ORIGINAL FICTION: "Climbers" (Chapter Fourteen)

to Charring Cross Hospital. He hardly every stopped by there so late, but it wasn't unheard of. The night shift knew him by now, of course. Maybe he could cage a meal at their cafeteria. It would be easy enough to make it look as though he'd been busy all day. And, come to think of it, he was hungry. When had he eaten last? He couldn't recall. Had it been so long ago that tree leaves looked good? He thought not.
The Blackfriars Medical Unit was up and running, but they were all running in place. When the sirens went off, they were ready to go. But go to where? No planes, no rockets, no bombs. A false alarm? It was possible. Better safe than sorry and all that. Only the senior medical officer at Blackfriars had some idea of what had really happened. He couldn't prove it, but it was just what he would have done to quiet things back down. And it did. It had been a long time since any of them had seen good old fashioned drunken party injuries. It was a welcome change from war wounds, but enough was enough. As the sirens told them, the situation could change in a heartbeat. Now they were ready- but for what?
Arthur hung around the medical unit's headquarters long enough to see what they needed. In spite of the overpowering combination of sweat and disinfectant, he was still hungry. If he had thought about it, maybe those tree leaves were looking better. Or at least a salad. He said his good-byes and headed out the door toward Charring Cross Hospital. Halfway between Blackfriars and Charring Cross, the first rocket bomb fell without warning.
The German V1 wasn't technically a rocket powered bomb. It was an unmanned pulse jet. The odd chuffing noise it made- when the engine was working- came from the opening and closing of the engine's vanes during normal operation. Open to take in air, closed during combustion, then open again. All done several times a second. In spite of the odd propulsion, it worked too well. People living on the eastern coast of the British Isles came to recognize the odd noise for what it was: Death on the Wing. Hawker Aircraft built their Tempest and Typhoon fighter planes to intercept the things and shoot them down. Hopefully over less populated landscape. Hearing the noise itself, however, was generally a sign of your continued good luck. If you hear the thunder, chances are the lightning didn't hit you. Not that one, anyway. The V1 ran itself out of fuel high over England and fell to earth silently. You might hear one pass overheard, on its way somewhere else. You weren't going to hear the one headed down for you. It was running on empty, with a full bomb load. So it was that Arthur Crutchfield looked up to see the silent street ahead of him disappear in a flash and roar.
Instinctively, Arthur threw himself toward the basement stairwell next to the sidewalk. The first hot blast of the explosion caught him in mid-air and pushed his flight path back a bit. He landed in the stairwell, but he landed on the stairs. He curled up and rolled against the wall in pain before the debris started to rain down. Masonry and flaming wood went sailing past, along with the dust, dirt and paving stones from the street. Within ten seconds it was all over. The last bits of shrapnel was on the ground, and the damage was done. Arthur gave it another minute of heavy breathing just to make sure. Anything else going to fall? Not this time. He looked up over the edge of the stairwell and down the street. A big hole and fire where the street used to be not two hundred feet away. The windows were gone for a hundred yards either way. Close by the crater, wood framing on the buildings was burning. Not bad. These were stone buildings. They weren't going to catch fire now. No sounds of any injured. Those sirens did their job. He stood up in the stairwell and checked himself over. Just a bit bruised where he landed on those stone stairs, but nothing broken. He would heal. Onward.
With a cold detachment, Arthur walked up the stairs he had flown past on the way down. He was still hungry.