Flash Flood

Chapter Ten

Ben realized that there were three other people with him in the room: sweaty-shirted Richard; a young Chinese man with an identity pass on his belt that said his name was Guang and he worked in the IT department; and a woman in a glittery top. They stared at the smoke filling the room outside, listened to the screams and the sounds of running feet.

‘It’s the transformer for this floor,’ Guang said. ‘It must have shorted. That smoke will be nasty.’

On the other side of the room’s glass wall was a frosted transfer with the ArBonCo logo. It began to blur as the heat melted it. A figure appeared through the smoke and Ben recognized the thin woman in the headscarf he had spoken to earlier. The woman in the glittery top let her in. She came in coughing on a wave of heat, as though she had escaped from an oven.

‘Cheryl, bring her over here to get some air.’ Guang edged around the big table in the middle of the room and opened the windows onto the river. The new arrival leaned on the table, coughing. Cheryl, the woman in the glittery top, put her arms around her shoulders and led her to the window. ‘Come on, Kabeera. You’ll feel better in a minute.’

Ben noticed that the smoke outside was getting thicker. Richard was standing glaring at him. ‘You stopped me getting out. I’d have swum to that bridge by now,’ he told him.

No you wouldn’t, thought Ben, but if I say so we’ll just have a pointless argument. On the wall was a display of rescue equipment for oil rigs, including a big, orange inflatable raft.

‘Maybe we don’t have to swim,’ said Ben. He moved quickly to the wall and pulled the raft down. ‘Help me with this.’

Richard looked at him mutinously, refusing to help.

Ben realized that he couldn’t waste time trying to talk him round. If Bel had been here, she’d have told him he was being an idiot. He’d get the others involved instead. What were their names? Ben searched his brain. Oh, yes. ‘Guang, Kabeera — we’ve got a raft!’ Ben tugged the raft off the wall and laid it on the conference table in the middle of the room.

Cheryl grabbed the other two, and pointed at the raft on the table. ‘Quick, help with this.’

‘Where do we inflate it?’ Guang asked. ‘Everybody look for a valve or a gas canister.’

On the other side of the glass, the smoke was thick and grey, like insulating wool. All the plastic frosting had turned black and charred. Everyone patted the orange material, searching for the inflation valve. They didn’t have much time.

Richard found it. ‘It’s here,’ he called. ‘And there’s no gas canister. So what do we do, blow it up like a balloon?’

It was true. Where there would usually be a tube of compressed gas to inflate the raft, there was just a tab of black fabric. Richard glared at Ben, as though this was all his fault. He really is a sore loser, he thought.

Suddenly, behind them, there was a bang. Cheryl screamed and Kabeera jumped. A jagged spar of glass the height of the door crashed down into the table between Ben and Richard. It smashed into shards like daggers. They stood frozen, shaken. Ben slowly looked round.

The glass door had cracked from top to bottom. The door handle was metal and it must have expanded, sending stresses through the glass. Hot smoke began to billow through the hole.

Kabeera was yelling but the smoke caught her throat and she started coughing again. Cheryl looked at her and suddenly understood what she was trying to say. ‘Use the fire extinguisher!’ she yelled. ‘Blow it up using the fire extinguisher!’

All at once they were acting together, like a team. Ben pulled the fire extinguisher off the wall. Richard smoothed down the fabric of the raft so that Guang could locate the valve again. Kabeera was coughing, but she and Cheryl managed to push the window open wide.

Ben put the nozzle of the fire extinguisher up against the valve and pulled the trigger. There was a hiss as the foam flowed into the material. The raft began to take shape — then stopped.

Ben pressed the trigger again, but the extinguisher was empty. And the raft was only half inflated.

The temperature was rising and the hot smoke was starting to fill the room.

There wasn’t another fire extinguisher; and anyway, there was no time to use it. Guang’s voice rang out. ‘Let’s go!’

Cheryl and Kabeera helped to drag the raft into place on the sill. The smoke curled out of the window, making dark clouds in the wet air. Richard dragged a chair across the carpet to act as a mounting block. Kabeera pulled her headscarf up a little higher to try and protect her throat, but she was still coughing as she climbed up.

One by one they scrambled onto the raft. Kabeera and Cheryl each went to the front and hung onto the ropes. Ben climbed out and inched his way across. The raft felt soft, like a lilo feels when it is going down. Would it hold? As he looked down he saw the water surging less than a metre below, smashing a wooden chair against the white walls. He remembered those people who had jumped from the London Eye, just bags of bones in the tide by now.

He must have frozen where he was on the sill. Guang tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. ‘You go over there and hang onto that rope in the middle.’

Ben had little choice. Water was better than fire.

Guang and Richard held on at the back, then they pushed away from the window frame. The raft slid easily on the wet windowsill. For a moment it was airborne, then it plunged into the water.