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1
Descent into Hell, 1941

The day the bombs fell on Maggie Leigh and tore her life apart, she was out shopping for fabric with her aunt Joan. Maggie usually didn't spend too much time with her aunt, because the family considered her a bad influence.

"Joan is a lost cause," Maggie's mom had told her more than once. At first, Maggie wasn't sure what she meant by this cryptic statement, because her mother wouldn't elaborate. She'd just say with a resigned sigh, "Your aunt's morals have been compromised -- I'll explain when you're older." But from overhearing hushed conversations between her mom and other relatives late at night, Maggie learned that her aunt had gotten involved in a secret relationship with a married Indian officer.

Maggie's aunt had left Britain five years ago to work at a civil service office in Bombay, an Indian city that according to Maggie's mom was "godless," and therefore suited Aunt Joan much better than London did. Maggie's mother was extremely conservative and religious, and had tried to raise Maggie the same way, although the indoctrination hadn't fully taken. Maggie imagined she took after her scandalous, travel-loving aunt much more than she did her strict mom. Her aunt always talked to her like she was fullgrown, and not just fifteen. Maggie could ask Aunt Joan questions she'd never dare ask her own mother, and her aunt would usually give her pretty honest answers.

Aunt Joan's illicit romance with the Indian officer was seen as tawdry and immoral by some, but to Maggie, the whole thing sounded like a great adventure. She tried to picture the Indian man, his features coalescing in a vague way out of clichéd images from the Rudyard Kipling stories she'd been forced to read at school. She wondered if he had a beard like coiled black wool, and maybe a turban or a sash to go with it. India seemed like a world she couldn't start to understand, a mystical place where the rules of daily life were suspended. Maggie had never left the British Isles in her entire life and found it hard to imagine exotic places like India actually existed.

The fateful day that Maggie got caught in the blitz of German bombs, her aunt had picked her up from her house, and they'd taken a taxicab to the fabric district near Oxford Street. Maggie was excited, because since the outbreak of World War II nineteen months ago, her mom didn't let her go many places anymore, except for school and the local market. Maggie still remembered hearing the prime minister's shocking declaration of war as she huddled next to the wireless radio. "We shall be fighting against evil things," he had said. She hadn't realized his words would bring an end to many of the childhood freedoms she took for granted.

The war also marked the beginning of many other nasty new experiences, such as cowering during air raids and learning how to put on gas masks. War rationing also meant that luxuries like certain foods and items of clothing were in short supply. However, Maggie's mom had always been frugal before the war, so this element of wartime Britain was no great change. Maggie's dad had left the family three years earlier; he'd been a part-time coal trimmer, and a full-time alcoholic. No one had any idea where he was, and in his absence Maggie and her mother frequently had to scrimp and save out of necessity. But Aunt Joan was an oasis of relief from all that. She made good wages in India and wasn't afraid to spend her money whenever she returned to visit London.

In the back of the taxi on the way to the fabric store, Maggie noticed that her aunt's palms were decorated with strange red designs: tattooed lines and patterns in concentric circles. Her aunt saw her looking at the markings, and she held up one hand for Maggie to scrutinize. "It's not permanent. It's henna, see? Only lasts a few weeks."

"Henna?" Maggie asked, peering closer. The color of the ink nearly matched her aunt's hair.

"It's a decorative tattoo they do in India. Don't you think it's neat?"

Maggie couldn't decide. "Sort of," she said, because she didn't want to sound critical, although truthfully she wouldn't have wanted that mess all over her own hands. She glanced down at them unconsciously where they lay, small and white in her lap. To her, they still looked like a little girl's hands, with short, stubby fingers.

Her aunt laughed. "It's okay if you don't like the henna tattoos. I thought your mother was going to faint when she saw them. You'd think we were fifty years apart, not five. She's like a decrepit old biddy in that chair..." Aunt Joan was referring to the fact that Maggie's mom had been confined to a wheelchair for the past two years, due to premature arthritis in her joints.

"Mum doesn't take to new things very well," Maggie pointed out. "She's old-fashioned."

Her aunt smiled. "Your mum takes after our mother -- your grandmother -- in that way. I was always the black sheep of the bunch, always breaking the rules...always getting punished." She glanced down at her hennaed hands, flexing them. "I got these done by a lady on Dinsbury Lane. She didn't do a half-bad job for the price." She looked out the window and saw they were close to their destination. "Driver, stop here," she called out, and the cab came to an abrupt halt in front of a row of stores.

