Work Text:
“...Is everyone inside?”
“Who the bloody Hell is ‘everyone’?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m here!”
“Prostite?”
“Huh?”
“What I’m saying is, is anybody missing anybody they came with?”
“Okh, Anglichane…”
“What in the blazes is he saying?”
“He said, ‘Oh, Englishmen…’”
“I’m missing my father!”
“Hmm.”
“Where are we?”
“Where do you think?”
“I went down a ladder. That’s what I know.”
“I miss my father…”
“Chto?”
“Is this a real shelter?”
“It’s my shelter.”
It had started with a whirr. The whirring and chugging of engines embedded in the clouds. Peter Laszlow had barely lifted his chin– the sound of planes and helicopters had become quite commonplace in years past, after all. Now, it seemed like a replacement for the gentle humming of the long-gone bees; an occasional, blustery reprieve from the oppressive smell of dust and sweat.
“I don’t care much whose bomb shelter it is, sir, am I safe in here? Ow!”
“Mind the shelves. They must be right above you.”
“I think I know that now, thank you very much! Where are the lights?”
“They were supposed to come on. Perhaps they’ve gone out.”
It was indeed pitch black in the room, but Laszlow had memorized the fixings in the shelter a long time ago. He had spent one day in each week making sure everything was in order, just as his pamphlets had instructed him. He was by the steel ladder, having just closed the hatch, which meant that at the far side of the room in front of him there was a shelving unit stocked with some rations of broth, vegetables, and water. On the left and right were bedding and toiletries, respectively. The body belonging to the cranky voice, not quite old but nowhere near spry, must be on the left or right if he were to bump his head on the shelves. He tried to remember who he had seen rush in.
“Okay. Who all is here?”
“I am!” said a bright and chipper young girl. He remembered seeing her small figure flash past before jumping into the bunker, like a doll on springs, with two long brown braids flying behind her and a young model’s face that was blemished with soot. She had complained of missing her father.
“My name is Nigel.” The next voice was thoroughly androgynous, mid-toned, and quiet, but he was, evidently, male. Laszlow decided he must have been one of the two young men he had seen also run past just minutes prior. One had been dressed properly with neatly combed black hair– perhaps that was the one.
“...Chto?”
“Vashe imya, ser.”
“Ah. Petrov.”
“The foreign fellow’s name is Petrov,” Nigel translated. The second young man had been rattier, with messier blonde hair and clothes, a solemn expression on his sooty face. Lazslow decided the blonde must be the foreigner.
“You study, Nigel?” Laszlow asked.
“A bit. Who are you?”
“Laszlow. This is my shelter. Who else is here?”
“Me.” The cranky voice stated. This was the thin-lipped wretch he had seen barge into his shelter. He had moved surprisingly quickly for his age, but Laszlow suspected that the current situation was a special circumstance in which being spry was essential.
“Your name?”
“What does it matter? We’re going to be dog meat quite soon,” he spat. “Your bunker’s not going to hold up against the Big One.”
“Maybe you should find somewhere else, then,” the translator pointed out.
“Pah! I’ll take my chances.”
“And your name, sir?”
“...Stalas.”
Laszlow counted down the people he had seen rush into his shelter. The translator, Nigel; the old man, Stalas; the young girl, yet unnamed; the foreigner, Petrov; and…
“There’s one more left,” Laszlow commented. He remembered seeing blonde curls, a face filled with blush unsuccessfully concealing an ugly, anxious pallor. He remembered now: there had been a woman toting the grubby little girl’s hand, shepherding her to the shelter. “Is your mother not here, child?”
“Mother is here,” the girl insisted. “She’s not moving.”
“Good Lord,” Stalas moaned.
Laszlow followed the sound of the girl's voice. “Ma’am, are you alright?” He addressed her, without knowing quite where she was.
“Mmm.” It seems that this hoarse murmur was the woman’s form of assent. Even with only this brief whisper, Laszlow could tell that the woman’s voice was gentle and delicate, like a single piece of wax paper ready to rip in two. Her breath, though quiet, was quick and uneven.
“Is your mother wounded?” Laszlow asked, leaning over to lay a hand on her wrist.
