by Chris Ryan
Suddenly he was aware of footsteps clattering on the bare floors. People were shouting, their words echoing as if in a subway. But that wasn’t unusual in police stations. They were hardly peaceful places.
He ignored it all until he heard a sound that really surprised him. Splashing. That’s when he sat up.
The floor of his cell was under half a metre of water and it was rising. The police station was flooding.
He got up off his bunk and paddled across to the steel door. He looked through the tiny hole and saw that the water was higher outside — halfway up the green-painted line that ran at waist height down the corridor. His cell was at the end — had they forgotten he was here?
He shouted out, but several black-uniformed figures were already running down the corridor towards him. They tried to open the cell door next to his, but seemed to be having problems getting in. Finally there was a rush as the water spilled gratefully in.
Francisco shouted out again. ‘Hey! I thought you were looking forward to sending me home.’
Two policemen appeared at his door. ‘Get back, Gomez.’
Francisco waded backwards, unsteady on his feet. ‘Hurry up,’ he said.
The door was unlocked. The policemen tried to pull it open, but once again the weight of water on the outside held it shut.
‘Gomez, you’ll have to push.’ Their voices sounded worried, urgent, as if this was a matter of life and death.
He put all his weight against the door. On the other side the two officers pulled.
Something was very wrong, thought Francisco.
The door opened a crack and that was enough: the water began to pour in. With the pressure equalized the door moved open more easily.
Something else registered in Francisco’s brain. Only two officers had come to get him. Normally he never had fewer than four guards.
‘I thought you’d forgotten me,’ said Francisco.
‘We wouldn’t forget you, Gomez.’
He saw they had cuffs, and felt a tiny prick of disappointment. He’d hoped they’d forgotten. One of the officers grabbed his wrists and snapped the cuffs on.
Curiously that made Francisco feel better. Usually they asked very politely if they could put handcuffs on him. Moreover, they hadn’t made him turn round to cuff him behind his back. They were not bothering to do everything strictly by the book. The emergency had taken them by surprise and they had no time for their usual precautions.
How many more important details were they going to miss?
One officer linked his arm through Francisco’s pinioned one. ‘Get a move on, Gomez.’
The water was up to their knees now and still rising. They started to run. Their shouts echoed noisily off the brick walls, as if they were in a public swimming pool. Other officers were already on the stairs, hurrying more prisoners to the upper levels.
By the time Francisco and his escort reached the stairs, the water was up to their waists.
Francisco rushed like everyone else, but inside, mentally, he was taking his time. This emergency — whatever it was — had taken the station by surprise. They were taking shortcuts. And one of those shortcuts might be his way out.
Another of the prisoners was demanding to know what was going on. ‘Where are we being taken?’ His voice sounded slurred, as if he was drunk or on drugs. He had an officer on each side of him, holding him up. The guy could barely walk.
Francisco decided that might be useful. He’d try to make sure he stuck close to him.
As they climbed the stairs, the water rushed down towards them. It was dirty and smelled of mud and oil and salt. Behind them, the basement was now submerged.
The drunk in front fell over again, swearing. The concrete steps were getting slippery. Francisco nearly stumbled into him and one of his guards half hauled him up. They had reached the ground floor now, but they were still wading.
The duty officer was still sitting behind the desk, water lapping around his shins. ‘Take them up to the assembly point on the roof,’ he called.
Now they were on the main staircase that led to the upper floors of the station. This area was office space; it wasn’t meant to house prisoners and the security was much less stringent here. Up the staircase there were big old-fashioned steel-framed windows that opened at the bottom like big cat flaps. It was hot, like a greenhouse, and one of the windows had been opened a little way.
It probably never occurred to them that it was careless. They’d probably never considered they might be escorting a terrorist up this way. These stairs were strictly for well-behaved, law-abiding staff.
Francisco saw his chance. He stuck his foot out, and the drunk crashed to the ground, pulling over the policeman who was trying to drag him up the stairs. At the same moment Francisco brought his elbow up and struck one of his guards in the face. The officer cried out and his hand loosened its grip on Francisco’s arm.
Francisco had his next move planned. He dropped to the ground and rolled over to the window. He pushed it further open with his shoulder and fell into empty space.
He landed in water and immediately went under. He tried to swim but the handcuffs were pinning his arms together. His legs cycled furiously, trying to find solid ground to push up against. He surfaced and shook the water from his eyes.
He was in a residential road in Chelsea, and it was bedlam. The water was nearly up to his waist, and in the middle of the street, cars and dustbins were being swirled along like canoes. He could hear screams and shouts.
It took him moments to suss out the best next step. He spotted a park bench heading towards him, rolled onto it and went with the flow.
Chapter Eight
For a moment, as he continued to stare through the window, Ben had almost forgotten the radio was playing in his headphones. The music seemed to belong to another world, not this strange, flooded landscape he was looking out at.
He retuned to Capital Radio for more news.
