Flood (9 page)

And now the flood started to spill over the housing estates. Thandie swooped lower so they could see. The rushing waters poured onto access roads still crowded with cars. Vehicles were overwhelmed, their lights flickering and dying. People scrambled out of their cars through windows and doors, and climbed onto the cars’ roofs, or tried to wade through the rising water. The current shoved the cars themselves, piling them into the fleeing people like logs.

All this Gary saw from above, from the warmth and comfort of his helicopter cabin. There was no human noise, no screams or cries; it was all drowned by the storm’s roar and the thrum of the chopper’s engine. Suddenly this was no longer just a stunt weather event, a puzzle for climate modelers. “Christ,” he said, “there’s a disaster going on down there.”

“The whole damn day is already a disaster,” Thandie said. “Let’s just do our job.”

The chopper roared up into the air and headed west. The flooded estate was reduced to an abstraction, a mélange of water and land.

12

P
ursuing the storm front up the river toward central London, the chopper flew over Tilbury, ten or twelve kilometers west of Canvey Island. There was a much more massive evacuation project going on from this heavily populated area, with traffic edging out of Tilbury to the north of the Thames and Gravesend to the south. Electricity substations were overwhelmed. The lighting in whole districts started to blank out. In the river itself a container ship had been caught, apparently as it tried to turn, and had pitched over, spilling containers into the water like matchsticks. That alone was a major rescue operation, Gary saw, with helicopters and what looked like lifeboats clustering around the stricken ship.

The chopper flew on.

“We need to understand this,” Thandie murmured. “Understand it, and do something about it.”

“Mean sea levels are up by a meter,” Gary said.

Thandie turned. “Who told you that?”

“It came from an eleven-year-old.”

Thandie grunted. “Well, she might be right.”

“It
was
a she, actually.”

“Of course it was.”

“Nobody knows for sure,” Sanjay said. “Trends are hard to establish. What we’ve actually seen are exceptional fluvial events, and exceptional incidences of tidal flooding, like this event. All over the planet. Ocean temperatures are rising too. The additional heat is fueling storms.”

“Like this one.”

“Possibly. The data’s patchy.”

Gary asked Thandie, “What do you think?”

“That the oceans
are
rising. The data might be patchy, Sanjay, but everything points that way. The secular trend will become apparent with time.”

“So how is this happening? A meter is a hell of a lot. When I was abducted that was an upper limit for the sea-level rise quoted for the end of the century, not for 2016.”

“I remember it well,” Thandie said dryly. “The good old days of global warming.”

“So what’s the cause? You say it’s not just glacier melting, the ice caps, or the heat expansion of the water itself.”

“All that’s going on, as it has been for decades,” Thandie said. “But this is something else.”

Sanjay said,“It’s an argument that’s been raging for a couple of years. And Thandie has some hypotheses—haven’t you, my dear?”

“Don’t patronize me, you smug Brit loser. Yes, I got some ideas. All I need is a way to validate them.”

“And then you can write your book and go on TV and scare everybody to death, while making a fortune in the process.”

Thandie lifted one gloved hand with a middle finger raised. Then she slowed the chopper to a hover. “Jesus Christ, look at that.”

Gary looked down at a six-lane road bridge that boldly spanned the river, fed by complex junctions to north and south. The north bank was lined by industrial developments, with wharves and jetties jutting into the river. Behind the industrial site was a broad splash of concrete and glass, brightly lit from within, from the air like a series of immense greenhouses. To the south he glimpsed an even more spectacular city of glass, set in what looked like a chalk quarry, with acres of manicured parkland.

“Where are we?”

“The Dartford Crossing,” Sanjay said. “That, my American friend, is the M25, the London orbital motorway. Even on a good day it’s a doughnut-shaped car park. And this is where it crosses the river.”

“And those retail developments?”

“Lakeside Thurrock to the north, Bluewater Park to the south. Shoppers’ paradises . . .”

