‘Oi, you, excuse me?’ she yelled out to a young guy who was trying to get under the red and white tape. ‘Sir?
You can’t come through…’
The man ignored her. Sergeant Pearce grabbed her radio and called a couple of colleagues over as she stepped under the line herself and hurried over to him.
‘Welcome back,’ he said to… well, to nothing. Just to
the fine white ash that had once been trees and goodness knows what else.
‘Sir, I must ask you to get back behind the line. This is a crime scene.’
The man continued to ignore her, and Pearce noticed that five other people had done the same thing all around the perimeter. ‘Guys,’ she said into her radio, ‘what’s going on?’
One of her constables reported back. ‘We couldn’t stop them, Sarge, they just got away from us.’
Pearce sighed and reached out to the man, but he was on his knees now, reaching out to the ashen ground.
‘Welcome back,’ he said again.
And his fingers connected with the ground as Sergeant Pearce reached out to his arm.
She felt a shock, small, electrical, but powerful, and found herself a good couple of feet away, flat on her back, shaking her head to clear it.
The man was standing now, back to the crater of ash.
Pearce realised that the other people, now seven in total had done the same. It was like they were guarding the site.
The young constable who had spoken to her over the radio was at her side. ‘You OK, Sarge?’ he said, helping her up.
She pushed him away. ‘I’m fine, Steve. What the hell is this?’ PC Steve Douglas shrugged. Sergeant Pearce tried her radio but all she got was static crackle.
PC Douglas tried his. Same result. ‘OK, this is dead weird,’ he said.
Sergeant Pearce walked away and back under the line,
telling Douglas to stay put and keep an eye on them. ‘But don’t go near them.’
She hurried over to a growing group of fire and police officers, which now included her superintendent. ‘Sir, we have a problem,’ she reported, and explained that seven people were guarding the crater.
Superintendent Shakiri frowned and started to move forward, towards the perimeter. ‘Get the public further back, Sergeant. Move the line another six metres.’
She nodded, but still her radio wasn’t working. Shakiri tried his. Nothing.
‘It was working ten minutes ago,’ he muttered.
‘So was mine,’ Pearce said. ‘It must be something electrical.’
‘Why’d you say that?’
She told him about being touched by the man and the shock she’d had.
‘Get yourself seen to by one of the paramedics, Sergeant.’
‘I’m fine, sir…’ she started, but he waved her away.
‘Delayed reaction, Sergeant. You’d tell anyone else to do the same. And if they say you’re fine, I’ll see you in five minutes.’ He smiled at her. ‘Please?’
Sergeant Pearce shrugged and walked towards one of the ambulances, while she listened to Shakiri yelling orders that the line was to be manually eased back.
As she reached the waiting paramedic, something…
something instinctive made her look back. It was like a slow-motion moment in a movie, so much happened at once, she couldn’t tell whether she saw it all or her brain pieced it together later.
A flash of purple light, like a bolt of electricity shot through the crowd of onlookers, flooring each and every one of them.
PC Steve Douglas vanished, although, for a split second, Pearce was convinced she saw him throw his arms up to protect himself from the purple flash, and she could see him – no, his skeleton – just for a second, then he was gone.
The seven ‘guards’, no longer hidden by the crowds, had stretched out their arms towards one another, and the purple electricity was connecting them all, like a rope.
Superintendent Shakiri threw himself down, dragging a couple of other officers with him in a rugby tackle, probably saving their lives.
There was a flash in the sky, like a sunburst, just for a second, and Pearce swore the whole sky flashed purple.
And then it was over. Sort of.
People were getting up and running further away. No one wanted to be near the electrical whatever-it-was. This was good in the sense that the public were going, but it was disorganised, and that was dangerous. If just one person fell… She remembered the story of a disaster in an East London tube tunnel during the war when it was being used as a shelter to hide from air raids. As the panicking public had scampered down the steps, one woman fell, bringing the whole crowd to the ground, killing almost two hundred people in the crush.
The panic going on right now, whilst not as confined, could be just as deadly. She saw Shakiri haul himself up, shouting to the officers around him to try and help the public. He threw a glance at where Steve Douglas had been standing – so he’d clearly witnessed it, too – and then back at her.
Waving the paramedic away, she ran over to join him at the scene. ‘What the hell was that?’ she breathed.
He pointed at the seven ‘guards’ around the crater. ‘I imagine they wanted us all to go away.’ He looked at the fleeing crowds. ‘Any casualties?’
Pearce just looked at where her young PC had been.
‘Would we know?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing left of Steve Douglas.’
Shakiri caught her eye. ‘And that’s why we need to know if there are others. If we hold them accountable for one death, we need to hold them accountable for any others.’
Both their radios crackled into life.
‘Good morning everybody everywhere around the world.’ It was a female voice, speaking clear, precise English. ‘My name is Madam Delphi and I am the only voice you need ever listen to. I’m speaking to you all on every wavelength, every radio, TV, PC and PDA the world over. You have now seen what I can do and will continue to do. This planet is mine. You can all go back to your dreary little lives and wait for me to tell you what to do next. I now return you to your scheduled programming.
