The Carbon Diaries 2015

by Saci Lloyd

  “Adi. He’s here!”

  “Light another one.”

  “I . . . can’t.”

  He waded over. “Give me the box.”

  The match struck, flared. I turned like a girl in a horror movie to see Arthur trapped under a pile of debris, up to his neck in water.

  “Oh, God.” I choked.

  Adi reached out a trembling hand.

  “Arthur?”

  Nothing.

  “He’s trapped under this beam. We’ve got to lift it clear.”

  “Is he . . .?”

  The match burned out, plunging us into darkness again.

  “Light another.”

  As the light came again, I bent down over the old man and gently took his head in my hands.

  “Arthur, please. We’re going to get you out of here.” I scanned his face. Nothing. I tightened my grip. “Oh, God, come on. Don’t die on me, Arthur! Please!”

  And then he smiled and whispered, “Lau-r marv’l . . .” before fainting away again.

  It felt like an electric shock passing right thru me.

  “Adi! Adi! He’s alive!”

  “Right, hold him there. I’m gonna lift this beam off.”

  I cradled Arthur in my arms while Adi slowly moved the wood to one side, and then between us we dragged him out along the hallway to the door. If you ask me now how we got him on the pallet or back to the Co-op I don’t know, but we did. I think Adi did most of it. Mostly I just remember Arthur’s face, so old and frail.

  When we got back to the center they took him to a corner of the floor they’d set up for first aid.

  “Is he gonna be okay?”

  The woman gave a tired smile. “We’ll do the best we can for him. He needs to go to hospital, but . . .”

  She let the rest of the sentence hang. We don’t even know if there are any hospitals right now.

  Midnight and still waiting. Adi sat with me for ages, but in the end I had to be alone. I went out onto the steps. After a while Mrs. Datta came out with a raincoat.

  “You’re getting soaked,” she whispered. “They’ll be back soon.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “But what if . . .?”

  She looked at the ground. “They’ll be back.” Adding quietly, “Thank God my boy is away from all this.”

  I didn’t want to talk anymore, then. Her quick look down was enough for me. After a bit I felt something wet on my arm. I lifted it, curious—to see I’d opened up the cut on my hand and blood was oozing out. But I couldn’t feel it, it was like I was a thousand miles from everywhere. I tell you. You never think it’s gonna happen to you, but all that pollution and dirty fumes and flights and factories and shit we don’t need and suddenly there you are, a stupid girl sitting alone on some steps, waiting to see if your family is ever coming back.

  Suddenly, a sound broke thru the storm. I froze. Something coming toward me? I couldn’t even cry out. And then a boat came out of the blackness. And then I saw Mum. She was bent over someone—my heart went like ice. And then I saw Dad. Lying still. The boat pulled up to the steps. Mum cried out.

  “Quick, get help. We found him floating in the water! But he’s alive!”

  2 A.M. Up on the 4th floor. It’s freezing. We’ve wrapped Dad and Arthur up in like a hundred blankets. Arthur’s sleeping peacefully, tough old bird, but Dad’s out cold, shivering the whole time. Mum’s cradling his head on her lap. Gwen Parry-Jones came and felt his pulse.

  “Hopefully, it’s just concussion,” she muttered. “I’m so sorry, Julia. Wish I could do more.”

  Mum smoothed the hair back from his face. “I know, but I’ll manage. I’ve been looking after this man for twenty years.” Then her face collapsed. “But Gwen, my girl’s out there. Why didn’t he bring her back?”

  Wed., Dec. 2

  A chopper came overhead early this morning. People ran onto the roof and waved, but it just circled around us a couple of times then shot off over the city. That was 4 hours ago. So much for air rescue. Adi is a total hero, though—he worked all thru the night to get a TV hooked up to an aerial and a battery.

  “Okay, people—we’ve got a TV working, gather around,” yelled GPJ. Everybody struggled up in their blankets and layers of clothing as the screen flickered into life. An American Sky presenter covered in makeup appeared on-screen.