Today these developments were having a very bad day indeed. Helicopters hovered, some of them big USAF Chinooks, their spotlights shining down on river water that lapped ever higher around the abutments and approaches of the big motorway bridge. The water had forced its way behind the industrial areas around Lakeside, isolating them, and was pushing its way into the retail development. By the crossing itself Gary saw an immense bowl where the roads snaked through toll booths, a bowl filling steadily with water. Car lights failed as they were submerged, and people swarmed like ants.

“The motorway’s jammed up,” Thandie called. “I’m listening to the police reports. The tunnel was closed already because of the threat of flooding, so the bridge and its feeder roads are clogged. Plus you have a lot of extra refugee traffic pouring in.”

As Gary watched, the lights in the northern shopping complex, Lakeside, went out. “Jesus.”

“The storm front is approaching the Barrier,” Sanjay said, peering into his laptop. “I guess this is the moment of truth.”

Gary asked, “So will the water overtop the Barrier?”

“Ah,” said Sanjay.“That’s the forty-billion-dollar question. It’s a 1960s design based on 1960s assumptions about future flood event probabilities. Even before this new sea-level rise phenomenon, the revised projections based on global warming were ringing alarm bells—”

“The police are asking us for help,” Thandie said, listening to her radio feed. “They’re organizing pickup zones. Kids, women with babies, the sick and injured. We can take some out to higher ground. Keep running until our fuel gives out.”

“Here it comes,” Sanjay said, staring at his screen.“I think the water’s overtopping the Barrier gates. My word.”

Gary looked at Thandie. “Let’s help.”

“Yeah.” The helicopter dropped out of the sky toward the darkened carcass of Lakeside.

13

I
nside the Dome at Greenwich,Amanda was almost relieved when the arena show was cut short by the evacuation announcements. Everybody stood up and streamed into the aisles, excited despite the distant ringing of fire alarms. It was nearly the end of a long day anyhow, Amanda supposed, and she knew kids; most of the audience here would be ready for the bright lights of the tube station or the warmth of their buses, ready for home. As for Amanda herself, whiskery boy bands singing Elizabethan madrigals for “educational” purposes, as mandated by the national curriculum, wasn’t her idea of a fun way to spend the afternoon.

But Amanda and Benj sat on either side of an empty seat. Kristie had gone off to the loo. Uncertain, Amanda glanced across at Benj. “She’ll have the sense to come back here, won’t she?”

But Benj didn’t reply. He sat back in his chair, a dreamy, absent look on his face. She had put an embargo on his Angel during the show, but he had snapped it on as soon as the evacuation order came over the PA.

Amanda worried vaguely. She didn’t even know what the alarm was about. She’d heard people muttering about terrorist scares, but she was willing to bet that the filthy weather had something to do with it. A flood on the Jubilee Line, the underground route that had brought her here with the kids; that was more likely it. But she fretted about what it would mean for her if the tube was flooded. The underground was the main way you got off the peninsula. There must be buses, but they would be packed. They faced hours waiting around, maybe in the rain, and the kids would be fractious.

She glanced around.Most people had gone already,this two-thousand-seat “Indigo2” arena draining remarkably quickly, only a few stragglers remaining. No sign of Kristie. Amanda wondered if she should go to the toilets to find her.

It occurred to her to try her phone. When she called Kristie she got a “no signal” message.

She paged around news services, trying to find out what was happening. There was no reception from the local services, even the BBC. She got a CNN feed, but that didn’t feature whatever was going on in London but the latest problems in Sydney, Australia, where the flooding had worsened markedly. Amanda stared at pictures taken from the air, of water spilling from the harbors deep into central Sydney, and a panicky evacuation from the glass needles of the CBD, Sydney’s central business district. The highways out of the city were jammed, and there was a crush at the main rail station, though reports said that the trains had already been stopped. Even now the cameras lingered on the postcard icons. The Opera House stood on a kind of island of its own, cut off from the mainland. It was like looking at movie special effects.

She shut her phone down and glanced around. No Kristie.

A Dome staff member walked up the aisle toward them. He was a young man with vertical red hair. He was chewing gum. “Sorry, Miss. You have to go. We need to clear the venue.”

Miss
. Amanda smiled; he was only a few years older than Benj. “I’m waiting for my daughter. She’s in the lavatory.”

