Surviving the Fall: How England Died

by Stephen Cross

  There was number of text documents that had been opened within the last hour.

  She opened the latest one. It was a short email transcript.

  FROM: Professor Angus Ferrera

  TO: Professor David Lloyd

  TOP SECRET

  “Ferrera, he works for Government labs in America,” said Grace. “I met him a year or two ago. He was an arsehole, didn’t speak a word to me.”

  She continued to read the transcript.

  Well David, looks like the experiment is well and truly fucked. I suggest you get your nearest and dearest and go hide. Forever. Adios.

  Grace stared at the screen in silence for a minute.

  She tried to open other recent documents, but they had all been deleted, and their innocuous titles, mainly dates, did little to betray their contents.

  “What the hell does that mean?” said Harry.

  Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. But he wanted me to find it.”

  “The experiment, you don’t think it’s anything to do with what’s going on?”

  “Of course not,” said Grace.

  “You sure? Come on. Why was Taylor here, what was on the flash drive? Why the helix clues?”

  Grace turned sharply to Harry and was about to open her mouth to shout, but she stopped herself. She was feeling emotional, suggesting cognitive dissonance; the evidence was not aligning with her beliefs.

  She took a few deep breaths. “I don’t know, Harry. I don’t know what this means. And neither do you.”

  “No I don’t, but it doesn’t look good.”

  “No. But we don’t have all the evidence. We need to find that flash drive.”

  Harry sat in the chair next to Grace and let out a heavy breath. “You know what that means?”

  “I do,” said Grace. “We need to find Taylor.”

  “You think he’s just going to hand it over?”

  “No. But he killed the Professor remember. I would say all is fair.”

  “Christ,” said Harry. “What a day.”

  Chapter 8

  They ran in the low light of the corridors, the sirens now making conversation difficult. The corridors echoed with the heavy and quick steps of running employees - hurrying to collect their belongings; to clear down their confidential research; to escape.

  Grace and Harry passed two exit stations as they made their way towards the administrative wing, as good a place as any to start their search for Taylor.

  The exit stations where bulging to breaking point. Shouts of anger bubbled from the doors, along with crowds of people carrying holdalls, suitcases, and plastic carriers stuffed with files and clothes.

  “How long until one of those soldiers gets it?” said Harry through quick breaths.

  They passed into the administrative wing. It was calmer. Still the same sirens of course, but less human traffic. And those that were there moved quietly and without panic. Men and women in suits carrying briefcases and little else.

  The administrative wing was a sprawling mass of around fifty or so offices. To search each one would be impossible.

  “Two hours and twenty minutes.”

  “I know where Davis’ office is, we can start there,” said Grace.

  She had been to the Secretary's office once, with the Professor, a few years ago. The Professor had been receiving a commendation for work on self replicating intrusive DNA strands.

  “Here it is,” said Grace opening the door quietly and peering in. It was empty.

  “We should be careful,” said Harry.

  “What is he going to do, fire us?”

  “I was thinking more shoot us,” said Harry looking around the empty office.

  Grace paused. Harry was right. She closed the door behind them. “Let’s be quick then. Now what are we looking for?”

  “Who knows. Let’s just look.”

  It was a large room, with oak wood panelling completely out of place in the otherwise clinical Facility. A little piece of Westminster hundreds of metres under the ground. They began digging through the various drawers and cupboards.

  “I don’t see any laptop, do you?” said Harry.

  Grace shook her head. So far all she had found where empty drawers, stationary, photos of Davis with politicians, and in one drawer a large weathered paper folder.

  Grace pulled out the folder and scanned through the documents inside.

  “Requisition, budgets, nothing that I can make any sense of immediately,” she said.

  “Put them in here,” Harry passed over his backpack. Grace tucked the papers in and passed it back to Harry.

  “There’s nothing about Taylor,” said Grace.

  “I didn’t think there would be. What now, he could be anywhere?”

  Grace walked over to the window and peered through the blinds, moving them as little as she could. Two women in pencil skirts and white shirts walked passed dragging wheeled suitcases behind them. They talked nonchalantly, ambling gently as if on their way to catch a plane, not escape an underground lab about to go nuclear.

  “What looks strange to you about here?” said Grace.

  Harry joined her and peered out the blinds.

  “Well, they all seem pretty relaxed as if…”

  They looked at each other, a sudden joint realisation. Grace vocalised it. “The Admin wing has its own exit station.”

  “Of course,” said Harry. “The government employees aren’t going to mingle with us plebs when it comes to escape time.”

  “They’ve always used the normal exit station before though,” said Grace. Only two months ago she had shared the elevator with Davis. A very auspicious moment.

  “Of course they have, the sneaky bastards,” said Harry, a smirk on his face. “They don’t want to give the game away.”

  “Take off your lab coat,” said Grace, taking her own off. Harry did so and they stowed the white coats in one of Davis’ empty wardrobes.

  He was wearing a shirt, a good pair of clean Levis, and trainers.

  “I guess that will do,” said Grace, looking at the trainers. “I’m sure some of these guys dress down at times.”