  “. . . London—a city on the brink of disaster. Can she hold on? The death toll is two thousand and climbing, but the good news is that so far today, the water level has not risen. However, the storm still shows no sign of blowing out—and what will happen at the next high tide?”

  She turned sharply for a different camera angle, face full of fake concern. The screen filled with a map of London.

  “This is the current status of flooding in the capital. The darkest sections represent five meters or more of flooding. When an embankment caves in under the strain of floodwater, the collapse unleashes a deadly wall of water. . . .” She raised an eyebrow as far as her Botox would allow. “. . . This acts like a battering ram, carrying all in its path.”

  Cut to footage from the Olympic Stadium. A giant crane floating in the main arena, smashing up against the stands.

  “Today, literally millions of Londoners are stranded without electricity and with no access to phone networks. All hospitals have been badly hit—in particular, Guys and St. Thomas’s, both close to the river. All over the capital, roads are impassable, cluttered with debris and abandoned vehicles. . . .”

  Cut to aerial shots of the Blackwall Tunnel—miles and miles of gridlocked, half-sunk cars.

  “London Underground has been severely hit; specifically, the central zones and lines east of the river, which have experienced substantial flooding.”

  Another cut to an aerial shot of Victoria Station, train tracks glinting underwater.

  “The prime minister has convened the Civil Contingency Committee—or the Triple-C—at the Cabinet Office in Whitehall. An announcement is expected today as to whether a full-scale evacuation is to take place. Much depends on the next high tide at six P.M. If the barrier is overtopped again, every major governmental and rescue department will be forced to evacuate. Chaos will ensue. London waits.”

  And so the hours passed and we waited. At 5 they switched the TV set on again. Complete silence, watching our own city fight for her life. All focus on the barrier. The dirty, swirling Thames spreading out over the city. High tide. Aerial shots. Water sliding over the embankment walls. Tension. Minutes going by like hours. Floodwater creeping up to the top of the barrier. Climbing, falling, climbing, falling . . . and then, finally falling, falling—the barrier had held! All of us crying, sobbing, grabbing at one another. Hundreds of dirty, lost souls.

  8 P.M. Dad’s still unconscious. Mum keeps calling and calling Kim’s cell phone, but there’s no network anywhere. Please let her not be alone.

  Midnight I couldn’t sleep, so I went up to the roof and looked out over the black city. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I knew it was him. Without a word I turned and we kissed, deep. We sank to the floor. Both of us the same. It was perfect. Me and Adi and the black water rushing all around us.

  Thurs., Dec. 3

  I woke up with Adi next to me. I sneaked away without waking him and went to my parents. Dad’s starting to scare me, he’s totally burning up and keeps tossing and turning and muttering Kim’s name. Adi came down and joined me and we held hands under the blankets. Didn’t speak, nothing to say, nowhere to go, nothing to do. The power came on for a few minutes in the afternoon—the TV flickered on: the prime minister pleading for calm. The batteries are dead now. When will they come and rescue us? Such a strange silence in the semidarkness. Sometimes there’s weird thuds and the sound of rushing water from outside. Some people talk and laugh, some just stay completely quiet. In a corner a woman’s been singing quietly to herself all day. Over everything there’s this strange tone that you can almost feel. Every now and again someone asks the time, 1
0 to 7, half past 12, quarter to 6—but it all feels the same. People are lying asleep everywhere. They look like little children.

  I woke up in the night to the sound of Mum sobbing. I didn’t have any words, just held her hand.

  Fri., Dec. 4

  2 A.M. A miracle! My cell phone buzzed. I snatched it up. Kieran.

  I couldn’t hear anything for ages, just static, then . . . “Laur . . . me? . . . here . . . Kim’s okay . . . but . . . can’t get through . . .”

  The network crashed again. We tried for hours to get thru again, nothing.

  But she’s alive!

