by Will James
S.O.S
Will James
Wordebite
www.wordebite.com
Other works by Will James
The Word
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Wordebite Ltd.
Copyright © Will James 2012
The right of Will James to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-78301-267-1
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in the publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Contents
The Beginning - London
CHAPTER 1 - London
CHAPTER 2 - Newcastle
CHAPTER 3 - North East Korea
CHAPTER 4 - London
CHAPTER 5 - London
CHAPTER 6 - London
CHAPTER 7 - London
CHAPTER 8 - Sunan International Airport, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
CHAPTER 9 - Grosser Tiegarten, Berlin
CHAPTER 10 - London
CHAPTER 11 - London
CHAPTER 12 - Berliner Flaughafen, Berlin
CHAPTER 13 - London
CHAPTER 14 - London
CHAPTER 15 - A remote area of North Korea
CHAPTER 16 - A remote area of North Korea
CHAPTER 17 - London
CHAPTER 18 - London
CHAPTER 19 - London
CHAPTER 20 - London
CHAPTER 21 - London
CHAPTER 22 - London
CHAPTER 23 - London
The Beginning - London
The walk from school was quite a distance, but Chris, even at thirteen didn’t complain about it. Most days, except when he had cricket, he walked from his comprehensive to the primary school where he met his mum and his sister, Sophie, and often he gave Sophie, who was eight, a piggy back ride the rest of the way. He was good-natured, a good kid; his parents knew they were lucky.
Tonight though, was different. He was making his own way home because he’d stayed late at school for science club and was going down to the rec with his mates for some football. They’d got it all organised, two teams of seven-a-side and his team was going to wop Alec’s team. His team were awesome; the best.
As he approached the park he heard shouting and waved at a few of the lads who were already there practising. They waved back and then suddenly something whistled past his ear. He saw a football bounce into the road as a shout came from behind.
“Get that for us will ya Chris?!”
Chris was quick; he didn’t need to be asked. “Gottit!” he shouted back. He darted out from behind a parked car into the road.
It happened in a heartbeat.
His mates, standing at the fence saw and heard what Chris would never see and hear: the screech; a car skidding sideways; a shouted warning bursting from their lips, too late. The horn of the car broken as it smashed into another parked car so that it went on and on and on.
And at that moment the world simply stopped. They knew that he was gone.
CHAPTER 1 - London
Dev Pathmajaren sat at his desk as the clock showed eleven, feverishly scribbling his calculations on the paper that littered his bedroom. All along one wall, sheet upon sheet of complex mathematics was tacked up with masking tape, the sort of calculations that should have been beyond a boy of seventeen, the sort more suited to PhD students and celebrated professors. But Dev Pathmajaren was not an average seventeen year old; he was a borderline genius. Borderline because, apart from school, which had long since given up trying to keep pace with his learning, no-one knew just how clever he was; borderline because his genius was not confirmed.
His shelves were stacked with Newton’s Principia Mathematica and Euclid’s Elements which jostled for space with volumes by Einstein, Feynman, Faraday and Hawking. The great manuals, dog-eared from use, watched in silence as the tall boy, bent over his formulae, suddenly stopped and stared at what he had just written down. Dev gazed at his work in astonishment and was gripped by a sudden fear, the initial triumph of completing his theory long forgotten.
As he considered his discovery, a bead of sweat broke out on his forehead and trickled down the bridge of his nose to be wiped away as he rubbed his face vigorously with his now damp palms. It had to be a mistake, it just had to be, he thought desperately as he rifled through the pages of calculation. But even as he did so, he knew it was a pointless exercise because so far, he had never been wrong. And, as he searched, he found that his maths, as it always had been, was perfect.
He sat there, an icy pool flooding his stomach as he thought about what his discovery could mean. He smoothed his hair with his hand. What to do, what to do? For the very first time in his life Dev Pathmajaren didn’t know the answer. It was a frightening feeling. He stood up and paced for a while then sat down again and re-checked his calculations one more time. Yes, he was right and this time the answer had fatal consequences, not just for him but for the entire world.
He snatched up his mobile and called The Royal Institution. The line connected.
“Hi, yes, please, extension 623 please.” He waited to hear the familiar ring tone and imagined the office – covered in papers, empty coffee cups, books, calculations. He could see Professor Wilkins searching for the phone under a pile of discarded notes.
“Yello!”
Typical Wilkins, Dev thought, yes and hello merged into one for immediacy. He didn’t do small talk – his brain didn’t have room for it.
“Hi Prof, it’s Dev.”
“Mr Pathmajaren. How are you since I saw you last, what two hours ago?”
“Fine, fine. I’ve erm... I’ve finished my theory.”
“Ah. Have you?” A sudden wariness had crept into the professor’s voice.
Dev listened and thought he heard voices in the background. “Yes, yes and Professor Wilkins, I think I’ve found...-”
“Dev, Dev, Dev,” Wilkins began, “I know what you think you’ve found but I have to be frank with you, it’s not what you think it is. I don’t think you’re correct.”
