Chapter 5
My train of thought and my sorry attempts at making a decision are abruptly interrupted as the public address system sounds, surprising everyone in the lounge. The entire group of people in the room stops whatever they are doing, freezing to listen to the address.
“Attention, Attention,” a female voice squawks loudly over the PA. “All personnel report to your posts immediately to await further orders; this is not a drill.
“Attention, Attention, all personnel report to your post immediately to await further orders; this is not a drill.”
The address repeats five times, but as soon as the first address is complete, the frozen statues all around the room spring back to life. They all rush to leave to wherever they need to be. Last bites of sandwiches are taken, final swigs of drinks gulped down and final goodbyes are said to colleagues and friends. Everyone is back on duty with a job to do and judging by the faces we see leaving, each one has a steely determination to do their duty.
I for one, feel like a lame duck as they all leave, almost embarrassed to be still sitting down watching as these men and women rush towards their unknown fate.
Josh and Alice must be feeling it much worse than me; they both look very fidgety, restless and a bit guilty watching their comrades leave. I am sure they both feel like following them.
Within a few minutes, the room is almost empty with only a few civilians like us remaining, feeling useless and unsure what to do with ourselves. All at once, a quiet descends over us and a tension that wasn’t there before seems to surround us.
Emily comes over to me and sits on my lap.
“What’s happening, Dad?” she asks nervously.
“I am not sure Em, the soldiers have had to go and do their jobs, I think,” I tell her, unsure what to say.
“Are they going to kill the Zombies?” she asks, turning to look at me.
“I think they might be going to try, my love.” It then registers what she said. “Where did you hear the word Zombie?”
“Around, everybody is saying it. Zombie is the word for the bad people isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is one of them,” I reply.
“Well, at least that has got rid of the queue for the food,” Dan jokes, trying to break the tension, but I’m not sure it works.
My phone, sitting on the table and plugged into Stacey’s charger, starts to ring, making us all jump a little and we all turn to look at it in trepidation.
“It’s Colonel Reed.” Stacey stutters slightly, looking at the screen before picking up the phone, pulling out her charger lead and handing it to me as I take Emily off my lap and get up.
“Colonel.”
“Richards, have you eaten?”
“Yes, Colonel”
“Good, transport is on its way to pick you up from there; it will be with you in a few minutes, so be ready.”
“Where am I going, Colonel?”
“They will bring you to me, we have things to discuss.”
“What things, Colonel?”
“When you get here, I will tell you, Richards. And bring your man Atkins with you, I’m sure he won’t want to miss out.” I look over to Dan.
“Okay Colonel, I will ask him.”
“Good, see you shortly,” he says, and he hangs up.
When the call ends, I hover just away from the group for a moment or two, thinking, trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do. I can’t work it out though. I can’t figure out any good options, even favourable ones for that matter. Maybe there just aren’t any and I just need to play it by ear and deal with the situation as it happens?
Tucking my phone in my pocket and turning back to the others, I see they are all looking at me, waiting to hear what the Colonel wants.
“The Colonel is sending transport to pick me up for another meeting he asked you to attend to, Dan. You are not obliged, mate; if you want out, now is the time to say and I wouldn’t blame you, not one bit,” I tell him seriously.
“Let’s see what he has to say,” Dan replies without having to think.
“Yes, we need to see what the score is.”
Sitting back down to wait, Emily jumps back onto my lap and I put my arms around her waist.
“How long will you be, Dad?”
“I’m not sure, not too long I hope; will you be okay waiting here for me?”
“Yes, as long as you’re quick,” she says looking down at the floor.
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” I tell her.
“You will be fine staying here with us for a while, won’t you Emily?” Catherine says from beside me, “and don’t let Reed pressure you, Andy; you don’t owe him anything.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t,” I tell her, trying to convince myself.
The few remaining people rattling around in the large space are all in small groups like us, and someone from most of these groups has come over to us, introduced themselves and asked us if we know anything about what’s going on. One of us tells them what we do know, which isn’t much and all of these people seem as ignorant as us, so we learn nothing new of any consequence. All are frustrated, some even angry that they have seemingly been just left here, and once they find out we can’t give them any new information, they either move onto the next group or return to theirs.
Ten minutes pass and there is still no sign of the transport to take me and Dan to Colonel Reed, and I must admit the delay is getting me frustrated. We need to know what he wants to discuss, and I am sure I will be able to get some useful intel from the Colonel, which will hopefully help me actually make some decisions. We all turn to look at anybody entering the room to see if it’s time, but so far it has just been people returning from using the facilities or just returning from a walk to stretch their legs.
Finally, there is some activity as the door from the stairwell opens and a man and a woman in uniform emerge. They are both holding tablets, but instead of approaching us, they go straight to the nearest group of people to the door from the stairs; they are three men and two women. These two are obviously not here to take me and Dan anywhere, so my guess would be that they have come to take details of who is left here so that arrangements, whatever they are, can be made for them/us.
