Snow! The Series [Books 1-4]

by Clifford, Ryan

  The Prime Minister looked up and nodded.

  ‘Where is my family, Ian?’ he whispered, tears welling up in his eyes. He knew in his heart that they were probably gone.

  ***

  Unfortunately, for the new PM and his family, they were not yet familiar with the personal protection afforded them since their sudden rise to prominence. They didn’t quite realise that they should stay in contact with the police officers from Special Branch at all times when out and about. Privacy in their lives was a thing of the past and the threat of personal attack was a very real one.

  The wife of the PM was indeed shopping and her two young children were in attendance. They had been driven to Harrods in Knightsbridge at 8.30am in an attempt to beat the crowds. Arrangements had been made for early access with store’s security staff.

  They arrived safely enough as the roads in that part of London were just about passable at that time. The family entered in close company with Patric Morris, their new escort. There should have been two close protection officers with the Prime Minister’s family that morning, but one had not made it to Downing Street because of the snow, so Morris was on his own. They had about thirty minutes to beat the Christmas crowds and off they went. There were no problems for the first hour or so as the three VIPs wandered about the store buying various items for Christmas. All items purchased would be wrapped and delivered to No.10 later in the day.

  They had been through the toy department and the special Christmas grotto area, and the PM’s wife promised the children to return after she had chosen some new shoes. The youngest child was playing up as he was impatient with the delay, and was entirely fed up with the shopping excursion. However, he was told to wait whilst his mother chose some new footwear. Both children trailed unhappily after their parent to the shoe department and wandered aimlessly about as she tried on several pairs.

  Morris had his work cut out trying to keep an eye on the three of them. Occasionally, a well-wisher would greet the wife of the new PM and this drew his attention close, as an apparent well-wisher could quickly turn into a real assailant.

  During one of these episodes, the younger child decided to go back to the toy department. One second he was there and the next he was gone. The elder child was sitting with his mother. Morris moved over to the PM’s wife and asked,

  ‘Where’s the youngest boy, ma’am?’

  They all looked round. He wasn’t to be seen. Minor panic now ensued. Without thinking, she turned to her elder son and mistakenly sent him off to search for his brother.

  ‘No!’ shouted Morris.

  However, it was too late. The boy had sprinted off.

  ‘No, ma’am. That's a mistake. Now we have two lost children.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she replied, ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘Never mind, ma’am, they can't get far, we’ll soon have them back. Where could they have gone?’

  ‘Probably to the toy department or to Santa’s Grotto.’

  ‘That presents a problem, toys are on the 4th floor and we are here on the first. The Christmas Grotto is on the ground floor. Where to first?’ asked Morris.

  ‘Toys!’ she cried.

  By the time the PM’s wife had got her own shoes back on, yet more valuable seconds had been lost. Eventually, the pair set off towards the toy department – only after the Special Branch man had asked the shoe assistant to put out an alert.

  Meantime, the youngest son was completely lost. He knew that the toys were higher up and that therefore, he must go upstairs. Consequently, he went to a lift – where somebody should have spotted he was alone, but in the crush, no one did. He got in and unfortunately for him, the lift went down to ground level.

  The boy assumed he was on the correct level and got out. He wandered alone, looking for the toy department which was four floors above. Meanwhile his mother and Morris were searching frantically for number one son who had taken the correct lift to toys. The two of them were running excitedly around calling out the boys’ names.

  Morris was not a happy man. He was now in an impossible position. All three of his charges were separated from each other – in a Christmas crush in a busy London store. His top priority was to keep sight of the PM’s wife, but she was becoming hysterical – as most mothers would in the same situation.

  Then, as luck would have it, they bumped into a Harrods Security Officer who had the number one son firmly by the wrist.

  ‘Thank God. Thank you. Thank you!’ blurted out the PM’s wife as she took hold of her son.

  Morris quickly thanked the Security Officer and apprised him of the situation as he flashed his warrant card.

  ‘Can you put out a storewide alert, ASAP? Get the entrance doors shut. Don’t let anyone else in or out.’

  Regrettably, he was a couple of minutes too late. Son number two had just left the building. He was completely disoriented and had been overwhelmed by the crowds of people on the ground floor. Consequently, he had been swept to one of the entrances and out into the storm. Perhaps, the doorman mistook him for a member of one of the many families going in and out.

  Seconds later, the message went out to shut the doors and before the boy could correct his mistake and get back in – he was locked out!

  Meanwhile, the PM’s wife, Morris, and number one son were still frantically searching the toy department. After ten minutes, they were forced to conclude that he wasn’t there.

