Flood

by Stephen Baxter

  He needed to get out of here, he realized suddenly. He slipped out and back into the storm, pulling his hood over his head, and walked off into the streets.

  Car Park Four was on the far side of the square. All the car parks had been full when Amanda and the kids had arrived this morning, but now most of the cars had already gone or were packing the exits, their tail lights crowding red, leaving behind a surface of pale pink gravel slick with water.

  Benj pointed to the left, toward the river side. “I think that’s our point over there.” Amanda saw a huddle of fifty or so adults and children, one of a number of such groups gathered under signposts all across the plain of car parks. Benj’s eyes were sharper than hers, and he was good at remembering instructions; she was sure he was right.

  They hurried that way, through the rain, splashing through puddles. They had to make their way through barriers of blue railings, and she could hear the rain hammering down on the double roof of the Beckham football academy. They were nearly run over by a big four-by-four that came bearing down on them out of nowhere, screeching across the parking spaces, driven by a frightened-looking young woman with a tiny scrap of a toddler strapped into a car seat behind her.

  Benj was alert, and he looked around curiously. For once the world was more interesting than his Angel. “Look at that boat, Mum. It looks awful high.” It was one of the fancy high-speed Thames Clippers, tied up at the spindly, modernistic Queen Elizabeth Pier. The boat was riding up in the water and heaving as waves passed. The river must be high, then.

  They reached the group. A policewoman stood with them, hands behind her back, smiling, an image of calm competence. Looking around, Amanda saw more police scattered through the crowds, gathering groups together.

  But she couldn’t see Kristie. Benj went off to try to find her. Amanda waited, hanging back from the group. Everybody else seemed calm, everyone but her. She felt embarrassed to have turned up in such a panic, without one of her kids, in such an incompetent mess.

  Benj came hurrying back. His hair was plastered down by the rain. “Mum, she isn’t here.”

  She couldn’t take it in. “What do you mean? Then where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice small.

  She stood there staring, almost angry at him for coming back with the wrong answer. Kristie had to be here. She glanced around at the calm policewoman speaking into her radio, the children subdued but not frightened, the dismal, soggy car park, the Dome with its crown of spiky pylons thrusting into the air. Racked by fear and inadequacy, she longed not to be here, to be safe in her office in Hammersmith, surrounded by her files and her laptop and with a phone that worked, safe in a world she knew and could handle. Not this rainy desolation.

  The policewoman stood on a low wall and clapped her hands. “Can I have your attention?” The kids’ chatter fell silent. “I’ve had fresh instructions. Look, you can see how things are. The tube is out because it’s flooded. The buses are all full up, and have mostly gone anyhow. I’m afraid we’re going to have to walk out.” There was a groan, but the policewoman smiled brightly. “Don’t worry, this is the standard evacuation plan and it’s been rehearsed. It’s not far.” She pointed south. “We’ll go that way, following East Parkside, and then along the southern approach to the Blackwall Tunnel. It’s a flyover, so you’ll be safe from the flooding.” What flooding? “Now, the roads are already clogged up with cars, but we’ve kept the hard shoulder open and we’re looking to open up another lane too, so it should be easy enough. There’ll be lots of other people walking too. It’s only”—she hesitated, looking at the younger children—“let’s say half an hour to the stations, Westcombe Park or Charlton, and they’ll be laying on special trains to take you off.” Off where? Amanda wondered. How do we get home? “That’s all. If you’d like to form up into a column, I’ll follow at the rear . . .”

  As the people gathered obediently into a crocodile, Amanda pushed her way through to the policewoman. “My daughter. Kristie Caistor. She’s got lost.”

  “I’ll put a call out,” the policewoman said. “We’ve a contact system in place, Mrs. Caistor. I’m sure—”

  “I’ll wait,” Amanda said desperately. “She might come here. She’s bound to be frightened.”

  “It’s much better if you move on. We have to get the whole site cleared.”

  Amanda snarled, “That’s what they’ve been saying to me since I was kicked out of that stupid arena by a fucking kid.”

  The WPC blanched, wet, tense. She fingered the radio button at her lapel.

