‘It’ll be gone tomorrow’ was the national state of mind.
Others made it into work successfully, but by the usual close of play - 5pm, they were trapped by the snow drifting menacingly up against the exit doors. The Government glibly advised that they remain under cover, and almost all of these citizens eventually perished in the workplace.
Many were caught in the open. They had attempted to walk to work, or perhaps to drop their children off at school, before continuing onto their part-time jobs in the local area. These victims were simply overwhelmed in the atrocious conditions.
The bulk of the population were trapped at home. The elderly or retired, home-makers, the unemployed, the sick, students on Christmas break and those wise enough not to venture out into the horrific storm.
In the final analysis, these folk did not fare much better than their compatriots did. As electricity failed, gas ceased to flow, water pipes froze and food and drinking water ran out, these temporary survivors slowly but surely also succumbed to the intense cold or simply died of thirst.
The sick and infirm stood no chance, as care workers and the medical profession simply failed to reach them. In reality, most people were involved in a desperate personal survival struggle, and any fleeting thought of helping others had been quickly swept away by the howling gales.
The Government and rescue services were helpless.
Communications broke down, as did rescue vehicles. The police, fire service and the Armed Forces found themselves in a similar position to the general populace – and they were soon fighting for their own lives.
Transport links failed almost immediately. The airports closed and flights into and out of the UK soon ceased permanently. Trains slowed to a grinding halt. The Underground railway systems throughout the UK failed, as did the electricity supply. Buses and coaches joined with other vehicles trapped in the nationwide logjam. Ferries and commercial shipping were trapped in port, or floated aimlessly just offshore with nowhere to berth.
As a consequence, thousands of victims shivered and froze to death in airports, trains, stations and other public transport termini. They generally had no practical way of returning to the comparative safety of their homes.
Most died where they had been abandoned.
It very rapidly became a fight for individual survival. Families had been separated by the storm and could not provide mutual support or succour. Even close neighbours found it almost impossible to assist each other. Many people selfishly refused to respond to pleas for help and others actively ignored the needy.
Wicked self-interest swiftly reared its ugly head.
The newly installed Prime Minister became haunted by guilt and hopelessly irrational remorse, and eventually took his own life in the vaults below 10 Downing Street. His close friend and ally, Sir Ian James, was rescued and conveyed to Sandringham, where the Royal Family had survived the storm. He began the futile process of national recovery with the vital assistance of the Machiavellian Ambassador to France, Her Excellency Dame Ann Fletcher CBE MVO.
The struggle for survival brought out the worst in many people. Patric and Joanie Silver experienced disgraceful and murderous behaviour at their campsite in Brighton, from where they escaped by the skin of their teeth. They discovered the meaning of ‘out of the frying pan’ when they joined a survival ‘commune’ in an erstwhile Tesco superstore, where harsh and criminal discipline was imposed as a means to justify continued self-seeking existence.
Jeff and Lyndsey Hyne used the assets at their disposal on the small trading estate in the Midlands to build a shelter and eventually survived following a desperate rescue by a UKRA helicopter. Like many survivors, when the snow eventually stopped they had revisited their domestic property only to find it flooded and wrecked.
The Drovers, a retired middle-aged professional couple living in Selby, Yorkshire made a valiant attempt in the conditions. They turned their sprawling Georgian mansion into a fortress and, like Andrew Brady, planned for the worst. When the worst happened, they were ready. However, when the thaw eventually arrived, they made the mistake committed by thousands of other survivors, and ventured out into the snow; ill-prepared and poorly equipped – and suffered the inevitable fatal consequences.
Animal life also suffered harshly. Farm stock and the occupants of zoos and wildlife parks either froze or starved as their human keepers fought for their own lives, and sadly neglected their wards through self-serving necessity.
The only non-human survivors in the short term were household pets – cats, dogs and birds. Many pet lovers fed these animals ahead of themselves and starved as a result. The ultimate consequences of this naïve generosity were to become cataclysmic.
However, there were some success stories.
There were many British citizens who took precautions from Day 1 to protect themselves in their own homes. These people expected the worst and reacted accordingly.
They astutely stored drinking water in baths and plastic containers. Whilst the shops remained open, they stocked up with tinned and frozen food, drinking water, energy drinks and warm clothing. They congregated in one central room and hunkered down for the duration. Nobody expected the storm to last more than three or four days – but those who had the foresight to be proactive and make basic plans survived the longest.
People like Wing Commander Andrew Brady RAF.
Brady was an experienced Royal Air Force winter survival expert, trapped like the rest of the population, but who pre-empted the coming disaster. His wife and two children died horribly on Day 1, and after adopting two companions – journalist Jane Kelly and twelve-year-old snow orphan Chris Davies – embarked on a practical course towards a chance of survival.
