Vampires Overhead

by Alan Hyder

  Falling on London; falling in layers like snowflakes, huge, obscene, black, twisting, writhing, growing motionless as more layers press them to earth swelling the drifts. Unaccountable millions there must have been of those blood-chilling muzzles, working vainly at the barren ground, satisfyingly at . . . Lying unstirring under piled layers of their kind, as though devoid of life, but for a shaking ribbon of pulse beating jerkily in their black foreheads, waiting for food. And for the millions which sated upon warm red blood there must have been millions which could have clamped working muzzles to nothing but the hardness of bricks and mortar, moisture of green herbage, dry brown of bare earth. Were they gratified with the results their ether-crossing flight had achieved? But this story, trying to tell the events of the world above the tunnel, would stop suddenly short. And yet I am fascinated weirdly by what must have happened. Isolated houses would have opened doors and windows in vain efforts to obtain air, when the suffocating layers dropped to smother, and warm into glowing embers with chill, phosphorescent bodies, wooden joists and rafters. And glowing embers would burst into flame when the massed bodies moved to let air drift among them. In the towns, I fancy, fire must have driven people from shelter to frightful deaths beneath the Vampires. Countryside and City, flaming and dying beneath those ghastly, black-winged, suctorial bodies. Until some weeks ago I though the things perished in the flames they so magically spread, but they did not. They are impervious to fire. What mysterious chemical reaction breathed from their cold bodies to cause warmth and smouldering embers? Some unearthly form of phosphorous, for in the dark they have shone faintly. But who can explain . . . who will ever explain . . .? Somewhere in the world, perhaps, high-browed professors are delving excitedly into this visitation from another specie of life. But of the tunnel, Bingen, myself, and later, the girl . . . that is all I can tell you.

  III

  The First of the Vampires

  STRANGE THE WORKING of destiny! Neither Bingen nor I had any special merits deserving an isolated preservation from the holocaust, and yet, there we were, down in that rat-hole, sleeping off what many people would call a drunken orgy, and others, more charitable, merely a hectic meeting between old friends. And the rat-hole was the saving of us both!

  Perhaps once or twice, when the cold hardness of the stone floor turned me a trifle achingly, I wondered drowsily why the watchman did not come to let us out, but I must have slept heavily, with the unaccustomed liquor doping my senses, for Bingen was the first to awake. How long he sat, crouched in the dark, staring terror-stricken at the thing humped by the gate, I do not know, but for some four hours we were asleep in the tunnel, and during that time London burst into flame above, and its crowded tenements died lingeringly beneath the Vampires.

  Half asleep, I pushed myself to sit erect, work and stretch my shoulders to ease the stiffness, before yawning and leaning back against the wall. I speculated idly on my whereabouts for some time, until my aching head remembered the night’s events of Bingen, the brewery, the manager’s unexpected visit, and even as I remembered I felt Bingen’s hand tight gripped on my thigh. He must have been sitting silently, holding on to my leg, for some time, and I think that actually wakened me. I tried to push his hand away, but could not, and angrily I rubbed my eyes, and then it was I felt, rather than saw, the red half-light filling the tunnel. Momentarily I thought it due to knuckles pressing on aching eyes, but when I opened them properly I realized that a dull, fiery glow reflected down from the entrance.

  Bingen sat oblivious to my awakening, and his unmoving tenseness caused me to follow the direction of his fixed gaze up the tunnel.

  From where we sat, the bend hid almost the whole of the entrance, but one portion of the gate was visible. I saw the deeper black of the corner, my eyes focusing to the dark, the bars of the gate itself, and, beyond the bars, a hardly discernible smudge. Although the diffused glare was uncanny, weirdly prepotential of peril, there was nothing actually, so far as I could see, to bulge Bingen’s eyes from his white face, but he stared as though unbelievingly up the slope.

  ‘What’s the matter, Bingen? Bingen! Been struck dumb? What’s the matter?’ Leaning forward I shook him, staring into his face. He ignored me, sat motionless, watching, with fixed wide eyes, did not answer, but I felt his grip on my leg tighten convulsively. I shook him again. ‘Is there something you can see? What’s this light? Bingen, pull yourself together, man.’