  Benj plucked at Amanda’s sleeve, horribly embarrassed. “Mum, please.”

  Somebody screamed, one of the kids. “My feet are wet!”

  And suddenly Amanda was aware that her feet were colder, too, and her ankles, her shins. She glanced down. Water, cold and full of muck, was washing over her shoes. She looked to her left, toward the pier. Water gushed over the retaining wall, a steady stream of it, pouring out over the flat surface of the car park. For a heartbeat or two, the people just watched the water rising around their shins, pelted by the rain.

  Then there was a surge, and a wave topped the wall and rushed down toward them. Children screamed, and parents broke and ran, dragging their kids away from the water. Amanda reached for Benj.

  Then it was on them like a tide coming in, a wave of water that reached Amanda’s knees, and then another pulse came that soaked her to her waist and made her stagger.

  The policewoman was yelling, “Go that way, the way I told you! Go on toward the flyover! Keep together!”

  The party struggled in that direction. But the water continued to pour over the bank wall, spreading eagerly over the car park. The current was surprisingly strong for such shallow water, and it was difficult to walk through it. One little girl went under. The policewoman and her mother helped her up; she surfaced, coughing, soaked to the skin. And still the water poured over the wall.

  Amanda tried to stay standing, staring wildly about. “Kristie. Kristie!”

  “She’s safe!” It was Lily, running up out of nowhere, in a wetsuit and heavy orange coat, splashing toward her. And Kristie was with her, holding Lily’s hand, her pink backpack bright.

  Amanda grabbed her daughter gratefully. Even Benj let Kristie bury her face in his coat.

  Amanda said, “Lily, where the hell did you come from?—Never mind. Where did you find her?”

  “She couldn’t get back to you, and she couldn’t make it here, so she went to a police missing-persons point. They’re all over the peninsula. Smart kid. They logged her in, I found her there, came for you—”

  A fresh wave came over the wall, and they all jumped.

  Lily grabbed Kristie’s hand. “Come on, we need to get out of here. The chopper’s waiting.”

  “What chopper?”

  “AxysCorp.”

  Benj said, “What about everybody else?”

  “We can’t take everybody,” Lily said grimly. “I’m sorry, Benj.”

  Amanda asked, “Lily, how can all this be happening?”

  “I don’t know,” Lily said. “For now I just want to get us out of here. Now come on. Hang onto me . . .”

  Clinging to each other, they struggled through the increasingly powerful currents that swept across the car park, heading for the chopper.

  15

  So this was Millwall, heart of the east end, a tough old community that stretched around the western shore of the Isle of Dogs, with the dock cut through its heart. Piers had never been here before.

  The boom that had brought such glamorous developments to Canary Wharf and Greenwich had evidently passed this place by. But there were signs of redevelopment, industrial parks and commercial buildings and estates of flimsy-looking new housing that crowded out the older stock, what Piers’s mother would have called “two-up two-down.” None of it was being spared by the river water that pulsed along the streets, black and stinking of rot and sewage, lapping at front doors lined with sandba
gs and rolling over scraps of front gardens.

  No cars were moving. The streets were lined with parked vehicles, and a few were abandoned in the middle of the road, their electrics soaked. There was hardly anybody on the streets. Through open windows Piers heard the chatter of battery radios, but there were no lights, no TV sets glowing; maybe the power was already off. The residents seemed willing, for now, to accept the official advice to stay put. Inside the houses he saw homeowners wearily hauling TV sets and bits of furniture up the stairs. But some of the houses already had blankets hanging out of upstairs windows, a sign that rescue was needed, blankets soaked by the continuing rain and flapping in the breeze.

  He turned down a terraced street, and he heard rushing water. He looked back. A wave that must have been a half-meter high pushed down the narrow street toward him, black and oily and crusted with rubbish, plastic bins and milk bottles and bits of paper, and a dead bird, a rook, gruesomely spinning in the water.

  He turned off the road and through a garden gate, instinctively trying to get away from the water. He climbed a step to a sandbagged front door. But the water came lapping over his legs anyhow, reaching to his knees, the sudden drag making him stagger.

