Surviving the Fall: How England Died

by Stephen Cross

  Davis took in a deep breath. Time for the finale.

  “We are ordering a full and immediate evacuation of the Facility. All non-critical personnel are to report to exit stations 3, 5, and 7 immediately. Senior staff are required to report to their work’s stations and securely delete all sensitive material. We have executed Protocol Icarus.”

  A heavy and dread silence fell across the room.

  “My God,” whispered the Professor.

  There was a sudden rush to the door, Davis was swept to the side, and he mopped his sweating brow with a handkerchief.

  Chapter 5

  Protocol Icarus was highlighted at the end of each new employee’s induction process. Grace remembered it well and its existence hadn’t surprised her - nothing about the Facility surprised her.

  Security was tantamount. Every policy, regulation and legal construct was enshrined to maintain the security if the Facility at any cost. The overriding policy was not concerned with people breaking in, although numerous precautions were taken against unauthorised personnel, terrorist attacks etc, but mostly concerned with stopping anything from getting out. This applied to people, but mainly to the research. The only way any of the Facility’s work would ever be published to the wider scientific community was through two paranoid gatekeepers; the Facility’s board of directors, and an unknown governmental department that never confirmed nor denied its own existence.

  The reason for this secrecy was that the research at the Facility was, as Grace heard it described in hushed terms, of an indeterminate moral nature, and as such, best operated within a moral vacuum perpetrated through isolation from society.

  Grace had understood the situation and indeed approved of it, as it meant she could compromise her own principles in silence, without the rest of the world, and the people she knew and loved, from being able to pass judgement. But then, after twenty years working the Facility, she didn’t have many friends and loved ones top side anymore, apart from her mother.

  The Facility quickly became the life of its most valued scientists.

  And so, the implementation of Protocol Icarus was like a hammer to her heart.

  It was only at that second she realised how attached she was to her gargantuan underground biological research lab, how much a part of her it had become. The news that the world above was falling apart was upsetting, alarming even, but nothing compared to the cold stark fear she suddenly felt at the removal of the Facility from her life.

  For Protocol Icarus would leave nothing behind.

  Slash and burn.

  Strategic and Tactical Catastrophe Management.

  The countdown would be over four hours. One hour for the Facility’s main systems to shut down and secure themselves. The next two hours was the charging and arming of the numerous small nuclear devices dotted around the complex.

  The last hour was just to be sure that everyone had a chance to get out; although, a few of the statisticians on the department had, as a playful exercise over the years, estimated how long a full evacuation of the Facility would take, and their numbers usually came in higher than the four hours given by Protocol Icarus. This disconnect became a common joke made in the same nervous way people would joke about a plane crash - an event that everyone feared, but never really expected. Still though, that voice at the back of your mind,what if, what if…

  And now what if was here.

  Grace didn’t want to be on the wrong side of the statistics.

  A low key siren began to hum in the background, its monotonous wail piercing enough for one to take notice, but not ear splitting enough to instil too much urgency. Not yet. Grace suspected it would get louder as the hours ticked away.

  A friendly voice announced on the loudspeaker that Protocol Icarus had been implemented, followed by a countdown.

  “Three hours and fifty five minutes.”

  A sick feeling in her stomach, like a hand gripping her insides and squeezing gently.

  She chased after the Professor as he hurried back to the lab. He ignored her calls for him to wait. She caught up with him as he unlocked the lab doors.

  “Professor, did you not hear me?”

  The Professor glanced up. “I heard you, but we have no time to wait.” He flicked on a few machines around him and sat down by his terminal. “What are you doing here? Go and get your things and get out. The queues at the exit stations will be huge within minutes.”

  He was right. But it didn’t feel right to leave him here. He was her friend, after all.

  “Come on Professor, come with me.”

  He shook his head. “I have to wipe all the drives, you understand what needs to be done.”

  “I understand what it says in the book, but I’ve never understood why it’s necessary, the whole place is about to be nuked!”

  “If, for some reason, one of the charges failed to go off, or a single hard drive remained, a particularly industrious person, or nation, may be able to recover some of what we are doing down here. It would be disastrous.”

  “Disastrous? More disastrous than most of the world dying, and you being obliterated by a nuclear explosion?!”

  The Professor turned to face Grace and gave her a sly smile. “You know me, a stickler for rules.”

  “That’s exactly not how I know you.”

  “Please Grace, I’ll be ok. This talking is only holding me up. I will take care of everything here and see you at Exit Station 7 in an hour?”

  The Professor could be a belligerent old bugger, and he had that look in his eyes. She knew, through years of experience, that it was useless arguing with him. The best she could do was let him do what he had to do quickly.

  “Ok, I’d better see you there, or I’ll be coming for you.”

  He gave her a nonchalant wave, his eyes fixated on his terminal.

  She ran out of the lab.

