Stephen Baxter - Flood

Amanda said, “Lily, where the hell did you come from? — Never mind. Where did you find her?”

“She couldn’t get back to you, and she couldn’t make it here, so she went to a police missing-persons point. They’re all over the peninsula. Smart kid. They logged her in, I found her there, came for you-”

A fresh wave came over the wall, and they all jumped.

Lily grabbed Kristie’s hand. “Come on, we need to get out of here. The chopper’s waiting.”

“What chopper?”

“AxysCorp.”

Benj said, “What about everybody else?”

“We can’t take everybody,” Lily said grimly. “I’m sorry, Benj.”

Amanda asked, “Lily, how can all this be happening?”

“I don’t know,” Lily said. “For now I just want to get us out of here. Now come on. Hang onto me…”

Clinging to each other, they struggled through the increasingly powerful currents that swept across the car park, heading for the chopper.

So this was Millwall, heart of the east end, a tough old community that stretched around the western shore of the Isle of Dogs, with the dock cut through its heart. Piers had never been here before. with the dock cut through its heart. Piers had never been here

The boom that had brought such glamorous developments to Canary Wharf and Greenwich had evidently passed this place by. But there were signs of redevelopment, industrial parks and commercial buildings and estates of flimsy-looking new housing that crowded out the older stock, what Piers’s mother would have called “two-up two-down.” None of it was being spared by the river water that pulsed along the streets, black and stinking of rot and sewage, lapping at front doors lined with sandbags and rolling over scraps of front gardens.

No cars were moving. The streets were lined with parked vehicles, and a few were abandoned in the middle of the road, their electrics soaked. There was hardly anybody on the streets. Through open windows Piers heard the chatter of battery radios, but there were no lights, no TV sets glowing; maybe the power was already off. The residents seemed willing, for now, to accept the official advice to stay put. Inside the houses he saw homeowners wearily hauling TV sets and bits of furniture up the stairs. But some of the houses already had blankets hanging out of upstairs windows, a sign that rescue was needed, blankets soaked by the continuing rain and flapping in the breeze.

He turned down a terraced street, and he heard rushing water. He looked back. A wave that must have been a half-meter high pushed down the narrow street toward him, black and oily and crusted with rubbish, plastic bins and milk bottles and bits of paper, and a dead bird, a rook, gruesomely spinning in the water.

He turned off the road and through a garden gate, instinctively trying to get away from the water. He climbed a step to a sandbagged front door. But the water came lapping over his legs anyhow, reaching to his knees, the sudden drag making him stagger.

The front door behind him opened. “Here, watch out for my gate.” An old woman, in purple cardigan and slacks, stood at the door with a crutchlike metal walking stick. The flood pushed over her heap of sandbags and spilled into her hall, and made her stumble back. “Ooh, oh my Lord.”

“Here.” Piers hurried forward. He managed to catch her by the elbows before she fell. He set her right as the water pooled past them on into the house. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, look at my carpets, what you want to go and do that for?”

“I’m sorry,” Piers said.

She looked up at him doubtfully. With a wisp of gray hair, she might have been eighty. She must once have been pretty.“I thought you was the nurse. You’re not the district nurse, are you?”

“No.”

“Today’s not my day. But I’ve packed my bag for the hospital.” She pointed to a small leather case that sat on a polished table in the hall.“It’s got all my bits. I’ve got my pills, and I put in my spare teeth, like Kevin said. But you aren’t Kevin, are you? My eyes aren’t so good.”

“The nurse? No, I’m sorry. My name’s Piers.”

“Piers! Well I never. My name’s Molly.”

“Nice to meet you, Molly.”

“You’re not a copper, are you? So what you doing standing in my drive, then?”

“I’m a soldier.”

“Oh,” she said, if that explained everything. “Well, help me on with my coat, dear.”

He hesitated for one second. Then he stepped inside the house to get her case and her coat. The hall was cramped, the walls crowded with photographs and bits of embroidery in frames, and there was a smell of rarely washed woolens, rapidly being overwhelmed by a sewagelike river stink. He found a heavy overcoat on a rack, and held it up for her.

“Got your car, have you?”

“A car? No.”

“An ambulance then. Well, how are you going to get me to the hospital?” She looked down at the filthy, steadily rising water.“I mean I can’t stay here, and I can’t walk with my knees.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.” He glanced out at the street. A policeman in waders and a bright yellow jacket worked his way down the road, hammering on front doors. An evacuation order, and coming late enough too. Doors were opening, and people were reluctantly emerging from their houses, bearing kids, suitcase, bundles of possessions.

Piers looked at Molly, and down at the swirling water. This is something I can do, he thought.

He put his hands on Molly’s shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Are you sure you’ve got everything you need? Your bank book, your NHS card-”

“Oh, yes, all packed, Kevin gave me a list. Large print too, he’s really very good.”

“This is a bit awkward-but do you need the lavatory for a bit? I’m not sure when we’ll get to a toilet.”

She laughed at that. “I’m all right, dear, let’s get on with it.” She peered past him. “Still can’t see your car.”

“Well, I don’t have a car, I’m afraid. Let’s see how we’re fixed.” He dug under his jacket, and took the belt from his trousers. He looped this through the suitcase handle and buckled it, and then hung the case around his neck so it dangled behind his back, over his slimmer emergency pack. It wasn’t terribly heavy. Then he reached for Molly. “Now then, madam-”

When he picked her up she laughed again. “Oh my word, what a day this is turning out to be.” But she put her arms around his neck, and settled easily.

He stood in the hall, balancing her weight. She was a solid woman, and heavy, but if he stood straight the case on his back acted as a kind of counterweight. He knew he was thin from his captivity, his muscles wasted; he wouldn’t last for ever. But he was confident he could make it for maybe a kilometer, which might be enough. “Off we go, Molly.” Carefully he stepped over the sandbags, and out onto the path.

He let her fumble for a key so she could lock the door. “Last time I was carried over this threshold it was by my Benny, and that was going the other way, oh I’ll remember today all right.”

“So will my back,” Piers said ruefully. He splashed down the path.

“And these sandbags go back to the war. Really they do. I was a little girl then but I remember it clear as day. My dad dug the sand into his garden but he always kept the sacks, never know when they might start up again, he said, and he was right wasn’t he, in a way..”

Letting her talk, he bent his head away from the rain and walked slowly, carefully. He headed east, roughly, toward the line of the DLR. The current of the flood water was fast, and though the water was still below his knees it tugged at him surprisingly strongly. One step, another, in the swirling, increasingly fetid water. He was determined not to get knocked over or trip.