Down: Trilogy Box Set

by Glenn Cooper

  Police and army units were responding to a “series of incidents” as the government was characterizing the evolving situation, but there was a clamor, rapidly approaching hysteria, for answers. Farmer was all too willing to go before the cameras from the stoop of his bed-sit in Lewisham and from this soap box he was challenging the authorities to come clean.

  “Farmer says he knows you,” Ben said.

  “I remember him,” Emily said. “We talked a few times on the telephone. He was bright but on the fringe.” She shook her head then continued, “Well, maybe he was more clever than me.”

  “Do you want to see his article?”

  “I don’t have the strength for it at the moment.”

  “He says he spoke to your father.”

  “Christ. I need to call my parents and let them know we’re safe. They must be frantic.”

  “Can she use your phone?” John asked.

  Ben passed it over and she had a brief, tearful chat with her mother. Emily told her that Arabel, Sam, and Bess were all in good health and that arrangements were being made to fly them to Edinburgh. She’d be up when she could but she had work to do and yes, it had everything to do with the problems they were watching on TV.

  “I didn’t know what I could tell her,” Emily said, handing the phone back.

  “I’m afraid I have no advice,” Ben said. “The prime minister will have to make a statement soon but not before the Cobra meeting.”

  Ben shook his head at the list of texts accumulated in the last few minutes.

  “What?” John asked.

  “One of the missing boys from the school in Sevenoaks is the son of the Secretary of State for Defense, Jeremy Slaine. He’ll be in attendance at the Cobra meeting.”

  John let out a weary, “Wonderful.”

  With the landing pad at Whitehall in sight, Ben’s phone rang. “My wife,” he muttered. “No, I won’t be able to return home,” he said to her. “I’m just about to meet with the prime minister. Did you get the girls from school? Good. Keep them inside and lock the doors. I’ll be home when I can. Yes, I know. I’m sorry. I’ll ring you back in an hour or so.” When he finished he said, “In times of crisis, I always seem to be placing job over family. Not my finest moment.”

  When they entered the crowded Cabinet Office Briefing Room A at Whitehall John saw people wrinkling their noses the way he had sniffed at Hellers. It dawned on him that after a month without a good wash, he and Emily probably smelled as rank as the dead. Ben had briefed them that the entire cabinet was going to be in attendance along with a host of military, police, and civilian advisors. The front of the room displayed video feeds of the main TV channels and CCTV footage from around London. The PM’s principal private secretary scanned the conference room and picked up a telephone. “Tell him we’re ready,” he announced.

  When Prime Minister Peter Lester entered he went straight for John and Emily, insisting they remain seated.

  “We’re so grateful you made it home safely,” he said, doing an excellent job of appearing to ignore their aroma and grime. “It’s good of you to come here directly from your ordeal. Would you like something to eat or drink?”

  They both said “coffee, please” simultaneously which briefly lifted the pall in the room. Everyone chuckled except for Jeremy Slaine, the secretary of state for defense, who looked as if his head might explode from incandescent rage.

  The PM took his place at the head of the table and pointed at Ben. “Mr. Wellington, I believe you’re in the best position to brief us on what happened this morning at Dartford. And by the way, in George Lawrence’s absence I’ve made you acting DG of MI5.” He offered a terse congratulations but Ben swallowed hard at the news and looked shaken.

  Ben began with a bald recitation of the facts. The planned MAAC restart had occurred at 10 a.m. and after the collider reached full power, the automatic shutdown mechanism had seemingly kicked in within the planned few nanoseconds. He couldn’t be sure of the timing because the control-room personnel had vanished. The missing personnel included a number of VIP observers, namely the UK energy secretary, Karen Smithwick, the US energy secretary, Leroy Bitterman, George Lawrence, head of MI5, Campbell Bates, the director of the FBI, Anthony Trotter, the assistant chief of MI6 and acting head of the MAAC, and some twenty MAAC staff members including Matthew Coppens, the acting head of the Hercules Project, Henry Quint, the former director of MAAC, David Laurent, a senior scientist, and Stuart Binford, the lab’s head of public relations. In addition three MI5 agents guarding the control room were caught up.

  The tally on returnees was a happier story but not without tragedy. Of the eight civilians who had disappeared a month earlier from an estate at South Ockendon, Martin Crandall, Tony Krause, and Tracy Wiggins had survived and were receiving medical evaluations. Four members of the same family of builders had all perished. And one woman, Alice Hart, a council electrical inspector incredibly had elected to stay behind in the other world.

  Of the Dartford victims, he was pleased to report that all had been rescued. Emily’s sister Arabel, her two children, and Delia May, an MI5 analyst, were also in a reasonable state of health receiving medical attention.

  Two of the rescuers, Emily and John, were before the committee. Trevor Jones had insisted on accompanying Arabel Loughty and her children to Edinburgh. An MI5 jet was standing by to transport them from Stanstead when they were released from medical care. And lastly, Brian Kilmeade, the medieval weapons expert, who by all accounts had acted with exemplary skill and heroism, had also made the incredible decision to remain behind.

