live; I felt it might have been better for me to have been crushed to death than to find myself living in this dying world.

  I was driven out of these thoughts by a sudden roar of voices from the west door, still thick with struggling people. I looked up. I saw the crowds break away, fall back, and for a moment I could not understand what had happened. Then I knew. In face of the crowd who were already trying to escape, a mass of terror-stricken people from the streets was attempting to force its way into the Cathedral. Those outside driven in—those inside driven out. I shuddered to think what I might find when eventually I did get out. There was now an appalling confusion at the west door, thou­sands opposing those who tried to escape the building, and with the thousands who ultimately broke in and forced the others back again, as many birds. They ran now, this new body of people, up the nave towards the chancel, surging over broken chairs in a demented frenzy. For a moment I could not move nor realize my danger, spellbound by this dreadful sight.

  A waddling little priest, with his surplice torn and bloody, came panting towards me and clutched my jacket; over his head circled a shrieking bird. “What shall I do—oh, what shall I do?” Saliva trickled down his flat red chin. The crimson hood on his back was streaked with a long dribble of mud-coloured ordure.

  While we stood there with the bird wheeling overhead as though waiting for a more opportune moment to attack, the crowd from the west thundered nearer and nearer the chancel.

  I took the priest’s arm and dragged him away with me. “Come away,” I shouted in his ear, “before we get trampled to death——”

  He could hardly move; I had to tear him along by his surplice. We ran towards the altar and left the chancel by another gate. Behind us we heard the others smashing their way over the stalls and lifeless bodies. We came to an aisle, down towards the west by another path. Within a few feet of us was a throng of raving men and women. I jumped up into the protective shelter of a massive monument to some belligerent soldier.

  I crouched down under a marble catafalque, and leant over the side to drag up the priest. But I was too late. The bird who had followed us, pounced upon him; in another second bird and man were lost under a torrent of stamping feet. A rabid mob of people swarmed past me. In their terror they fought and tormented one another; many tore their nails down their own faces as though to blind themselves.

  I buried my head down by the cold marble, closed my eyes, and shivered. I could no longer look on these things. But I could not prevent myself from hearing the mournful wailing and crying of the tortured people, nor, above those sounds, the frightful din of the organ and the rushing of the wind.

  I stayed there with my eyes closed, slowly getting colder. When I opened my eyes and looked below me, I saw a heap of bodies, torn clothes, blood, twitching limbs. I raised my head to the broken panes of a window opposite. As I looked at the desolate sky, the wind suddenly raged against the jagged hole and tore away the remaining glass. The sky and the wind terrified me. I would rather the rain poured down from that iron sky. Yet this thought reminded me that if I stayed much longer in this dreadful place I should never get away before the rain fell. The thought of Lillian and Olga raced in my head. I was driven to action.

  I jumped, clear and wide, recovered my balance, and fled towards the west door. There were still people wailing and crying in the Cathedral. By the door I encoun­tered a swaying mass, and with no thought now but for my own
escape, I hurled my way into the midst of them, determined to get out.

  A sharp pain in my hand made me cry out aloud. I withdrew it quickly from the teeth of a woman dressed in expensive clothes. I met her eyes and shuddered; her face was contorted in madness. I broke away from her, but she pushed towards me and tried again to attack me. I felt my passions rising, the passion of self-preserva­tion, so deadly. I wanted to kill the woman, to kill any who got in my way. But as my thoughts turned thus, an enormous bird covered the woman with its wings.

  Breathless and sick, I stood gasping against a pillar on the steps of the Cathedral, the wind dashing against my face and deep down into my body.

  *

  It is strange how in moments of great stress, the most insignificant object by its very imperturbability can recall us to the reality of existence. Standing on the steps of the Cathedral, hardly aware as yet of the horrible confusion in the streets before me, feeling that I had come through some dreadful dream and that I was but slowly waking—I was jerked back to a realization of the truth by the sudden consciousness of the stupid, hard black hat which all this time I had been holding in my hand. God knows how I had kept it! But there it was, this domed hat with a dent in the middle, otherwise unharmed, utterly contemptuous of the fact that it might be the last bowler hat left in the world. I looked at it and shook my head in bewilderment. What did it mean? What business had it to be alive?—for truly it seemed to me to have a secret life of its own. Yet though I resented its imperviousness to disaster, there was something tangible and realizable about it which filled me with a strange comfort. Here was this hat in my hand; I was still alive, the hand that held it was mine.

  The whirring sound of engines above sharply reminded me that if I stayed here for long I should certainly never emerge from the City alive. I looked up and saw a fleet of aeroplanes flying low. Mingled with them, blacker than the blackness of the cloud which had now drained sunlight from all the sky, I saw birds flying in and out amongst the machines. I heard shots. In the square below I saw mounted police, and soldiers hideously masked with oxygen-laden appliances, making frenzied attempts to drive the people into shops and offices. Whether there was any organized purpose in this shepherding of the people I did not know; but I suppose they hoped to drive every one into shelter and then give a signal to the aeroplanes to expel their fumes of poison gas. They never succeeded in this plan. For suddenly, one of the aeroplanes, over­powered by the birds, turned over and came spinning to the ground, falling with a hiss of sharp flame into the middle of Ludgate Hill. An omnibus loaded with people and black with birds crashed into the flaming wreckage of the aeroplane. Almost simultaneously a powerful car travelling at a great speed, with a monstrous bird stretched over the hood, lurched sideways to avoid the bus and swerved into a shop doorway thick with people.

  I saw then only a ribbon of flame and figures running, red and wet.

  As I stood there trying to summon enough courage to get away, people still hurled themselves frenziedly up the steps. “The Cathedral, the Cathedral!” they cried. There seemed to exist a belief amongst them that, once inside with the doors shut, they would be safe. I pressed myself back against the pillar as they swayed past me. They were the last of our civilization to claim the sanctu­ary of that old temple. Already the shoutings and screamings were dying away to a silence that would be more intolerable.

