CHAPTER 22
Crash Day + 27 weeks 5.45 a.m.
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Lieutenant Adam Brooks blew warm air into his cold hands as he stepped out through the dome’s main entrance into the still-dark morning. Both guards saluted; Gunner Lawrence paired up with one of the Met officers. Lawrence made a better job of it as Adam acknowledged the salute and strode quickly past them beyond the pool of light.
His radio crackled again. ‘Sir?’
‘I’m on my way over,’ replied Adam. ‘How many of them did you say?’
Ahead he could see the faint glint of a torch beam flickering around in the darkness, picking out something beyond the wall of the barricade.
‘Hard to say, sir. I guess . . . I dunno, several dozen of ’em. Maybe thirty or forty.’
That many? His pace quickened, standard-issue heels clicking noisily in the darkness. They’d not had a group that big turn up outside for months. These days they came in twos or threes, often alone; malnourished people who looked like scarecrows, faces rendered blank and immobile.
As he approached the guard point he snapped off his radio and called out. ‘Lieutenant Brooks approaching!’
The torch beam that had been lancing out over the barricade wall swung his way momentarily and picked him out.
Adam winced and shaded his eyes. ‘You say thirty to forty?’ he called out to Gunner Huntley.
‘Yes, sir. Looks about that.’
Adam jogged over to the base of the wall; six-foot-high panels of corrugated iron pilfered from the roof of the factory out in no-man’sland, welded together side by side, and topped with loops of razor wire. He climbed up onto a small crate and stood beside Huntley.
What he was about to say to these people he’d already said to hundreds of groups before. And the response was always the same; the desperate pleas to be let in, hopeless sobbing. Adam took the torch off Gunner Huntley and panned it down across the small crowd of pale oval faces - smudged with dirt, expressionless, eyes narrowed from the glare of torchlight, and all of them shivering from the cool night air.
‘This is London Safety Zone Four,’ he announced with tired formality, a cloud of his breath danced brightly across the torch beam. ‘I’m afraid we can’t take in any more people at this time, unless you have a special skill, in which case you can be admitted for a probationary period.’
There was an expected mewling of defeated voices amongst them.
‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, ‘that’s just the way it is.’
The voices raised in anger and frustration. Adam quickly counted. Forty-seven of them. He turned to Huntley. ‘Better get Sergeant Walfield and a section of men up here, to be on the safe side.’
Huntley nodded, dropped heavily down off the crate, his webbing jangling, and scooted noisily off into the darkness towards the dome.
Adam turned back to them. ‘Look, I’m sorry. We have barely enough supplies for the people already inside. We can’t spread what we’ve got any further.’
Somebody’s voice cut through the chorus of protesting voices. ‘We’ve come from the Cheltenham safety zone.’
Cheltenham? GZ-C?
‘Who said that?’ he asked, panning his beam across their flinching faces.
A hand rose up. A woman; thin and dark-haired, her face almost as white as a ghost.
‘I’m a government worker. One of the emergency workers.’
The others around her suddenly cast suspicious glances at her. Adam noticed a gap growing around the woman and a palpable sense of rage simmering amongst the others.
‘Have you got ID on you?’ he called down.
She fished inside her fleece top as a woman standing next to her spat in her direction. ‘You f*ckin’ bitch,’ she hissed, ‘you’re one of them?’
The woman produced her laminated ID badge, dangling from a chain. From where he stood it appeared to be legitimate, the same as that worn by the workers in SZ-4; Home Office logo, name and details, passport photo . . . although from here Adam couldn’t really tell if that was the woman’s mugshot.
‘Okay, you better come in,’ he said waving her forward.
Before the others rip you to pieces.
He nodded down at the soldier manning the gate to slip the bolt. ‘Keep your shoulder against the door, though.’ His torch beam swung across the others. ‘The rest of you stay back!’
‘F*cking bitch!’ shouted a man. ‘You’re a guv’ment worker? And we shared our food with you!’
The woman eased herself through the snarling faces towards the door, grimacing as someone spat in her face; another man, barely more than a lad, mimicked headbutting her. So close, in fact, that Adam thought he’d actually done it as she recoiled, raising her hands to protect her face.
‘F*cking fat-cat bastards like you an’ the guv’ment left us outside to starve.’
‘Taking care of their own, again.’
‘Go on, then, f*ck off . . . bitch!’
She reached the rough rusted metal of the gate and looked up at Adam. ‘Please! Open the gate! They’re going to kill me!’
Adam swung the assault rifle off his shoulder and cocked it noisily. ‘Please, everyone, back off . . . right now. Or I will shoot.’
The crowd made some space, reluctantly drawing away from the base of the wall.
‘Please! Let us in!’ someone called out. ‘It’s dangerous out here.’
He ignored the voices. ‘All right, open it,’ he uttered down to the lad by the gate. It cracked open on thick rusty hinges that creaked noisily. The woman saw the gap and squeezed hastily through it, just as the others, yards away, instinctively stepped forward, some of them no doubt hoping to file through in her wake.
‘I said stay back!’ Adam shouted.
The woman was in and the soldier swiftly rammed the thick bolts back in place.
‘The rest of you,’ said Adam, ‘should disperse. I’m sorry, there’s nothing here for you.’
There was abuse hurled back. He could deal with the ‘f*ck-you’s, the ‘fascist bastard’s . . . what he struggled with was those who desperately tried to appeal to his humanity.
‘What do we do now?’ an elderly woman asked. ‘Please? I don’t know what to do.’
‘You should get out of London,’ he replied. ‘All of you! Get out whilst you’re still fit and able enough. The city’s dead space. You’ve got a chance out in the country.’
He heard the heavy clump of boots on tarmac and jangling webbing approaching. Sergeant Walfield and a section of their boys emerged from the dark.
‘Everything all right up there, sir?’ Walfield bellowed.
‘You people really should go now,’ he said to the others outside. ‘We’ve got orders to fire upon civilians if they attempt to get over the barricade.’
The people drew a few steps back into the thick darkness; a pitiful mob that he suspected were all going to die sometime over the coming winter. If the cold or bad water didn’t get them, then one of the many armed gangs would find them.
‘Good luck,’ he called out. Someone replied that he should go f*ck himself.
Sergeant Walfield stood below him, eyeing the woman suspiciously. ‘Don’t we have standing orders to let no one in, sir?’
Adam stepped down off the crate to join them. He panned his torch across the woman’s ID card again; the mugshot in the corner looked like her.
‘Yes, Danny, but I think Mr Maxwell might be interested in talking to this one.’