  ‘Don’t worry, ma’am. He will be somewhere. He cannot get out of the store. I’ve had the doors shut.’

  The PM’s wife was now in a severe panic.

  ‘Let's get down to the Christmas Grotto area,’ she spluttered.

  Morris turned to a Security Officer and asked him to continue the search, and to put out a PA request for shoppers to look out for the boy, and to say that the shop was closed until the boy was found.

  He turned back to the PM’s wife to discover that she had gone. After all he’d said over the past hour about not separating – she’d bloody gone again. He gasped in desperation and set off to the lift through the thronging crowd. There was no sight of her.

  The PM’s wife, with her son, had caught the lift down to the ground floor and made their way rapidly to the Christmas Grotto area. It's a smallish area and it soon became clear that the boy was not there. In fact, store Security Officers had been searching the area in vain for thirty minutes.

  She was now in serious meltdown. Morris was gone and she did not know what to do next, so she thought she would look outside. The boy might have wandered off.

  She approached the nearest exit and found a throng of people trying to get out. Store Security Officers were preventing people from leaving, attempting, in vain, to placate and explain the situation to angry shoppers.

  The PM’s wife pushed her way to the front and met with resistance from the door staff.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ she demanded.

  ‘No madam and I don’t particularly care who you are. You cannot leave. A little boy is missing and no one is leaving or entering until he is found. Sorry.’

  ‘It's my son, you idiot! Look at me. I’m the Prime Minister’s wife and it's my son that's missing. LET ME THROUGH!’ she screamed.

  The man’s colleague nudged him in the ribs as the crowd grew silent.

  ‘It is her, Ernie, let her through.’

  The Security Staff stood aside as one of them opened the doors and let the PM’s wife through. She turned to one of them and begged:

  ‘Look after my son here. Hand him over to my personal policeman when he turns up.’

  With that, she stepped out into the storm – wearing only a light fashion raincoat with no hat or gloves.

  She stood on the busy pavement looking up and down the street. She saw no sign of her son in the near zero visibility and the storm was now really blowing. The cruel irony was that if she’d come out of the next exit down, she would have found him cowering and shivering and alone in the entrance. However, due to the crowds of people a
nd the worsening storm, they never found each other. The PM’s wife blundered up and down the Brompton Road until she was so cold she could go no further. She never dreamt of taking shelter – she was in a complete state of maternal panic.

  And, like many other people who ventured into the blizzard that morning, woefully ill-equipped, they eventually perished.

  Patric Morris made contact with the other boy about fifteen minutes after the PM’s wife left the store. He ordered the shop closed and called for reinforcements. However, it was all too late. Both he and the boy would never leave Harrods alive. Traffic, which could have brought relief, was already at a standstill.

  Day 2 – Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire – 1:45pm

  Ziggy Arberfeld was at the end of his tether. Staffing levels were at about twenty-five percent. He’d been on the nightshift and next to nobody had turned up to relieve him or his colleagues. The power station just outside Nottingham was snowed-in and not one person could now get in or out of the complex. His job as a supervising maintenance engineer meant that he had the responsibility for keeping the plant going with a team of other engineers, and now he was being asked to go way beyond his brief, and attempt jobs he just wasn’t qualified to do. The situation was getting fraught.

  The most senior manager remaining on site was standing on a table in the canteen attempting to get a grip of the situation. He was explaining to the assembled throng that without the proper staffing levels the station would cease to function in two or three days. He knew that the current level of staffing was inadequate but he was pleading for co-operation, and not opposition from the unions.

  Unfortunately, he was out of luck.

  The properly elected representative of the workforce stood up and waved his arm to attract attention.

  ‘Are you prepared to get stuck in, Mr Browning?’ begged the manager.

  Browning was brief and to the point.

  ‘My members have now been at work since 9pm last night – that’s nearly sixteen hours. They are tired and cold. They also have families at home who need them. What do you really expect them to do? This is only a bit of snow, it’ll be gone tomorrow. You’re over reacting, as usual.’

  At that point, the PM appeared on the TV that sat in the corner of the canteen, and as he said his piece the shocked power workers watched in complete silence.

  When he’d finished, even before the manager could speak, people rose from their seats and started leaving the room with some urgency – supposedly on their way home.

  ‘Where are you going?’ bleated the manager, ‘You can't drive off the site. It's snowing too hard!’

  Browning stared at him and answered ruthlessly,

  ‘Well, we’re going to give it a go, anyway! Did you actually listen to the Prime Minister?’

  The manager was exasperated.

  ‘Of course I did, you selfish idiot. He emphasised that the populace would need power to survive and you are deserting your post!’

  Browning was dismissive.