Suddenly it strikes me that when we get back from this meeting, this place could be empty and everyone moved to another area at Heathrow—or even out of Heathrow, even out of London!
I need to talk to Josh and Catherine quickly and without Emily around to hear.
“Stacey, can you go and see if there is any tea leftover on the food tables, please? I could do with a cup,” I ask and wink at her. “Why don’t you go with her, Emily, to help?”
“Sure, Andy,” Stacey replies and I get a moody ‘okay’ off Emily; they both get up and make their way over.
“Josh, Catherine; are your phones charged?” I ask as soon as the girls are out of immediate earshot.
Josh says ‘yes’, and Catherine says she has ‘some charge’, and they both ask why?
“I’m afraid that when Dan and I are gone, they could move you all and that could be to anywhere. It looks like they are taking details so they can make arrangements to possibly move everyone out of here. Josh, if they give you a new posting or deploy you somewhere else, let me know, keep in contact wherever you are. I don’t want to lose you again, okay?”
“Of course, Dad, I will let you know whatever happens.”
“Catherine, Josh might have to go, he won’t have a choice if he does. Will you stay with the girls until I get back, please?”
Catherine looks at me angrily. “Are you serious! What do you think I’m going to do, let them take the girls off and stand by and wave as they go? You can be an idiot sometimes Andy. I would never let that happen. I am with you, Andy, and that means Emily too. And as long as Stacey is with us, that means her as well.” Catherine now looks very offended.
“I’m sorry Catherine; seeing them taking details panicked me a little bit, and I just didn’t want t
o assume. I know I can be thick sometimes.”
“Okay then, let's forget it; the girls will be with me.”
“Thank you,” I tell her. “If they do move you, make sure you stay here at the airport and don’t let them take you anywhere else unless absolutely necessary. Phone me if you need to.”
“Of course, I will,” Catherine says as I give her a hug. “Don’t worry; I will look after them,” she whispers in my ear.
“Looks like we are on, Boss,” Dan says, pointing at a soldier marching towards us from beyond where Emily and Stacey are. He seems to have appeared as if from nowhere.
I shout and wave to Emily and Stacey, and as soon as they see the soldier, they are soon running back to us across the polished floor.
Emily jumps straight into my arms, giving me a face full of blond curls.
“How long will you be, Dad?” she asks.
“Not long, I hope. I’ll be as quick as I can,” I tell her as I put her down and stay down with her, on my haunches, looking at her seriously. “I want you to listen to Catherine and Josh, while I’m gone, okay?” I put the emphasis on Catherine’s name. “You might have to wait for me somewhere else and I’ve asked Catherine to make sure you are okay, so be good for her, okay?”
“Why would we go somewhere else?” she asks.
“Because they might need this room for something else and need everyone to wait somewhere else. I will come and find you when this meeting is over, so make sure you stay and listen to Catherine.”
“Captain Richards?” the soldier—wearing the red beret of the Military Police—asks as he reaches us, but I ignore him for a moment.
“Emily, is that okay?” She has gone quiet but then does answer.
“Yes Dad, just be as quick as you can,” Emily says quietly.
“Of course, I will be my love,” I tell her, giving her a kiss on the cheek before getting up.
“I’m Richards.”
The soldier salutes me and then waits while Dan and I say goodbye to everyone. We tell Stan and Lyndsay good luck in case they do go to join their families before we return. We ask Alice to try and stick around until we’re back. We both give Josh and Emily hugs and then finally, I give Catherine a hug, thank her and tell her to phone me when she knows what’s going on, or if she needs to at all.
“Lead the way, Lance Corporal,” Dan tells the soldier when our goodbyes are done.
Chapter 6
We follow the red beret away from everyone, past the remnants of breakfast that still remain on the tables and past some of the other people left in the Departure Lounge. They look at us quizzically, trying to figure out what is going on, one guy even asking us where we are going. But we don’t answer.
We are heading towards a corridor at the end of another row of shuttered-up shops, obviously where this MP had appeared from. As we approach the corridor, I turn and take a few steps backwards to get one last glimpse of my children and Catherine before we disappear into the corridor. Dan doesn’t even turn his head and strides straight into the corridor with a look of determination on his face, a determination I am finding hard to grasp inside myself right now.
The corridor is only short and leads to a single heavy door with a keypad by the side of it. The MP pauses at the keypad and punches four digits into it, then turns the handle to open the door.
Beyond the door is a staircase that only leads downwards; the lighting is fairly dim in the stairwell and the stairs seem to go down quite far from what I can see when I look over the side, at least two floors. As we descend farther down into the stairwell, it is eerily quiet and feelings hit me that remind me of descending the stairs into the Tower of London, feelings I try to suppress.
Thankfully, as we go even farther down, the light starts to improve and those feelings fade, it now becoming apparent that the light is natural daylight, not man-made; we must be getting close to the outside of this massive building.
At the bottom of the stairs is a heavy wooden door that has a couple of glass panels in it, with sunlight beaming through them. We reach the bottom of the stairs and the MP punches some more numbers into the keypad by the side of the door.