  Grace herself was wearing a plain blue dress, with flat shoes. Perfectly smart.

  Checking that no-one was approaching the office, they stepped out into the corridor and set off in the same direction as the two woman.

  They soon found themselves in a flow of administrative staff as they walked deeper into the admin wing.

  Ten minutes of walking and the crowd became thicker. Not as bad as it had been back in the labs, but enough to cause Grace worry. Her and Harry kept their heads down, not wanting to be recognised.

  “Up ahead,” whispered Harry, “look.”

  Grace craned her neck past the crowd in front of her and saw a large set of double doors. They soon filtered through the doors into a large cavernous room, some sort of conference hall. It was lit brightly, in contrast to the dim glow in the rest of the Facility, and buzzed with conversation and agitation.

  Eight queues started halfway down the hall, and led towards the end of the hall where the wall had lifted to reveal eight large elevator doors.

  “One hour and fifty five minutes.”

  “Plenty of time,” said Grace, speaking freely. All eyes were focused on the lifts - she didn’t think anyone cared who her and Harry were anymore.

  “What now?” said Harry.

  “We have to find Taylor.”

  “I imagine he’s long gone.”

  “Even so, let’s look.”

  They walked slowly around the edge of the crowd trying to be inconspicuous in their scanning of the queues.

  Harry put his hand on Grace’s shoulder. “Look, over there.”

  In the corner a group of men stood, talking amongst themselves, looking clam, relaxed. Taylor was among them.

  “We can’t do anything here,” said Grace. She motioned to the soldiers standing by the elevator doors. “We’ll be shot within seconds.”

  Withi
n seconds, however, their problem was solved. But another one began.

  Chapter 9

  At first it was one scream. Ear splitting and coarse. It took a few seconds for Grace to realise it was a man screaming. The sound was so piercing, so visceral, that it immediately struck cold fear into her.

  Within seconds, more screams followed, like a wave, increasing in volume, spreading like fire through the large hall. A sudden surge of movement pushed against Grace and Harry, away from the door of the hall towards the elevators.

  “What’s happening?” shouted Grace.

  “I don’t know,” sad Harry, frantically looking around.

  Grace grabbed Harry’s hand, suddenly accurately aware that she didn’t want to lose sight of him.

  “This way,” shouted Harry. He wrapped his arms arm Grace, in a loose bear hug, and pushed through the crowd, towards the wall, towards Taylor.

  They were bumped and pushed by the mob. Harry and Grace fought hard to keep their trajectory steady, and away from the drag towards the elevators and the building sardine crush.

  A monetary break in the crowd offered Grace a window of sight to the doors of the hall.

  A man in a suit stood there. His shirt was covered in deep red blood. His face was also covered in blood, dripping in thick rivulets from his open mouth. His lips curled back, like a rabid dog. The right side of his head was missing skin. His skull was plainly visible, dabbed in globs of thick purplish material.

  The man opened his mouth and let out a moan - a huge, sky-filling moan that silenced the hall for a few deathly seconds, before the screams began again, louder, more acute, more desperate.

  The man, the zombie, hissed and slowly lurched towards the crowd. It latched onto a middle-aged woman and tore into the flesh at the back of her neck. Blood spurted high into the air.

  Grace closed her eyes and held in a scream. Harry ploughed through the crowd, eventually reaching the wall.

  Grace breathed fast. She felt nauseous and her legs shook.

  “What is it, are you ok?” said Harry.

  She nodded, trying to catch her breath. She managed to say, “Did you see that?”

  Harry shook his head. “Saw what?”

  “The man, the zombie.”

  “Here?”

  She nodded frantically. “Here.”

  They were pinned against the wall, bodies and panic encasing them in a pulsating wall of flesh.

  Grace looked towards the elevators. It was now the only way out.

  “We have to get in the elevators,” she shouted.

  Harry wrapped his arms around her again and set off towards them, pushing, shouting his way through. Grace thought she even saw him snarling. She felt him breathe, felt his heart beat fast, felt his muscles strain as he fought his way through the crowd. It was a battle for life.

  An old woman, Grace recognised her as one of the cleaners, fell as Harry barged passed her. She disappeared into the forest of entangled limbs below.

  They reached the elevator door. It was full.

  Harry and Grace pushed through, displacing a number of older and weaker admin staff. Harry received a punch, but continued his drive through. They needed to get away from the door, or they would be caught in a continuous fight to hold their place.

  They reached the middle of the elevator. Grace, who was facing over Harry’s shoulder, looked back to the door. Row after row of heads trying to get in, trying to live.

  The lift doors tried to close, but met resistance, and opened again.

  A few feet away from Grace, just outside the lift, blood spurted high into the air. A guttural scream accompanied the sight. Panic spread through the lift like a raucous beast, every member of the lift trapped, staring at the new arrival, a zombie, only feet away.

  “Override, dammit, the door override!” A lonely, but loud shout from the back of the lift.

  Grace realised this voice had been shouting over and over since she had entered the lift, but it had been lost in the other voices, until now, until the voices had stopped and panic had taken over.