Oh, sorry, except for those countries currently broadcasting any version of Big Brother. Sorry, all the contestants and presenters of that show, wherever they are, are dead. You can thank me later.’
The two police officers looked back at the seven people guarding the crater, that purple electricity still binding them together.
‘Tell you one thing, sir,’ Alison Pearce said, as she looked upwards to where it had all begun.
‘What’s that, Sergeant?’
‘That scary face in the sky has gone.’
Miss Oladini was seriously thinking of handing in her notice. This was not a good enough job to be worth all this aggro.
Last night she’d been chased, had electricity chucked at her, been nearly blown up in a car and, worst of all, someone had nicked her bike. She hoped it was that redheaded woman who had been with her in the car, because that would mean she too had escaped the blast.
Miss Oladini wasn’t entirely sure how she’d done it herself, but knew it had involved a lot of rolling along the ground, ignoring the heat and running into a bush and holding her breath for what seemed like an hour but could only have been a minute or two before her pursuers assumed both women were dead.
She had no idea what was going on at Copernicus, but her body had given in to the shock and she’d fallen unconscious in the grounds of the old mansion house, eventually waking up again, cold, damp and very hungry.
And minus a bicycle.
She waited a while to see if anyone was watching her, then made her way back inside the house for warmth.
After a couple of minutes, she found a couple of abandoned coats. She knew she was in shock. Her body needed protection and warming up.
She put on the coats, one on top of the other, then headed for a tiny closet. She could hide there, and its cramped conditions would help retain the heat she needed.She found a half-drunk bottle of water on
a table top and took that with her, too.
After a couple of hours, she felt strong enough to venture out of her closet and see if the people were still there, see if Professor Melville was still with them.
She’d been creeping quietly down a corridor when she jumped, because a load of radios and TVs and a couple of desktops burst into life, and she listened to Madam Delphi’s portent of doom, feeling cold again.
Now she had recovered enough from last night’s ordeal, now it was daytime, it was time to get away from Copernicus. Forget Professor Melville and those people, this was too much for her to deal with, and she suspected that radio broadcast was connected. The police, maybe the army, they needed to know that something was going on here. She began to creep slowly towards the big staircase when a hand came out of nowhere and wrapped around her mouth, cutting off any noise she could make.
Miss Oladini thought this was it, she was going to die.
‘Please be quiet, sweetheart,’ said a voice in her ear.
‘My name is Wilfred Mott, and I don’t want to hurt you.’
He moved his hand away from her face, and Miss Oladini pulled away. She looked at the man, old, but not weak, clearly. His eyes burned with intelligence, but there was nothing threatening.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked bravely.
‘My granddaughter was here last night. She told me about things going on here. I’m looking for the Doctor.’
‘Granddaughter? Redhead?’
‘That’s Donna. You must be Miss Oladini? She thought you were dead, she’ll be so pleased you’re OK.’
Miss Oladini wasn’t sure about this. Those people that had attacked her could know all this. But would they know about…?
‘How did Donna get away?’
‘On a bike. Was it yours? She left it near a police station somewhere. South Woodham Ferrers, that was it.’
He smiled at her. ‘She got home so late last night and I’d been waiting up. She told me everything that happened, and after I got her off to sleep I decided to check on this place myself.’
Miss Oladini frowned at him. ‘You didn’t believe her?’
‘Course I did! Donna doesn’t make things up. But I wanted to find the Doctor and keep Donna safe at the same time. She’d been through enough. So I left her sleeping and crept out of the house this morning.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Right now she’ll have worked that out and be creating merry hell, I reckon.’
Miss Oladini still wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t seem to have the zombie-ish approach of the rest of the people here. ‘You’re looking for a doctor? Which one? They’re all doctors and professors here.’
‘He came with Donna. Tall bloke, daft hair. Talks a lot of rubbish.’
‘Sums up most of the Copernicus workers, frankly, Mr Mott.’
‘Wilf. And no, he doesn’t work here. He was asked to come here by a Professor Melville. That’s why he and Donna turned up so late.’
‘I spent most of last night hiding and being blown up, I didn’t see Donna till we escaped. No idea if there was anyone with her at all. Sorry.’
Wilf seemed to deflate. ‘Oh. I was so sure he’d be here.
I think he’s the only one who can save us from all that Madam Delphi stuff we just had to listen to.’
‘Why’d you think that?’
‘It’s the sort of thing he does. Save us.’
‘Some sort of vicar is he?’
Wilf laughed. ‘No, no, not at all. So, where is everybody, then?’
Miss Oladini shrugged and explained she was thinking of getting away.
‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ Wilf said. ‘If we don’t find my friend, I’ll drive you back home, how’s that?’
Miss Oladini weighed up her options, and then agreed.
There was, after all, no other way home as easy as this.
And Wilf Mott didn’t seem to be very threatening.