  Glancing about in the eerie red half-light I understood. The brewery was afire! But surely that was insufficient to strike dumb terror into Bingen, and then, even as I perceived the significance of the light and was pondering on Bingen’s stupefying terror, the blood in my veins chilled slowly, icily, unbelievingly, for startlingly a shaft of red light stabbed down to illuminate the portion of gate in my vision. Behind the bars, the grey smudge grew to blackness. Details came into view, lit prominently by the shaft of flame as I scrutinized it.

  Bingen whispered huskily, shakingly:

  ‘It was there when I woke up. It was there, like it is now, watching us. It’s watching us. It’s watching us, I tell you!’

  His voice rose shrilly.

  ‘For God’s sake don’t be a fool, Bingen. It’s some silly joke that damned old fool of a watchman’s playing.’

  ‘It was there, watching us, when I woke up.’ Bingen’s voice was low and thick; he whispered emphatically trying to reassure himself. ‘Yes! Yes! It’s a joke. A joke. That’s what it is.’

  Yet both of us knew it was no joke.

  Down my spine trickled a thin stream of icy sweat. Even though the watchman had conceived of the red glow backing it, he could not have produced the thing humped on the ground by the gate. We sat watching in rigid terror. As we saw the thing then, the spotlight of flame had detailed it from a dull-grey mass silhouetted against a shimmering glow, into a fantastic horror, etched acidly on the retina of my disbelieving eyes. But I have seen so many since I saw the first of them down in the tunnel.

  Clamped to the bars of the gate, humped upon haunches like a black bull-terrier draped in a dull black cape, was a Bat!

  That at least is as near as I can get to it with a vocabulary coined only for birds and beasts of this earth.

  The paunchy carcass, sloped bottle-wise from its shoulders was, like the enveloping wings, of a dull black, but slightly lighter in shade; its build was curiously similar in shape and size to a bull-terrier, earless though, and the long working muzzle was mouthless but for a minute aperture; the dull membrane of its wings, folded between the upper and lower limbs instead of, as in bats, merely between the lengthened digits, was leathery, but nearly transparent, and a bonily ridged member protruded under the membrane, jointed like the gear-chain of a bicycle; the scalloped wing edges were fringed with wispy tentacles and, with limbs folded beneath the wings, it was with these tentacles it clamped itself to the gate bars; its eyes were large and, I think, immovable; the eyes of a dead fish, but with a weird light glowing in their depths; they have a way of following one unmoving, like painted orbs in a portrait which are fixed upon one no matter in which corner of the room one stands. The tentacles on the wings quivered gently as though with a fascinated yearning, but the movement was so minute as to be indiscernible except when one stared directly into those expressionless eyes. Only when one looked into its eyes was any life, any movement, apparent. Upon its right temple beat erratically a tiny ribbon of pulse, and the movement of that was not evident when one looked directly at it.

  Like a spotlight from the wings of a theatre, the shaft of flame lit the thing into vivid relief, and my heart dropped, beat on again suffocatingly. My stomach muscles contracted. Subconsciously I connected the fiendish thing at the gate with the scarlet glow reflecting into the tunnel. A dull thunder of sound undertoning a faint hissing, as though above us, there sizzled and crackled before a fire, a great joint of meat, had beaten in my ears all unnoticed through sheer terror.

  Then Bingen stiffened jerkily against me. I heard breath leav
e his throat in a long gurgling sigh. He slumped to the floor.

  Unobserved, I thought then, if indeed I thought at all, its movements were hidden by the flickering background of red light, but I know now that they have an uncanny effect of moving without appearing to move at all, the thing was almost through the bars of the gate!

  The ribbed, tentacled wings were behind it now like—odious comparison—the wings of a butterfly, and its paunch was through the gate where one bar bent in a slight curve made a possible opening and then, nearly falling to the ground with the effort, it was in the tunnel.

  I heard Bingen’s chattering sigh, and knew that he knew the thing was in there with us, and to save my life I could not move a muscle. I was in one of those terrible nightmares where one is threatened with danger and one’s muscles die.

  The thing was nearer!

  Even now I do not understand how they move. It is as if they hypnotize one and slither close while one stares without seeing.

  Bingen screamed!