The driver didn't say anything, and Maggie thought he looked unhappy, slumped behind his well-worn steering wheel. Because of the curfews, and the blackouts at night -- which meant that cars couldn't turn on their headlamps -- most people used the underground trains to navigate London these days, so there wasn't much use for taxis. Many of the streetlamps and traffic signals had been taken down or permanently disabled.

Maggie slid out of the cab while her aunt paid, the soles of her black boots landing on the cobblestones as her eyes scanned the wide street. It was an upscale neighborhood, and Maggie instantly felt out of place. She saw two girls her own age at the other end of the road, both in fancy black dresses, with colored ribbons done up in their hair. She suddenly felt self-conscious about the way she was dressed, which was in a cheap gray skirt and a brown sweater-blouse, so she looked away from the girls. She caught one of their voices and could tell from the accent that they were posh, and probably lived somewhere in this rich neighborhood. Maggie and her mom lived in the lower-middle-class district of Hudsworth Green, which couldn't compare.

Maggie knew these girls would probably hate her if they realized where she was from, because class warfare remained intense, even during a real war. As the taxi slunk off down the street, Aunt Joan walked over and put her arm around Maggie's shoulders, distracting her. "Come this way, dear. I'll show you why the British empire can't hold a candle to India when it comes to cotton and silk."

When Maggie and her aunt entered the fabric store, which had an indecipherable name written in Sanskrit symbols, the shopgirl behind the counter greeted Aunt Joan warmly. Maggie noticed the air in here was thicker than outside, thicker even than a London pea-soup smog, and it held the sweet tang of oriental incense. The smell was strong enough that she could taste it, like cinnamon, oranges, and pepper tickling the back of her throat. She fought the urge to sneeze, afraid it might make her seem unsophisticated in a place like this.

As she looked around, she realized the store contained a blizzard of fabrics, all kinds of shapes and colors and textures. They were piled in bales against the walls, hanging from the ceiling, and wrapped around large wooden slats, like giant rolls of Christmas paper. Fabric was even draped over several lamps, muting their glow but casting warm, colorful patterns across the walls.

Maggie's aunt moved around the store, swiftly assessing the different fabrics based on their colors and textures. Maggie followed, unsure what her aunt's standards were but certain that she had some definitive ones. Her aunt picked out a swatch of fabric from a pile on a table and turned around. She held it up to Maggie's chest and said, "This blue silk matches your eyes. We could make a sari out of this. Turn you into a real maharaja's bride." Her aunt made a funny fish face, and Maggie couldn't help laughing, even though she was also flushing faintly with embarrassment. The idea of herself as a bride seemed a million years away.

"Auntie, please," Maggie said, looking around to see if anyone else in the store had heard. But there was no one else except the shopgirl, counting receipts. "I'd like to go to India one day, to see what it's like," Maggie said, trying to change the subject. "It sounds so different from here. It sounds fun."

"If you want to go there, you probably will. Desire can provide excellent motivation. Remind me to stop by the bookseller on the way home, and I'll buy you a real book about India. I can't imagine your mum buys you too many books, does she?"

"The only book she ever gave me was the Bible."

Her aunt laughed. "Why am I not surprised? Now come on, I want to talk to the stock girl. I need to ask if she -- " Her aunt suddenly broke off midsentence, her mouth still open.

"You okay?" Maggie asked.

"Listen, do you hear that sound?" Aunt Joan's voice had dropped several octaves into a husky whisper of fear. She reached out a hand and grabbed Maggie's arm. "Tell me I'm imagining things."

Maggie cocked her head to one side and followed her aunt's gaze through the front windows of the shop. It took her a moment to realize that faintly, in the distance, she could hear an unmistakable whine that had become all too familiar in the past several months.

"Oh no," Maggie whispered. It was the rising and falling sound of an air-raid siren, the kind that signified great danger. Usually when she heard this sound, she and her mother were already on their way into the Anderson bomb shelter at home. But here in this store, on this cobblestone street in an unfamiliar part of London, she and her aunt were trapped.

Then, under the noise of the sirens, Maggie heard the rolling thrum of an airplane engine. From the loud, harsh sound of it, it was a German plane, and it was getting closer. Maggie knew from the increasing pitch and intensity of the engines that they only had a few moments before the plane passed overhead, and there was a very good chance it would be distributing some bombs along the way. The sirens almost always gave much greater warning. This German plane must have sneaked in unnoticed, or turned in some unusual direction, Maggie thought.