  Sat., Dec. 5

  A chopper came overhead and dropped emergency food and water supplies on the roof. They dropped news flyers, too. Thousands of army and UN soldiers are here. They’re working 24/7 to pump the floodwater out and set up rescue and medical centers across the city. The mayor’s ordered a complete ban on civilian movement unless it’s an emergency. Duh.

  Dad’s fever is going down at last, he’s finally stopped shivering like a dog. This afternoon he even drank a little water and sat up. “I couldn’t get to her, Ju. I went into Soho, to that Leopard place, but she wasn’t there. I walked the streets for hours, went in every bar. Nothing . . . I had to get back to Laura.” He put his head in his hands. “I didn’t know what to do, didn’t mean to leave her . . .”

  Mum stroked his shoulder. “It’s all right, Nick, she’s with Kieran now. We’ll go and get her together.”

  He nodded. “I’d got all the way to Greenwich when it started to flood. I ran and ran, thought I was going to make it, then on the corner of High Street I just got knocked off my feet. Big wall of water . . . I . . . can’t remember anything else . . .” He started to cough.

  Mum eased him down on the pillow. “Enough, now . . .” She turned to me. “I can’t believe we found him, Laura. We’re so goddamn lucky.”

  Sun., Dec. 6

  Finally, finally some of the phone network is back, but all the emergency service numbers are jammed. I stood up on the roof with Adi while he spoke with his family. They’re safe, but scared—they had to go to the 3rd floor of their building with 20 others. He hung up and stood there for a moment looking out over the streets.

  “Y’know today was supposed to be our recording session?”

  I ran my hands thru my hair. “Oh, God, yeah.”

  He sighed. “Feels like another life. It was another life.”

  I reached out and took his hand. “Adi, when did you know?”

  “Bout you?” He paused, then broke into a grin. “Dunno. I think it just crept up. This year’s changed a lot of stuff, it’s like I couldn’t see before what was right in front of me . . . Plus I never thought I had a chance. I was way too normal—I mean, I actually like you.”

  I laughed. “All right . . . but I’ve changed, too. Things are . . . clearer, somehow.”

  I looked out across the devastation, hand in hand with my lovely boy, and I know this is weird, but I just felt so, so . . . lucky.

  Mum can’t get thru to Kim, though. She’s been trying all day, but nothing. Suddenly this afternoon the power came on for 2 whole hours and all the lights and the TV monitor came to life. A huge evacuation is happening by the docks, but the rest of London is safe, even though 40% was flooded. The east has been hit the worst. The army found thousands of people wandering up and down the shattered A2, just past the Blackwall Tunnel—pushing shopping carts, laundry racks, anything they could find to carry their stuff away. Crowds were trapped on the other side of the tunnel. They waved up at the helicopter rescue teams with empty water jugs, begging for help.

  Oh, man, but the most disgusting thing ever is the rats. They’ve swarmed into the Olympic Stadium to escape the water. Millions of them, covering the stands like a sick, filthy, living, breathing carpet.

  Bet that wasn’t in the Olympic bid.

  Mon., Dec. 7

  Urggh. Can’t move—it’s like I’ve been punched in the head.

  GPJ took one look at me. “Flu. Lot of it around. Rest up.”

  Adi came over just as I was vomiting into a bucket.

  Tues., Dec. 8

  Vomit, sleep, vomit, sleep. Woke up for a minute and overheard Mum talking to Kieran. He’s got Kim down to an emergency treatment center. She’s got a fever and broken her arm. Mum wants to go straight down there, but Kieran said to wait. “Julia, you don’t know how crazy Soho is right now. There’s no civilian movement yet. You’d never get thru . . . I’m looking after her the best I can.”

  Wed., Dec. 9

  The water’s nearly drained away around Charlton. The army are going to let people move again tomorrow, but only for medical reasons. The prime minister’s been all over London. He did that thing leaders do when they jump out of helicopters in shirt-sleeves and talk about the human spirit. I keep falling into a flu stupor, can’t move, just drift in and out of stuff going on around me. I woke up to this one, though.

  “So what are we going to do about the rats when we get outside? Poison?”