“But Professor, you said that you thought...-”
“I know what I said Dev!” The professor’s voice had taken on an edge of aggression. He didn’t like to be challenged. Ever. “But I’ve had time to reflect and I don’t think that you’re right. Something in your calculations is wrong. They don’t add up.”
Dev couldn’t believe he was hearing this. “But...” He was going to remind the professor that he had said Dev was right, had encouraged him all along to consider the theory and now, now he’d changed his mind? Dev felt a sickness claw at the pit of his stomach.
“While you’re on Dev, I ought to tell you that what with budget cuts and the rest, we need to make some changes here at the Institute. I’m afraid we’re not going to have room to take in young physicists like yourself without funding from the right channels, Dev. We’re not going to be able to let you come and go as you have been doing. I’m sorry.”
Dev held the phone tightly. He’d been going to the Royal Institution ever since his parents had written to them about him, ever since he’d finished all the physics and maths exams at school, for years in fact. He felt the blow almost physically. He loved the place – it was the heart of physics.
“I really am sorry,” Professor Wilkins said, this time more gently and Dev believed him. Whatever was going on the
re, Wilkins had always supported Dev.
“If you want my advice Dev, just forget this theory and focus on another aspect of physics. Bide your time until you go up to Cambridge next autumn.”
“Yes, yes of course, I...” Dev was lost for words; he felt crushed. “Thank you Professor, for everything that you’ve...” He swallowed hard, but he didn’t get to finish what he wanted to say. The line had gone dead.
*
Molly Sharp lay on her bed, curled up on her side with her headphones on. It was 3am and the music rebounded in her head as she drifted in and out of sleep. Tonight was bad.
She had shut both the windows even though she liked the cold, fresh air in her room while she slept and she’d closed the curtains - pulling down the blackout blind she’d insisted her mother get for her - which sometimes helped, but not tonight. Tonight it felt like they were louder than ever. Incessant. Tonight even the headphones and the pumping beat couldn’t drown them out. The cat sat outside her door and wouldn’t come in. A bad sign.
At 4am, Molly got up. She took the headphones off. She stood in the middle of her room; a tall, thin girl of sixteen with a flame of dark red hair, graceful, lovely and she shook her head.
“For God’s sake!” she cried, “Why don’t you all just shut up?! Shut up for one minute will you and let me sleep!” She stopped. There seemed to be a moment of silence and she let out a sigh. Then it disappeared, lost in the swell of voices that rose up out of the darkness.
“GO AWAY!” she cried, much louder this time, “Will you please just all go AWAY!”
In the bedroom next to her, Sandra, Molly’s mum, also lay awake in the dark and listened to her daughter’s cry. She had been asleep when she heard Molly call out and woke with a start. The shout was loud enough to hear her voice, but not loud enough to hear the words, so as always, Sandra’s imagination ran riot. What was her daughter shouting about at 4am? What had woken her? Was she in trouble? What could it be that made her sound so anguished and in pain?
Sandra sat up and switched on the bedside light. Climbing out of bed, she padded to the door and opened it, listening for any more sound from Molly’s room. There was nothing. She went out and knocked on Molly’s door.
“Molly?” She waited. “Are you okay?”
There was no answer. She cracked open the door and peered into the darkness. Molly was in bed, under the covers with her head phones on. She was asleep.
Sandra went back to bed. She switched the light off and lay in the dark, listening to the silence underpinned by the distant hum of traffic on the main road. Perhaps it was a dream, she thought, a nightmare? She consoled herself with that thought as she closed her eyes and tried to get back to sleep. But whatever it was she thought, drifting off, it was getting more and more frequent.
*
A remote area of North Korea
Somewhere within the P’unggye-yoke area of North East Korea there is place that people have heard of, but know nothing about.
Until 2003 it did not officially exist and even today the government gives nothing away. Its function is described by them as simply an operating base for the Air Force. No one is known to work there; there are lawyers, engineers, insurance brokers but officially they don’t exist. Their life is secret.
The Colonel allowed himself a small smile as he thought what would happen if the conspiracy theorists really knew what was going on; fact, he thought wryly, was often stranger than the fiction.
He sat at his desk and looked through the four inch plate glass that separated his office from the rest of the huge, underground expanse that made up their work area. He watched the scientists mingle with members of the army and government agents; people hurrying along neon lit corridors with files; white coats, suits and grey uniforms. They were occupied; busy. The people here had a purpose and that pleased him.
A knock upon the door disturbed his thoughts. It was not the usual smart rap but a frantic hammering. He called the order to enter and the head scientist, Dr Johann Stamn, spilled through the doorway in a flurry of limbs, flushed and sweating. The Colonel allowed him to catch his breath. He turned and eased his gaze from the window to Dr Stamn. His eyes were cold and calculating.
“Sir, we’ve done it!” exclaimed Dr Stamn as he composed himself, adjusting his glasses and wiping away the sweat of his palms on his lab coat.
