Adrift 2: Sundown

by K. R. Griffiths

  Conny’s mind began to creak. It was just too much to process.

  Somewhere in the distance, an explosion rocked the evening, and moments later a helicopter roared overhead, flying low.

  “We’re quarantining central London,” the soldier said. “You need to evacuate.”

  She nodded at him numbly.

  “The nearest evac point is across the bridge,” he pointed at the Thames, “London Bridge Hospital. We have people there who will get you to safety. You know where it is?”

  London Bridge Hospital.

  Conny knew where it was.

  Intimately.

  26

  Conny jogged across London Bridge with Remy keeping pace easily at her side, each stride setting off tiny detonations in her wounded calf. She paused around halfway across the river when a formation of jets streaked across the sky, heading for the centre of the city.

  She turned to watch as the aircraft passed overhead, half-expecting that they were about to open fire on the city. Surely the situation hadn’t become so bad in thirty minutes that the military were under orders to bomb the capital?

  Apparently not: the jets continued north for several seconds and then banked left, disappearing from sight to the west.

  A reconnaissance mission, then.

  Now that she was able to see more of the skyline, Conny could see that the most severe of several fires raging in the city was two or three miles to the west, along the Thames. Knightsbridge, perhaps, or Kensington.

  Above the city, she saw the spotlights of several helicopters surveying the streets below.

  It would be a disaster zone in the most densely crowded areas, she thought, picturing the murderous creatures tearing through Trafalgar Square and Oxford Circus and Camden. The panic alone would injure many; it was, she guessed, probably the cause of the fires that she saw. There were likely a thousand car crashes occurring in the city centre at that very moment. Even without direct contact with the creatures, the chaos of the burning city would claim many casualties.

  The southern bank of the river, by comparison, looked far quieter: no sign of fire, no helicopters.

  She began to breathe a little easier. If the trouble—which Conny subconsciously labelled the infestation—was confined to the north of the river, then Logan was safe, and the army had already secured the hospital. He might even have been evacuated already.

  The worst of it was over.

  She turned her back on the burning centre of London and pressed forward, biting down on the pain in her leg and increasing her pace.

  *

  The area outside the hospital was awash with light and people. There were three buses parked outside, engines running, and a group of soldiers were guiding a steady stream of patients and visitors toward them.

  As Conny neared, two large military-looking trucks pulled up alongside the buses, and armed troops began to spill out of them. Around sixty in total, she guessed. They began to make their way to London Bridge, hauling pieces of equipment and sandbags. It looked for all the world like they were planning to set up machine gun emplacements on the bridge.

  Quarantining the city with bullets.

  She pushed through a crowd of bodies toward the hospital, flinching when a soldier grabbed her elbow.

  “Hospital’s being evacuated, Ma’am.”

  “My son is in there,” she snapped, and shook away his hand.

  He looked her in the eye for a moment, his expression impatient, and nodded, stepping aside to let her pass.

  She moved through the entrance and into the reception area.

  London Bridge Hospital offered private healthcare only, and was small by the standards of most modern hospitals, with a little over a hundred rooms for patients. The reception area itself was plush, but cramped: a cosy waiting area and front desk opened out into a corridor containing elevators which transported patients and visitors to the treatment areas upstairs. The neutral decor was clearly meant to lend the place a cool, calming atmosphere.

  It wasn’t working.

  The interior of the hospital was in chaos, and Conny’s progress was slowed almost as soon as she entered the building.

  The walls reverberated to the sounds of human anguish: cries of grief and disbelief; moans of pain and despair. The UK very rarely experienced natural disasters of the scale seen in other parts of the world: earthquakes were infrequent and lacked strength, and the weather almost never unleashed itself on the country with the sort of savagery experienced by those for whom tornadoes or tsunamis were simple facts of life.

  The people streaming out of the hospital did not have disaster preparedness drilled into them, and it showed in the shock and confusion on their faces.

  Two men in army uniforms holding exquisite M27s were trying to hold the tide of people back, in a futile attempt to keep the evacuation of the hospital orderly, and were failing pretty spectacularly.

  Remy cut through the crowd like a hot knife, and Conny followed, making her way to the nearest of the soldiers. He looked stressed and afraid, almost like he was considering whether a short burst from his rifle might get everyone to just shut up and listen.

  She glanced back at the hospital exit. At the rate that things were going, there would be a crush in the doorway.

  This is going to get ugly, she thought.

  “Wrong way, Ma’am.”

  She blinked, and turned to face the soldier. He nodded at the exit, and Conny shook her head firmly.

  “My son is a patient. I need to find—”

  The soldier waved a hand for her to stop.

  “I don’t know anything about the patients, Ma’am. We’re just here to make sure everybody gets out. Your boy might be in there. Bottom three floors of the hospital have been cleared, I know that much. We have choppers en route for those who are too sick to get on the trucks and buses. ETA twenty-five minutes. Once they’re gone, we’re pulling back, got it?”

  He met her eyes, ensuring that she understood.

  Conny nodded her thanks, and turned away, guiding Remy toward the distant elevators. If the bottom three floors of the hospital had already been cleared, then Logan might still be in there somewhere. His room was on the top floor.