"Where to go, where to go," her aunt was muttering in a sudden panic. From the corner of her eye, Maggie saw the shopgirl crouching underneath one of the oak tables. She met the girl's eyes and saw her own fear reflected back in them. Maggie and her aunt crouched down too, between racks of orange cotton.

"Is there a shelter out back?" Aunt Joan yelled to the girl.

The girl mutely shook her head, too scared to speak.

"It's getting louder!" Maggie said, focusing on the drone of the engines. It was easy to tell the German planes from the British ones, because she'd had so much practice.

"If it drops any bombs, they won't hit us here," her aunt declared loudly, with forced cheer. "The plane will pass overhead. They always do. They go to the other parts of town, to the East End."

What Aunt Joan was saying was true -- that the Germans usually bombed the poorest parts of London in a misguided attempt to cause an uprising of the poor against the rich -- but this demented Nazi logic couldn't always be counted on. Occasionally, a German plane got lost, or went rogue, and then anything could happen.

It's not a good sign that this plane is out in the daytime, Maggie thought. Usually they only came out at night, in sneak attacks, like cowards. Either the Germans were getting bolder, or maybe this pilot was suicidal, because in the daylight over London he'd make an easy target for the RAF.

As Maggie listened to the plane, she thought she detected an additional noise, almost inaudible against the sound of the engines. It was a thin whistle, like a teakettle left too long on the stove. She knew in that moment her aunt had been wrong, and her worst gut fears had been right. It was the sound of a German bomb cutting its way through the air, from the belly of the aircraft down to British soil.

Maggie's aunt realized what was happening too, and she grabbed on to Maggie, trying to shield her with her own body. Maggie tucked her head under her aunt's chest, feeling her aunt's pounding heartbeat. The whistling grew louder and then cut out completely, only seconds from impact.

Maggie couldn't believe this was actually happening to her, although she'd known it was possible that one day it would. And now that the day had found her, she felt completely unprepared. Her teachers at school had drilled everyone on what to do if something like this occurred, but in the panic of the moment, all their best advice went straight out of her head.

As the instant before impact came, she was surprised to feel a final burst not of fear but of unhinged excitement. The emotion shocked her, and it was coupled with the knowledge that she was going to be okay, that she would somehow be protected. Her aunt's words swam around in her mind, merging with the remnants of half-forgotten prayers, forming a holy invocation: It won't hit here. It'll pass overhead. Dear God. They always do.

For a fraction of a second, Maggie thought that maybe the bomb had been a dud, or that perhaps some kind of divine grace had rescued her. But then Maggie's entire world exploded, like the ground was being wrenched apart underneath her feet.

The bomb hit and detonated with the force of a tidal wave. The front windows of the store shattered inward, showering Maggie's hair with glass and toppling her backward. She felt a blast of burning air, and gasped as the strength of the explosion pinned her to the floor and compressed her lungs. Then the air darkened with clouds of gray smoke and suddenly she couldn't breathe.

Oh God, she thought, panic rising as she fought for air, feeling her eyes and nose burning. All the excitement was gone, and only terror and shock remained. The store was completely filled with acrid smoke now, and it felt like she was deep underwater. Coughing and gasping, she groped around for her aunt, or for anything familiar. All her hands found were reams of tattered cloth, now sharp with broken glass and bits of shrapnel. Her hearing was muffled from the roar of the blast, but she could faintly hear her aunt's voice saying "Quick! Quick!" She turned toward the sound and felt fingers pulling at the sleeve of her blouse. She realized her aunt was right next to her in the smoke, and had been all along. "We have to get out of here!"

Still dazed, Maggie tried to brush glass from her hair as she forced smoky air into her lungs. True fear was with her now, and she felt her legs shaking like she'd just biked twenty miles. Supported by her aunt, Maggie staggered outside, blinking against the light and trying to get dust out of her stinging eyes. The shopgirl had made her way outside too, her face blank with dead eyes.

Maggie glanced back at the store. One of the doors had blown off its hinges, and the other one was askew, hanging by a splintered piece of wood. The warning siren continued wailing its unearthly cry, and more and more sirens joined in from neighboring streets. Maggie's right hand hurt, and she saw that a piece of glass had sliced it along the back, so finely that the wound looked like a paper cut. Yet it was deep, and blood was oozing out its edges. She looked over at her aunt, who had an abrasion on her cheek and a cut on her forehead. Her hair was white with fallen plaster.

