The Deluge Read online

  What Max didn't see was the knife. He saw the guy's amz come round and heard a thud as his fist made contact with Noel's ribs. But then Noel was running again and the guy was already falling away, his energy seemingly spent in that one clumsy punch. Max waited for his brother, and then the two of them crossed the road and turned down Essex Street. Max would happily have run all the way home, but when they reached the entrance to an alley, a long black throat ending God knows where, Noel thudded to a halt and gasped, "In here."

  Max thought Noel was just winded, and told him to keep going, but Noel was already limping into the alley. They hid behind a skip three-quarters of the way down. They remained silent for a minute or so, Max listening for sounds of pursuit. Then Noel said quietly, "You'd better call an ambulance, man."

  Max glanced at his brother, surprised. "What for?" he asked.

  Noel pulled his jacket open. There was blood all over his shirt and hand. Running down the leg of his jeans. Pooling on the floor.

  "Oh, fuck," Max said.

  "I'll be okay" Noel told him. Then he turned his head to the side and threw up.

  Max traveled with Noel to the hospital, jogged behind the trolley they used to clank his brother up the corridors to emergency surgery. He would have gone into the operating room too if a pretty nurse hadn't stopped him at the door, squeezed his shoulder and said, "Why don't you get yourself a coffee? We'll let you know as soon as there's news."

  The waiting area was a big space filled with rows of brown leather seats. It was three in the morning, but there were still people around. There was one gray-haired guy in a red dressing gown whose white shins were knobbly with blue veins, but he was the only one who looked like a patient. The others were ordinary people like him, whose loved ones had been whacked by the big stick of fate on this particular night.

  Against a section of wall close to the hospital's main doors were a couple of vending machines-one for drinks, the other for snacks. It was as Max walked across to the drinks machine that he noticed the shaking for the first time. It registered as a vibration beneath his feet, as if there was a vast and powerful engine beneath the floor of the hospital. Weird, he thought, punching in the numbers for tea with extra sugar. He looked up as the hospital's main doors hissed open. Instantly a fist of ice clenched in his guts as the Nazi psychos entered the building.

  Nothing was said. There was nothing to say. Max saw Tattoo Face spot him, saw his expression change from dumb hostility to the invigorated rage of a predator. As the Nazis came for him, he scooped his mostly filled cup out of the drinks machine and hurled its contents into Tattoo Face's face. The Nazi roared as he was blinded by boiling tea. Before he could recover, Max turned and ran.

  He ran across the waiting area and turned right at the back of the room. He went that way purely because Noel had been taken left to the operating theatre, and Max wanted to lead them as far away from his brother as possible. The right-hand corridor was full of obstacles-patients, nurses, a discarded wheelchair. Max dodged them with ease, but gathered from the cries of alarm and protest behind him that the Nazis were not so nimble. There came a roar from behind him: "We'll get you, you fucking black cunt. We'll fucking hunt you down."

  At the end of the corridor, Max turned right, then left, then right again. Fast as he was, he couldn't seem to shake the gang off, could still hear them on his tail. The corridors were featureless, and aside from ducking through a door with no way of knowing what was on the other side there was nowhere to hide. He rounded another corner, looking for the next turning, the next exit, the next escape route-and suddenly there wasn't one. He had come to what he'd dreaded: a dead end.

  Well, not quite a dead end. There was a ward in front of him, but even from here Max could see through the open double doors that most of the beds were occupied by old peo ple, mainly women. Whatever happened, he knew he couldn't go in there. If he did, the Nazis would just bulldoze their way in behind him, and if they caught him they'd beat the crap out of him whatever the audience.

  He looked around. Halfway down the corridor was a lift and a door into a stairwell. The lift was twenty meters away. He ran towards it. He was almost there when the gang came round the corner.

  Shit. Suddenly the lift was no longer an option. As the gang yelled in triumph and came for him again, Max grabbed the handle of the heavy fire door and yanked it open.

  He was still on the ground floor, which meant there was only one way to go. He took the stairs three at a time, using the handrail to haul himself up. He'd climbed a dozen steps when the fire door below flew open and the Nazis crashed through it like a tornado.

  Max continued to ascend, his only plan being to build up enough of a lead to slip through a door into a corridor without the Nazis knowing. But they were too close to him, their cries tearing at his ears, their footsteps pounding at his heels, and so up he went, and up again, and up once more. He carried on clattering up flight after flight until suddenly, in his panic, he realized there was nowhere left to go.

  He was at the top of the building. There were no more stairs ahead of him. There was nothing but a square landing of bare concrete, and a door to his left, stout but old-looking, a chunky key in the lock.

  He didn't have time to think about what to do. He crossed to the door and twisted the key in the lock. Feverish with urgency he pulled open the door and slipped through the narrow gap. He turned back to lock it behind him, and for an agonizing second the key slithered around the lock as if reluctant to go in before sliding home.

  Seconds later something crashed against the door from the other side. Max stepped back, expecting to see wood splinter, but the door held. When he was certain that it wouldn't fly from its hinges with a single kick, he looked around. He was on the hospital roof, which was big enough to have accommodated two football pitches with room to spare.