She led him down the stairs, through the shattered French windows and out into the back garden, pointing over at the radio telescope, explaining that was what the whole place was about.
Wilf nodded. ‘That face in the sky, that was made up of stars, right? I reckon that observatory thing is where the Doctor would be.’
Miss Oladini shivered and pulled her coats tighter around her. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want to go back there.’
‘Why not?’
But Miss Oladini couldn’t explain. There was just something about it, something about the way the telescope had always seemed a safe place to work but now…
Wilf gripped her shoulder. ‘All right, you wait here and I’ll pop over and see if the Doctor’s there. Won’t be long.’
Miss Oladini watched as he wandered off. She shivered again. For one brief moment she had felt safe with this strange old man, and now she was alone again, she…
She caught up with him in seconds. ‘Entrance, this way,’ she said.
He smiled at her. ‘Good for you, girl,’ he said. ‘Didn’t fancy going in alone. To be honest.’
They smiled at each other.
‘So, Donna’s your granddaughter, then?’ Miss Oladini said. ‘Glad she got away.’
‘Me too. Be lost without her. Family’s an important thing to keep a hold of.’
Miss Oladini considered this. ‘I don’t know where my family are,’ she said. ‘Probably back in Nigeria.’
‘How come you lost touch?’
She smiled. ‘Oh, you know how it is, came to the UK
for university, lost my status, stayed hidden here, signed on to the agency to find me work under a false name, usual stuff.’
‘That’s very brave of you,’ Wilf said. ‘Risky, too, working here.’
‘Right under the government’s nose,’ she replied.
‘Easiest way to disappear off the radar is to hide in plain
sight. That’s what my dad said last time I spoke to him.’
Wilf agreed. ‘Used to say that about spies, during the war,’ he said. ‘Best way to infiltrate was to be seen, so no one got suspicious. Just become a member of society.’
‘That’s what I did. Look where it’s got me. Frightened for my life.’
Wilf winked at her. ‘You’ll be all right.’
They were at the door of the radio telescope. It was slightly ajar and they crept in.
Professor Melville was dead. There was no doubting that, his neck was at such a strange angle, and although Miss Oladini had never seen anyone dead before, she just knew it. Her hand was over her mouth, stifling the cry in her throat. Wilf checked the poor man for a pulse, but gently lifted his hand away.
It looked like he had been working at the guidance systems for the array when he’d died. When he’d been killed, Miss Oladini thought. After all, people didn’t break their own necks.
Wilf was climbing up the small ladder that led to the upper deck, where the telescope itself was housed. It wasn’t an old-fashioned tubular telescope, but a series of computers arrayed across the room, linked to the radio dish on top of the building.
That had always disappointed Miss Oladini when she first came to work for the poor Professor. Somehow a giant telescope seemed more romantic than a computer bank.
She glanced back at his body, eyes staring open at the ceiling, and thought about his old mother. And his cat.
And how scared she’d been of him the last time she had seen him. And now all she could think about was his cat.
And she began to cry for the first time since everything had gone wrong.
*
Donna punched at the radio buttons until she got a station.
She didn’t want music, she wanted news. It wasn’t hard to find. All over the globe, massive beams of light had struck down, and been surrounded by people. Some observers were saying they were terrorists guarding a bomb site, some thought they were religious fanatics guarding something holy and special. Others reckoned it was aliens, coming to get those who had claimed to have been abducted and then retur
ned with microchips in their heads over the last fifty years. The strange message from ‘Madam Delphi’, which everyone assumed was just an internet hacker trying to be funny, had started that one off…
‘Irony is,’ she said to the radio, ‘that’s the one that might be right!’
There didn’t seem to be too many casualties but no one could get near the people actually guarding the craters.
Britain, America, Russia, the Middle East, Asia, New Zealand, Africa, Greenland, nowhere was untouched.
There seemed to be no connection between the people gathering to guard those craters: different ages, sexes, politics, backgrounds.
‘Wonder if the Poles got attacked,’ she mumbled after
listening to the reports for a bit longer as they drove past the Tower of London.
‘There was a mention of one in Germany,’ Lukas said.
Donna smiled. ‘I didn’t mean Poles in Poland, I meant the North or South Poles.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yeah, it probably does. They seem to be heavily populated areas, rather than desolate. So there’s something significant about that.’
‘What?’
‘No idea. But I’m thinking.’ She looked at a sign saying A13 Tilbury. ‘Essex thataway.’ Then she shrugged.
‘Not that I know exactly where I’m going. It was dark last night and I was thinking about the Doctor too much to note landmarks.’
‘You want to take the A127,’ Joe piped up. ‘Three miles along that after the M25 junction, then left into Meadow Lane, half a mile further on and right into Gorsten Road. Stay on that for six and a half miles, then left towards South Woodham Ferrers.’
‘Oh yes, I remember that name,’ Donna said. ‘How do you know?’
‘After passing under the railway bridge, you need to go eight miles on Tributary Road and as you get to the B8932, turn right into Allcomb Lane. Copernicus is two miles along there.’
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