‘We’re just receiving reports that central London has been flooded,’ said the DJ. His normally cheerful voice had changed completely. He sounded shocked. ‘There’s been an accident at the Thames Barrier and it’s not functioning — London was left vulnerable to the high rainfall combined with a surge tide …’ He sounded confused, but the basic facts were clear. London was flooded. ‘Here’s Meena Chohan, our traffic reporter, up in the Flying Eye,’ he finished.
The sound of a light aircraft engine came on in the background, and Ben heard the voice of the female reporter who had been speaking earlier.
‘I’m over East London right now and the scene is unbelievable. The river is as wide as a lake. The runways of City Airport have disappeared. Docklands has disappeared. The Docklands Light Railway has vanished. Central London and the City are just a mass of towers sticking up out of the water.’ Her voice sounded shaky, disbelieving, appalled …
‘The flooding just goes on and on. Usually when we’re up here doing traffic reports, we navigate by the pattern of roads and roundabouts. They have all gone.’
Ben caught a glimpse of a small blue object, moving across the sky on the east side of the building. He ran round to watch it. That was Capital Radio’s plane, the Flying Eye.
‘It looks like a completely different city,’ Meena Chohan continued. ‘That water’s got to be at least three metres deep. There’s some dry land up where it’s higher. St Paul’s is OK, but there’s water lapping at the bottom steps. The devastation is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Ben started to walk around the perimeter of the gallery. The building was completely surrounded by water. Water that was moving, carrying along cars, street furniture and helpless people. He was still carrying the binoculars and he lifted them to his eyes to look more closely. He remembered the helpless people he had seen grabbing at lampposts, trees — anything. Helpless as ants. It reminded him of some of the footage he had seen on the TV of the Asian tsunami. He put the binoculars down again.
He supposed Cally would
come for him soon. Then he had a horrible thought. Where was she? She’d gone down to the conference room in the basement.
Had she got out?
Would she have had time? The basement was three flights down from the ground floor and the water had flooded in so rapidly.
Could his mother’s friend be dead?
‘Regent Street seems to be dry,’ said Meena Chohan, ‘but there are people and traffic everywhere. It’s chaos. Buckingham Palace has escaped for the moment but the Mall’s under water. Most of Westminster’s cut off.’
Westminster. That was where his mum was.
Ben ran round to the front of the building again. The terraces of Westminster had gone. The water lapped at the windows so that the Houses of Parliament looked like a famous painting he had seen of Venice. Where was Bel having her meeting?
He got out his phone and speed-dialled her number. I don’t care if you’re in a meeting, he said to himself. For once, just answer.
He didn’t expect her to answer, of course. He expected her abrasive answerphone message again but he never even got a ring tone. Instead he got an automated message from the phone company. ‘Lines are busy. Please try—’
The message was cut off. There was silence. He tried again but there was nothing — not even the message that told him her phone was out of reach.
He tried home; his dad in Macclesfield.
Nothing. It was as if the battery was dead. But it wasn’t: the display was glowing as usual and the battery icon showed more than half charged. But the signal display was blank.
A bang like a firework going off made Ben look out of the window again. At the same moment the lights in the gallery went out. He saw that the lights in all the buildings nearby were down. There had been a massive power cut.
The London Eye had stopped. At the bottom, glowing sparks were fizzing out of the mechanism. Ben watched as two parents, up to their waists in water in a half-submerged capsule, struggled to lift their three young children onto their shoulders. The official escort in the navy London Eye uniform was frantically searching for a window that opened.
Further up, other passengers started to notice the panicking passengers below. They hammered on the glass with cameras and shoes, until the whole wheel looked like a grotesque mobile, a painting of hell, the pods swinging as people tried to escape from their glass prisons.
The glass in one of the higher pods sprayed out in a shower. A figure in a red cagoule hurtled out into the air — feet first, nose held as if anticipating the plunge into the water. Another followed, legs and arms cycling in the air as if he had lost control of them. The figure in the red cagoule hit the water. The other figure splashed down soon after.
Slowly Ben raised the binoculars and watched.
The jumpers had underestimated the fierce current. He saw flailing arms rise briefly above the choppy surface, already being carried away from the Eye like twigs caught in a whirlpool. Once again, he lowered the binoculars, but he could still see the small helpless figures. They were swept towards the concrete walls of the ArBonCo Centre. He didn’t see them hit, but he did see the tide suck them away again. When it did they were unmoving, lifeless.
Ben felt sick. He put the binoculars down on the window ledge and turned away.
Strange — if he looked at the room, it was as if nothing had happened. Outside the windows, the sky was the same grey as it had been before. The carpets, the easy chairs, the low tables all looked so everyday. The only thing that was odd was that all the lights had gone out.
What should he do? Hide up here? It seemed nice and safe and normal.
And then the creeping fear began to steal up on Ben as well. He began to notice the sounds. No, it was not normal. Car and burglar alarms shrieked from the streets below. And there was another sound: muffled shouts and screams. Once he became aware of them, Ben couldn’t block them out. They filled him with fear, just as the people in the London Eye had transmitted their panic to each other, reverberating through the spokes of that giant wheel.
He didn’t want to stay here alone.
