Bunker

An excruciating scraping.

"Grimworth?"

Finding ourselves underground was the first thing we did that day. I
had made myself sick with too much whisky and I was crouched in the
freezing corner of the bunker. Grimworth seemed to be trying to peer
out of the slat that soldiers had used to fire out of when it had been
active, standing on his tiptoes and trying to hook his fingers over the
sill.

"Yes?"

He was lifting himself off the floor very slowly and dropping down
again panting. His face was very red.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't reply.

We both knew it was getting colder; we would have to get out soon. And
my shirt had a slight tear in the cuff. My cloth cap had been soiled by
some kind of rodent. Grimworth's Barbour was flecked with mud and his
Wellingtons were clogged with filth.

"Can't you see anything?"

"Nothing."

Time must have passed since we came. There had been nothing out there
when we came in, the inside rim of the crater and a few pieces of junk
and rusted metal. Some drylooking weeds were growing on the inside of
the wall that I picked at with my unpared fingernails.

Already I felt it was time to leave. I stood up and went over to wipe
his brow. My handkerchief was soaked but I made a fist of it and I
managed to restore him to some level of respectability. He was looking
good, considering.

"Considering?" he asked.

"Just thinking. Sorry."

"Yes. Are you better. Time to go."

He didn't say it like it was a question: I coughed a round gout of
phlegm into my handkerchief and agreed while stuffing it into my jacket
pocket. We walked up the stairs and into the light. The sun was shining
on the crater and I felt better. Grimworth instantly began
sweating.

"What is it? Grimworth?"

He motioned me to be quiet and tramped off through the mud for a few
paces before stopping and bending over an old freezer that someone had
left there. As he opened the lid, his buttocks flexed through his fat
cords. He rummaged. Standing up, he seemed to be tending to something
in his arms. He turned his head back towards me and motioned me to join
him.

He had stopped sweating, and cradled in his thick coatsleeves a tiny
kitten.

It was barely born, yawning and showing us its little teeth in its
clean pink mouth. There was no trace of the gracelessness of earlier
left on Grimworth's face. He had made a friend.

"What shall we call it?" I asked.

"Quite," replied Grimworth.

And so we carried Quite out of the crater and fed her red berries - I
had taken the trouble to ascertain her sex at once - and other things
that we found on the way back to the car.