"Wow," her aunt said. "That was something, wasn't it?" She sounded like she was in shock too. "Look up there." A hundred yards to their left, a crater had magically appeared in the street. It was about ten yards in diameter and had swallowed a car and part of a building. Maggie realized it was the center of the bomb blast. All along the sides of the street, the windows had been blown out, and there was rubble everywhere. Maggie knew that if the bomb had landed just a little closer to the fabric store, she and her aunt might have been killed. She felt both sick and giddy at the realization that her own life was so fragile and could end so quickly. She also realized the plane had only dropped one bomb for some reason. She didn't know why, but she was grateful for that twist of fate. Things could have been much worse.

Maggie saw that not everyone was so lucky. She looked in the other direction down the street and noticed a man on fire. He was spinning and writhing on the cobblestones like a dancer who'd lost his mind. He was wearing a gray flannel suit, and the suit was engulfed in flames, the fabric annealing to his melting skin. He wasn't screaming: he was completely silent, engaged in his solitary battle with the fire. Damaged people were warily emerging from shops, clutching their heads and injured limbs, but no one moved to help him. Perhaps they were too preoccupied with their private pain, or scared of getting burned themselves. The more the man swatted at the flames, the more they burst and flared, bubbling his skin. The fire was burning his clothes and his hair completely away. He'll be naked soon, Maggie thought. Like a baby.

Maggie suddenly felt a rough hand over her eyes, jerking her head sideways.

"Don't look!" her aunt commanded. It sounded like Aunt Joan's moment of shock had passed, and she was back in control of herself. Still, her voice was tight with jagged emotion, a mix of fear and relief. "We can't help him. An ambulance will get here soon and take him to the burn ward at St. Bartholomew's." Maggie wasn't foolish enough to ask her aunt if the man would be okay; she knew he'd probably die from his burns.

The two of them started walking hastily down the street in the other direction, Maggie propelled forward by her aunt. She wanted to turn and look back at the man, but she was too afraid. She thought she heard the sound of people rushing to help him at long last and extinguish the blaze, but perhaps it was just her imagination. Her aunt kept her arm tightly around Maggie's shoulders, holding on to her. "We can only help ourselves. More bombs might be on the way. Who knows what those bloody Krauts are up to? I can't let you get hurt more than you already are -- what would your mother say?"

"Who cares?" Maggie asked, her tongue feeling large and dry in her mouth. "It's not your fault the Germans want to kill us." Her mouth was gritty, like sand had got inside it, and she wiped her lips on the sleeve of her blouse. A little stain of blood came off. "Are we going home now?"

"No. We're going to the closest tube station," her aunt said, walking as briskly as her shoes would allow. "We'll wait there until we're sure the raid is over and the all-clear has sounded."

Maggie nodded, and then winced, because her neck hurt. The tube made sense to her. The teachers had told them in school to run to the closest underground train station if they were ever outside when bombs fell, she remembered that now. Most of the underground stations were deep enough that they acted like massive concrete bomb shelters.

"There's one at Hawk's Cross," her aunt said. "It's not far, and I know the way." The sirens continued to wail. Other people had started walking and running in the same direction. Not enough to form a crowd or a mob, but enough that Maggie and her aunt had become part of a steady stream of traffic. No one was making much noise; they were all as well-behaved and orderly as possible. Behind them were the sounds of fire engines arriving at the epicenter of the blast. Nervous, Maggie looked up but didn't see any planes in the sky, at least for now. She wondered where the RAF were, and when they would shoot down the German.

Maggie's thoughts returned to her mom, who was back at home waiting for them, oblivious to the danger they were in. She knew it was doubtful that anything had happened near her own home, but the safety of her mom was becoming a pressing thought as her own shock wore off.

Her aunt picked up the pace and Maggie struggled to keep even with her. Her hearing had come back, but now carried with it a ringing sound that nearly matched the pitch of the sirens. Her senses all felt heightened by the traumatic experience, and her skin was tender and raw.

Maggie's aunt was still gripping her around the shoulders, as though afraid Maggie might suddenly bolt, or someone might snatch her.

"John Gielgud comes down here," her aunt started babbling as they approached the opening to the underground station. "The stage actor. Have you heard of him? He's famous."

"No." Maggie knew her aunt was just talking to try to keep them both calm.

