Omega (31 page)

'This one's jammed, Phil.'

'Hell!'

He took over and found she was right. It took him a spanner and three minutes' effort to get it free. Hastily, they lowered the cover to the floor - so absorbed that they were unaware of the woman's presence till she spoke.

'Treasure-hunting, this time of night?'

They both spun round and Philip knew at once that in their surprise they had over-reacted. He managed a grin, and said: 'God, you made me jump, creeping up on us like that. . . . No, blockage-hunting . . .' He repeated the story he had told the Security man, hoping he sounded natural. Betty was behind him, so he could not see her, but he had more faith in her acting ability than in his own.

He had an uncomfortable feeling he had seen this woman before. She wore the shoulder-flashes of the Press Corps; looked, and in her single remark had sounded, American; about thirty-five, short strong fair hair, shrewd grey eyes that watched him. He finished his story, hesitated and then turned to Betty.

'Well, we'd better get in there, if we're ever going to find it.'

Betty moved towards the trap, picking up her maintenance kit and respirator haversack. 'Find what?' the American asked, too casually. 'Surface?' 'I told you...'

'And I didn't believe a word of it.' She had picked up the shopping bag before Betty could reach it and pulled out the obviously civilian sweater. 'To coin a phrase - that's no maintenance lady, that's your wife. I've seen you both in the Mess.'

Philip would never have dreamed Betty could move so fast. She was on the American woman like lightning, the edge of her hand slashing at her neck. But the woman was fast, too; she dodged just in time and they grappled. The American was saying 'Hold it, hold it!' as she defended herself, and it was only the f
act that she did not shout that
made Philip hesitate to use the spanner that was still in his hand. The hesitation was only momentary - he would
have
to use it - but it was long enough for the American to gasp 'For Chrissake - I'm on your side!'

Betty jumped back, watching the other warily.

'In here - quick,' the American said, and threw open a cubicle door across the corridor. For some reason they did as she said and found themselves in what was obviously her own room. She turned and faced them. 'Tonia Lynd, Associated Press correspondent. I know you' - to Betty -'you're the one they've been calling witch-lover. My job to keep my ear to the ground. So you want out. Me too but my Chief won't give me an exit pass. My Press card will do once I
am
out. So can I come with you up that chimney? Because that's sure as hell where you're going and sure as hell
I’
m
not going to snitch on you.'

Betty said 'Yes' while Philip was still gathering his wits. 'I'd feel safer not leaving you behind, just in case you're lying. Get your respirator, money, anything else you need that'll go in your pocket. But no luggage. Come on, then -there's no time to hang around.'

Philip could hardly remember, afterwards, the rest of the climb. All that remained vividly in his mind was the three of them - himself, his wife, and the American stranger -standing at last beside the concealed air intake on the roof of a Stoke Newington factory, breathing the fresh air and gazing out dumbly at the London dawn.

14

'Why are there no buses - or queues at the stops?' Philip wondered when they had made their way out into the main road. 'There should be, even this early.'

'Don't you know?' Tonia replied. 'They called a strike, late last night. They're demanding Dust respirators for all bus crews.'

Philip halted in his tracks and stared at her. 'Dust respirators? But how did they know?'

'Holy Moses! Didn't you get the Prime Minister's TV statement?'

'We didn't watch TV at all last night, or turn on the radio. We were too busy getting ready.'

'I guess you would be, yes . . . Eight-thirty, it was. He gave a warning about this Dust that might come up out of the ground if there were any more tremors. Said you could protect yourself against it by breathing through gauze soaked in vinegar. . . . Walter Jennings, the TUC man, spoke after him. He called on the unions to cooperate -several factories are going over to producing proper respirators on a crash programme. Meanwhile there's enough to equip the essential serv
ices. . . . That's what the bus
strike's all about. They found they weren't on the essential services list.'

They started walking again, towards the Walthamstow Marshes. The Summers' home lay in Leyton, on the other side, and they planned to pick up and stock their car before getting out of London. Tonia, planless after her unpremeditated escape from Beehive, asked if she could go along along with them till she had thought out what to do next.

'Stick with us till you're out of London anyway,' Philip advised her. 'You don't want to be caught in town if there
is
a Dust outbreak. . . . Did the Premier say what the Dust did?'

'Only that it was poisonous.'

'That's putting it mildly. I think I'm one of the few hundred who do know, because of my job. . . . Get the Dust in your lungs and it drives you incurably insane.'

'Jesus!'

'Thank God they
have
given the warning. At least people can get their hands on vinegar and gauze now.
...
If there'd been a Dust outbreak before that, in somewhere like London - within three days, it'd be a city of homicidal maniacs. . . . The Government's known about the vinegar-mask thing for a couple of months. I never could understand why they sat on it.'

'If you ask me,' Tonia said, 'Big Chief Harley was
still
sitting on it. He was away from Beehive last night. I wanted an interview with him for AP - he's been very polite to us, so far - and I managed to waylay him when he got back around midnight. He bit my head off and pushed past me, with a face like the wrath
of God. . . . D'you know what? I
think Jennings talked the Prime Minister into making his broadcast while Harley's back was turned. Only a guess, but it figures.'

'Do you notice something?' Betty said suddenly. 'People don't like these uniforms. They resent us.'

She was right. The steadily thickening early-morning crowds, walking to work through the busless streets, were eyeing them as they passed and the hostility could not be mistaken. Beehive was no longer a secret, that was plain - and somehow Beehive uniforms were recognized.