  Whoever was at the lift controls seemed to understand, for suddenly the lift doors closed, and did so with a vicious authority. They stopped for nothing, but ran across feet, legs and faces, sheering skin from those on the boundary.

  They shut with a majestic clang, and accompanying yells of agony from a few by the door. The inside of the doors were covered in thick rorschach patterns of blood.

  “My hand,” shouted one man, “my fucking hand!”

  But no-one cared because the zombie was outside and the doors were closed.

  The elevator shuddered and whining electric motors reverberated through the metal walls. An expectant silence settled on the occupants, joined in panic, fear, and anticipation.

  The sound of creaking metal cables came from above and the lift began to slowly ascend.

  “There’s too many of us,” whispered Harry. They were still crushed together in the middle of the elevator. The breath and sweat of the crowd was raising the temperature. Perspiration broke on Grace’s back and forehead.

  The elevator moved, but slowly. There was a long way to go.

  Grace shifted and Harry loosened his grip on her as much as he could. She looked up at him, and him down at her. They smiled, but just for a second.

  The elevator shook and a high pitched whipping sound rattled in the shaft above. They all lurched to the left with a chorus of screams.

  “There are too many people,” said a powerful voice from the back. The voice was deep, and it brought silence to the crowd.

  “There are too many people, we need to lighten the load,” repeated the voice.

  Grace looked for source of the voice.

  Taylor.

  He was in the corner of the elevator, standing straight, his manner relaxed and calm, his expression imperceptible.

  All eyes were on him.

  “If we don’t lighten the load, then we are all going to die, and rather soon.”

  Silence settled over the occupants in the elevator. As if to underline what the man, Taylor, had just said, a loud and pained creak vibrated through the elevator. It swayed gently.

  “The longer we refuse to take action, the closer we all are to plunging to our deaths.”

  The elevator had stopped rising.

  A few muffled sobs were heard. Fear spread quickly like a white flash through Grace’s body. Harry’s heart, pressed against hers, thumped strongly. The elevator, a few seconds ago their sanctuary, now felt like a tomb. The bodies pushing around her felt like many flesh vices slowly squeezing the life from her.

  Silence. The weighing up of the meaning of Taylor’s words.

  Grace looked up, trying to catch Harry’s eye, but instead her attention was drawn to the ceiling.

  What looked like a service hatch.

  “What about that,” she said, tying to point, but unable to raise her arms, pinned by the weight of the crowd. “Look above, the hatch, maybe we can get out there,” she shouted.

  There was a gentle commotion in the elevator as the others looked up.

  “She’s right.”

  “Let’s use the hatch.”

  Taylor interrupted the brief celebration. “And then what, we sit on the roof?”

  Grace felt anger overcome her fear. It was if he wanted to see people die.

  “There should be a ladder,” said Harry. “There’s bound to be some sort of service ladder.”

  More voices joined in agreement.

  Grace and Harry were below the service hatch. Harry turned to the man behind. “Climb up on my back, open the hatch.”

  “I don’t know if I-”

  “Do it,” said Harry. A number of agitated voices cajoled the man into doing as Harry had asked.

  The man, slight and in a suit too large for him, clambered clumsily onto Harry’s shoulders, helped on by many a pushing hand. The man balanced on his knees and reached up to undo the simple catch before opening the hatch. After a few tries, the
hatch went up and over, and clanged to rest on the elevator’s roof.

  A draft of cool air blew in, and Grace felt immediate relief. Not only physical; a weight left her heart. The tyranny of the metal coffin had been broken.

  “Can you pull yourself up,” shouted Harry.

  “I’ll try.” He pulled until his head and shoulders were through the hatch.

  “What do you see,” shouted Harry, “any ladders?”

  “Yes, there’s a ladder. It looks like it goes the whole way up.”

  Sighs of relief echoed throughout the elevator. A few nervous laughs.

  “Thank God,” said a voice from somewhere behind Grace.

  The man pulled himself up onto the ceiling of the elevator. Metallic footsteps echoed from above. He called down. “The cable has snapped, only partway through though.”

  “Will it hold?” shouted someone behind Harry.

  “I think so. I can hear engines whirring, but nothing’s moving.”

  “One at a time everyone,” said Harry, “then help the next person up before you get the ladder.”

  “What about you?” said Grace to Harry, quietly.

  “I’m ok. You go next.”

  Grace shook her head. “No, I got you into this, I’m staying here to help.” She looked at Harry, giving a look she hoped indicated there was to be no discussion. It worked.

  “Ok, come on!” said Harry.

  The crowd came alive again as people jostled for position, trying to get closer to the hatch.

  “One at a time,” shouted someone.

  “Stop pushing.”

  “You’re making it swing.”

  A woman clambered up on Harry’s back, and with the help of those below and the man above, she was soon onto the roof.

  Another woman followed, and then a young man in a technician’s uniform. The crowd waited with a nervous patience. Thank God, thought Grace.

  It was after six people had got up and out that everything changed.

  It started with a panicked voice from the corner of the elevator. “Oh my god, let me through, get me out of here! It’s one of them!”