Suddenly this day of flooding was more than an inconvenience, more than just something in her way. People must be dying, right here in her field of view.
She tried to focus, to think. She grabbed Thurley’s arm. “Come on. We need to get away from here.”
He seemed hypnotized. “Ah… Quite. But which way?”
“The Strand,” Helen said immediately, remembering her driver.“This way.”
Pushing through the crowds, they hurried back along the Embankment. They had almost reached their left turn into Horseguards when the water reached them, a knee-deep wash. There was garbage in the water, bits of paper and plastic bags and fast-food wrappers, slicks of oil and sewage. People clung to the wall, to lamp posts, to the stranded cars; others were knocked off their feet, to come up drenched and sputtering. Even now people held onto their phones rather than use both their hands to support themselves; Helen saw the little screens glowing everywhere. She found herself leaning into the current, pushing to make her way forward, like walking into a tide, but she and Thurley kept their feet.
And now the river reached a new height and poured over the river wall in a torrent. The cars jostled forward, like boulders in a fast-flowing stream. People screamed for help.
Helen and Thurley made it to Horseguards. There was no respite here; the black, muddy, oil-streaked water surged after them as they struggled through the crowd. Helen was tiring by the time they reached Whitehall, and Thurley was wheezing, out of condition, exhausted.
But Whitehall itself was already flooded. They stared at another river that gushed down the street toward them, immersing people up to their thighs, pouring away from the higher ground to the north. It ran down past the pale sandstone frontages of the grand government buildings and flooded eagerly into roadwork trenches.
Thurley looked south, the way the water was running.“Look at that.” He pointed at a rubber police launch fighting its way against the current. “That’s Downing Street. They’re evacuating.”
“Yeah.” She turned and looked north. She could see Trafalgar Square at the end of the street, the steps and pillars of the National Gallery rising like a cliff.“We can get out that way. But we have to fight the current…”
They started to slog upstream. All around them a crowd of people had the same idea. They pushed up the street, or climbed along rows of railings. But the current was growing more powerful.
Thurley slipped. Grabbing for him, Helen fell herself, face down. She felt the turbid stuff pushing into her hood, soaking her hair, and seeping inside her coverall. She kept her mouth closed, remembering the water that had come bubbling out of the sewers. She nearly made it up, but then somebody fell into her and pushed her down again, and she couldn’t get her feet underneath herself. She felt herself slide backward, along the tarmac of Whitehall. She panicked, she wouldn’t be able to get up, she would drown in a meter of dirty water.
But then a strong hand grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and hauled her to her feet. She stood there dripping before a mountain of a man, T-shirt and shorts and tattooed arms, like a rugby player gone to seed. Soaked to the skin, he actually had a can of lager in his left hand. He leered at her, and with his right hand he squeezed her breast through the coverall’s soaked fabric. She recoiled, disgusted, and he laughed and stomped away.
Here was Thurley, drenched. “Not much of a hero,” he shouted.
“Prick,” she snarled. “Hope he drowns on his own vomit. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
They pushed on. She was soaked now, her face and hair wet, river water inside her suit, and it was much harder going.
But they reached Trafalgar Square. On the north side the National Gallery and the old church of Saint Martin in the Fields were above the water, and people stood or sat on the gallery’s steps. But in the square itself the gushing river water was forming a lake, lapping around the famous old fountains. There had to be thousands of people in this view alone, swarming around the square and climbing the gallery steps. She saw no sign of police, no evidence of attempts at orderly evacuation. She glanced up at the column on which Nelson stood, imperturbably surveying the latest shocks to be inflicted on his city.
Thurley touched her shoulder.“Look up there.” He was pointing to the roof of the National Gallery, which was carpeted by gray. Pigeons, thousands upon thousands of them.“You mentioned the Strand, Ms. Gray.”
“Yes.”
He pointed right. “Thataway.”
They splashed through the deepening water, staggering across a road, past dead traffic lights and cars like boulders in a stream, and people everywhere, struggling to get to safety.
18
Another descent for the chopper dipping down toward the carcass of London, another rescue routinely handled by the AxysCorp crew, this time of a mother, child and grandmother stranded in Wapping, an area of old dockland converted to river-view flats. Lily helped strap the refugees into their bucket seats.
The rotors growled as they bit into the air, and the chopper pushed on further upstream to her next job. The bird was already nearly full of old folk and women and kids wrapped in silvery emergency blankets, but she was going to keep flying until she ran out of fuel or reached her capacity; she could hold as many as a hundred refugees packed in tightly.
Glancing through the open door, Lily saw water black as oil soaking down the streets of London, and across the squares and parks, the river exploring the contours of the flood plain that had long been denied it. Choppers flew everywhere like busy insects, both yellow search-and-rescue vehicles and military machines-even Sikorskys that must have been flying out of American bases. Boats of all kinds, small private powerboats and inflatables and police launches and lifeboats, buzzed around houses and office blocks where blankets dangled limply from upper windows. Away from the central flooded areas Lily could see thin lines of traffic barely moving on the blocked arterial roads, and emergency vehicles moving against the flow in toward the disaster area, blue lights flashing. It was a July evening and still bright, but you could see the areas where the power had failed where streetlights failed to shine, and ad hoardings stood mute and blank. She had an AxysCorp handheld, and the little screen showed her frantic images of soldiers racing to save key installations, Royal Engineers and the Royal Logistical Corps building levees and laboring with pumps to try to keep the water out of substations and water-treatment plants. London’s flood plain was crowded not just with office blocks, shops and houses, but with the city’s core infrastructure, even hospitals and police stations.
The handheld bleeped, flashing a headline from outside London. The news was from Sydney. There the flooding had struck deep into the heart of the city. The state government was trying to organize a managed evacuation west along the route of Highway Four, toward the higher ground beyond the Nepean River some thirty kilometers west of the city. Reception centers were being set up further west yet, in the higher ground of the Blue Mountains. The Aussie government was struggling, the commentators opined. The country had never been hit by such a calamity. Floods in Sydney and in London, Lily thought, floods on both sides of the world. How strange.
The pilot murmured, “Wow, look at that.” The chopper banked again.
Lily put down the handheld and looked out.