“I’m sorry but you have to go now. It’s my job to get the venue clear.”

“I’m waiting for my daughter.”

The boy backed off, nervously, but he seemed distracted; he must be getting instructions from an Angel of his own. “Please. I’ll have to call security. I have to clear the venue. It’s the evacuation plan.”

Benj stood up. “Oh, come on, Mum, there’s no point winding him up. She’s probably hanging around outside the toilets anyhow. You know what’s she’s like.”

She felt oddly reluctant to stand up, to leave the seat without Kristie. It meant a definitive break with her normal day. But she supposed this boy was telling the truth about security; she had no choice. “All right.” She stood and followed Benj out of the row of seats.

They made their way to the main entrance area. This was a cavernous plaza facing a row of glass doors, lined to either side by ticket offices and shops, a deserted Starbucks. The Dome roof itself loomed over her, a faintly grimy tent that trapped hot, moist, stale air. She could hear the drumming of the rain on the canvas panels high above. It was always gloomy in here, enclosed.

There was no sign of Kristie outside the loo. Another staff member, a hefty woman this time, wouldn’t allow her to go and look inside.“The toilets are clear, ma’am.”

“But that’s where my daughter went.”

“The toilets are clear. She can’t be in there.”

“Look, she’s eleven years old!”

“I’m sure you’ll find her waiting for you at your party’s emergency assembly point.”

That threw Amanda from anger to a feeling of inadequacy, of helplessness. “What assembly point? I don’t know anything about an assembly point.”

“I do, Mum,” Benj said. “It was on our tickets. Car Park Four.”

The woman pointed. “It’s signposted, very easy to find.” Her walkie-talkie squawked, and with an apologetic glance at Amanda she turned away.

Benj took the lead again. “I know the way, Mum. Come on.”

“Let’s try calling her again.”

Benj lifted his own phone. The screen flashed red: no signal. “I’ve been trying. I can’t even leave a message. Look, she’s not completely thick. She knows where to go.”

“Well, I hope so.” She followed him, reluctantly, but she knew there was no choice.

They were among the last to leave the Dome; the crowds had streamed out quickly. As they crossed the floor of the entrance plaza they were joined by the last stragglers emerging from Entertainment Avenue, the big circular shopping mall that curved around the arena at the Dome’s core, a corridor of shops and restaurants, fancy lamp posts, even trees flourishing in the tented gloom.

They emerged into rain driven almost horizontally by the wind. Amanda glanced back at the Dome. The rain ricocheted off its dirty fabric roof. She could see only a little of it; it looked oddly unimpressive, for its curve created a horizon so close to her eye it hid its own true scale. Bad design, she thought. And when she looked away from the Dome, toward the car park, she saw massed, chaotic crowds. She had no way of judging numbers. There might have been tens of thousands here, a mob like a football crowd. Her heart went cold as the scale of what was happening began to press on her.

Benj took her hand, holding his hood closed around his face. “This way to the car park.” They made their way forward, splashing through water that puddled on the concrete and tarmac and gradually formed more extensive ponds. People milled everywhere, shuffling along in their raincoats. But nobody seemed alarmed. The younger children were excited. Nobody seemed upset except Amanda. Benj and Amanda tried their mobiles again, but there was still no signal.

There was some kind of emergency going on around the tube station. The station itself had been fenced off by a barrier, manned by bedraggled police. Amanda stared at a steady stream of soaked, frightened-looking passengers, emerging on foot from the deep tube line. Paramedics in Day-Glo coats, working in pairs, forced their way in through the emerging crowd, and came out again carrying stretchers.

The sight of the drenched people, the bodies on the stretchers, horrified Amanda. She found it impossible to believe that only half an hour ago, less, she had been sitting in an arena, warm and relaxed with her kids beside her, listening to a boy band murder madrigals. And now, this. Had people
died
?

And if the Jubilee Line was flooded, the tube network was probably shut down entirely. Travel was going to be a nightmare, even once they got off Greenwich. Bit by bit the day continued to unravel.

Benj pulled her hand. “Come on, Mum, I’m getting cold.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” They hurried on.

14