  “What sort of numbers are we looking at?”

  “I read four thousand rats are born every hour in London.”

  Gwen Parry-Jones cut in. “Well, we’ll just have to clear them out—one by one, if we have to. I’m not really sure how to do it, though. Anybody here got any experience?”

  “I do. I was in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Got caught on vacation.”

  I lifted my head from the pillow. A guy I recognized from up the street was talking, candlelight flickering across his exhausted face.

  “First, we kill as many as we can by hand, but we’ve got to be really careful.” He nodded toward a crowbar leaning against the wall. “Carry something like that and a flashlight, and then you got to go through everything—furniture, drawers, mattresses, clothes, paper, appliances, dark corners, attics, cellars . . .”

  An old woman raised her hand. “They . . . don’t really attack you, do they?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you. Rats can be pretty ferocious. Go prepared.”

  “What if you get bitten?”

  The man looked down. “Hospital and . . . the vet—to check the rat that bit you for rabies.”

  Everyone looked sick.

  “I know . . . it’s horrible—but after we’ve killed as many as we can then we go on to using poison. Lots of it.”

  “But what about the children?”

  “Keep them home.”

  GPJ frowned. “And what about trash?”

  “Yeah, very important. We’ve got to get rid of all food waste. Lift the trash cans high off the ground—on trees, on hooks, whatever.” He looked around at us all. “And after that we keep up a daily patrol till the job’s done.”

  “How long?”

  “Days, weeks, months.”

  “How do we know?”

  “When there’s no more rats crawling over your feet at night.”

  Arthur closed his eyes. He looked like he was shaking. I hope he’s not getting sick and not telling anyone.

  Later on at supper, I noticed Arthur was missing. I dragged myself out of my blankets and finally tracked him down on the stairs. I only saw him cos of his lit cigarette tip. God knows where he’d got a smoke from.

  “Arthur?”

  No reply.

  I climbed up, touched his arm. “What’s wrong?”

  Silence while he took in a long drag. “I was seventeen years old, on patrol. In the Ruhr Valley. There’d been running battles for days and they hadn’t had time to clear away the bodies. So there I was, a skinny young boy with a rifle and a flashlight I could barely keep in my hand I was trembling so much. I was walking along a section of riverbank near a bridge and my flashlight picked out something up ahead. I . . . forced myself to go forward . . .” Arthur took another deep pull on his cigarette. “And I saw three dead men lying on the ground, almost as if they’d fallen asleep—except . . . rats were running from under their coats, enormous rats, Laura, fat with human flesh
. I bent down over the nearest man. His helmet rolled off . . . his face was stripped of flesh, the eyes devoured. Then from where his mouth was a . . . rat . . . leaped out.”

  When I went down to the main hall, the stink hit me. I looked around—everybody’s finished off. Dad looks like an old man.

  Thurs., Dec. 10

  Nut Brown dragged open the big steel front doors of the Co-op this morning and everyone went out on the front steps of the building, like we were posing for some totally messed-up wedding photo. Nothing to see but sewage and slime. And then the sun came out. Everybody gazed out in silence, dazzled by the play of sun on mud and swamp water.

  “Now I know how Noah felt,” muttered Loud Dad, tears in his eyes.

  Mum set off to find Kim straightaway. She won’t let Dad go.

  “You’re not well enough, Nicky. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Dad sighed. “No dramatics now—just stay out of trouble . . . please?”

  “I promise.”

  And then me and Dad stood on the steps and watched her walk down the filthy street till she turned the corner. Adi’s gone, too—to his family. It’s only been a few hours and I’m already so lonely without him.

  Mum got back just before dark. “I couldn’t make it past the Soho checkpoint without ID.” Her mouth was grim. “ID for my own city. I can’t believe it.”

  “What’ll you do?” asked Arthur.

  “Go to the house tomorrow and find my goddamn passport.”

  “What’s the city like?”

  “Don’t ask . . . The army crews are still searching over the last bits of flooded area for the dead. They say the death toll’s at 2,450.”