Flash Flood

Chapter Eight

For a moment, as he continued to stare through the window, Ben had almost forgotten the radio was playing in his headphones. The music seemed to belong to another world, not this strange, flooded landscape he was looking out at.

He retuned to Capital Radio for more news.

‘We’re just receiving reports that central London has been flooded,’ said the DJ. His normally cheerful voice had changed completely. He sounded shocked. ‘There’s been an accident at the Thames Barrier and it’s not functioning — London was left vulnerable to the high rainfall combined with a surge tide …’ He sounded confused, but the basic facts were clear. London was flooded. ‘Here’s Meena Chohan, our traffic reporter, up in the Flying Eye,’ he finished.

The sound of a light aircraft engine came on in the background, and Ben heard the voice of the female reporter who had been speaking earlier.

‘I’m over East London right now and the scene is unbelievable. The river is as wide as a lake. The runways of City Airport have disappeared. Docklands has disappeared. The Docklands Light Railway has vanished. Central London and the City are just a mass of towers sticking up out of the water.’ Her voice sounded shaky, disbelieving, appalled …

‘The flooding just goes on and on. Usually when we’re up here doing traffic reports, we navigate by the pattern of roads and roundabouts. They have all gone.’

Ben caught a glimpse of a small blue object, moving across the sky on the east side of the building. He ran round to watch it. That was Capital Radio’s plane, the Flying Eye.

‘It looks like a completely different city,’ Meena Chohan continued. ‘That water’s got to be at least three metres deep. There’s some dry land up where it’s higher. St Paul’s is OK, but there’s water lapping at the bottom steps. The devastation is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Ben started to walk around the perimeter of the gallery. The building was completely surrounded by water. Water that was moving, carrying along cars, street furniture and helpless people. He was still carrying the binoculars and he lifted them to his eyes to look more closely. He remembered the helpless people he had seen grabbing at lampposts, trees — anything. Helpless as ants. It reminded him of some of the footage he had seen on the TV of the Asian tsunami. He put the binoculars down again.

He supposed Cally would come for him soon. Then he had a horrible thought. Where was she? She’d gone down to the conference room in the basement.

Had she got out?

Would she have had time? The basement was three flights down from the ground floor and the water had flooded in so rapidly.

Could his mother’s friend be dead?

‘Regent Street seems to be dry,’ said Meena Chohan, ‘but there are people and traffic everywhere. It’s chaos. Buckingham Palace has escaped for the moment but the Mall’s under water. Most of Westminster’s cut off.’

Westminster. That was where his mum was.

Ben ran round to the front of the building again. The terraces of Westminster had gone. The water lapped at the windows so that the Houses of Parliament looked like a famous painting he had seen of Venice. Where was Bel having her meeting?

He got out his phone and speed-dialled her number. I don’t care if you’re in a meeting, he said to himself. For once, just answer.

He didn’t expect her to answer, of course. He expected her abrasive answerphone message again but he never even got a ring tone. Instead he got an automated message from the phone company. ‘Lines are busy. Please try—’

The message was cut off. There was silence. He tried again but there was nothing — not even the message that told him her phone was out of reach.

He tried home; his dad in Macclesfield.

Nothing. It was as if the battery was dead. But it wasn’t: the display was glowing as usual and the battery icon showed more than half charged. But the signal display was blank.

A bang like a firework going off made Ben look out of the window again. At the same moment the lights in the gallery went out. He saw that the lights in all the buildings nearby were down. There had been a massive power cut.

The London Eye had stopped. At the bottom, glowing sparks were fizzing out of the mechanism. Ben watched as two parents, up to their waists in water in a half-submerged capsule, struggled to lift their three young children onto their shoulders. The official escort in the navy London Eye uniform was frantically searching for a window that opened.

Further up, other passengers started to notice the panicking passengers below. They hammered on the glass with cameras and shoes, until the whole wheel looked like a grotesque mobile, a painting of hell, the pods swinging as people tried to escape from their glass prisons.

The glass in one of the higher pods sprayed out in a shower. A figure in a red cagoule hurtled out into the air — feet first, nose held as if anticipating the plunge into the water. Another followed, legs and arms cycling in the air as if he had lost control of them. The figure in the red cagoule hit the water. The other figure splashed down soon after.

Slowly Ben raised the binoculars and watched.

The jumpers had underestimated the fierce current. He saw flailing arms rise briefly above the choppy surface, already being carried away from the Eye like twigs caught in a whirlpool. Once again, he lowered the binoculars, but he could still see the small helpless figures. They were swept towards the concrete walls of the ArBonCo Centre. He didn’t see them hit, but he did see the tide suck them away again. When it did they were unmoving, lifeless.

Ben felt sick. He put the binoculars down on the window ledge and turned away.

Strange — if he looked at the room, it was as if nothing had happened. Outside the windows, the sky was the same grey as it had been before. The carpets, the easy chairs, the low tables all looked so everyday. The only thing that was odd was that all the lights had gone out.

What should he do? Hide up here? It seemed nice and safe and normal.

And then the creeping fear began to steal up on Ben as well. He began to notice the sounds. No, it was not normal. Car and burglar alarms shrieked from the streets below. And there was another sound: muffled shouts and screams. Once he became aware of them, Ben couldn’t block them out. They filled him with fear, just as the people in the London Eye had transmitted their panic to each other, reverberating through the spokes of that giant wheel.

He didn’t want to stay here alone.