'I think,' Philip said, 'it would be a good idea if we tried some quieter back-streets. Everyone must know what these respirator haversacks are. We could easily be mugged for them.'

They cut across towards Mount Pleasant Hill. Philip knew there was a footbridge over the River Lea at the bottom of it which would enable them to cross the Marshes without using the Lea Bridge Road bottleneck. One other thing they had noticed; queues were already forming outside shops which would not be open for another hour or two. 'By the middle of the morning, there won't be a bottle of vinegar in any of them,' Philip predicted. 'And after that I wonder what the black-market price will be ?'

As they climbed the footbridge over the Lea, they could see Lea Bridge Road a couple of hundred metres to their right. At this time of the morning, the bulk of the traffic should have been westwards towards Central London, but it was unmistakably eastwards. Lea Bridge Road was one of the principal arteries leading out to Epping Forest and the open country of East Anglia. If the eastward flow was building up already, at just after seven in the morning -then the exodus had started. Not a panic as yet, because the flow was moving steadily at a good forty to fifty kilometres per hour. But what would happen when the jam was nose-to-tail, alternately stopping and crawling? How long would tempers stand the strain? . . .Philip was glad they lived on the other side of the two-kilometre-long bottleneck, which was the only road across the Marshes for at least three kilometres north and south. On the Leyton side there were dozens of quiet side-roads which could be taken towards the Forest and Philip knew them like the palm of his hand.

Visiting home, even long enough to fetch and park the car, was dangerous enough, though he doubted if there could be a police call out for him and Betty yet. Staying there (quite apart from their determination to be out of town as soon as possible) would be out of the question; Beehive, he knew, took very prompt action against defectors and by this afternoon at the latest the local police would be alerted.

'Which way now?' Betty asked. 'We can't cross the Canal. It's either Lea Bridge Road or the railway.'

The Canal ran parallel to the Lea river, two or three hundred metres ahead. Crossing it by the road bridge would be almost direct but Philip thought it was better to avoid it. They swung north across the playing fields towards the railway bridge a kilometre away.

After a minute or so, Tonia stopped, her head on one side. 'Did you hear that?'

'Hear what?'

'And feel it. A sort of rumble.' 'Train coming, perhaps?' 'No-I...'

Even as she spoke, the great shock-wave threw them off their feet. If they all sc
reamed, the sound was lost immediatel
y in a vast thunder of noise. A fissure suddenly appeared in the ground beside them, widening and shooting out lengthwise as they scrambled away from it. 'Keep together, for God's sake!' Philip yelled. They were still on all fours, unable to stand on the jerking, groaning earth. How long it lasted, they never knew; ten seconds, half a minute
...
They were too overwhelmed with impressions -the railway bridge ahead of them twisting and tilting like soft wax, the crash of falling buildings on each skyline, the terrible metallic clatter of endless multiple pilc-ups on Lea Bridge Road
...
the deadly grey mist seeping up through the nearby fissure and Tonia crying out 'Respirators -quick!'...

They fumbled with the black rubber muzzles, holding their breath while they pulled them over their mouths.
Now we're marked game,
Philip thought dizzily -
the law
of
the jungle.

They gazed at each other, stunned by what had happened. It was some seconds before they realized that the world around them was, briefly, almost silent.

And after the silence the screams began. Screams mounting and multiplying from the carnage on the roads; screams, more distant, from the shattered bricks and concrete ahead and behind, where the still-living were trapped and maimed, and the lucky (lucky?) uninjured struggling to free them.
In three days they'll be mad. . . .
Philip thrust the thought away in horror.

'The river-look!'

The two women turned at his mask-muffled voice and looked. Behind them, surging and tumbling, the River Lea had burst its banks and was rising inexorably towards them.

They took to their heels, watching for fissures as they ran. Philip led them obliquely northwards, in a race to reach the twisted railway bridge before the flood did. They made it with water lapping about their ankles and scrambled to immediate safety among the ruined girders. Below them, by some freak, the Canal bed had drained dry. A giant, Dust-spewing fissure diagonally across it was a possible reason but already the floodwaters were cascading over the wall as though trying to re
fill it. They whole thing was a
Titan's beach-game, transforming in minutes a landscape that had been familiar to Philip since he was a boy.

He tore his eyes away from it and examined their position as coolly as he could.

The bridge was an X-shaped one on two levels, the Clapton-Walthamstow line crossing above the Tottenham-Stratford one and at right angles to it, each at forty-five degrees to the Canal. Both were now a single mass of wreckage, but the south-easterly line, towards Lea Bridge station and Stratford, looked walkable, and protected by the Canal bed from the floods; the water still seemed to be disappearing into the great fissure. It lay in the direction they wanted to go, so they climbed over the wreckage and followed it.

On the way, they kept their eyes open for weapons. They found a solid iron bar, the rusting front fork from a bicycle and a heavy shovel; with these in their hands, they felt safer. Philip worried about the bridge at Lea Bridge station, where the line passed under the crowded holocaust of a road; would they still be able to get through? The station itself was a relic, long closed down, but . . .

The bridge, when they reached it, had collapsed, but there was still a jagged tunnel of daylight to one side. They approached it carefully, hiding in the empty station, for there were people shouting and running above and still the wails of pain and helpless terror from the injured and the trapped. Once through the gap they ran - not merely to escape the crowds but because to their immediate left the gasworks were burning fiercely and there might be more explosions at any moment.