Flash Flood

Chapter Twenty-seven

The Puma had flown due west, skirting over the top arc of the M25 and out over Buckinghamshire. They were flying higher than before, and faster. At that height, Meena couldn’t make out the details she was used to seeing. The rusty-looking sprawl of London thinned out. The features of the landscape looked tiny, the different colour corduroy fields looking like a patchwork counterpane. But lakes of pale grey water still reflected in the sky and rivers showed up wide and swollen. Some houses were surrounded. Even out here, miles from the Thames, rivers had burst their banks and were trying to claim the land.

At least the traffic Meena saw was moving. Vehicle headlights trundled along the tiny lanes. But they were the only lights visible. There was not a single light in any of the buildings.

The Puma circled and hovered, then descended. Meena saw sprawling slate roofs with old-fashioned chimneys and windows. Tiny leaded panes of glass reflected the Puma’s glittering lights. Then trees got in the way and the Puma touched down on a large letter H painted on a stretch of tarmac. It looked like they had landed in an expensive country hotel.

The whine of the engine diminished and the rotors wound down. A military tanker painted dark green drove out to meet them.

Dorek took off his helmet. ‘Refuelling stop. No smoking.’

Meena and Phil unbuckled their harnesses and made to get out.

‘No time for that,’ said Dorek.

The refuelling crew was already starting work. Meena felt a couple of metallic bumps as the fuel cap was unscrewed, then a humming reverberated through the fuselage. She realized it was the tanker delivering fuel.

She looked out of the window in dismay, then back at Dorek. ‘You mean they’re refuelling with us on board?’

‘That’s nice,’ said Phil. ‘What if it catches fire while we’re in here?’

‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Dorek. ‘What if it drops out of the sky when we’re five hundred feet up?’

Meena had to quell her worries. Normally on civilian planes you didn’t refuel when there were people on board. Sitting there while the fuel pulsed into the tank felt wrong, but she had to accept that the army did things differently. And she didn’t want to appear a wimp.

A soldier stepped up to Dorek’s window and handed him another laptop. ‘General Chambers says the briefing documents are all on there.’

The ground crew had nearly finished refuelling. Meena looked out of the window and saw, over the trees, an Elizabethan mansion, like a hotel. ‘Er — where exactly are we?’

‘Chequers.’

Meena thought she’d misheard. ‘Chequers? As in where the Prime Minister lives?’

‘Yep,’ said Dorek. ‘We’ve got to go take him some homework.’

No, go away, thought Ben. Leave me alone. I want to sleep.

‘Wake up,’ a voice was shouting. ‘You’ve got to wake up.’

Hands grasped his shoulders and shook him. Ben tried to bat them off. He turned over, trying to retreat into his cocoon of sleep. When he moved, rain trickled down inside the collar of his jacket.

Still the hands shook him. ‘Wake up. You can’t sleep.’ Something was touched to his lips. ‘Drink this.’

He tasted warm Coca-Cola. It went down the wrong way, and he coughed and sat up. Water streamed down his forehead. Go away, he thought.

‘Are you awake?’

He forced his eyes open and saw a tubby girl wearing a black zip-up jumpsuit and a neoprene balaclava. For a moment he thought he’d been kidnapped by aliens. Except for her red lipstick and her eye make-up running in the rain.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘Eva.’ She held out a Mars Bar. ‘Eat this — it’ll give you energy.’

Ben suddenly realized he was ravenous. He snatched the Mars Bar but could barely tear open the wrapper. His fingers felt like fat sausages, all boneless and uncontrollable. Eva had to open it for him. He wolfed the bar down in three bites.

She handed him the Coke can again. ‘Have some more.’

He drank it obediently.

The sugar rush started immediately, as if it had been injected directly into his veins. He started to shiver.

Eva pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on, we’d better get you something warm.’

He still didn’t want to move; he felt too cold for that. He wanted to curl up in a ball so that he could keep warm.

Eva linked her arm through his and nudged his legs with his feet. ‘Come on, start walking. You’re getting hypothermia — that’s why you don’t want to move. But if you stay in that doorway you’ll die.’

Ben groaned.