  Twenty-five minutes, she thought.

  She had plenty of time.

  *

  A bank of four elevators was located in the corridor behind the reception desk, but Conny moved straight past them: all were in use, of course, and likely there were people on the top two floors stabbing the call button repeatedly.

  She made for the stairs. They were narrow, and a trickle of those who weren’t willing to wait for the elevators flowed down from the upper parts of the hospital.

  Conny took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the ache in her muscles.

  When she and Remy made it to the top floor, she stepped into tension so thick it almost knocked her backwards. The people who were already there—the top floor had to be still half-full of patients at least—were all clustered around the windows which faced the river, staring out quietly.

  The silence in the place was putrid, and Remy huffed softly at her side, apparently coming to the conclusion that things might be better if they moved on.

  “It’s okay, Rem,” she whispered, and she moved closer to the windows, unable to tear her gaze away from them.

  Matters outside were deteriorating quickly.

  The London skyline looked like a warzone of the sort that Conny had only ever seen previously on TV; the backdrop to a solemn news presenter reciting facts that were virtually impossible to comprehend. Tracer fire arced from the dark clouds, spat down onto the city from an aircraft that she could not see. At ground level, the fire seemed to be everywhere now, and pulses of light seared her eyes at regular intervals as small explosions rocked the city.

  Her jaw dropped.

  Without that newsreader to provide a reassuringly detached soundtrack, their place taken by the soft whump of the distant explosions, the sight of what was happening to Lo
ndon was mesmerising and terrifying beyond all reason.

  How could things have fallen apart so fast that airborne attacks on the city had already been sanctioned? What next? Missiles?

  Nukes?

  The disastrous view from the hospital window meant only one thing.

  We’re losing.

  The army had been called in and, just like the police, they were dying.

  There wasn’t time to consider how that was possible; how a bunch of creatures that killed with claws and teeth might be able to defeat one of the most advanced military forces in the world. Screw waiting for the military; she’d evacuate her son herself. Commandeer a car, point it south and just drive.

  She began to move from room to room, searching for Logan. Typically, he was in the last room on the floor, near the fire exit. He was staring out of the window in shock, and didn’t see his mother approaching.

  Conny ran into the room, grabbing his arm.

  “Logan, we have to go.”

  He didn’t respond.

  And when Conny followed his gaze, she saw why.

  A helicopter.

  Approaching fast.

  Too fast, Conny thought, as she stared at the incoming vehicle in horror.

  The chopper was big, but it was flying as though buffeted by the wind like a frail insect, veering crazily and lurching down toward the hospital. As it neared, Conny saw the blades stuttering.

  It’s out of fuel.

  It was heading right for them.

  “Get down!”

  Conny wasn’t even aware that she was shouting. She hit the deck, grabbing a handful of Logan’s hospital-issue nightgown and pulling him down beside her. The chopper roared toward the windows, and the top floor of the hospital filled with screaming…

  …and it disappeared from sight.

  Moments later, a crash shook the building, rattling the windows in their frames. Conny could clearly hear a loud, metallic squeal as the downed helicopter scraped to a halt on the roof.

  Fine dust rained from the ceiling.

  Remy sneezed.

  Conny stumbled to her feet, helping Logan up. She clasped his cheeks in her palms, and couldn’t keep the tears at bay.

  “Are you okay?”

  Logan flinched away, his lip curling.

  “Not really. I’m dying, didn’t you hear?”

  Conny recoiled at the bitterness in her boy’s voice. She hadn’t told him about the disease that had claimed his father, nor the possibility that Logan might inherit it, not until three weeks earlier.

  When he had woken up one morning to find that he could barely move his left hand.

  He had hardly spoken to his mother since she told him that Huntington’s might be a possibility. For those three weeks, he retreated into his shell and refused to come out, speaking monosyllabically and keeping his eyes pointed at the floor. When the option to spend three nights at London Bridge Hospital while he underwent tests had been offered, Logan had jumped at it, and Conny knew it was because he couldn’t stand the sight of her.

  It broke her heart.

  “Logan, I—”

  A crash somewhere behind Conny cut her off, the noise followed immediately by screams of surprise. Conny spun around, her nerves blazing; expecting to see that one of the monsters had smashed its way into the building.

  She blinked.

  The crash had been the noise of someone kicking open a door labelled roof access. The someone was actually four men: two, who looked no older than twenty, carried a third—who appeared to be unconscious—draped across their shoulders. The last of the four men brandished a pistol as he moved out in front of the others.

  “Looking for a doctor,” he growled, waving people back from the exit and moving inside the hospital.

  Remy immediately began to snarl when he saw the firearm, and a space opened up around Conny as the people crowding into the corridor moved away anxiously, their eyes fixed on the gun. She grabbed the dog’s collar with her right hand, holding him back, and held her left arm protectively across Logan’s chest.

  The man with the gun stared down at the growling dog, surprised.