Chapter Nine
In the middle of the gallery was a green EXIT sign and a pair of fire doors.
Ben ran for them. He snatched the doors open and started to run down the white marble-tiled stairwell. Somewhere below him, he heard running footsteps — so many that it was like distant machine-gun fire. And shouting and screaming, louder now. He went down past one door, then another, then another. Floor after floor went by. The sounds grew louder. Ben kept his hand on the black handrail, counting down the floors, swinging round and round as he went. Floor five … four … three.
He caught up with a small group of people, who barely looked at him, all intent on getting out. They were half jogging down the stairs, not daring to run fast but too frightened to walk.
When they reached the second floor, they saw a man wearing a red armband printed with the words FIRE MARSHAL. He was waving people in through the open fire door, like a policeman directing traffic.
Ben caught a glimpse of something further down the stairwell. Something black, glossy and moving. The building was full of water. He wondered with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach whether Cally was still down there.
‘In here, please,’ said the fire marshal, and Ben obeyed.
It was a big, open-plan room, which took up nearly the entire floor of the building. It was full of people sitting in chairs, on desks, leaning against the window ledges. They looked calm and orderly, all waiting patiently. The ones who had just arrived were joining a queue and filing past another fire marshal, who was ticking off names on a list.
Ben joined the queue. He felt better now that he was with people, reassured by the queues. OK, he thought. Maybe we’ll all be all right. But there was a smell in the room: cold sweat and fear.
There was another smell too — something salty, tarry. And a sound, like gentle splashing. The water was lapping just below the windows.
It was Ben’s turn to be checked on the register. Another fire marshal peered at him. ‘Who are you?’ His list of personnel ran to several pages. The building must have thousands of people working in it.
‘I’m a visitor,’ said Ben.
‘Who were you with?’
‘Cally—’ Ben realized he didn’t know her surname. ‘Cally in Clean Fuels Research.’ He looked around the room, hoping to catch sight of her.
The pen scanned up and down the list, over the page, found a name and hovered. ‘Is she with you?’
Ben hesitated. ‘No.’
‘Where is she? She shouldn’t have left you alone. Visitors shouldn’t be unaccompanied. Where is she?’
Ben didn’t want to say. His throat was dry. It took him a few goes to get the words out. ‘She went to a meeting in the basement.’
The fire marshal didn’t look up. He kept his pen over Cally’s name for a moment, then put a dot in the margin next to it. Ben stared at it.
Then the man waved him on.
A woman sitting at a desk beckoned Ben over. Beside her was a big green first aid kit; a man in glasses was dabbing antiseptic on a gash in his arm. ‘Have you got any injuries?’ she asked Ben.
He shook his head. ‘No. I’m fine.’
‘OK. Find a seat and wait for instructions.’
Ben did as he was told. He approached a group of people who were sitting chatting. They looked almost unconcerned, though he noticed that one had a bruise over one eye. Most of them had rucksacks or bags with them, and coats. He passed some people who must have escaped from the flood water outside too — a woman was rubbing her legs with a towel; her companions’ jeans were wet up to the knees; high-heeled boots lay discarded on the floor, the leather soaked through. It grew darker as Ben made his way towards the middle of the floor, away from the windows. He could see tiny patches of light as people used their mobiles as torches to read, or listened to music or played games.
A slim woman with her hair covered in a headscarf spotted Ben. ‘What’s
happening?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ben.
A plump woman in a long skirt, wet up to the knees, answered her. ‘The police said to stay here and we’d be evacuated.’
Ben leaned on the window ledge and looked across to the Houses of Parliament. Now that he wasn’t so high up, the river looked even more vast. A plume of sparks rose into the sky like fireworks. What was it — an electricity substation shorting out? He got out his phone again. The display said there was no signal.
‘You won’t get anything on that,’ said a voice.
A balding man in a light grey suit was watching Ben morosely. There was something smug about the way he said it, as if he was enjoying Ben’s disappointment.
‘No harm in trying,’ said Ben cheerily.
The balding man looked taken aback and moved on. Ben was suddenly reminded of the louts he’d met on the train, seeing what they could do to upset the other passengers. Perhaps one day the pierced bullies might be wearing suits and going bald. That made him smile.
He looked out of the window again. Big Ben said ten to two; his watch said two fifteen. Then he knew the world really had gone wrong: Big Ben had stopped.
A loud bang and a flash shattered the hushed conversations. Ben, along with all the people at that end of the floor, found himself instinctively pushing away from the explosion. All around him he heard screams.
After a few moments everyone stopped and looked back, like wild animals that had been spooked. A cupboard was belching thick smoke into the room. Sparks of orange-yellow and blue light showed behind the door.
Then the chaos started. Everyone began to talk at once. ‘The sprinklers will come on in a minute.’
‘They won’t. They’ll have shorted too.’
The light show continued behind the cupboard door. ‘All the electrics are on fire in there.’
Then Ben noticed that one of the windows was open; a thin man in a dark, sweat-stained shirt was sitting on the window ledge, looking down at the water lapping at the white marble building just a couple of metres below.