  The usual peaceful corridors of the Facility were no longer peaceful. Gone where the wandering doctors and professors, talking over reports and iPads as they walked from one lab to another. Gone where the smiles and jovial greetings of one professional to another.

  Instead, they ran. Everyone ran. Panic and worry knitted on each face.

  The siren had increased in volume a notch, and with it came urgency.

  Grace found herself running. Her quarters were located only a few minutes from the lab. Even so, she suddenly felt the passing of time like a new sense in her body. A demanding sense that overrode all others. The ever tick tock of the seconds took precedence over everything.

  The lights suddenly switched from their bright day-like glow to a dull orange.

  The Facility was conserving power, shutting down non-necessary systems as it continued its workmanlike stomp towards complete oblivion.

  Chapter 6

  Grace worked her way methodically through her small room, placing items of importance into her suitcase.

  She didn’t have much. She packed her laptop - her personal one with no work related information. She packed her clothes and toiletries. She packed the few photos of her parents. She paused to look at the last photo she had of her mum and dad together, before dad died five years ago from pancreatic cancer. That period had been her longest break from the Facility since she joined. Six months topside helping her mum rebuild her life without her partner of forty years. She nearly hadn’t made it.

  And for what, thought Grace? A lonely life with her daughter living in a hole in the ground doing ‘important’ government work.

  As Grace pushed her laptop’s power pack into her suitcase, she took pause. She realised she was packing for a normal world. For a weekend break.

  Who was to know if there would be any power up above, if she would ever be able to use her laptop again. With 85% of people gone, who was keeping the lights on?

  A spike of nervousness and anxiety shuddered through her being.

  She continued pushing the power pack into her suitcase.

  The eternal optimist.

  Exit station
7 was the nearest to her quarters. It consisted of a large waiting room and gated exit, manned by a soldier, who would conduct a battery of identity and security checks on personnel before they were allowed to exit - checks hopefully dispensed with due to Protocol Icarus.

  Grace was painfully disappointed to find the chain of bureaucracy still wrapped tight around the exit procedure. The lounge was full of nervous people, an angry buzz of communication and demands hanging in the air, while the flustered looking young soldier at the exit gate methodically performed his security checks.

  “The whole place is going to go up in a nuclear blast in a few hours and you want to check my fingerprints?” shouted one angry Doctor.

  The soldier, with a glint of fear in his eye, said, “I’m sorry sir, but I haven’t received any orders to the contrary, we all have to be checked.”

  “You haven’t received any orders to the contrary because there are no open communication channels with the surface, you stupid fucking grunt!”

  Grace looked around for the Professor, but he was nowhere to be seen. She put her case down in a corner of the packed waiting room and went to find the Professor. She bumped into Harry, who was carrying a leather holdall.

  “Grace,” he smiled, a pleasant window on his otherwise worried looking face. “Where are you going? Decided against leaving?”

  “Have you seen his place? They’re still doing all the checks. It’s going to take hours to get out of here.”

  “Is there any other way?”

  “Not that I know off. But I have to find the Professor. He said he’d be here, and maybe he can help.”

  Harry looked over the restless crowd. There was an unsavoury bite to the air. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but I’d rather be here after it happens, if you know what I mean.”

  They both rushed away from the waiting room, in the opposite direction to the crowds, back towards Grace and the Professor’s lab.

  It took them ten minutes or so to get there, pushing through agitated and scared flows of people heading in various directions. The loudspeaker kept countdown, every five minutes,

  “Two hours and fifty minutes”

  …until the end of the world, echoed Grace in her head.

  They reached the lab and Grace put her hand on the closed door. Harry, who was looking through the lab’s small window put his hand on hers, stopping her from going in. He motioned through the window and Grace joined him in peering into the lab.

  “It’s the guy from the other morning, the government spook,” said Grace. “He’s called Taylor.”

  “I remember him,” said Harry.

  Taylor was talking to the obviously agitated Professor, who was waving his arms and shouting. Grace couldn’t hear what was being said, the thick glass and door blocking out most of the sound.

  Taylor stood calmly, regarding the Professor with what seemed to be amusement.

  “Shall we go in?” said Grace.

  Harry shook his head. “I don’t like the look of this. Let’s see what happens.”

  The Professor stopped talking and lowered his head. He shook it slowly and took something out of his pocket. He handed it to Taylor.

  “What’s he giving him?” said Harry.

  “It looks like a flash drive. He said he was wiping all the computers, all our work, so what’s he doing giving a flash drive to that guy?”

  “I’m not sure he wants to…” said Harry.

  Taylor took the flash drive and looked at it. He smiled and put it his suit breast pocket.

  Then, in one fluid movement, too quick for anyone involved to recognise what was happening, never mind intervene, he took out a gun from his inside pocket. Surely it can’t be a gun, thought Grace? Guns were never seen except on the TV, except in films. Certainly not in real life.