‘Come on,’ said Eva, and shook him. ‘Once you get moving you’ll feel better.’

Ben started to walk, leaning heavily on her. It wasn’t her words that made him try; it was her running eye make-up. It made her look like Marilyn Manson. He wasn’t going to disobey someone who looked like that.

They were approaching a big interchange. Large, old-looking buildings surrounded a statue of some guy with wings. Buses stood abandoned and the road was littered with debris.

Ben realized he knew the place. ‘Is this Piccadilly Circus?’

‘Yeah,’ said Eva.

Ben clung onto Eva’s arm as she led him purposefully across the road. He remembered Piccadilly Circus as a crowded, bustling place. Now the huge advertising signs stood dark, brooding over the deserted roads. The giant record shop on the corner was no longer a vibrant place pumping out music. It was empty and silent.

Funny how those things still took Ben by surprise. He felt like any second he would wake up back in his bed in Macclesfield.

‘In here,’ said Eva. She pushed open a door.

Ben found himself surrounded by golf carts and checked trousers. They were in the sports store Lillywhites. And mercifully, it was dry.

‘Up here,’ said Eva. She dragged him towards the stairs.

Ben groaned again. Now that he’d stopped, he didn’t want to move. ‘Can’t we use the lift?’ he asked, before he realized it wouldn’t be working.

‘It’s only three floors,’ she said.

He followed Eva’s jumpsuited rear, pulling himself up by the handrail. She had funny little boots too; they seemed to be part of the jumpsuit. Why was she dressed like a black Teletubby?

She waited for him by the fire doors at the top. He tried to push the door open but the spring was heavy and he had to give it a second go.

They emerged on the shop floor, in the diving department. Ben saw a chair and went to sit down.

‘Don’t sit down for a moment,’ Eva ordered him. ‘I need to see what size you are.’

Ben stopped where he was and looked at her wearily. She looked him up and down. ‘OK, now you can sit.’

Ben sank down on the chair while Eva marched off. Short-sleeved diving suits hung around him, crisscrossed with zips and smelling of rubber. He realized that was what Eva’s weird outfit was: a diving suit.

She came marching back with a handful of multi-coloured items and dumped them in his lap. ‘Eat those. And don’t you dare go to sleep again.’

They were energy bars. Ben picked one up and pulled at the wrapper. His fingers were still cold and it was no easier to undo than the Mars Bar. How ironic, he thought, if you died because you didn’t have the strength to open your energy bar. He put the wrapper between his teeth and tore it. He wolfed one bar down, then started on a second.

‘You’re not asleep, are you?’ called Eva’s voice. He couldn’t see her between the racks but he could hear the scrape of hangers on rails.

‘No,’ called Ben, crumbs dropping out of his mouth.

‘Get undressed.’

‘Eh?’ Ben stopped chewing for a moment, thinking he’d misheard. He swallowed. ‘What?’

‘Take your clothes off. You’ll catch your death.’

‘But—’

‘Go on.’ He heard more hangers squeak as Eva searched through them.

Her tone was so insistent Ben realized he’d have to comply. He didn’t want that strange streaky face looming over him asking him if he was shy. He stood up and took off the London Underground jacket, then his sweatshirt. It was stuck to his arms and he had to practically peel it off. It fell in a filthy heap on the floor. He hadn’t realized how disgusting it was until he saw it lying there. It looked like he’d crawled through a mud pit in it.

Eva came tramping back through the rails again. She dumped a pile of gear at his feet. Ben was about to take his T-shirt off, then stopped, embarrassed.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I need to see how well coordinated you are.’

Ben pulled the T-shirt off over his head.

‘You’ll live.’ Eva pointed at the clothes dumped on the carpet. ‘See if any of those fit. I’ll be back in a minute.’

He didn’t touch them until she was well out of the way, swishing hangers again.

She’d brought packets of black thermal underwear. He ripped one open and his fingers felt the soft pile of the fabric. Just the touch of it made him feel warmer. He shook it out of its packet. It was a long-sleeved vest. He couldn’t get into it fast enough. As his arms slid in he felt a huge sense of relief. His skin felt warm for the first time in hours.