  He tried calling the cops, which was when he got the message on his display screen telling him there was no network coverage. He walked around the roof, looking for another way down, only to discover he was out of luck. Finally he decided there was only one thing left to try. He walked back to the access door, which was thankfully still standing. The gang's previously frenzied attack had abated a little, but the threats were still coming, loud and clear and nasty as ever.

  "You're one dead nigger," he was told. "You won't get away from us, you little black cunt."

  Yeah, yeah, Max thought. But a pulse fluttered in his throat.

  "I've called the cops," he shouted, glad his voice didn't betray his fear.

  His words were answered with a renewed barrage of blows and threats, which he tried to ignore. "They'll be here any minute," he added.

  "Just in time to scrape you off the fucking pavement then, nigger," one of the Nazis replied.

  There were a few more kicks and thumps on the door and then Max heard the Nazis talking amongst themselves. He heard-thought he heard-the word "brother." He stepped a little closer, and then jumped as one of the Nazis shouted, "Your card is fucking marked, boy You're a dead man walking. We're gonna pay your brother a visit and then we'll be back for you. Your fucking brother is one nigger who'll never be able to run from us again."

  That had been a while ago. Max had heard their footsteps receding, and since then there had been silence. He'd listened and heard nothing, but even now he wondered if maybe a couple of them had stayed behind and were currently crouching on the other side of the door ready to jump him.

  Eventually, trying not to sound nervous, he said, "I know you're still there, you arseholes. And you must be even more stupid than you look if you think I'm opening this door."

  Silence. Nothing but the freaky rumble quivering up through Max's feet. After a moment he said, "I can hear you, you brain-dead freaks. I can hear you breathing. Whatever you do to me and my brother, it won't stop you being losers for the rest of your crap little lives."

  Still nothing. Okay, Max thought, here we go. He reached for the key...

  And turned it just as the li
ghts went out over London.

  "There's no water," Abby said.

  Steve would have laughed at that if he could have guaranteed he'd be able to stop. Ostensibly he was calm-sitting by his daughter's open window, smoking a roll-up and watching the smoke drift on the breeze-but beneath the surface was a well of hysteria. He could feel it like a fever beneath his skin, like something wild with directionless energy, wanting to break free.

  This water should not be here. His mind recoiled from the impossibility of it; his every instinct screamed at him to curl into a ball and squeeze his eyes tight shut until the world returned to normal.

  "What do you want it for?" he called. As if he were asking a normal question on a normal day.

  "I wanted a wash." She padded into the bedroom in her lilac nightshirt with COOL CHICK emblazoned across the front. She was a striking girl, tall for her age, with tousled blond hair and plump red lips. Her looks dazzled and alarmed Steve in equal measure. He knew what boys were like, and pretty soon she'd have hordes of them, drooling and desperate, sniffing at her heels. That is, if she didn't already.

  Hang on. Reality check. She would have had them sniffing at her heels if it hadn't been for this. But now... who knew what was going to happen? With London underwater all bets were off. It was terrifying to think that the future was suddenly a blank page, that everything they had taken for granted had been snatched away in a few hours. And even worse was the fact that it had been snatched away by something with no boundaries, no context, no rationale. Because if you couldn't understand what was happening, how could you develop a sense of perspective about it?

  Steve had spent the last few hours trying to come up with explanations. What climactic catastrophe could have caused London, possibly even the whole country, to sink beneath the waves? Had the polar ice caps suddenly collapsed like a house of cards? Was that possible? Steve knew about global warming, but like most people he was too caught up in the day-to- day minutiae of his own life to give the subject anything more than lip service.

  "Dad?" Abby said. "What shall I do?"

  "About what?"

  She rolled her eyes. "About having a wash."

  "There's some water in the kettle. You could use that. Hang on, though," he said as she turned to go. "Maybe we ought to save our fresh water."

  "For drinking, you mean?"

  "Yeah."

  "What, and not wash?" She screwed up her nose. "That's pretty gross."

  He shrugged. "Priorities. Don't worry, it'll probably only be for today. Someone's bound to come and rescue us soon."

  "You think they'll send boats?"

  "Maybe. Or helicopters."

  "Cool." Her eyes shone. "I think I'll still brush my teeth. I just won't use water."

  "Good idea."

  It was amazing, thought Steve, how quickly the young adapted to crisis. Maybe Abby was simply accepting things on face value, but even so, it wasn't a bad way to be. What was the point of expending energy trying to come up with reasons, theories, explanations? How would that help them deal with practical problems-finding food, water, dry land?

  Abby returned ten minutes later, looking pleased with herself. "I found these in my bag," she said, handing him a shiny white package. "I forgot I had them."

  "Wet wipes," said Steve. "Aren't they for babies' arses?"

  She punched him on the shoulder. "I get makeup off with them. But we can use them to wash our important little places."

  She said it so primly that he laughed.

  "I went to the loo just now," she said. "The toilet flushed, but the cistern didn't fill up again."

  He sighed. "There's some practical stuff we need to talk about," he said.

  She perched on the bed. Her narrow jeans made her legs look long and slim.