The Colonel considered for a moment. He didn’t like to praise; it showed weakness.
“Good,” he said calmly, which for him was high approval. “Show me.”
He followed Dr Stamn down through twisting corridors and steel staircases, descending further into the bunkered heart of the base. They stopped at the correct section where Dr Stamn allowed his eyes to be scanned before gaining access and made their way into a huge room.
This was the room at the hub of the experiment. Filled with high tech computer technology not seen anywhere else in the world, banks of screens showing measurements and readings that were undecipherable to an outsider.
Stamn’s team, usually seen hard at work, were all milling around excitedly, shaking hands and congratulating each other, but they gradually fell silent as they noticed the Colonel’s presence. The Colonel let them have their moment of triumph; if they had truly been able to succeed in their mission then it was well deserved.
A hush finally pervaded the lab, but the excitement and tension in the room was still palpable. Dr Stamn cut a path through the small crowd and The Colonel followed him. They reached the far end of the room, a steel reinforced concrete wall, lined with lead that ran the length of the lab. It had one long, thin eye level slit cut into it, fitted with a reconstructed glass-like material, six inches thick, which allowed a small view into the bunker beyond the wall.
The Colonel, Stamn and the other scientists gathered along this thin viewing panel and looked into a vast cavern, its walls reinforced as the room was with steel, lead and concrete. Littered throughout the enormous fissure were an array of vehicles and objects; the latest model of attack tank used by the army, reinforced houses, models of soldiers wearing the latest flak jackets and protective gear and the rats that had colonised the expanse long ago. The Colonel felt the muscle in his neck twitch with excitement. He turned to Dr Stamn who was by now working with a team at a computer, preparing what was about to happen.
Dr Stamn looked up from the screen. “I’ve placed it in the centre of the cave and prepared a tiny amount of energy to be released.” He stared at the Colonel. “From our calculations that is all we need.”
The Colonel acknowledged this fact with a small nod of the head.
“Preparing for countdown,” he said. Suddenly warning sirens blared out across the vast plain of rock, startling the rats so that they scampered into corners and cowered. There was absolute silence. A countdown appeared on the screen:
5
4
3
2
1
A blinding flash dazzled the Colonel. For a moment he lost sight and was forced to steady himself as the ground shook from under him. Blinking furiously he looked around. People stood dazed and shaken. He peered through the sight line at the cavern. He blinked again.
There was nothing left of the houses, of the armoured vehicles or even the rats which had scurried into corners. They had evaporated.
The Colonel surveyed the barren wilderness with awe, and thought about the potential that these geniuses had uncovered. He turned and, pausing briefly to shake the hand of a shaken Dr Stamn, walked swiftly away to relay news. News of a discovery that would build the state of North Korea into the supreme and unchallenged force in the world.
*
Newcastle
The snow came to Newcastle, at first a few gentle flakes fluttered down upon the late night party-goers, dusting them quietly with frost. They drew their coats closer about their shoulders as the cold bit and hurried home, their drunken laughter quickly snatched away by the howling wind and lost. The flurry grew heavy on the banks of Tyneside, erupti
ng into a blizzard that roared its anger through busy streets and deserted alleyways, blanketing the earth.
In one forgotten corner a homeless youth huddled against the doorframe of a quiet house, arms wrapped around his knees and head bowed against the storm. He shivered uncontrollably in a thin hooded sweatshirt over a dirty vest top. He hugged his knees closer, in a vain effort to block out the Arctic chill and could feel his fingers grow numb and lose their grip. His toes too began to lose their feeling, his worn trainers doing nothing to guard against the bitter cold that seeped into every pore of his thin body.
He sat there, frozen, and felt the numbness spread up his legs, his arms and through his chest, the cold gripping his heart in a vice making him gasp. In his ear he could hear the thump of it, once so rhythmic but now it seemed to beat slower, missing beats, shutting down. The boy slowly looked up from the crook of his arms and everything seemed blurred, the shapes of arches and streetlamps indistinguishable in the whitewash around him. It was becoming harder to breathe; the cold air was painful as it passed his blue and swollen lips. He couldn’t think straight. His thoughts had slowed along with his heartbeat and all his mind was telling him to do was to remove his hoodie in an effort to keep warm. Conjuring the last of his effort to stay conscious he looked up and thought he saw a flash of white light glimmering; a light so close he thought that he could reach out and touch it, but his arms were too heavy. He sank back against the wooden doorframe with the last of his breath. The white faded into black and disappeared. His eyelids drooped.
*
London
The church was quiet and dark as Father Tom sat in prayer. He hadn’t been able to sleep and so had left the priest’s house across the road and let himself into the vast old crumbling building that stood on the side of a main road in the east end of London. There were a couple of homeless sleeping in the porch and he’d covered them with the extra blankets he kept in the back of the church, leaving them where they were, not having the heart to move them on as the Bishop wanted him to do.
