Stephen Baxter: Flood

Helen Gray sat cradling Grace, her baby, returned to her after the transfer, the focus of her whole world. Twenty-five years old, tall, she was very pale under her freckles, very English-looking, fragile. Gary Boyle, the even younger American research scientist, sat bewildered, as if stunned. His fear and distress were always beguiling to the guards’ bullying streak, and his arms and legs were purple from the bruises of his beatings.

Piers sat slumped in his chair, a grimy towel over his face. Piers Michaelmas was the senior British military officer who had been Lily’s principal passenger in her Chinook. He had been working for a Western alliance trying to prop up the then-new military government. It was long months since he had retreated behind his towels and his blindfolds, and he rarely spoke.

And John Foreshaw, American civil contractor, tested his shackles, as always edgy and impatient, at his most dangerous at moments of flux like this.

They all looked so similar, Lily thought, male and female, British and American, military and civilian, young and not so young, in their grimy underwear, pasty pale from the lack of daylight, their eyes hollow, their scalps and faces shaved bare. But they were all white, and all British or American, the categories that made them valuable as hostages.

There was nothing else here, none of the usual equipment of their long captivity, the foam mattresses and grimy blankets, the plastic bags they had to shit in, the old Coke bottles that held their drinking water and their piss: this time, nothing but themselves.

It was John who spoke first. “So where the fuck are we now?”

Jaume plucked his cigarette from his mouth and blew out a mouthful of barely inhaled smoke. Like the rest of these “Fathers of the Elect” he was no more than twenty, twenty-one years old, only half the age of John, Piers, Lily. “La Seu,” Jaume said.

“Where? What did you say? Why can’t you fuckers talk straight?” Once John had been fat; now his jowls hung from his cheeks and under his chin, as if emptied out.

Gary Boyle spoke up. “La Seu. That’s the cathedral. Dedicated to Saint Eulalia. A thirteen-year-old martyr. I came here as a tourist, when I was a kid…” He glanced around. “My God. This is the crypt. We’re chained up in a cathedral crypt!”

“It’s just another shithole, is what it is,” John said. “There’s water pouring down the walls. We’ll fucking drown, if we don’t die of pneumonia first.”

“Holy place,” Jaume said easily, in his heavily accented English. “You with God here.” He started walking toward a shadowed staircase, followed by the others.

John called after them, “Hey! Where are you going? Where are our mattresses? There’s no food here. Not even a bag to shit in.”

“God provide,” said Jaume. “Has looked after saint since ninth century, will look after you.”

John started dragging at his chains; they rattled noisily in the enclosed space. “You’re leaving us here to die, is that it?”

Lily instantly wondered if he might be right. There was nothing to suggest they were here for a long stay. She tried out the thought, the idea of dying. She wasn’t afraid, she found. She had been in the arbitrary care of frightened, ignorant young men for five years; even without the cruel games and the mock executions, she had grown used to the idea that her life could be terminated on a whim at any second. But she didn’t want to die stuck in this hole in the ground. She felt a deep, intense longing to see the sky.

The guards continued to retreat up the stairs, and John yanked at his chains. “You fucking kids, you grab a handful of hostages and you think you can control the whole world.”

“John, take it easy,” Lily said.

John was raging now, his face purple.“You’re fucking cowards is what you are. You can’t even finish the job properly, you’re not men enough for that-”

Severo turned and fired his Armalite. The burst was loud in the enclosed space. John’s body shuddered as the bullets hit. One shot got him in the face, which imploded in a bloody mess.

Gary screamed, “John. Oh God, oh God!”

“No coward,” said Severo, cigarette in mouth. He followed the others up the stairs and out of Lily’s sight.

John was splayed over his chair. Blood pooled thickly on the floor. Helen hunched down over her baby, grasping her close, rocking, as if nothing else existed in the world. Piers turned his hooded head away, his body slumped.

Gary was crying, hunched over, weeping with shock. Chained up meters away from him, Lily couldn’t reach him.

John had been an asshole in some ways, but Lily had known him for four years. Now he was gone, gone in an instant-killed before their eyes. Worse than that, discarded. Of no value to their captors, not anymore. And the implication was, neither were the rest of them.

“It’s over,” Helen said. It was the first time she had spoken since they had been brought here. She held her baby on her chest, her chin resting on Grace’s head. “I’m right, aren’t I?” Her accent was crisp northern English, her vowels flat. She had been a language teacher.

“You don’t know that,” Lily insisted.“Maybe some other group is late for the handover, that’s all.”

“They killed John,” Gary said heavily.

Helen said,“And that bloody lantern is going out. Look at it! Bastards couldn’t even give us a fresh battery. We’re going to be left in the dark, with a stinking corpse. Left to die.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Gary whimpered. And Lily heard him groan softly; she knew that meant his bladder had released.

“It’s not going to happen,” Lily snapped. “Let’s get out of these chains.” She tugged experimentally. The radiator was bolted massively to a stone wall. “Look around before the light goes. There must be something down here, something we can use-”

“How about bolt cutters?”

The new voice was a man’s, English, coming from the stairs. They all leaned over to look. Even Piers turned his hooded face. Torchlight flashed. Lily raised her unchained hand to shield her eyes. She made out two, three, four people coming down the crypt stair.“Who’s there? Who are you?Como se llama usted??Me puede ayudar, por favor? Me llamo — ”

“You’re Lily Brooke. Yes? USAF captain, serial number-”

“Tell me who you are.”

He lifted his torch to illuminate his face. He was black, maybe forty; tall, square, he wore what looked like battle dress with a purple beret, and a shoulder-flash logo: the Earth cradled in a cupped hand. “My name is George Camden.”

“You’re English. Military?”

“A private security force. I work for AxysCorp.” He tapped his shoulder logo. “I’ve come to get you out of here. You’re safe now.” He smiled.

Nothing changed inside Lily; there was no feeling of relief. She couldn’t believe it. She remained tense, wary, waiting for the trap to spring.

“AxysCorp,” Gary said. “Who John worked for.”

Camden shone his torch. “You’re Gary Boyle, of NASA? Yes, John Foreshaw works for us. We’re operating in conjunction with the coalition peacekeepers, the government forces. But at AxysCorp we look after our own.” He flashed his torch around. Piers flinched from the light.“So where’s John?”

“You just missed him,” Helen said bitterly.

“Missed him?” Camden’s torch found John. “Oh. Damn it.”

Lily lifted her shackled arm.“You said something about bolt cutters?”

Camden waved forward his men. “Let’s get on with it.”

Released, they were helped up the crypt stairs.

The cathedral’s interior was a sandstone cavern, looted and burned. They stumbled out through a massive door called the Portal of San Ivo, and onto the street. The cathedral was a squat Gothic pile, the labor of centuries. Its carefully worked face had been cratered by shellfire. The rain fell, hard and steady, and the water stood in spreading puddles on the street, making every surface glisten.