“Is she sick?” the translator queried.
“Is she going to infect us all?!” the old man barked.
“There’s no reason to assume that,” the translator said evenly.
“I have every reason to assume it!” he snapped. “If we're here long, any disease is going to ravage us quickly. Even a cold, a chill, could kill us all within weeks!”
“Weeks?” the young girl spoke up. She had gone curiously silent when Laszlow had asked about her mother, but at the mention of the possible duration of their stay, she seemed to have regained her voice.
“Weeks,” he hissed and continued before either the translator or Laszlow could intervene. “None of you know what’s going to happen now, do you? Especially not you, child… But I’ve heard it all before. They start with the rocket bombs, the firebombs, the civilian casualties, and such. They’ll bomb us every day, killing everyone stupid enough to remain outside and making sure everyone else is too afraid to leave their shelters. This they’ll do, all around the country, but not in the big cities, no, no, no… they’ll save your Londons’ and your Birminghams’ for the Big One! And we’ll all be dead, then. Every last one of us.”
There was a sharp sound, like leathery hands coming together in a clap. “Even now you can feel the explosions!” he listlessly cheered, and there were indeed gentle vibrations wracking the walls of the shelter. “Those aren’t to kill us, no, no sir,” he declared. “They’re to keep us down here. To keep us in our graves. They won’t have to clean up any bodies, now, will they?”
“Now, sir, that’s hardly appropriate to say in your present company!”
It came off as unnatural to Laszlow for the translator to raise his voice, but he did agree. The little girl, he could hear, was now sniffling – the old man’s words had obviously upset her. Even the mother had begun moaning, although if she had even heard the words of Stalas and was instead doing so for pain or distress, Laszlow could not be sure. He took her hand off of her galloping pulse.
“I’m sure we’ll all turn out fine,” Laszlow said, backing away. “I made this shelter following the pamphlets, after all. We’ll all be safe so long as we're here.”
The old man sniffed contemptuously but did not respond. The translator murmured something to the foreigner, and he responded with either great zest or great anger, of which Laszlow could not tell. The young girl took a great hiccuping breath, and the mother continued to groan softly.
“Where did you all come from?” Lazslow asked, hoping to keep his companion’s minds off of the shuddering of the room and the dimness of the old man’s soliloquy. The translator whispered a few words to the foreigner, who again responded greatly.
“Ya sam priyekhal…” and more words that Laszlow did not understand.
“What is that wretch saying? Tell him to shut up!”
“He’s answering. He says he’s from the Ukraine…that he was told Britain would be safer for him, and his family.” He quickly slurred out a slew of incomprehensible speech, and the foreigner responded. “...He says his family was supposed to meet him here, in just two weeks' time.”
“What a shame,” Laszlow shook his head, thinking that it was unlikely the foreigner’s family was still alive, but proceeded to wonder whether the foreigner cared much at all. Though he had mentioned it, Laszlow couldn’t understand any emotion, if indeed there was any, coming from his words. He elected to say no more on the topic. “And how about you, child? How is it that you’re here?”
The girl’s immature squeak of a voice, sounding as though she were trying quite hard to seem dignified, blurted, “Father said to find shell-ter. He said he would find me and Mum. Where has he gone?”
There was an interminable silence for a moment. Like the foreigner’s family, Laszlow thought it unlikely that the little girl and her mother would ever see their father and husband again. The mother evidently thought the same, as she let out a desperate, creaking wail with her paper-thin voice.
“Shut that up!” The old man demanded.
“You can hardly expect a woman to be stoic in a situation such as this,” the translator defended her. “She’s grieving, can’t you see?”
Laszlow heard the little girl murmuring immature words of comfort, as little girls tend to do. “It’ll be OK, Mum. Father is coming. He said he would. He’ll come for us.” Her gentle easings seemed to strike a chord within the group, as the woman ceased her wailing and the old man backed down, if only slightly.
“I can’t see anything in this bloody shelter,” he grumbled, “but I guess she would be grieving, wouldn’t she? There’s not a chance in Heaven or Hell her husband’s alive, after all.”
“Propriety, sir,” the translator urged him. “You’re causing everyone upset.”
