by Tim Flanagan
The double doors of the entrance were already open, permanently wedged apart by an overturned chair. Beyond the doors they could see furniture scattered across the floor of the reception area. Other survivors, possibly some of Coldred's salvaging teams, had already visited the hospital and taken what they wanted, but Steven hoped there would still be enough supplies for them to help Georgia. Most of the main salvaging had probably been concentrated on the bigger hospitals where supplies were greatest.
Tracker jumped over the chair and manoeuvred a wheelchair to the doors for Steven to put Georgia in.
They wheeled her across the reception area and through a pair of swing doors into a corridor with rooms on either side. Everything was in darkness, but the whiteness of the walls reflected some of the moon light enabling them to see. The rubber wheels of the chair squeaked on the vinyl polished floor. They moved quietly but quickly, always cautious, not of the creatures, but of other human beings. The first room looked like an office. Through the open door they could see a desk, the drawers left open and paperwork scattered casually on the floor. Steven pushed Georgia on towards the next room. This one appeared more clinical, and was probably used as a consulting room. A couch was pushed against one wall, half covered by a privacy curtain. Metal hooks had been torn from the railing and were scattered across the floor. Another desk and chair were turned on their sides, next to a computer monitor, the grey screen punctuated by a black hole in the centre. A metal trolley with glass shelves and drawers was wedged in the corner, beneath a ceramic sink. Tracker stepped cautiously over the debris on the floor towards the trolley while Steven wheeled the chair in and lifted Georgia onto the couch.
'There's not much left,' muttered Tracker from the corner. He pulled out some of the drawers from the trolley and was rapidly moving things around as he tried to find some dressings they could put on Georgia's wound.
'Bring everything over. I'll clean and dress the wound while you check the other rooms in this corridor. Don’t go too far,' said Steven. 'We need to stay together as much as possible.
Steven began removing Georgia's blood soaked clothing then wrapped her in as many blankets and sheets as he could find beneath the couch. He then ripped a blanket into two strips, ready to use as extra bandages, tore the end off a saline sachet with his teeth and allowed the clear liquid to run through Georgia's wound. Decayed morsels of food that had been dislodged from the creature's teeth flushed out of Georgia's arm until the soft red flesh of the wound appeared clean. A chunk of flesh the size of Steven's fist was missing from Georgia's upper arm. At the base of the wound he could see thin white tendons stretched beneath the remains of muscle as well as the smooth white surface of a bone. Picking up the white gauze that Tracker had found, he wound a bandage around her arm. He then unpicked the shoelace that was tied beneath Georgia's armpit and let the blood flow freely back into the area. Once again he checked the pulse in Georgia's neck. As the blood began to return to the wound he noticed a dark patch soaking through the centre of the dressing he had just put on. Quickly he put more gauze over the top of the dressing and wound more bandage tightly around it. Using the discarded privacy curtain, he looped it over the metal rail above the couch then tied it in a sling to support Georgia's arm so that it was higher than her body. He waited once again to see if the blood began to soak through, but it remained clear.
Whilst he waited for Tracker to return, Steven moved around the room, lifting the desk and chairs back up off the floor. Most of the debris on the floor was paperwork, but there were other items which he thought might be useful. He placed a pair of dressing scissors, a mug, a small bunch of keys and any more dressings onto the desk.
Steven suddenly stood motionless in the centre of the room. He thought he heard a repetitive squeaking noise coming from the corridor outside the consulting room. He was relieved to see Tracker enter the room, together with a portable bed that was stacked with towels, blankets and boxes of various medical supplies.
'On the whole it looks like this place has been left untouched,' reported Tracker. 'Some chaos and destruction, but most medical supplies are still here. Even found a snack dispenser at the end of the corridor. Someone had already put a fire extinguisher through the glass, but I picked up a few chocolate bars, crisps and drinks from the bottom. How is she?'
'Very weak,' Steven replied. 'I don’t know how long the antibiotics will stay in our system before we need to take more. The bacteria from the creature could still kill her if the level of antibiotics in Georgia's blood stream drops too low.'