  Ben then turned to the current and evolving crisis. He apologized for the lack of details but promised to update the committee in a few hours when more would be known. As far as he had been made aware, an entire class of Year Ten boys had disappeared from their dormitory at the Belmeade School in Sevenoaks and an undetermined number of souls were missing from the town centre in Leatherhead and a housing estate in Upminster. A large number of aliens, or Hellers as they were being called, were rampaging through Leatherhead with smaller numbers at Sevenoaks and Upminster.

  “And finally …” Ben said.

  Jeremy Slaine hit the table with his fist and interrupted him. “I can no longer sit in silence,” he fumed. “My son, Angus, is one of the boys who’s gone missing. Are you aware of that?”

  “I am, sir,” Ben said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Sorry won’t cut it, will it? What I cannot understand and what I find utterly incomprehensible is that the majority of this cabinet was kept in the dark about this affair until yesterday.” He gave the prime minister a withering look and said, “Peter, that was inexcusable. If we were not in the midst of a crisis I would resign immediately.”

  “I do apologize, Jeremy,” Lester said. “I take full responsibility for the information blackout. We desperately wanted to contain the story as a matter of public safety. We wanted to avoid panic at all costs and were cautiously optimistic we could contain this. We were wrong. I assure you, we will do everything possible to retrieve your son and his classmates.”

  “I believe it was the height of irresponsibility not to mothball MAAC at the first sign of trouble,” Slaine said. “We must now reap what you have sown.”

  “With twenty-twenty hindsight, I might have come to the same conclusion,” the prime minister said. “However, brave people, like Dr. Loughty and Mr. Camp, risked their lives to save innocent parties, and we did not wish to abandon them.”

  The Home Secretary, Margaret Beechwood, in an obvious attempt to diffuse the awkward row, said, “Mr. Wellington, you were just about to conclude your remarks, I believe.”

  “Yes, Madam Secretary,” Ben said. “I was saying that there was one more item to report, in some respects the most extraordinary in a sea of extraordinary events. There was one more individual who arrived here with our people at Dartford. He is someone known to all of us, a former monarch of England. We have in our custody King Henry the Eighth.”


  The room erupted with the clamor of a dozen voices and the prime minister had to raise his hands and ask for quiet.

  “I’ve been aware of this for only an hour or so,” the prime minister said. “Suffice it to say it adds a rather bizarre and urgent element to an already bizarre and urgent crisis.”

  “Has the queen been notified?” the home secretary asked.

  “The palace has been briefed about the general nature of the crisis but no, we haven’t as yet disclosed King Henry’s arrival. We feel we need to satisfy ourselves that this man is who he claims to be.”

  John piped up, “He’s Henry the Eighth, all right. Believe me.”

  “I’m not suggesting you’re wrong, Mr. Camp,” the prime minister said, “but we need some kind of independent verification before we present him as such to the queen.”

  “Before I went over,” John said, “we commissioned a Henry expert, a Cambridge history professor, to help me profile him. This guy, Malcolm Gough, has already signed the Official Secrets Act.”

  “Margaret,” the prime minister said to the home secretary, “could you arrange to get this professor down to London straight away and arrange for a secure location for him to interview our—what shall I call him—our visitor?”

  “If I may,” Slaine interrupted, “this is a sideshow. People’s lives are at risk in London. I understand there have already been casualties. My son’s life is at risk. Might we address these issues?”

  “Yes, let’s move on, as Jeremy suggests,” the prime minister said. “Margaret, would you brief us on the ongoing police operations?”

  The home secretary passed the baton to the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police who asked his assistant to pull up CCTV footage from Leatherhead.

  Sir Evan McPhail rose and went to the front of the room. “The home secretary has asked us to coordinate a response with the home county police departments affected by this invasion. In Leatherhead we have supplemented the resources of the Surrey Police with a number of armed tactical officers and armored vehicles. This CCTV feed is from Church Street in the town centre.”

  “It looks deserted,” the prime minister said.

  “What is that?” the deputy prime minister asked. “Is that a body?”

  “It’s deserted now,” the commissioner said. “And yes, I believe that is the body of a member of public. Here is footage from ten o’clock this morning.”

  Men were streaming down the street, running wildly and chaotically, attacking people with their fists and feet. One of the men appeared to stomp and kneel over a man where the corpse would later be seen.

  “Rovers,” John said quietly. “Lots of them.”

  “What are you saying?” the secretary of state for health asked.

  “They’re the worst of the Hellers,” John said. “They’re gangs of completely vicious outcasts. They terrorize the rest of the population. They’re also cannibals.”

  “Christ almighty,” the home secretary said. “Is that what’s happening there?”

  “It looks like he’s taking some flesh,” John said. “Do you know how many of them came through?”

  Sir Evan replied that a preliminary and rough estimate from CCTV and eyewitnesses pegged the number in excess of fifty.

  “Where are they now?” John asked.

  “We’re not sure,” the commissioner said. “Here is a live image from a police helicopter over the town centre. As you can see the streets are empty. Residents have heeded our TV, radio, and loudspeaker warnings to stay indoors. It is possible that these rovers as you call them have also taken shelter within structures. The area has been cordoned off and we are discussing how best to enter and clear it. I will have an operational plan from my field officers and the Surrey police shortly. We are concerned about the volatile mixture of armed police and civilians. We want to avoid collateral casualties if at all possible.”