  Curious sounds stand out in my memory. A horse neigh­ing; a cataract of broken glass in shop windows; the grumbling of forsaken engines in car and omnibus; the bitter sound of children wailing; a cat crying; and, most singular and haunted of all, dance music from a high-powered wireless set broadcasting from some continental town.

  While I stood there, half insensible to what went on around me, a new sound clanged abruptly in my ears. The Cathedral clock struck two. When I heard that, and saw that the steps were slippery with the foul mess of trampled bodies, that the streets were ready to crack under the stagnant weight of burning traffic, I threw my hat away with a cry, and saw the last of it tumbling down the steps till it rested unconcernedly against the belly of a dead horse.

  I could escape. I would.

  I heard a chuckle of laughter and turned, startled. There was a man skulking behind one of the pillars; I did not need to look to know who he was.

  “Only you and me left now,” he said.

  “There will be others,” I spoke in a low voice, not looking at his face.

  “Others—yes, a few. And what do you think they will do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I could not move. I was held by his voice, for suddenly I remembered it as the same voice that had sounded over a marble table one night in a café.

  “I tell you what they will do,” he said “They will build it all up and start again in exactly the same way until——”

  “No!” I said. “No!”

  But my words seemed to choke in my throat.

  “Yes, they will. And I shall help them. I shall——”

  With a great effort I turned and faced him, sick at the sight of his narrow face, his changeless smile. It seemed to me that he was blind in his right eye, and when I saw that, I was heavy with fear.

  “I’ve seen you before,” I said steadily.

  “Yes,” he said. “Oh yes—we’re old friends.”

  He advanced towards me as if to link his arm in mine.

  “Come,” he said, “let us have a little fun——”

  My hand shot out as though independent of my brain. I knocked him sprawling against a pillar. But as I ran down the steps I heard him laugh, a high, complacent cackle.

  I ran wildly towards a little alley where I knew there was a telephone-box. Quickly I turned aside as I saw the crushed head that lay athwart the door. I did not yet realize that such things as tele­phones were to be of no further use to man. When I ultimately found another box and got inside, no amount of turning the dial could connect me with my number.

  Desperate with the thought of Olga and Lillian, I came out to Cheapside and ran wildly towards the Bank. It was difficult to make any progress, for the street was in utter chaos. Hardly a shop window remained intact; merchandise of every description was scattered about in the road; cars had mounted the pavement and charged into sheets of glass; I saw their drivers inert over the wheels. Whirling in the hurricane that now seethed over the City as though to suck everything into its invisible pocket, was a bombardment of news-sheets, coloured material from drapers’ shops, hats, gar­ments, a vagabond assortment of worthless trinkets. Strangest of all were umbrellas that had been blown inside out; a canvas chair that sailed aloft from the broken windows of a large general store. Mingling with these gale-driven inanimates, the birds darted and swooped upon the thinning crowds of maddened people. The wind blew from the south-west, but the birds, flying from the east, compelled their victims to run in face of the wind. If they staggered and fell, exhausted by the fury of the gale, it was not many seconds before a pursuing bird pounced down with a clacking of wings. I managed to reach the end of Cheapside. There, panting for breath, I paused a moment, standing in the partial shelter of the open doorway of a jeweller’s shop on the corner.

  How curiously inanimate objects stand out in the memory. Roll­ing down towards the gutter, I remember a large silver cup of the type coveted by athletes. In the murky light its sheen was emphasized. I stared at it like an idiot. It reminded me of my bowler hat, possessing the same power of detachment and scorn for all this destruction. What athlete would claim it now? It might, I thought, lie there for centuries. For who could begin, who would ever dare to begin to build up the City again?

  “They will build it all up and start again in exactly the same way.”

  The words came back to me. I could not believe them.

  Fire from wrecked lorries and cars licked its way towards glass-shattered buildings. Some hoarding a few yards along the road was crackling i
n flames, a noise which sounded like derisive laughter. I suddenly thought of the park where wild animals from all over the world were herded together. What would happen to them?

  I realized that I was not alone. A bright-faced, middle-aged man, clad in a nightgown and an overcoat, stood before me.

  “Exthuthe me, thir,” he spoke in an excitable, lisping voice, “but can you tell me the way to Chanthery Lane? I jutht want to inquire about my money. Quite a thum, you know.”

  I stared at him.

  “Chanthery Lane,” he repeated impatiently, “the Lane that ith in Chanthery.” He leant over and whispered to me. “I too wath in chanthery, thir. But I got out thith morning, you thee. Now, if you would kindly thyow me the way.”

  His eyes were glittering; his mouth trembled with incipient laughter. I pushed past him and ran away quickly. Were madmen from lunatic asylums all that were left to roam the shat­tered streets?

  “No,” I cried aloud. “There are others, there must be others.”

  But I saw none.

  I realized by now that to attempt to catch any trains to the northern suburbs was fanciful. I did not even possess the courage to descend any of the underground rail­ways, for the steps were a hideous sight, cluttered with bodies and the grotesque fuel of the gale. Hordes of people had stampeded down to the railways hoping to escape. I shuddered as the wind whistled in and out of those bloody caves.

  I crossed to the Royal Exchange and again pressed my hands over my eyes. For lying across Threadneedle Street like a mighty dismembered arm was an iron girder that had fallen from the scaffolding of the Bank of England; pinned under it, a tortured mess of splintered steel, smashed glass, wheels, horses, pieces of human beings. A dozen or so solitary birds hung like lean vultures over this heap of wreckage. At least, I thought, nobody will lie there long in agony; the birds will not be satisfied till they have claimed their last victims.