“We’re being bombed to death! Is that not cause enough for upset?”
“Even still–”
“Nigel, how about you?” Laszlow asked, attempting to get the conversation back on track.
“Huh?”
“Whereabouts do you come from?”
“East End,” he supplied hurriedly, after a moment of thought. “I came here to stay with an acquaintance.”
“The East End?” The old man roared with laughter. “I thought perhaps the smell of poverty came from that immigrant. But I guess I was wrong!”
Laszlow himself was surprised but didn’t let it show in his voice. “Are you perhaps blonde, Nigel?”
“Hmm?”
“Never mind.” The walls were still shaking, the not-so-distant bombs seeming closer than ever. “It’s only– never mind. Stalas, how about you? How did you get here?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he sniffed rudely. He didn’t elaborate.
The translator sighed. “...If that old wretch is to be believed, I guess I’m glad to have gotten out of London when I did.”
The man gave a loud snort. “You’d think that, huh?” he said. He sounded bitter, but not like he was making fun of the translator's intellect.
“What are you saying?”
He gave a great sigh. “The ones in London? They’re the lucky ones. They’ll get to die easy- no pain, not a single thought. Probably won’t even see the flash of light. Some won’t even know they’re going to die. For them, it’s like falling asleep. Quick. Easy. But the rest of us? We’ll survive…just not for long. Only long enough to breathe it all in. The radiation, and the smoke, and God knows what else! We’ll be coughing up blood soon, we’ll be scratching the burning flesh off of our living, decaying bodies. And we’ll die, and we’ll be buried in this damned bunker. Damn it all!”
There was a sound like a bang, and Laszlow knew the man must have struck his fist against the wall. The mother gasped, and someone in the room huffed a few breaths like they were trying not to weep, though Laszlow couldn’t tell exactly who.
“I’m sure it won’t end like that,” Laszlow said. He felt the certainty of this deep in his belly. “The pamphlets said–”
“You daft fool,” the old man croaked. “There isn't another way.”
Lazslow screwed up his face, though no one could see it. Though Laszlow felt that he was right, he couldn’t supply the words to support this conclusion. “...Isn’t it better to think that there is?” he said at last.
“Maybe,” Nigel said. Within the span of half a minute, it seemed his solid voice had aged him twenty years. “But perhaps we should prepare for… the worst.”
The little girl sniffed and continued to coo at her mother.
The mother sniffed and continued to groan.
Shuddering breaths came from somewhere in the room.
Weathered fists thumped at the wall.
And the lights came on.
First dazzled by the gleam, Laszlow covered his eyes. It seemed his body’s reflex to do so. A gentle hum of electricity made its way through the room, and after a long moment, Laszlow regained his wits and uncovered his eyes.
Before him, three men, a woman, and a girl.
A man in proper clothes, trimmed hair, and regal face was silently weeping, rocking back and forth, and muttering a distant tongue to himself from across the room. To his left, the blonde man from the East Side was comforting him in the same language, with that steady androgynous voice.
To his left, a mother was also rocking back and forth, and though not a tear crossed her blemished cheeks, her eyes were hollow pools in which it seemed she was drowning. Beside her, the young girl with her young sooty face and braids was caressing her mother’s palm, eyes calm and solemn, aging faster than her body.
On his right was an old, thin-lipped man with dusty brown hair. He stared at Laszlow with his lip twisted– not with derision, but with an emotion Lazslow couldn't begin to describe or even understand.
“I pray for myself, and for all of you, that it goes quick,” Stalas murmured, still staring at Laszlow with that troubling expression. “We shouldn’t keep our family waiting. I won’t keep my wife waiting– not for long.”
It suddenly became clear to him that Stalas wasn’t looking at Lazslow but through him. He looked beyond him, to a horizon behind the room, a horizon which would likely not be seen by them again.
“Sit, Laszlow,” Nigel advised, sighing and running his hand through his blonde hair. “Join us.”
The daughter nodded. The mother murmured something unheard. The foreigner looked up. The old man stared on.
The owner of the bunker let himself droop, dropping to the floor. He said not a word, but even without speaking it was understood that he, too, was now looking over their shared horizon.