  The home secretary asked, “Mr. Camp, on the footage we’ve seen, these rovers don’t look all that different from members of the public. How can the police distinguish them?”

  “From a distance, it won’t be easy,” John said. “Their clothes are pretty rough but they could be in people’s houses right now, doing what they do, stealing food and clothes. Up close, you can smell the difference.”

  “Did you say smell?” the commissioner asked.

  “They smell like meat that’s gone off,” John said. “They think we smell uncommonly fresh. You could probably get police dogs to alert to the scent. We could get an article of clothes from King Henry to train them up.”

  “It’s a good idea. I’ll get that done,” Ben said.

  “We’ll need to know what our rules of engagement are,” Sir Evan said. “By this I mean will we have the green light to shoot to kill?”

  “My understanding is that they are already dead,” the deputy prime minister said.

  “Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds?” Slaine said. “They’re running around killing innocent civilians. Of course we should shoot to kill.”

  “Can they be killed?” the prime minister asked. “Mr. Wellington, I believe you had some experience apprehending some of them in Suffolk recently.”

  “I’ll steer clear of semantics,” Ben answered. “They can be killed. What’s left are corpses that seem like any other corpses. What happens to them beyond that, I wouldn’t care to speculate.”

  “Mr. Camp? Dr. Loughty? What do you think?” the prime minister asked.

  Emily asked John to comment. “We don’t have any direct experience with that,” he said. “I’d guess after they are killed they’d wind up back in Hell but it’s only a guess.”

  Slaine said, “So they can be shot and they can be killed. The army is far better positioned than the police for exercising lethal force. We should be deploying the army into the affected areas with immediate effect.”

  “With respect,” Sir Evan said, “with the Metropolitan Police supplementing the county police departments, we have an adequate armed presence to deal with the situation. The police are trained to work in domestic population centers and mitigate civilian casualties. I’ll be the first to request the assistance of the army if we are in danger of losing control of the situation.”

  Before Slaine could come back at the commissioner, the prime minister said, “I’ll take your suggestion under advisement, Jeremy. This committee will be in perpetual session until the crisis has been resolved. Margaret and Sir Evan, I’ll require an update on police activities in one hour’s time. And by the way, if you capture these Hellers where will you be holding them?”

  “We plan to use our holding cells at New Scotland Yard,” Sir Evan said. “We’re presently clearing them of conventional prisoners.”

  “Very well,” the prime minister said. “Now, I’d like to ask Dr. Loughty a few questions.”

  Emily nodded and finished her coffee.

  “Every time the collider has been reactivated the situation seems to have worsened. Is that also your view?”

  “I’m afraid I’d have to agree,” she said. “We’re seeing increasing instability in areas, nodes if you will, along the architecture of the MAAC tunnels. To date we’ve had points of inter-dimensional contact at Dartford, South Ockendon, Sevenoaks, Upminster and Leatherhead.”

  “Did we have a problem this morning at South Ockendon?” the prime minister asked.

  The home secretary said she was unaware of any unusual activity there.

  “It’s impossible to say why some areas are affected and others not,” Emily said. “I’d need to spend time analyzing the data. Right now the Dartford lab has been quarantined so I won’t have a way of accessing computer systems and obviously I can’t speak with my key department heads as they have disappeared. If we can get the assistance of scientific staff at the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, perhaps I can safely tap into the servers and access key data.”

  The deputy prime minister, a heavyset man whose wide forehead was beaded with sweat despite the air condition
ing, raised a finger and asked, “If we permanently shutter the collider and apprehend all these Hellers, will that be the end of it?”

  Slaine almost jumped out of his chair but the prime minister insisted that Emily be allowed to answer the question.

  “Perhaps, perhaps not,” she said. “I’d prefer not to be so wishy-washy but there’s no scientific precedent for what’s happening. The best case scenario, which would of course be a tragedy for the people who were transported to the other dimension this morning, is that in the absence of further collider activity the problem will be cured and future dimensional transfers will cease. However, I can’t guarantee there won’t be spontaneous instability at current nodes or new nodes. Until we have a better handle on that it’s prudent to quarantine all known nodes.”

  “Has that been done?” the prime minister asked.

  “At Dartford, yes,” Ben said.

  “Consider it done elsewhere,” the home secretary said, picking up a telephone.

  Emily said, “My understanding is that in my absence an expert panel of physicists was convened and failed to come up with a solution. I’ll need to speak with these advisors urgently. However, we did make contact with the world’s greatest expert in strangelets, the exotic particles we believe are at the heart of this phenomenon.”

  “Who is that?” the prime minister asked.

  “Paul Loomis, the former director general of MAAC.”

  The prime minister nearly shouted. “Excuse me, but Dr. Loomis is dead.”

  “We found him on the other side.”

  It occurred to John that Emily had been assiduously avoiding calling a spade a spade. Maybe Hell sounded too unscientific to come out of her mouth. He kept quiet.

  “If you recall, he did murder two people,” Emily added. “This undoubtedly explains his presence.”