  “Remy, hold,” she said firmly. She glanced up at the man with the gun. “I could let him go,” she said evenly. “He’s dealt with firearms before. He’s fast. I’d rather it didn’t come to that, because people might get hurt. I need you to place that weapon on the floor. Now.”

  The man with the gun lifted his gaze to Conny.

  “And what? You’ll arrest me? You do know what’s happening out there, right? In fact, fuck it, throw me in jail. A steel cage would probably be the safest place to go right around now, anyway.”

  Conny frowned, confused, and felt her cheeks burn. In a way, he had a point. Was she even a police officer anymore? After abandoning several of her colleagues to die—and then killing another herself?

  I should be the one in prison.

  “We’re not here to hurt anybody,” he continued. “I absolutely do not want to have to shoot your dog. Please, I’ve had a rough couple of days. Don’t make me do that.”

  Conny’s eyes narrowed.

  “Then why are you here?”

  The man lowered the gun a little and beamed at her.

  “To save the world, of course.”

  27

  It was the burning bus that did it.

  One of those distinctive London double-deckers, painted a bright and cheerful red. It rolled along slowly, almost of its own accord, with fire and thick black smoke pouring out of the windows.

  Mancini stared at it, transfixed by the incredible spectacle and the grisly narrative it threatened to tell.

  Was it full of people when the flames took hold; all of them now just meat cooked in a giant metal oven? Were the blistered remains of the driver still hunched over the wheel, his charred foot still pressing the gas pedal?

  Mancini couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran through his body at the sight.

  And he couldn’t stop watching.

  That was the trouble.

  If it hadn’t been for the almost hypnotic sight of the burning bus—if they had been just thirty seconds earlier or later; if they’d taken a different turn as they approached the River Thames—none of it might have happened.

  What did happen, in the first instance, was that everybody in the van was so transfixed by the eerie sight ahead of them that nobody saw the truck coming from their right, and they had time only to turn their heads at the last moment as it smashed into the side of the van.

  The world span like someone had dropped it into a washing machine.

  Inside the rolling van, Mancini heard someone yelling, and someone else loose a round from their weapon, before a lamp post abruptly killed their forward momentum.

  Along with Braxton.

  The van came to a rest on its roof, all windows smashed and most of the right side of the vehicle caved in. The driver’s seat had been all-but obliterated as the solid stone post drove half of the engine backwards into the cab. Most of Braxton wasn’t visible. He was smeared across the exposed engine like red paint.

  Mancini looked away from the dead driver and checked himself for injuries. His head was bleeding, and he was pretty sure the seatbelt had cracked a rib or two, but he’d been lucky. He unclipped the belt, grunting as pain arced through his chest, and fell out of his seat. He twisted awkwardly to see into the back of the van.

  “Everybody okay?”

  “Burnley fucking shot me,” Montero snarled.

  “Grazed you,” Burnley muttered. “Sheesh. And I didn’t shoot; the gun went off. If I’d ‘shot’ you, you’d be dead.”

  “Yeah, whatever, Burn—”

  “Keep your damn voices down!” Mancini hissed. “Pruitt?”

  The Brit hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt; he was crumpled at the rear of the van, looking pretty beaten up.

  “I’m fine,” Pruitt grunted. “The worst part is having to listen to Laurel and fucking Hardy back here.”

  Mancini g
rimaced.

  “Yeah? Try spending six hours on a plane with ‘em.”

  “Fuck you, Mancini,” Montero said. He lifted his voice. “Hey, nice driving, Braxton.”

  “Braxton’s dead,” Mancini said flatly. “Like the rest of us, if you don’t quit hollering.”

  He squatted low, peering out of the windows. The street outside the van looked quiet. In the distance, the fiery bus had come to a stop at last, crashing sedately into the side of a building and setting it alight.

  “I think we’re okay,” he whispered.

  “Tell that to Braxton.”

  Mancini flicked his eyes to Montero, letting his gaze burn some silence into the man. “We have to move,” he said, not breaking eye contact. “Quietly.”

  He reached into the rear of the van, helping Jeremy clamber over into the passenger seat as the others fumbled at their seatbelts, and crawled out onto the road through the side window.

  In the distance, he heard heavy weaponry being fired; a sound he hadn’t heard since his days in the military: helicopter gunships raining death down onto the city. No wonder a single gunshot hadn’t drawn much attention. Somewhere overhead, a jet engine shrieked, crossing the city in seconds. Mancini couldn’t see it.

  Jeremy hauled himself out of the window with a grunt, and pulled himself to his feet, refusing Mancini’s offered hand. Almost as soon as the Brit was out of the way, Burnley slipped through the window smoothly.

  Somewhere in the van, Montero let out a muffled curse.

  “I only grazed him.” Burnley shrugged.

  Mancini ignored her, turning to Jeremy.

  “How far away are we from Rennick’s apartment?”

  Jeremy scanned the streets, his expression thoughtful.

  “We’re not far from the London Eye,” he said, “so it’s just a couple of miles east, along the river. Maybe less.”

  “You know the way?”

  “More or less.” Jeremy glanced around fearfully. “It’s a good thing it’s quiet on this side of the riv—”

  He fell silent as an unearthly shriek split the night.