  The front door behind him opened. “Here, watch out for my gate.” An old woman, in purple cardigan and slacks, stood at the door with a crutchlike metal walking stick. The flood pushed over her heap of sandbags and spilled into her hall, and made her stumble back. “Ooh, oh my Lord.”

  “Here.” Piers hurried forward. He managed to catch her by the elbows before she fell. He set her right as the water pooled past them on into the house. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, look at my carpets, what you want to go and do that for?”

  “I’m sorry,” Piers said.

  She looked up at him doubtfully. With a wisp of gray hair, she might have been eighty. She must once have been pretty. “I thought you was the nurse. You’re not the district nurse, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Today’s not my day. But I’ve packed my bag for the hospital.” She pointed to a small leather case that sat on a polished table in the hall. “It’s got all my bits. I’ve got my pills, and I put in my spare teeth, like Kevin said. But you aren’t Kevin, are you? My eyes aren’t so good.”

  “The nurse? No, I’m sorry. My name’s Piers.”

  “Piers! Well I never. My name’s Molly.”

  “Nice to meet you, Molly.”

  “You’re not a copper, are you? So what you doing standing in my drive, then?”

  “I’m a soldier.”

  “Oh,” she said, if that explained everything. “Well, help me on with my coat, dear.”

  He hesitated for one second. Then he stepped inside the house to get her case and her coat. The hall was cramped, the walls crowded with photographs and bits of embroidery in frames, and there was a smell of rarely washed woolens, rapidly being overwhelmed by a sewagelike river stink. He found a heavy overcoat on a rack, and held it up for her.

  “Got your car, have you?”

  “A car? No.”

  “An ambulance then. Well, how are you going to get me to the hospital?” She looked down at the filthy, steadily rising water. “I mean I can’t stay here, and I can’t walk with my knees.”

  “No, I don’t suppose so.” He glanced out at the street. A policeman in waders and a bright yellow jacket worked his way down the road, hammering on front doors. An evacuation order, and coming late enough too. Doors were opening, and people were reluctantly emerging from their houses, bearing kids, suitcase, bundles of possessions.

  Piers looked at Molly, and down at the swirling water. This is something I can do, he thought.

  He put his hands on Molly’s shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Are you sure you’ve got everything you need? Your bank book, your NHS card—”

  “Oh, yes, all packed, Kevin gave me a list. Large print too, he’s really very good.”

  “This is a bit awkward—but do you need the lavatory for a bit? I’m not sure when we’ll get to a toilet.”

  She laughed at that. “I’m all right, dear, let’s get on with it.” She peered past him. “Still can’t see your car.”

  “Well, I don’t have a car, I’m afraid. Let’s see how we’re fixed.” He dug under his jacket, and took the belt from his trousers. He looped this through the suitcase handle and buckled it, and then hung the case around his neck so it dangled behind his back, over his slimmer emergency pack. It wasn’t terribly heavy. Then he reached for Molly. “Now then, madam—”

  When he picked her up she laughed again. “Oh my word, what a day this is turning out to be.” But she put her arms around his neck, and settled easily.

  He stood in the hall, balancing her weight. She was a solid woman, and heavy, but if he stood straight the case on his back acted as a kind of counterweight. He knew he was thin from his captivity, his muscles wasted; he wouldn’t last for ever. But he was confident he could make it for maybe a kilometer, which might be enough. “Off we go, Molly.” Carefully he stepped over the sandbags, and out onto the path.

  He let her fumble for a key so she could lock the door. “Last time I was carried over this threshold it was by my Benny, and that was going the other way, oh I’ll remember today all right.”

  “So will my back,” Piers said ruefully. He splashed down the path.

  “And these sandbags go back to the war. Really they do. I was a little girl then but I remember it clear as day. My dad dug the sand into his garden but he always kept the sacks, never know when they might start up again, he said, and he was right wasn’t he, in a way . . .”

  Letting her talk, he bent his head away from the rain and walked slowly, carefully. He headed east, roughly, toward the line of the DLR. The current of the flood water was fast, and though the water was still below his knees it tugged at him surprisingly strongly. One step, another, in the swirling, increasingly fetid water. He was determined not to get knocked over or trip.