24. The Everlasting Night
It was obvious that the hospital was to become their home for the foreseeable future. Steven and Tracker methodically searched along each corridor, checking every room for items that may be useful for their survival as well as medical essentials to help Georgia.
The morning after they had arrived, Steven had discovered a dead body that had been abandoned in the operating theatre. A monitor was still attached to its finger, but after a long period of inactivity it had automatically switched off, thinking it had been left idle. Steven pressed a button and the screen lit up a blue display panel. A line that he presumed would normally show the pulse rate, moved from one side of the machine to the other, accompanied by a high pitch squeal, confirming that the man lying on the operating trolley was definitely dead. Although the power was down, the heart monitor was obviously running from its own internal battery. Steven examined the body closely. Coming out from a blood vessel within his forearm was a clear tube that linked him to a deflated bag that had long since been drained of its contents. The man no longer needed the equipment so Steven released him from it. He then collected some full bags of fluid from one of the cupboards as well as some attachments and took it back to where Tracker was sitting with Georgia.
Steven gently inserted Georgia's finger into the heart monitor and switched it on. The flat line he had seen before now showed an occasional jump that corresponded with Georgia's heart beat. More cautiously he approached her uninjured arm. He had learnt from looking at the attachments on the dead man, how he needed to link Georgia to a saline bag. Before inserting the needle he mentally double checked that he had everything as well as running through how each part was to be fitted. Tracker looked at Steven with some doubt and uncertainty, but he knew that if Georgia was to survive, she would need fluids to help her regain strength. He put a strap around her arm so that the vein in the crease of her elbow began to swell with blood. Steven, his hand shaking slightly, pressed the needle against her skin. It slid in effortlessly. As it went in he expected a sudden gush of blood to come out, but nothing happened. He breathed a sigh of relief then attached the line that would take the overhanging fluid from the bag into Georgia's body. Steven taped everything in place so that it wouldn’t move, whilst Tracker released the strap allowing the blood to flow freely back into Georgia's arm. Steven hoped that this would be the first and only time he would have to do anything like that. But, in this new world where everyone would have to adapt to survive, he suspected it wouldn’t be.
Together with an injection of Penicillin and Morphine in her thigh, Georgia slowly seemed to look more alive, even though she remained in her sleep-like state.
As Steven sat beside Georgia, he went over what Coldred had said to him at the bank.
He knew that Coldred had a supply of antibiotics; he had said as much. That supply was probably being kept securely at his headquarters within the American Embassy. But, that would be too difficult and dangerous to break into. It would be heavily guarded by Coldred's armed and suspicious community. When we were in the elevator, that other guy said he saw some letters at the bottom of his cereal bowl, Steven heard Coldred's voice clearly in his head, you should have listened to him and done some research. It's actually the name of my research facility.
'We need to find Coldred's facility,' Steven said aloud. ‘There might be a supply of antibiotics there. He probably gave them to his staff while they were working on the bacte
ria.’ He thought back to the morning he had met Coldred in the elevator inside MI6. He remembered Davison from Counter Terrorism entering the lift and telling Steven about a word he had seen in his cereal bowl. But he had dismissed it as another joke at Steven's expense and with everything that had gone on since then, he had completely forgotten what the word had been.
'Do you know where it is?' Tracker asked.
'No, but if I can get to my desk in MI6 we might be able to find out.'
'But, hasn’t Coldred got another community based inside MI6?'
'Yes, we may have to wait until they move out of London. The radio broadcast said that they were moving in forty-eight hours. That was when we left Audley End, which would mean tomorrow morning they would be moving out.'
'What about Georgia? Can she wait if we can't do anything until tomorrow?'
'I hope so,' replied Steven. 'Even though we can't get into MI6 until Coldred's community has left, there are still other things we need to do today. I'm uncomfortable about leaving Georgia at the moment, but I think we're going to have to.'