  Taylor put the gun against the Professor’s head. The Professor didn’t have time to change his expression before a fountain of deep reds and purples exploded from the back of the Professor’s head, accompanied by a dull flat bang.

  The Professor fell, disappearing from view.

  Grace pulled her hand to her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Harry grabbed her, “Come on!” he shouted.

  They ran down the corridor and into the next open lab and pulled the door shut. They pressed up against the wall and waited, keeping still. The room was dark. Grace breathed hard and fast, blood thumping in her temples, her hands shaking. The image of the Professor being shot in the head replayed in her mind, as if burnt onto her retina, like she had stared at the sun.

  Harry grabbed her hand and she squeezed it tight. She could hear his breathing, also loud and fast.

  “We wait here,” whispered Harry through laboured breaths. “Just five minutes, give him plenty of time to get far away.”

  “Ok,” said Grace, happy to stay there in the dark, away from the now terrible world, at least for the next few minutes.

  Silence, but for her heart.

  Chapter 7

  Grace and Harry shared a few minutes of no words in the dark lab. The siren had increased in volume.

  2 hours and 45 minutes

  The death of the Professor played over and over in her head. She had known him for over twenty years. Had seen him nearly every day. He knew her better than anyone apart from her mum.

  Harry was talking.

  “What?” said Grace.

  “We need to leave,” his voice wavered, he was finding his own troubles in processing what had happened. “We need to get the fuck out of here. There is some dark shit going on down here, and we need to get out.”

  2 hours and 40 minutes

  His eyes stared at her in the low light.

  Harry was right. But first, there was something she needed to do.

  “I have to go back to the lab.”

  “Why?” said Harry. “I don’t see how that can help. We just need to get out of here, sooner rather than later.”

  “It’s ok, you go. But I have to see the Professor. I don’t know why. We were close.”

  Harry walked over to the door of the lab and peered out the glass window up and down the corridor as far as he could. “It looks empty. Let’s go, let’s be quick.”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “I know, but I will.”

  She was glad for the company. “Thanks.”

  As they stepped into the corridor, the noise of the siren became louder. There was shouting somewhere in the near distance. They ran to the lab.

  She opened the door and stepped in. Harry followed. The lights were off. She went to turn them on.

  “Don’t,” said Harry.

  She withdrew her hand. He was right. It wasn’t completely dark anyway - the Professor’s computer was on, its screensaver rolling through images of various complex DNA chains, illuminating the room with changing colourful tones.

  She held her breath and looked to the floor, where the Professor’s body was. At first she saw nothing but a dark hulk, like a heavy sack. Then, as her eyes adjusted, the shape of a body revealed itself. Lying unnaturally, uncomfortably. A dark circle spread from the body’s head. The Professor’s blood.

  She walked over slowly and leaned down beside him. She felt for this heart, just to be sure. No heartbeat, no nothing. No life. The spirit that had given him his spark was gone, evaporated in less than a second through a hole in the back of his head.

  His eyes were open. She closed them.

  “You ok?” said Harry.

  She nodded and rested her hand on the Professor’s. She allowed herself tears, just for a minute.

  “I’m sorry Lloyd,” said Grace quietly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. Take care, wherever you are.”

  The countdown rudely interrupted her.

  “2 hours and 30 minutes.”

  “We should go,” said Harry.

  Grace stood up and straightened her dress. She took one last look around the lab.

  “Ready?” said Harry
.

  “Ready,” said Grace.

  She turned to leave, then paused, her attention taken by a pattern on the Professor’s screen she didn’t recognise.

  The Professor’s screen saver consisted of a series of the DNA helixes of his favourite viruses. She laughed inwardly for a second at the Professor being a man with favourite viruses.

  This helix she was looking at was not one of them, however.

  “Hang on,” said Grace. “I need to check something.”

  She walked over the the screen and wiggled the mouse around. The operating system came back into view.

  “Wait a minute…” she said under her breath.

  “What is it?” Harry joined her by the low light of the terminal.

  “This is Windows.”

  “So?”

  “The Professor hated Windows. He used Linux. Always.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Why would he be on Windows? He said he was coming here to wipe everything, but he’s on a different operating system.”

  She looked at Harry, who said, “Maybe he wasn’t keen on the idea of wiping everything…”

  Grace sat down by the computer hurriedly. “Ok, give me a minute. I want to restart and have a look at what’s on his Linux. I think he was only pretending to clear everything down.”

  They waited as the computer restarted. A purple boot screen appeared, giving the user the option to start up Windows or Linux. She selected Linux. They sat for another minute or so as the operating system loaded up. Anxiety gripped Grace, but a different kind of anxiety from the one she had felt since waking up; this was an exited nervousness. The same as when she was on the brink of a new discovery.

  Once it had loaded, she opened the file system.

  “Let’s look at recent files,” she said, half to herself, half to Harry.