  That shrill scream, choking into a shuddering silence, broke my paralysis. Close, so close that at last it seemed to melt into his body, the thing moved towards Bingen, and when he collapsed over it in a dead faint, that brought me to my feet.

  Crimson light filled the tunnel to let me see, and my hands scratched, tore frantically at that loathsome body to pull it from Bingen.

  It turned its head. . . . Have you seen the eyes of a man whose spine has been smashed by a high-explosive shell? He stares at you pleadingly as though not understanding when you bend into his direct gaze. . . . The thing’s eyes were like that while I pulled and beat and clawed at it frenziedly, and on its forehead, beat spasmodically, as in some tortured animal, a thin pulse. Its wings pushed stubbornly at me while I heaved, and its eyes watched so that I hardly remember anything except that the filthy muzzle was working gently at Bingen’s pallid cheek. . . . Clamped to his cheek, the thing’s throat gulped greedily, and all the time remorseless eyes lifted upwards.

  It was torn loose at last, and my hands burned, though the thing’s flesh was chill, like damp suede. Flung violently away, it dropped to lay humped on its side by the wall, and I swear its eyes never left my face.

  I think I went mad!

  Jumping at it, my wildly kicking feet tangled with the soft leathery wings, and I sprawled to the ground. My fingers clutched the sword Bingen and I had so insanely carried into the tunnel and, with a gasping sigh of relief, I was on my feet, hacking, cutting, stabbing, while tears of horror mingled with perspiration. The sword jerked and sliced in my hands, ribboning the thing on the floor, tearing loose when tentacles twined vainly about it, lifting to swing down with a maddened strength that rang the weapon on the stone through the creature’s soft yielding body. . . . And in the red light glowing fitfully, I could see still, cold, bleak eyes fixed immovably up at my face, and on its temple, despite the gashed and severed body, the pulse beating frantically. When one hysterical swathe of the sword sent the head rolling jerkily across the tunnel, the eyes did not change their chill expressionless stare, and still the pulse beat on mechanically.

  I shouted, cursed, sobbed, stamping and beating that severed head into a messy pulp!

  Leaning breathlessly upon the sword, wiping sweat and tears away, recovering my sanity, I bent over Bingen to gasp thankfully that the thing was no more, that it was all right, but Bingen lay as though dead. I lowered his head to the floor, rose to go to the gate to shout for help, water, rescue from the tunnel, and was halted into a heart-beating clamour of terror. The gate was a pressed mass of motionless similar things to the one I had killed.

  Layer upon layer of them piled behind the bars. A diabolical black curtain. Eyes glinted in its dullness, and bodies were packed so tightly together that only here and there did scarlet light from the burning brewery penetrate in thin cracks. Spurred into action by fear, I jumped forward, for through that curved bar one of the things was being squeezed by the weight of its fellows. If more of them got in the tunnel!

  Through the barred gate, the sword thrust and stabbed as though into piles of dead pelts, for they made no noise, no eluding resisting movements; there was no discernible killing or wounding. I dropped the useless weapon, clasped the gate while my feet pushed at the one half-way into the tunnel, and, as my fingers tightened about the iron bars, I cried, threw myself away. Clamped to my hands were the trunk-like muzzles of as many of them as could twist and press heads close enough. The one being pressed between the bars fell suddenly to the floor, recovered its balance, sat regarding me bleakly, and its place was taken by another, squeezing, pressing, urged through the space under the weight of its eager kind behind.

  The one in the tunnel was chopped and mashed into a dry bloodless pulp, the sword was rammed into the opening to close the gap, and I was half-standing, half-crouching with shaking knees to watch them. Great sobbing breaths of the warm choking air brought the fetid odour of them into my nostrils. An indescribable smell like nothing I have experienced before, and then, over that, came a scent I knew. The sickly, sweet, disgusting smell of burning flesh. Human flesh. I had tasted that in my nostrils before, at Ypres and Benares.

  My boot pressed the sword securely into position, blocking the gap safely, before I turned back to Bingen.

  He lay in a deathlike coma, but when I bent to slap his hands and cheeks, shake his limp form, he groaned. On his white cheek was a vivid scarlet splodge where the thing had muzzled him. Consciousness came to him, he struggled against my arms until his gaze fell upon the gate and he crouched silently, afraid. I pulled him farther around the bed so that we could escape those watching eyes.