  "All right," he said, "this is the situation. We're surrounded by water, so we're stuck for now. We've got no power, which means we can't cook or listen to music or watch TV. It also means the fridge and the freezer are off, so we'd better eat the fresh food first. I've got tins in the cupboard, so we'll be okay for a while, though we might have to eat soup and beans and stuff cold."

  She pulled a face but said nothing.

  "But we don't know how long we're going to be here, so we should eat sparingly. The same goes for drinks. There's water in the kettle, plus there's bottled water, orange juice, Coke and booze."

  "How long do you think we can make it all last?"

  Steve hunched his shoulders. "A week, maybe two."

  "That's all right then. We won't be here that long."

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "We'll have been rescued by then, won't we, dummy? As soon as people realize what's happened they'll send boats and helicopters and stuff."

  Steve smiled. It would do no good to express his doubts and fears at present. "Yeah," he said. He flicked the butt of his roll-up out the window and watched it bob away on the flowing water eight feet below.

  "I wonder if Mum knows what's happened," said Abby.

  "Bound to," Steve said.

  "I wish I could call her."

  "Phone still not working?"

  Abby picked up her lemon yellow mobile from the bedside table. "It still says `no network coverage.' I thought mobile signals bounced off satellites in space?"

  "They do. I think."

  "So how come they're not working? Space isn't affected by all this water, is it?"

  There were tines when Steve realized how little he knew about technology, about how the world worked. "Maybe the signals have to be collected by some sort of receiver on the ground."

  Abby swung her legs from the bed and moved across to join him at the window. Instantly Steve raised a hand to hold her back. "I wouldn't"

  "I only want to look out of the window"

  "I know. It's just... I don't think it's a good idea."

  She looked at him steadily. "You've seen dead people, haven't you?"

  He hesitated, thought about lying, then nodded. "Some, yeah."

  "How many?"

  "A few."

  In fact, it was more like dozens, perhaps even hundreds. Even now, several hours after seeing the first one, his heart still lurched whenever he saw a man or woman or-especiallychild float by. It was particularly awful when they were on their backs so he could see their faces. Most of the drowned wore nightclothes, or were seminaked or naked. Some of the bodies were damaged, buffeted by obstacles encountered on their final journey or by the other debris that choked the water-trees, paper, clothes, furniture, bits of houses... myriad belongings from myriad lives. Earlier an old woman's body had come to rest below the window, her journey temporarily halted by the building in her path. Steve had watched in horrified fascination as her hand had flailed languidly from the water as if she were halfheartedly seeking help. He had watched her white nightdress billow obscenely up her legs to expose her mottled thighs. He had watched her gray hair spread out like some colorless undersea plant. Worst of all, he had caught glimpses of her face-eyeballs white and glaring, mouth yawning blackly open in a final soundless scream.

  Abby was nodding sagely now "I guess some people are bound to have died," she said.

  "A lot, I'd say" said Steve cautiously.

  "How many, do you reckon?"

  He shrugged, wondered what percentage of London's population had been up high enough to have survived when the wave had hit. Five percent? One? Less? He wondered how much warning there had been, whether the royal family had survived, or the government. He wondered how many landmarks had gone, how many buildings had been destroyed, how many years of history had been obliterated in the space of a few hours. And what of the media, the monetary system, the transport networks, the lines of communication? What of civilization?

  Steve was aware that his heart was pounding. Pounding with a fear that was almost primal.

  "Are you all right, Dad?" Abby asked.

  He tried to pull himself together, to smile. "Fine," he said.

  "You don't look fine."

>   "Ijust need something to eat, that's all. What time is it?

  "Half past ten."

  "There you are, then. We've missed breakfast."

  It felt unreal to be sitting at the kitchen table eating corn flakes. The fridge had only been off a few hours, so the milk was still okay. The cereal made him feel better, but Steve couldn't help wondering when he'd next taste milk after these last couple of pints had gone. I could murder a cup of tea, he thought; then inspiration struck hinm.

  "What are you doing?" Abby asked as he crossed the kitchen and dropped to his knees in front of the cupboard beneath the sink. He opened the cupboard door and was delighted to see that the camping stove was still there. He knew that in the great scheme of things this was an inconsequential triumph, but he couldn't help wondering whether this was what their lives would consist of now - a series of little victories, small steps to ease the way.

  "Cool," Abby said as he brandished the stove like a trophy. "Does that mean we won't have to eat cold beans after all?"

  "It does indeed," said Steve. "And, most importantly, it means we can have a nice cup of tea. I think I've even got some extra gas canisters somewhere."

  He made the tea and they carried their mugs into the living room, which consisted of a ratty old settee, an armchair, a wide-screen TV and DVD player with various discs stacked haphazardly beneath them, a state-of-the-art sound system with speakers strategically placed for maximum effect, and floor to ceiling shelves covering every available wall space and containing thousands of carefully alphabetized CDs.

  Indicating the walls, Abby said, "Told you to get an iPod."

  "Thanks," Steve said gloomily, "that's a big help." It had already occurred to him to wonder when, if ever, he would get a chance to listen to music again.

  "What about the shop?" Abby asked.

  Steve raised an eyebrow. "I don't think I'll be opening today."