"I read about it in the Times last month. Actors come down to the underground and perform shows for the crowds during blackouts. They recite monologues from Shakespeare."

"Why? That seems weird." Maggie's voice sounded shaky and thin to her own ears.

"It's their way of helping. They're doing their part for the king. Not every man can be a soldier, I suppose."

Maggie and her aunt reached the station entrance, and Maggie saw the narrow steps leading down at a perilous angle into the semidarkness. She was conscious there were people behind her, and she got nervous she might slip and fall, but no one was pushing or trying to move quickly. Again, she was struck by the orderliness of the whole endeavor.

Maggie and her aunt began descending the brick steps, and Maggie's eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light. The air in the stairway was damp and stale, and old cigarette smoke intermingled with the unmistakable tang of human urine. The main station lights were turned off, so they had to make their way by yellow emergency lights on the walls that barely emitted a faint glow.

Maggie's hands grasped the wooden railings as they continued downward. She could see the station platform way below them, crowded with refugees from the current blast, and also from previous German assaults. So many families had lost their homes in the war that some were temporarily living in certain underground stations, on thin army cots supplied by the government. This didn't stop the trains from running, so that every few minutes an unearthly din shattered the air and disrupted everything. To Maggie, the idea of living in a tunnel sounded like a total nightmare.

She finally reached the platform with her aunt, and they merged with the crowd. Maggie was relieved to be off the stairs, but still unnerved; she kept running her hands through her hair and finding tiny bits of glass that pricked her fingers. Even a long, hot bath wouldn't remove all the remnants of the blast.

Maggie saw her aunt scan the refugees, looking alternately horrified and saddened at the beaten-down parade of humanity. Then Aunt Joan unexpectedly took something out of her pocket and held it up to her eyes.

"What's that?" Maggie asked, puzzled. It was an object no larger than a pebble, but it appeared to be intricately carved out of dark wood.

"Ganesh," Maggie's aunt said. "An Indian god. He's a good-luck charm." She pressed the item into Maggie's hand. "Here, feel it."

Maggie did as she was told, trying to avoid getting jostled by a family heading past them, deeper into the station and the waiting mob. "It's warm." She peered at the charm in the dim light. "It looks like an elephant?"

"Yes, that's right. The Hindus worship animals, just like your mother venerates Jesus and the Virgin Mary. You can keep it if you want. It's supposed to protect its owner from harm, understand?"

"Sure." Maggie didn't really know what to do with the little Ganesh, so she stuck it in her pocket with her uninjured hand. I'll take any luck I can get, she told herself.

A man brushed past, inexplicably selling newspapers and bags of potato crisps. Churchill was on the front of The London Times again, his silhouette inked there in smudgy black newsprint. Another man was passing around bottles of Lucozade. It was like a whole new city had set up shop down there in the dark, driven beneath ground by the unforgiving Germans. Maggie thought about an H. G. Wells book she'd read in school called The Time Machine. In it, one race of people forced another conquered race called the Morlocks to live underground in squalor and pain. Maggie thought to herself that if the Germans won and took England, it would be a Morlock world from then on for her, and for everyone else who wasn't a vicious, mindless Nazi. It was not a comforting thought.

Just then, there was a loud rumbling above them, and from all around, as though another bomb had struck the earth above. Maggie knew that here, a hundred feet or more beneath the earth's surface, they were almost certainly safe, but it was still nerve-racking and made her worry even more about her mom back home. Bits of brick and mortar from the high ceiling of the tunnel fell down, shaken loose by the impact, and the crowds of people grew even quieter. Maggie felt the muscles of her neck and jaw tensing up.

Her aunt noticed her fear and tried to reassure her. "We're safe, Maggie. Don't worry any more than you need to."

But the words were practically drowned out by another, louder sound, a droning, rippling noise like a peal of thunder. This time more chunks of debris fell down, and the crowds were not so silent. People began to murmur and complain, and shift uneasily on their feet. Maggie glanced up at the tiled ceiling. She was starting to get the feeling that they weren't so safe here after all. The rumbling continued, getting louder, seemingly endless.

"Move back!" a voice suddenly yelled. "Move back! All of you, dammit!" The crowds tried to comply as Maggie searched for the owner of the voice. She finally saw it belonged to a young policeman, his wide face flushed and sweaty as he passed under one of the emergency lights. He was moving up the tracks with an electric torch.