  In the darkness I trod upon something that squealed and nearly tripped me. Bingen gasped and struggled foolishly back towards the gate.

  ‘Come back, you fool,’ I cried as I realized. ‘It’s a rat.’

  A rat! A companion sheltering from the horror above. We listened to it scuttling away with a dragging movement as though it was hurt. Rats! At any other time in the dark they would have been horrible, but now . . . how insignificant. There were not many. Four we killed when the light filtered through. Afterwards, I saw rats by the score sucked dry and mummified, as were the men and the women and the children not burned in the flaming buildings.

  The tunnel sloped steeply here and, from the slimy walls, was under-water at high tide. But a few feet away the river lapped gently.

  Bingen, with his hand on my arm, sank to the ground with a shuddering sigh and we peered at each other.

  ‘Worst “jag” we’ve had, Garry,’ he spoke at last, bravely, though his voice shook. ‘God! I can feel that thing yet. What was it? And more of them at the gate. They can’t get in, Garry, can they?’

  ‘The sword’s pushed between the bars where they were getting in,’ I reassured him. ‘I think we’re safe enough in here now. But what’s outside . . . the burning. . . . What became of the watchman and the man who knocked at the gate? God! It’s stifling. I must have a drink.’

  We loosened collars, took off coats, and I went down the tunnel to scoop handfuls of water into the dryness of my throat. It certainly was hot, and no wonder, for above us, though little we guessed it, the whole of London burned. But for the depth of the tunnel, and the damp from the river creeping up and down it, we should have been cooked, roasted alive, as were the many who burned rather than venture out to the filthy muzzles covering the country.

  ‘What in hell’s name are they?’ Bingen queried wonderingly.

  ‘God knows! And yet I’ve seen somewhere, illustrations of something very much like them. Vampires! Vampire bats. That’s what they are. How the devil did they get here? Where’d they come from? I’m not so sure that their existence even in tropical countries isn’t contradicted by some authorities. God!’

  ‘Contradict! Contradict those things at the gate! Ugh!’ Bingen shuddered. ‘There must be fifty hanging on to that gate. Garry! We’ve got to get out! I daren’t stay here and risk another getting close to me
.’

  ‘I don’t think they can get in now, and we can’t . . . daren’t go out until they’ve gone.’ I trembled involuntarily at the very thought of being out there amongst those things, until a thought struck me dazedly. ‘Get out! Bingen, the gate’s locked!’

  ‘We can’t go out with them there. It doesn’t matter about us getting out, so long as they can’t get in. Oughtn’t we to look at them now and then. Go round the bend to make sure they’re not getting in. God! If another of them got on me, I’m done.’

  I agreed, and walked, or rather foolishly tiptoed, to the bend to inspect the gate. They were still pressed, unmoving, to the bars, but the sword prevented ingress, and as I stared at them it came into my mind they had not enough sense to push the sword to one side, and with that thought came back some of my courage.

  ‘Still there. Can’t get in. But they seemed to have thinned out a bit, because you can see more light between their bodies. Bingen, that’s no light from an ordinary fire. There’s more than the brewery in flames. If the heat’s like this down here, what’s it like out there? And it’s queer how those things on the gate don’t seem to heed it.’

  Sitting with my back against the damp wall, with Bingen so close I felt him jerk nervously every time some sound penetrated the tunnel, my thoughts tumbled between my lips.

  ‘You know, Bingen, I’ve a weird premonition there’s something going on that’s even worse than you and I here in the tunnel imagine.’

  ‘For God’s sake, what can be worse than this?’ Bingen snarled, and I felt him shiver against me.

  ‘I don’t know, but I feel something is,’ I answered slowly. ‘I feel as if you and I are minor tragedies in some vast unimaginable upheaval.’

  Even though we guessed something else beside the brewery burned, we did not dream the whole of London flamed, had no idea, when we did stagger out into the day, that we would find a dead world grey under a pall of ash, floating, spiralling in mists of heat, littered with carcasses from which every drop of moisture had been drained. Had we known, realized, could we have sat there smoking? Would we have survived? Rather would unrestrained terror have driven us mechanically through that locked gate in a vain endeavour to escape. But imagination baulks at what we would have done, knowing no aid would be forthcoming from the world above!