'I've been thinking the same; with no weapons and so little food we are vulnerable so long as we stay here. What did you have in mind?'
'How do you feel about taking a trip back to the bank?'
'Are you sure about that?'
'Yes. If we can retrieve the cars from outside we will have supplies and weapons to survive. That will give us the time we need to wait until MI6 becomes vacant,' said Steven.
'What about Annie, Shirley and the others?'
'There's no way we can get inside. We would just be captured again and killed.'
'We could wait until they begin to move everyone from the bank,' said Tracker.
'It's too risky. They will be moving in a convoy of cars and we wouldn't know which one they were in. Coldred will be keeping a careful eye on them, just in case they start talking to the other survivors.'
That afternoon, Steven checked Georgia's saline drip was full before grabbing anything they could find to use as a weapon. Armed with a kitchen knife and saucepan, Steven and Tracker locked the consulting room door, securing Georgia inside, then ventured out to the blood smeared car they had escaped in the previous night.
The road from Greenwich looked like every road they had been on over the last few days - littered with more abandoned cars. Along the centre of some of the roads was a cleared path where others had been before them. They turned onto London Bridge and crossed the Thames. Before the bank came into view, Tracker turned the car into a side street, then they continued on foot, staying off the main roads and always cautiously looking out for cars patrolling the area. But, the roads were silent.
They crept up Change Alley, a pedestrian arcade of shops that provided them with safety and cover so that their progress went unseen. From beneath the stone archway at the end of the alley that joined onto Cornhill, they could see the back of the Royal Exchange where they had left their cars. Further along and to the left, they knew that the Bank of England was waiting, but they didn’t intend going down that far. After carefully checking for any guards, they ran across the road. They could see the two Range Rovers tucked up next to the shop fronts, between abandoned or crashed cars. Trent's snow-plough, which had been left there too, was now gone.
They approached a bronze statue of a woman with two children. Tracker reached his hand up and placed it into a deep crevice beneath the lady's armpit and pulled out two sets of keys. For safety they had hidden the car keys before they entered the bank the previous day.
Tracker looked over to the gold coloured Range Rover that Steven and Georgia had been travelling in. Wedged beneath the windscreen wiper was a white piece of paper flapping gently in the breeze. They waited for a while, just to see if anyone had seen them, before moving towards their cars.
Steven pulled the paper from the windscreen.
'I of W?' said Tracker, reading over Steven's shoulder.
'Isle of Wight,' explained Steven. 'We're too late. The community's already left. Trent must have put it here when he came back to collect his snow-plough. Coldred's moving everyone to the Isle of Wight.'
'We could follow. A convoy that size will be slow to move, we could easily catch up.'
'No. Georgia needs us. We need to find more antibiotics. Once we have some protection from the creatures, we can search for Annie and the others.'
They drove back together along the same route they had come and arrived back at the hospital as the sun began to fall. They took some food and guns into the building and unlocked the consulting room door. Inside Georgia was still lying on the couch, but her eyes flickered open at the sound of the door opening and turned towards them as they entered.
Steven smiled, relieved to see her awake.
By night, the screams of the creatures hounded their sleep; their hunt for food was becoming a harder and more desperate task. Steven had continued to make mental notes of the time the creatures began their nightly hunt, noticing that it was getting earlier and earlier with each passing day. He had also noticed that the time the creatures went back into their nests in the mornings had also begun to get later. He realised it wouldn’t be long before the creatures' adaptation to sunlight was complete and they would be able to hunt during the day as well. By then, night would merge continuously into day. The few human survivors that remained would become even more vulnerable and the terrors of the night would never end. Steven knew it was a race against time before their freedom to move about during the day without the threat of attack would end. It also wouldn’t be long before the antibiotics in their blood stream filtered out leaving them vulnerable to infection and attacks from the alien creatures the same as everyone else.
They needed to find a supply of antibiotics, and time was running out.