"What's going on?" someone yelled from the crowd, over the din of whatever destruction was occurring above their heads.

"Move back, I said!" the policeman yelled again, as though those were the only words he could say. Another policeman appeared up the tracks, pointing a flashlight directly into people's faces, eliciting angry cries.

Maggie looked back in the direction of the stairs that had brought her to this place. She couldn't see the sky, only darkness black as pitch. More people were running down the long flight of steps into the tunnel. Some had blood on their faces and clothes and were clearly injured, while others just looked terrified. Maggie's eyes lit upon one woman who was clutching a small child in her arms, cradling him in a red blanket as she negotiated the steep stairway. Maggie couldn't tell if the child was dead or asleep.

She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. A man in the crowd, perhaps a crazy person, or someone who'd just been underground for too long, began to fling abuse and curses at the police. Another man in the crowd started to argue with him, and they got into a shoving match.

"I hope it's not another September seventh," Maggie's aunt murmured to her. "If so, we might be here for a while." September seventh of the previous year had been the very first day that German Luftwaffes had flown over London, dropping their payloads of fire and destruction. That attack had lasted all day and night, and was still one of the deadliest on record.

Over the concussive din of the bombs, Maggie dared to ask her aunt, "So is this tunnel really safe?"

Her aunt looked back at her with wide eyes and said, "Of course, dear." People were still screaming at the policemen, and the police were screaming back, fear turning into rage. In the dim light and noise, everything was becoming frightening. The people looked possessed and scary to Maggie, no longer everyday Londoners.

"Should we stay down here?!" Maggie yelled to her aunt, trying to be heard over the increasingly loud crowds. She knew it was a stupid question, because where else could they go? They'd have to remain in the tunnels until the raid was over, no matter what. Her aunt didn't even hear her, but stared up at the curved roof above the train tracks, which now seemed to be shaking slightly. For some reason Maggie thought of all those pretty, priceless fabrics in the Indian store. They were ruined now, burned and shredded, impossible to repair.

Aunt Joan was just about to speak when a noise louder than anything they'd heard so far came roiling down the tunnel toward them. It was nearly as loud as the initial bomb blast itself, and it enveloped Maggie with a physical force. It was a rumbling, groaning, crushing sound, like a building being imploded by a thousand charges. Brick, plaster, and earth started to rain down on everyone's heads, pelting the crowd like hail. It took Maggie a fraction of a second to realize that the roof of the underground station was going to cave in on them, and that they were about to be buried alive.

Maggie's aunt understood at the same instant Maggie did, and instead of trying to shield her this time, she pushed Maggie as hard as she could in the direction of the stairs and screamed, "Run!" Maggie didn't hear the word, she just saw her aunt's lips move and knew what she was saying.

Maggie didn't hesitate. Assuming that her aunt was right behind her, she dashed through the surging crowds toward the staircase, which was the sole avenue of escape from the platform. Many people reacted more slowly, a decision that might have cost them their lives. As Maggie tore through the crowd, people just stood there, gaping upward as though they couldn't believe what was about to happen to them. Others got confused and hopped down off the platform onto the rails, as though they could seek shelter from the pending collapse there.

Maggie looked back behind her only once, after she'd reached the stairs and hauled herself partway up. The staircase rails were shaking like an earthquake was happening, and it was hard to hold on. To Maggie's horror, her aunt wasn't behind her at all but was still back in the crowd, unable to fight her way through. Maggie's vision was seared with a horrific image that looked like it came out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting of hell she'd once seen in the National Gallery. The roof of the tunnel was slowly caving in on the people way down in the blackness, many of whom were now, finally, surging up the stairs behind her. Yet the people were stumbling and falling down, creating a nearly impassable barricade of human flesh. Men were crawling over the heads of women and children, clawing their way upward to the faint light.

Someone slammed into Maggie and spun her sideways, knocking the wind out of her. For a sickening moment she thought she might fall down into the morass of churning bodies, but instead she got pressed against the cold stone wall of the tunnel, her fingers grasping to find purchase. She heard the muffled sound of an explosion and couldn't tell whether it was coming from within the tunnel, or whether it was another German bomb somewhere up above her. Death could come from either direction now. God help me, Maggie thought in terror and dismay.

The stairs started shaking even harder, and she broke her momentary paralysis, lunging forward. She ducked under a man's arm and headed desperately toward the gray light that danced above her through the oval opening of the tube, like a cruel mirage.