They made the decision not to surrender to inertia and freeze, but to escape the snow and trekked towards the east coast of England - and a slim chance of survival. His companions died, but Brady was rescued from the raging North Sea in the nick of time by a Danish ice-breaker, and was subsequently transferred to a Dutch military base hospital, where the extensive rescue operation was being co-ordinated.
It was here that Brady encountered his ex-wife, the scheming yet beautiful and charismatic Dame Ann Fletcher. She manipulated Brady heartlessly – as she did most people – and convinced him to return to London as the thaw set in, and attempt the rescue of ‘their’ daughter Chloe, who was entombed with her surrogate family.
Brady, escorted by undercover SAS operative Ross Bryant, was dropped into the desolation which Britain had become, and after a series of escapades safely evacuated Chloe and her fiancé’s family.
However, on his return to UKRA HQ in Brussels, he was shocked to learn that Dame Ann had tricked him and discovered that Chloe was not his daughter – he had been horribly duped.
By now, in the UK, the thaw had turned into a flood and survival took on a new challenge.
The landscape began to reveal the horrors lying beneath the snow. As the corrupted waters flowed towards the sea, it carried tens of thousands of corpses – animal and human – that cascaded grotesquely into the water and drifted offshore.
However, this was only one of the countless number of consequences brought about by the snow. Almost six million British ex-pats and residents found themselves marooned wherever they were located when the snow began.
There were Christmas holidaymakers stretched out across the globe; snowbirds taking in the sun in southern Europe; émigrés in Australia, New Zealand and Canada; employees on business and the staffs of hundreds of British legations and embassies – not to mention the countless backpackers and ‘gap-year students’ drifting aimlessly around the world.
Many forlornly filtered back into Western Europe, but discovered that return to the UK was impossible and that they had lost everything – property, schooling, family, employment, savings and government support. Most ended up in temporary tented transit camps in Germany and France funded by worldwide financial relief.
Dame Ann Fletcher set up the UKRA – U
nited Kingdom Recovery Alliance – with Sir Ian James, the newly installed Prime Minister, and attempted to inject order into an insufferable situation.
The watching World had taken almost a week to realise the enormity of the catastrophe, but in due course, the rescue effort began. Led by the USA; accommodation, food, water and a modicum of hope had eventually been provided for the millions of British refugees streaming into Europe. The World also donated generously – but only after the UN and the IMF accentuated the inevitable long-term global financial damage to the markets if the UK went under.
However, slowly but surely, expats trapped abroad realised that their fate was probably sealed.
A return to their homes in the UK was not going to be possible – almost certainly never in their own lifetimes.
This salient fact didn’t escape the notice of Dame Ann Fletcher. She decided that remaining in Brussels attempting to resettle millions of desolate, mostly ungrateful and unresponsive ex-British citizens was futile and unprofitable.
Consequently, she conspired to steal billions of pounds worth of gold from the vaults beneath the Bank of England. Using the UKRA as cover, she organised the liberation of the gold and cleverly swapped it, using a well- connected and rich South African contact and lover to do the dirty work. Ann escaped clean away to the Americas with US$2 billion, her daughter Chloe and her best friend and close ally, GCHQ analyst Dame Susan Macintyre.
She had involved many, many other innocent parties to achieve her aims.
Some she brutally murdered and others she left behind to carry the can.
However, Andrew Brady, Ross Bryant and Patric Silver used their wits to escape with their share of the booty. Eventually they realised that the UK was finished and that morals, ethics and principles were an expensive and pointless waste of time.
Extraordinary situations demanded extraordinary reactions.
However, not only was the UK a wasteland, there were things happening across the nation that were beyond human understanding.
The snow lay on the tip of a truly horrifying iceberg!
Day 100
Tuesday 25th March
Brussels
Bryan Wester was a lucky man.
He fully appreciated this fact as he surveyed his domain in the restaurant at the Combined Services Club (CSC) in Brussels.
From Day 1, when the snow started, he'd been lucky. Lucky enough to be at home - off sick.
He had reinforced this good fortune by using his noddle, and immediately secured his eleventh floor apartment on the outskirts of Bristol against the cold.
There were very few survivors on his floor, and when he realised that there was no alternative if he was going to survive, he raided adjoining flats for food, water, heating and bedding. He cooked fresh meat before the gas and electricity failed and made a damned good fist of the survival attempt.
He was unable to save a couple of elderly neighbours, who preferred to freeze to death than open the doors to strangers on this less than salubrious council estate.
Bryan also encountered a pair of teenaged thugs who were terrorising a young family on his floor. They reacted badly to his interference, and then made the fatal mistake of confronting Bryan, thinking that he was an elderly pushover.
Big mistake.
Bryan had spent many years as a doorman or ‘bouncer’ at clubs and pubs in Bristol, touching shoulders with minor criminals and ne’er do wells. As a consequence, Bryan was well able to look after himself. When the two yobs attacked him, Bryan dealt with them summarily and permanently.