Eva came back with a small black neoprene item.

Ben examined it cautiously. ‘A hood?’

‘You lose a lot of heat through your head,’ said Eva. ‘Put it on.’

There was a mirror nearby. He pulled the hood on and glanced at his reflection. Dirty, grime-smeared face, hollow eyes, purple lips all framed by a tight black hood. He looked like a nightmare.

Eva came back again with a black and grey jump-suit. It was stiff and long and practically stood up by itself.

‘Hold this,’ she told him.

Ben took it by the shoulders and she knelt down and started undoing zips in a workmanlike way.

It was a peculiar garment. It even had its own boots, dangling off the end of the legs as if someone had welded a pair of wellingtons to it.

‘Eva, what is it?’

‘A drysuit.’ She stood up. ‘Put your leg in there.’

He did as he was told. He got one leg in and wiggled it down. It got stuck halfway.

‘There’s something inside,’ he told her.

‘It’s this,’ said Eva. She seized the knee pad and scrubbed the fabric together in her hands, like someone trying to open a stubborn plastic bag. ‘Now push,’ she said.

Ben got one leg in, then the other. But that wasn’t all. Eva knelt down and did up a complicated system of zips around the legs. The suit got tighter and tighter.

‘Now pull those elastic braces up over your shoulders.’

Ben took hold of a brace but the elastic was too tight. It twanged out of his hand and disappeared down the inside of the suit. He laughed.

Eva watched him without a flicker of a smile. ‘A lot of people lark about when they put a drysuit on.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ben. He didn’t think he’d ever come across anyone so serious. He tried the braces again and didn’t do any better the second time.

‘You’ve got to pull hard. They’re made to be tough.’

Finally he got them up and Eva zipped up the back of the suit. Now he was in.

He looked at her again, her Marilyn Manson face framed by the hood, and started to giggle. ‘Now we both look like Teletubbies.’

Eva didn’t think that was funny either. ‘At least you’ve got your sense of humour back.’ She said it with a completely straight face, as though she was a scientist observing an experiment.

Ben felt bad that he might have offended her. She had probably saved his life. ‘Thanks’ — he gestured at his strange outfit — ‘thanks for all this.’ He put out his hand. ‘I’m Ben, by the way.’

Eva shook his hand solemnly. ‘Well, Ben, if I hadn’t come along, who knows what would have happened to you.’

‘You seem to know a lot about all this.’

‘I’m a qualified diver. We’re taught to recognize the signs of hypothermia. Your body loses heat fast when you’re wearing wet clothes. Then you start to go wrong, like an old machine. You can’t think straight. You just want to lie down and sleep but that’s the worst thing you can do because you lose heat even faster if you stop moving.’

She seemed to take a peculiar delight in describing these gloomy details. But Ben had to admit that, although she only looked a few years older than he was, she seemed to know her stuff; it was as though she’d been following him with a video camera.

‘It’s not nice, is it?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Eva. ‘I had it once while wreck-diving in Plymouth.’ She started towards the exit. ‘Come on.’

Ben followed her. It was only when he started to move that he realized there was a bulging seam that forced his legs apart like a bandy cowboy’s. Even worse, his shins felt like they were being scraped raw.

He stopped. ‘Eva, are you sure I’ve got this on properly? It hurts.’

Eva barely even glanced back at him. ‘It’s probably the lining. Those ones are a bit sticky at first if you haven’t waxed your legs.’

Sticky wasn’t the word for it. It was like every hair was being pulled out of his skin. Still, it was better than that awful, creeping, deathly cold.

Ben passed another mirror and saw that the suit was light grey across the shoulders and black further down. In the middle of the chest was a valve with a yellow logo around it. There were curious pockets all over the place with nobbles and zips. He looked like Batman, especially with the hood. But he’d better not say so to Eva.

More seriously, though, he realized how much better he was feeling. He’d felt so cold and miserable before.

‘Come on,’ called Eva in a strict voice. ‘You need more fluids.’

She was a bit of a bossy boots, thought Ben. Still, he was grateful for the company. And if she hadn’t come along, he might still be in the doorway, sinking into oblivion.