He would have to try and take a run at the door. He stepped down gingerly, feeling his way with his feet. He’d have to be careful otherwise he’d fall down the stairs.
He launched himself up at the door and hit it with his shoulder.
It hardly moved.
Ben listened for a moment. Maybe the sound of him trying to break out would bring somebody. He shouted out.
Suddenly he heard a voice. No, it was only the radio, still broadcasting reassuring messages. The voice seemed to have been chosen specifically to sound authoritative and soothing, like a drug. ‘This is the BBC, coming to you from our Manchester studios. All other services have been suspended after the flooding in the capital today. Scheduled programmes will be repeated at a future date. For details you can check our website, which we hope will be back on line shortly.’
How absurd, thought Ben. Criminals might be roaming the streets of London, Big Ben might have stopped, but BBC Radio was thinking about an orderly future, with The Archers and The Chart Show.
He needed a longer run-up. He turned round, put his right shoulder against the wall and felt his way down the stairs very cautiously. One, two, three.
There was something on the fourth step; he tripped and lost his balance, stumbling into the dark. Horrible images flashed through his head — stories about people falling to their deaths down cellar steps. He crashed onto his shoulder and rolled on down. Instinct made him tuck his head in, protect it at all costs.
He was suddenly engulfed in freezing water. He cried out and his mouth filled with that same foul taste he’d choked out earlier that day. He flailed around, as if trying to wake from a nightmare. Then his feet found solid ground.
He stood up and started for where he thought the stairs were, but then realized he hadn’t a clue what direction to take.
Deep breaths, he told himself. Panicking will definitely get you drowned.
The water was up past his waist here. It chilled him to the bone. Where had it all come from?
This street wasn’t underwater — the flood started at least a street away — it must be seeping through the ground, through the basement levels. Perhaps through a drain or an underground river. He forced himself to be calm. He needed to be able to see where he was going. In a moment his eyes would adjust.
Ben’s patience paid off. He saw a gleam of light and waded over to it.
He came up against a wall, but at his eye level there was a hole. When he looked through, he saw a crawl space under the floor above, and daylight.
So the cellar didn’t go the full length of the building. He saw a bank of bare earth and foundations like rough brick pillars resting on them. There was light coming through — enough for him to see the wood grain of the floorboards of the ground floor above. It smelled dank and rotten. There seemed to be debris in there too — crisp packets and polystyrene burger boxes — but that was a good sign: it must have blown in from the outside. And that definitely meant a hole. The space itself looked tight, but he reckoned he could crawl through.
Ben realized that, in the time he’d been standing there, the water level in the cellar had risen. It was now nearly up to his armpits.
No time to waste, then. He put his hands on the rough brick sill of the crawl space and hoisted himself up. With so much buoyancy from the water it was easy, like vaulting out of a swimming pool. He wriggled into the space on his stomach, then pulled himself along on his elbows. It was cramped, like crawling under a bed, but not too bad if you kept your eyes on the light.
A squeaking, skittering sound made him start in alarm. He recoiled and banged the back of his head on wooden floorboards.
Something was in there with him.
Suddenly Ben could see small points of light, like sequins. They flashed at him, then moved away.
What were they?
Something brushed past his arm and he heard the squeaking again. This time he saw more sequins of light, some of them blinking at him. Then he saw torpedo shapes running about, then stopping abruptly. Tails flicked in the gloom.
The crawl space was full of rats.
Ben went cold all over. What was this under his hands? It felt like earth, but was it rat droppings?
He felt bile rising in his throat. He wanted to turn round and go back there and then. But this was the only way out of the cellar.
All at once Ben felt a sense of hopelessness rising in him. He cursed Bel, wished she could see what he was having to go through because she’d mucked him about. He’d certainly give her all the horrid details. No, that would be pointless. She would probably say she’d had to do worse before her press conference after the tsunami in Phuket, or something similarly unsympathetic.
Ben realized he’d already battled against worse today, when he slipped off the raft into the water. This wasn’t nearly as hard; just disgusting. He had to just pick a goal and work towards it.
The opening had a pattern over it, like some kind of mesh. More importantly, it was ten metres — four brick pillars — away. He kept his eyes on that light, and pulled himself along with his elbows.
Tiny squeaks and squeals flitted at the corner of his consciousness. Clawed feet ran across his bare hands. Scaly tails lashed his face. They touched his lips and he spat them out, swearing, trying not to think what would happen if the rats bit him.
He passed one brick pillar. Good. That was a landmark.
A furry body brushed against his nose, filling his senses with the smell of wet rodent. Despite his resolve, he almost turned round, only there wasn’t room.
That was when he started to realize how tiny the space was. The floorboards above, the pillars of brick to the side, the earth under his belly. He might get stuck here and die. Die, and be food for the rats.
He passed another brick pillar. The ground was getting wetter, slimier. Obviously the rain was coming in, but that was a good sign: it meant he was getting closer to outside.
The tiny eyes watched him as the rats skittered to and fro across his path. Look all you want, he thought. Soon I’m going to be out of here.
Slowly Ben passed the third pillar. Daylight was just a few metres away. Unfortunately, in front of him he saw a mass of small brown bodies. They stopped and looked at him: tails, ears, rodent faces. For some reason these rats didn’t run away. It was like they knew they didn’t have to be afraid of him: he was in their underworld and was vastly outnumbered. He saw their teeth and had a vision of them swarming towards him, to pick his bones clean.
Well, they’d have to get through his jeans first. And a rather expensive Burberry mac.
Then suddenly, as Ben focused on the opening ahead, he saw what it was, and all the fight went out of him.
It was merely a row of air bricks, designed to ventilate the underside of the building. From a distance it looked like a big hole with a mesh like a radiator cover, but up close it was solid bricks with a honeycomb pattern. There was no big hole.
The rats scurried around him, squeaking. Two of them sniffed at his hands. He struggled not to shake them off in case they bit him. Claws danced across his legs, his back.
Now what could he do? He was stuck under a building, in a stinking den of rats.
He’d have to go back.
With difficulty he turned round, squirming like a snake, the rats finally scattering out of his way. He’d have to try the cellar door again, he thought, before the water level got any higher. Before the water level rose so high that it flooded the crawl space too.
Painfully Ben pulled himself back towards the cellar. He was heading into the dark, and now his night vision had been bleached away by the glimpse of daylight. He hoped his eyes would adjust by the time he got back to the cellar.