He felt no guilt or compassion for his worthless victims, but when he made contact with the rescue forces after the thaw set in, the incident came back to bite him.
He had arranged for a helicopter to land on the roof of his apartment block in order to rescue himself and a group of fellow survivors. However, what he didn’t know was that the father of the thugs had been biding his time, after witnessing the demise of his contemptible offspring.
As Bryan herded the survivors up onto the roof, the man attacked and stabbed him full in the chest. Although Bryan had been semi-prepared and produced a hidden handgun with which he shot and killed the man, he suffered an apparently grievous and fatal wound.
He fell back and lost consciousness as his head slammed viciously against the concrete floor. His companions thought him dead, and the helicopter crewmember forced them precipitously all aboard before allowing anybody to properly check for life signs.
But, Bryan was a lucky man.
The crew of the rescue helicopter vectored in another ambulance chopper to Bryan’s block, and they discovered that the chest wound was not as serious as previously imagined. Consequently, Bryan was transferred to a UKRA offshore hospital ship and then onto Brussels, where he encountered Patric Silver and Dr John Stubbins.
Bryan’s luck multiplied.
Dr Stubbins saved his life and then Patric Silver used his influence as the Personal Protection Officer to Ann Fletcher to get him a job as the deputy manager at the Combined Services Club in Brussels.
Years before, Bryan had graduated from doorman to club manager, as owners realised that his numerous talents were wasted organising bouncers for twenty or so local pubs. Therefore, he was well qualified to step in as deputy-manager in Brussels when the previous incumbent was killed in a road traffic accident.
So, Bryan was extremely grateful for his good fortune. Millions of other victims of the snow had been scattered to the four winds and their lives lay in tatters. In many ways, Bryan was far better off now than before the national disaster.
However, several issues still puzzled him.
He had become aware of the scandal surrounding the loss of the British Gold Reserves. The UKRA leadership had fallen and the PM had resigned. Dame Ann Fletcher had apparently been murdered – but her daughter, whom he had briefly met, had mysteriously disappeared.
He was even more perplexed by the disappearance of Patric and Joanie Silver. Patric had gone to great lengths to find Bryan this job at the CSC, yet had inexplicably vanished. Bryan had telephoned to his apartment several times and on the last occasion a different fellow answered, inferring that the Silvers had gone away permanently.
Andrew Brady had also gone missing – as puzzlingly as his daughter Chloe. They had been regular visitors to the CSC and Bryan hadn’t seen them for weeks. Neither had Lt Ross Bryant been to the club since late February.
It was a conundrum, and when considered and analysed with information gleaned from newspaper articles and conjecture, he smelled a very large rat.
Nevertheless, he was satisfied to continue in his position at the CSC, making contacts and listening in to the alcohol-fuelled and indiscreet conversations conducted by senior politicians and civil servants.
And it was one of these earwigged exchanges which scared him shitless!
***
Dr John Stubbins was also mildly bemused.
After the ghastly experience on the return from holiday in Cyprus with his family, life had subsequently been very kind.
His wife Eve and his two teenaged children had been on their annual Christmas sojourn to the Mediterranean island when the snow began. Most of the ensuing holiday involved ever more desperate attempts to return home when their holiday concluded. However, as subsequent events have shown, flights into the UK quickly became impossible, and the Stubbins opted to return to Germany where they were processed and promptly allocated positions within the UKRA medical infrastructure – John as a surgeon and Eve as a dentist.
John was despatched to a hospital ship off the British coast and Eve – with the children – to a small town in Holland to administer dental care to the refugee ex-pats in the transit camps.
They were much, much more fortunate than most.
John met up with Patric and Joanie Silver on board his hospital ship, where Joanie was being treated for double pneumonia contracted as a result of her experiences on land. Patric was an old golfing buddy of John’s from Stai
nes-upon-Thames, and they briefly exchanged notes and post-snow experiences.
John supervised Joanie’s recovery and, coincidentally, Bryan Wester was in the next bed, having been treated by John for his stab wounds.
After Patric took up his new post as PPO to Dame Ann, John was flown into Brussels to treat her for a minor skin blemish. She was suitably impressed and arranged for a UKRA apartment in Brussels for John and his family. Schooling was arranged for the children in the exclusive UKRA Academy in Brussels, Eve was found a local dental position, and John moved to the UKRA Hospital in the Belgian capital. Life was very good indeed.
Things got even better after John conducted a post-operative examination on Dame Ann in his private office.
He had already made the acquaintances of Ross Bryant and Andrew and Chloe Brady – introduced by Patric Silver. However, he was concerned at the constant adverse discussion concerning Dame Ann, and he became worried that the three men were openly conspiring against her.
Snow! The Series [Books 1-4] Page 109
