Shawcross halted beside a door on the right. “This is the staffroom,” he said. “Let’s get inside.”
He opened the door and reached in for the light switch. The room became bright, illuminated by the light Shawcross had switched on and also by several windows that overlooked the woods at the edge of the park. The room gave Annaliese a strange feeling of normality as she looked around it. The pool table in the centre was still littered with balls and cues where a game had been abandoned mid-session. An empty crisp packet adorned a small side cabinet. A forgotten coat hung from a wall peg. The room’s plush sofa seemed inviting. Somebody had left a paperback on one of its cushions, The Final Winter. The room had a lived-in feel and spoke not of the horrors that had occurred so close by.
“Thank the heavens,” said Mike as he ran over to a snack vending machine at the far side of the room. He pulled some change out of his pocket and began pushing numbers into the keypad.
“Is there a phone in here?” Charlotte asked. “I want to try and call my mom. The one in the hotel room didn’t get a dial tone.”
“There’s no phone,” Shawcross told her. “But there’s something even more important.” He headed over to the cabinet beside the pool table and swept aside the empty crisp packet. He plucked up a TV remote that had been hiding underneath it. The old-fashioned CRT screen, fixed to one of the room’s corners by brackets, flickered to life as Shawcross pointed the remote at it and pressed a button.
The picture was dim for a moment, but slowly faded in. The news came on, loud and blaring.
Mike moved up besides Annaliese, a chocolate bar half-raised to his mouth. “Holy cow,” he said before taking a bite. His face wore an expression of utter shock as he chewed robotically.
Annaliese watched the news report with utter horror. Banners at both the bottom and top of the screen read, NATIONAL EMERGENCY. The anchor-man providing the report looked mortified; not at all like the unflappable journalists the BBC usually placed in front of their cameras.
“We are getting word from France that Paris has now been declared a quarantine zone. Armed forces are forming a perimeter around the city and are preventing anybody from leaving. There are suggestions from local sources that the UK Government is preparing similar measures for London and other major cities.”
Shawcross was shaking his head. “This cannot be.”
“We take you now to scenes outside Westminster, where an emergency government assembly is holding crisis meetings.”
The newsfeed switched to a camera on location. It showed the full scope of the nightmare they were now living in. There was total silence in the staffroom as they all realised just how much trouble they were in.
The camera feed was from a helicopter a hundred feet above the Thames. The lens was focused on the spiny structure of the Houses of Parliament. Unbelievably, the face of Big Ben was dented and scorched as if some airborne vehicle – perhaps another helicopter – had collided with it.
Gathered in the thousands, laying siege to the parliament buildings, were ranks and ranks of infected people. It was obvious that the mob was infected because of their animal-like movements and the collective pitch of their screams. They covered the streets of Westminster like the legions of Hell.
The camera-feed cut back to the studio and the anchor-man continued reporting. “The Prime Minister, as well as the leader of the opposition, is currently under siege, but he has assured us, through sporadic communications, that the Government is working hard on a solution. Armed forces have been deployed nationwide and all military personnel stationed abroad have been recalled with immediate effect. However, with allied nations also under attack, it remains to be seen whether or not our servicemen will make it home safely.”
Shawcross collapsed backwards, but managed to save himself by putting his hands against the pool table. He had gone deathly pale and seemed ready to throw up.