THE H-BOMB GIRL by Stephen Baxter (beach books txt) 📕

pulled up Bernadette’s blouse, and put her hand on her exposed belly. “You’ve made a right mess of yourself, missy. You need a doctor. But the baby’s still alive. I’m no expert, but I can feel it move. In the end you couldn’t hurt your baby, could you?”

Bernadette covered her face with her arm. “I’m useless.”

“Joel,” Mum said now. “Find my handbag. I’ve got a bottle of TCP and some tissues. Let’s get this lot cleaned up.”

Joel went for the bag.

Then Nick cried out, and slumped against a wall, limp as a doll. He had blacked out again.

And a crash on the ceiling brought dust and plaster sifting down on them all. Some of the candles blew out.

“The rioters are getting closer,” Agatha said to Laura. “We’re running out of time. If they break in here—”

“I know, I know,” Laura said.

She looked around helplessly, at Nick, sprawled and unconscious, Bernadette bleeding from a dozen self-inflicted wounds, Joel lost in his concern, Mum bearing up but brittle. Laura had the sense of everything falling apart.

“Time for Plan B,” she said.

She dragged the “phone” they had stolen from Miss Wells from her blazer pocket, and opened it up. She pressed the green button with the phone symbol. Then, uncertainly, she held the phone beside her ear.

Miss Wells replied instantly. “Laura. I’ve been expecting your call,” she said dryly.

“Help,” said Laura simply.

“Just don’t touch any buttons. We’ll track the phone and come and get you.”

Agatha stared. “And this is your plan? To ask her for help?”

“She said she’d help. She must have doctors. And we can’t stay here. Do you have any better ideas?”

“But when Miss Wells gets hold of you—”

“I’ll think of something,” Laura said, trying to sound more confident than she felt.

It took half an hour.

Then the wall exploded, the bricks bursting inwards.

A huge steel screw, shining silver, came pushing through, whirring. It was like the bit of an immense drill, on the end of a cylinder maybe four feet across.

On the cylinder’s flank was a symbol, a green Earth in an iron fist, and a slogan written underneath: PEACE THROUGH WAR. Laura had seen it before, on Mort’s computer, and Miss Wells’s phone.

When about ten feet was sticking into the cellar, the bit stopped whirring. The sudden silence seemed loud. The cap of the drill hinged down, and blue light shone out.

Laura walked up to the open cylinder and peered in.

Miss Wells was crouching awkwardly in the cylinder. She was wearing a featureless grey coverall.

Laura stared at her. “You took your time.”

“And you’re pushing your luck. I knew you’d call, in the end.”

The hammering on the roof got worse.

Laura said, “You’re the lesser of two evils. It was you, or wait for the looters to get here.”

“That’s not very nice. After all, I’m you. You’ve worked that out. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?”

Behind Miss Wells, inside the cylinder, Laura glimpsed a wheelchair, a stocky man sitting in it. It was the Minuteman.

“What’s he doing here?”

“He’s my boss,” said Miss Wells.

“He wanted to be here, Laura. When we found you.” That was a man’s voice. Mort stood up behind the Minuteman, and put a hand on his shoulder. “We both did. But you’d expect that, given the circumstances.”

Looking at them together like that, Laura suddenly saw it.

They were the same man, separated by forty years and a dreadful injury.

Miss Wells held out her hand. “Get in.”

Chapter 24

Saturday 27th October.

Black Saturday.

Time unknown. They took away our watches, when they brought us into this place.

Miss Wells calls her machine the Burrower. It just squirms its way through the ground, leaving a tunnel behind it. It’s like an underground spaceship. If I was a boy I’d probably think it was pretty neat.

The crew came out into the cellar and loaded up Bern and Nick on stretchers, and shepherded the rest of us walking wounded aboard the Burrower. Nick was out cold. Bern was crying from the pain, where she’d stabbed herself.

Joel got away. “I’m off.”

“Why? Joel, come with us. It’s not safe here.”

He sniffed. “I don’t see too many black faces inside those grey suits. You get an instinct for that sort of thing. Take care of yourself. And look after Bern.”

And I looked away, and he was gone.

Inside, the Burrower is like a military helicopter Dad gave me a ride in once, with canvas bucket seats and webbing. It backed up into the tunnel it had made. It was a noisy ride, like a bumpy underground train. Mum held my hand.

So we came to Miss Wells’s underground lair. Very James Bond. At first we didn’t see much of it.

Bern and Nick were taken off on stretchers.

Mum, Agatha and I were put through a shower room. All steel walls and fluorescent lights. We had to strip off, and our clothes were taken away. I knew what was going on. We were being scrubbed clean of any contamination by radiation. It was the same in “Doctor No.”

So I’ve learned that people from Miss Wells’s future live in bunkers, and are terrified of radiation.

Without her clothes on, Agatha is thin. Half-starved. I pitied her. But she seemed to enjoy the hot shower.

We were given clean underwear and shapeless grey coveralls, like Miss Wells’s. “Ugh,” Mum said. “First chance I get, I’m accessorising.”

Miss Wells led us to a tiny bedroom, with four bunk beds, and its own little toilet. “En suite,” said my mother. “Very nice.” There was a jug of water some fruit. Some of our belongings are here, Mum’s handbag, this diary. Not our watches, though.

They let me keep the Key, incidentally. But then Miss Wells knows the Key is useless without the code numbers in my head.

None of us could resist the soft beds. We hadn’t slept much for days. Agatha sighed as she lay down.

I don’t know how long I slept. Maybe the water was drugged.

The others are still sleeping. I’m writing this with a make-up pencil from Mum’s handbag. Waiting for the strangeness to