25. Return to MI6
Steven looked out from the small window in the consulting room. He scanned the dull morning sky watching the bat-shaped silhouettes dance across it and waited until they disappeared for the day. Leaving Georgia armed, but locked inside the room at the hospital, Steven and Tracker got into one of the Land Rovers and began making their way along the Thames towards the distinctive MI6 building. They parked along the street, out of sight of the building, still being cautious just in case one of Coldred's community was still resident inside. They waited and watched the roads for any signs of movement, but nothing happened.
Silently, they unpacked everything they needed into two large hold-alls and began walking towards the front of the building. The reinforced green glass windows reflected the cloudy sky. Fractured pieces of the white stone from the outside of the building had become dislodged and were now scattered around the base. It appeared dead and redundant. Small drops of rain began to fall onto the pavement in front of their feet as they walked up the steps towards the entrance. With weapon in hand, Tracker pulled at the front door, but the electronic hinge was resistant and fixed in one position. Neither of them had thought that entering MI6 was going to be easy, so had come prepared. Steven took a screwdriver from his pocket and removed a metal panel from the wall beside the door. The panel housed the security card scanner that would normally open the door as soon as an employees card had passed over the reader. Steven raised the back of his jacket over his head and shoulder to shield the electronics from the rain. Whilst Steven sifted through the numerous coloured wires that were attached to the back of the key panel and card reader, Tracker removed a car battery from one of the hold-alls and attached two leads to it. Steven had now isolated a small transformer which fed power from the main circuit within the building to the panel. Using a pair of wire cutters he had acquired from the hospital operating theatre, he sliced through the two inputting wires. Tracker then clamped the other ends of his leads to the bare transformer wires, hoping there would be sufficient power to run the card reader, as well as the security door.
The panel flickered to life with a gentle crackle of electricity.
The card reader, a blank plastic tile abov
e the keypad, illuminated in a flickering blue light. Steven quickly placed his security card over the reader. A small red light at the side of the panel changed to green and a heavy click came from somewhere around the door frame as the hinge disengaged. Tracker pulled at the door. It moved slightly, but the car battery couldn’t provide enough power to open it automatically. He pulled harder, managing to resist the pressure in the hydraulic hinge long enough to nudge some of the fallen brickwork into the gap and prop it open. The clouds above the building were getting darker all the time. The rain became heavier until it was drumming rhythms on the tops of cars. Steven removed his card, the light turned to amber, followed by red and the door frame clicked repeatedly as it attempted to lock back into place. Tracker removed the leads, picked up the battery and followed Steven as he squeezed through the gap.
The atrium was empty. Not just of humans, but of furniture. Every chair and sofa had been moved from this area. Steven presumed the community that had been here would have been organised in a similar fashion to the one at the Bank of England. The chairs had probably been taken away to use in an accommodation room that was deeper inside the building where it would be warmer and more protected.
'What's that smell?' said Tracker, as he put his hand over his mouth. The air within the atrium was putrid and sharp like rotten eggs. Tracker coughed as the smell hit the back of his throat, stinging it and making him choke. There even seemed to be a yellow foggy haze that drifted over the floor and swirled in dancing circles as Steven and Tracker's feet disturbed it.
'We need to take the stairs up to the seventh floor,' instructed Steven, his voice muffled by his hand across his mouth. He looked over at the glass elevator where he had first met Coldred. It now hung helplessly within its dark shaft, useless without electricity. Steven pushed against a door. Beyond it was a series of steps that ascended up a flight, before turning on themselves and continuing up to the next floor. Tracker quietly followed, his gun sweeping round every corner he could see, just in case anyone, or anything, was hiding. Now that they were out of the atrium, the air appeared to be cleaner. They continued in silence, cautiously listening at each door on every level they completed, checking to make sure that they were alone. The only noise they heard was the constant rain strumming against the glass side of the building that encased the staircase. In the distance a rumble of thunder crackled within the clouds. Eventually, they took the final steps to the seventh floor and accessed a corridor. At the far end was the door that was all too familiar to Steven. It was the door to the department he worked for - the UFA.