32
MORLOCK NIGHT
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” said I. “Edwin Hocker’s my name.” Thus introduced, we proceeded upwards, away from the sanctuary of the sewer’s quiet and dark. Nothing that had happened so far had prepared me for the sight I witnessed upon reaching the surface of London again. I crawled out of the sewer opening, following Tafe, my new found Amazonian – in temperament if not stature – comrade, and entered a universe whose last vestiges of Order had fallen to brute Chaos. Through a grate of twisted iron bars we hoisted ourselves out onto the Albert Embankment. All around us the marks of recent combat were visible – the rubble of shattered buildings, the cratered streets, the thick pall of smoke stinging our eyes. The Embankment’s lamp-posts knocked on their sides like tenpins, with their iron dolphins in the street’s dirt and muck like so many beached fish gasping for air. From this point, upriver on the Surrey side, we could see the fires at London’s heart, billowing out their columns of smoke that all but obscured the moon and stars. Massive rumbling noises, like the Earth in upheaval, together with explosions muffled by distance, battered our ears from all points of the compass. “Let’s go,” said Tafe. She unslung her rifle from her back and held it poised before her. Mute with dismay at the sight of London in flames, I followed after. The next few hours melted