  ‘He also said that this was a personal survival situation and I'm going home to make sure my family is safe. I suggest you do the same before it's too late.’

  At which, he turned and left the room.

  Within sixty seconds the manager and his secretary stood alone in the canteen.

  Day 2 – Southampton – 2:00pm

  Doris Ekins was enjoying a quiet time. Since the snow started and the initial batch of ambulances streamed out on emergency calls, the hospital had quietened down considerably. Not one of the ambulances had returned. Not one visitor had turned up and not one casualty had visited the outpatients department. In fact, only half a dozen patients with appointments had appeared at all, and they had been rapidly dispatched back home, as there were very few doctors available in the hospital to treat them.

  In fact, manpower was the main issue. She’d been on the night shift and had decided to stay on. Doris had no choice. Patients needed care and if she left without a relief, then they would suffer and she wouldn’t allow that. Her team agreed, so they were doing their best to cope but with no doctor’s rounds and no visitors, it was eerily quiet. Luckily, the kitchens were still functioning and lunch had just finished. How long that situation would continue was anybody’s guess.

  She had just finished watching the Prime Ministers address on television with her colleagues, and a fair bit of apprehension was starting to set in. Doris had no family to speak of, but many of her co-workers and patients did – and they were starting to worry.

  Some of the nurses wanted to leave – but she merely pointed outside through the window and shrugged, ‘How?’

  A couple were going to try it anyway and she couldn’t forcibly stop them; but that left her with a team of only four, including herself, to supervise her geriatric ward.

  Staff Nurse Ekins decided to take some positive action. She sent a nurse out to the ward store and told her to issue every blanket they could find. In the meantime, she moved all of the beds closer together so that twenty-two patients were crammed into one end of the ward. She used spare mattresses to act as insulation against the giant windows and she also drew all of the curtains. She made the space as snug as possible and turned up the heating to full. These old folks got cold very quickly and she was uncertain as to how long the power would last.

  A bit of the old ‘Dunkirk spirit’ was creeping in, but several of the older ladies were crying and asking for their families. Doris had expected this development, but there was little she could do about it.

  Things took a turn for the worse when the power eventually went off at about 4.30pm.

  Almost immediately, the hospital emergency generator cut in and lighting came back on. However, it didn’t prevent a spate of screams and groans.

  ‘How long before this generator goes off as well?’ she thought.

  Not long as it happened. The ward was still waiting for the evening meal that was forty-five minutes late already. Suddenly, all of the lighting failed and this time it didn’t return. Screams from patients were met by a sharp word from Doris who called for calm.

  She had prepared for this eventuality; each nurse had been issued with a torch and a box of matches and went round lighting the pre-positioned candles laid out by the staff.

  Soon calm was restored and luckily one of the old chaps started a sing-song. However, their hearts weren’t really in it and the ward faded into silence after about fifteen minutes.

  Strangely, but not unexpectedly, nobody came to visit the ward. Staff Nurse Ekins had wandered around the hospital in the afternoon and found that all of the other wards were in the same sorry state as hers. However, most staff had stayed on and at least two nurses were in every ward, with porters and other clerical staff helping out.

  No one was entering or leaving the hospital, night had fallen and the light and heating were gone – probably permanently. She wasn’t oozing confidence about the prospects for survival if temperatures dropped. It was already getting colder.

  She now instructed the nurses to put on their coats and hats and anything else providing warmth. Then she made them do the same for the patients. It was an odd sight when they’d finished, but it might just keep some of the geriatrics alive through the night.

  By nine o’clock, many of the elderly patients were getting very cold. She had placed a thermometer against a window and it registered minus twelve degrees C.

  It wasn’t much warmer in the ward. Doris decided to transfer the old folks to two in a bed, and spent the next forty minutes rebuffing protests from overmodest ladies. However, the nurses eventually got them settled and when there was nothing else to do, she jumped into bed with a colleague, snuggled down and waited for the morning. She was exhausted and soon fell into a broken sleep.

  It was a terrible night. Although she had sedated all of the patients, one or two moaned with fear at the sound of the blizzard outside storming against the windows. Doris was dog-tired and very cold and was loathe to get out of bed to tend her pati
ents. She slept fitfully.

  When morning came, she awoke with a start as the wind rattled the windows. Everything was quiet inside and she sighed with relief. She checked her watch. 8.30 pm – but it seemed that night was still with them as it was so dark outside. She lay shivering in bed and shook her bed-warming partner who woke slowly.

  ‘Come on,’ said Doris, ‘we’d better get round the old folk and see what we can do.’

  She crawled out of bed, still fully clothed and made her way towards the bed next to hers. She gently shook the old man’s shoulder.