  “Oh, I’ll remember this day I will, are you sure I’m not too heavy? I’ve got some mints somewhere, do you want a mint? . . .”

  The AxysCorp chopper lifted Lily and the others from a soggy sports ground in the lee of the flyover. The helicopter dipped its nose and they flew north, panning over a peninsula that was becoming an archipelago. The water lapped all the way around the Dome now, and the car parks had vanished. Soaked to the skin, Amanda sat with her kids at her sides, holding them both close, shuddering.

  The pilot glanced back. “Thought you might like to see this, Captain Brooke. Seeing as you missed the Games and all . . .”

  The chopper sped across the swollen river, and surged further north. Here, spreading up across Tower Hamlets and Newham as far as Hackney, was the Olympic Park. This was in fact the valley of a tributary river, the Lea; it too had burst its banks. Lily recognized a velodrome, and what looked like a complex for hockey or soccer, and a bowl of a stadium, all of it abandoned, desolate, rusting, even vandalized. The filthy water spread across the valley and swirled around the Olympic facilities, as if coloring in a map.

  The chopper dipped again and soared away to the west, toward central London.

  People in Millwall knew Molly Murdoch. One old man a couple of streets from Molly’s home, who was determined himself to stay put, offered Piers the use of the wheelbarrow he used on his allotment. The water was still shallow enough for that to work, and Piers lowered in his passenger, carefully, trying not to splash her, apologizing for the muck.

  “That’s the ticket,” said Molly as she settled into the barrow, and Piers wearily put her suitcase on her lap. “Home James!”

  So they trudged on.

  They joined a gradually merging crowd, all walking or limping, some pushing baby buggies and barrows and wheelchairs. The crowd converged on a DLR station called Mudchute, on the edge of the park where Piers had been set down. The railway itself ran along a brick viaduct a few meters above the ground. A team of police and DLR employees organ
ized the queuing, and supervised access to the platform.

  Molly got priority from the police for her disability. Piers needed a hand getting her in her barrow lifted up to the platform. They didn’t have long to wait for a train, though it arrived packed. Piers was relieved the trains were still running at all. Again Piers and Molly were given priority treatment, though they had to dump the wheelbarrow to make space.

  With Piers sitting beside Molly on a soaked seat, the train set off. Outside Mudchute the track was tree-lined, but he glimpsed residential streets. Over an Asda superstore whose car park was steadily filling with water, they were joined by more refugees pushing supermarket trolleys laden with children and possessions. Past Crossharbor Station a train was stranded on the other line, its smart red livery gleaming in the rain, its doors gaping open. A line of refugees straggled past awkwardly.

  They crossed the water to South Quay Station, and entered the office district, thirty glass buildings all jammed in, mostly lit up. This was a city in itself, Piers thought, like an American downtown planted alongside the much older community just a few hundred meters to the south, insulated from it with its fast tube links and enclosed rail routes. It felt very eerie to be traveling along this curving rail track surrounded by these gigantic developments; it was like a trail through a mountain range. But the old docks that stood at the feet of the buildings had overspilled, and the buildings were glass cliffs looming up from a shallow sea, through which people struggled, sodden lumps.

  At Canary Wharf the line ran beneath the great tower itself, One Canada Square. It was like riding through a tunnel cut into a huge sequoia, Piers thought idly. But the tower, fifty floors of it, was surrounded by a moat of water, and its underground mall must already have been flooded. All over the face of the great monolith above him lights blazed in the gathering evening. He could see office workers at their windows, in shirts and ties or colorful blouses, drinking coffee, peering out at storm-lashed London. Some had binoculars, and others took snaps with their mobile phones; you could see the flashes. Piers knew that the flood wasn’t necessarily bad news for some of these spectators. A disaster was an erasing, an opportunity to rebuild and make a profit in doing so, and perhaps establish a bit of financial control you hadn’t had before. The corporate barons of Canary had never much cared for the old communities like Millwall they had to share the Isle of Dogs with. Now was their chance to change the balance, perhaps. Some of the office workers were laughing at the dispossessed refugees at the foot of their tower, and raising their glasses in salute.