As we get outside, my mood is lifted by the bright sun that is still low in the sky, but rising in front of us, blue sky is everywhere with no clouds that I can see, and the warmth from the sun recharges my determination.
“You okay, Boss? You seem a bit quiet; we will find them when we get this shit sorted,” Dan reassures me.
“Yes, I am good, mate. I went down for a minute back there, but I’m back with it now.”
“Good, we are going to need you at full strength,” he tells me.
“Don’t worry, I am, let’s get this done.”
The MP gets into the driver's seat of yet another Land Rover Defender that is parked just outside the door, while I get into the back seat behind him and Dan goes around to get into the back beside me.
My watch tells me that it’s just coming up to 0730, which I find hard to believe; it feels like it should be at least 1030 or even 1100. The days when I used to ‘Yomp’ ten or even twenty klicks[AJ2][LW3] before brekky are definitely long gone.
The MP drives in a direction both Dan and I recognise; we are going back toward the large hangars and the quarantine building where we touched down yesterday, and soon enough, the swarm of Apache helicopters is in front of us. Approaching them, we can see a large amount of activity buzzing around them, and some rotors are even spinning, whether getting ready for lift-off or if the engines need to be tested, we are not sure.
The MP doesn’t turn right towards the quarantine building as I was half expecting, he carries on straight, but slows down taking a narrower path, driving straight through the swarm of Apaches now on both sides of the Defender together with maintenance engineers and crews checking over their helicopter.
Dan and I look at each other, giving knowing looks; the clock that is ticking down is nearing zero!
Eventually, the Defender breaks through the swarm and we go into more open space but by no means clear space. There is still hardware all around, close by, waiting.
“Where are we going?” Dan asks the MP, who’s driving.
“Colonel Reed is in the Command Tent,” the MP says and points towards a large green camouflaged tent with which Dan and I are very familiar. It is about two hundred meters in front and off to the left on a patch of grass.
“Thank God for that, I thought you were going to say he was in the Air Traffic Control tower for a second,” Dan jokes, but I know the Colonel will always be in the thick of the action just where he likes to be, where he can make and influence strategies and give orders.
The Defender pulls up at the side of the tent and all three of us exit the vehicle. It feels good to have the soft grass underfoot, even with my boots on. And I’m sure I get the slightest smell of freshly cut grass, but maybe I’m imagining it?
We walk back down the side of the tent, which is extremely large even by Colonel Reed's standards and the view we get looking back towards the main airport is staggering. A distance away now in front of us is the mass of helicopters which seem to have overtaken the Terminal 4 area of the airport, away to our left.
Further up on our left and in the distance are the cargo hangars where we were taken into quarantine when we arrived. In the far distance, more or less straight ahead is the massive Terminal 5 building where we just left the others. It looks small from this distance and other building obscure all but the left edge of it. On the right of the tent is the South Runway with more terminal buildings beyond it, together with too many military aeroplanes to count, or even see. The North Runway, not visible from here, will be over from them, with the remaining terminals and buildings. Planes are still taking off and landing from both runways, including big heavy cargo planes and small fast jets that all seem to be using the North Runway, which must be the one they allotted for them. I haven’t seen any of them over this side of the airport.
The noise from all thi
s machinery reverberates all around us and increases and decreases constantly as activity on the runways varies. The Colonel will definitely feel in the middle of the action here, and something tells me that is exactly why this Command Tent is pitched where it is.
The front of the tent is pointed in the direction of the helicopters and has a large double-flapped opening, which is closed. Guarding the opening is one youngish soldier who will be there to stop unexpected ‘guests’ from entering the tent, which obviously doesn’t include us because the guard and the MP exchange quick salutes and then the MP holds one of the flaps open for us to walk straight in.
The inside of the tent is dimmer than outside, but it is still well lit with two rows of long florescent lighting strips running down the middle of the roof of the large tent. Also, running down the middle of the tent are tables that have been set up in a rectangle shape; their tops are filled with computer monitors, two rows of them facing outwards all the way down the tables; there must be at least twenty monitors, ten each side. There are more tables and monitors around the outside perimeter of the tent, these facing inwards and showing various images—some moving and some static. I see aerial reconnaissance photos of the destruction of London and moving drone footage of the same. Whether this is live or recorded footage, I don’t know, and other monitors are showing different maps of London and the wider area, whilst others have text on them that I can’t read from this distance.
There is a hive of activity around the tables of military personnel, all of whom are in uniform. Some are sitting in front of their computer monitors, studying whatever it is beaming at them. They look up from the screens on occasion and feed the information they have discovered to one of their colleagues, or they pick up the nearest phone to relay the information. There are personnel walking around the tent too, between the inner and outer tables, talking to the ones sitting down. They are checking and verifying the information before moving on to gain more, desperately trying to quench their thirst for information and to be the one who takes some vital piece of information to their superiors.
Capital Falling Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 28