‘Motoring organizations have issued a weather warning to drivers, warning them not to set out unless their journey is absolutely necessary. Several towns in the South West, including Boscastle which was devastated by flooding a few years ago, are on flood alert.’
Ben found Capital. He found a chirpy female presenter, but the message was the same. ‘Don’t travel by car unless it’s absolutely necessary. The M25 is gridlocked after flooding at Wisley. This is Meena Chohan in the Flying Eye, with all the latest traffic news as it happens.’
He tuned through the stations until he found one playing an Usher track. He looked out of the window to see how many more millimetres the London Eye had moved.
Suddenly something caught his attention down below.
The river.
One moment it was lapping at the walls of the Embankment. The next, it was rising, as though the water was swelling, like a bath filling too fast.
And it didn’t stop.
It swallowed the walls of the Embankment on the north side and spilled over the banks on the south …
Chapter Five
Down on the street below, the pavements, dark grey with rain, seemed to dissolve as the water surged over them.
People who were out walking, heads down under hats and umbrellas, looked at the water swirling at their feet and started to run. They ran up the steps of the London Aquarium.
The water followed them. It flowed over the half-wall by the National Theatre and swirled around the deserted café, clattering the chairs together. It lapped at the theatre entrance, then swirled down the passageways between the buildings and out over the roads.
In moments it had covered the square of green grass in front of the entrance to the ArBonCo Centre. It crept over the road, choking an excavator so that it stalled with its arm poised in the air like a yellow claw. It gushed down the steps of the ArBonCo Centre and filled the sunken stepped area in front of the glass doors like a swimming pool.
On Ben’s headphones the music continued. The radio station seemed unaware of the catastrophe. He took the phones out of his ears.
The noise from outside was deafening. There was a loud roar like an earthquake as the water slammed into the sides of buildings. Very faintly Ben could hear other noises too; the faintest of sounds that he thought might be screams.
Looking across the river, he saw that, over on the north bank, the road was invisible. The river was twice as wide as it had been, bordered now by the rows of buildings opposite. And still the water continued to rise.
Ben saw a set of binoculars on a stand next to the window. He grabbed them and put them to his eyes.
What he saw made him go cold all over.
A tourist stall by the London Eye buckled as he watched, its canvas roof collapsing. Policemen’s helmets, Union Jack bowler hats, brightly coloured T-shirts and a host of souvenirs spread out in the water and were swept upriver in the strong current. Burger wrappers and cardboard coffee cups were flushed out of bins and set off in clusters.
More, larger debris followed: the wooden chairs that had been standing outside the theatre; books and trestle tables from a stall under Waterloo Bridge; placards from the National Film Theatre shop and menu boards from the restaurants.
A distinctive shape skimmed through the water. Ben tried to focus the binoculars on it, unable to believe his eyes. A long pale grey outline; a triangular fin like a sail. He saw an eye. And then the words: SEE THE TIGER SHARK AT THE LONDON AQUARIUM. Yes, he was indeed looking at a shark, but it was a cardboard cut-out.
He focused on the far side of the river again. What had happened to the vehicles that had been travelling along the Embankment? It was lunch time, and quite a few people had been hurrying along the pavement under their inadequate umbrellas. A frisson of horror went up his spine. He realized he could no longer see the front doors of the buildings opposite. He couldn’t see the cars and lorries because the water had completely engulfed them. That must mean the water was at least two metres deep on the Embankment. Probably three metres, because it was nearly up to the first-floor windows of the white building opposite.
Then Ben noticed the top of a double-decker bus sailing sideways past the white building. Only the red rectangle of its roof was visible; the rest was submerged.
Ben was amazed by the speed at which the flood waters had surged up. In only a matter of seconds, it seemed, they had risen up over the Embankment walls and totally covered the road above.
And then he began to see the people — helpless shapes borne along by the tide, arms waving as they tried to attract attention, to get help, to grab onto things. Others were holding onto trees, clinging on like monkeys, trying to climb out of the water. The trees looked fragile and spindly, like clumps of coral. Ben realized their trunks were submerged: only their tops stood clear of the water.
One woman was trying to hold onto a coral-tree, but the branches wouldn’t take her weight. Ben watched, appalled, as the branches snapped and she was pulled off into the current. Then he swung the binoculars away. He didn’t want to see any more.
He focused on the river to the east of the ArBonCo Centre. There were more small helpless objects being swirled along. He told himself these shapes were debris, furniture, chairs from cafés; anything but people.
For miles downstream towards the obelisk of the Canary Wharf Tower, the river was lapping at windows. The roads had vanished. Ben could see cars, but they were being borne along in the water like boats, only visible as metal roofs, rocking in the current. And it was the same in the other direction.
In the windows of the buildings opposite he could see movement: rows of faces gathering to look out at the changed world. Their expressions all said the same thing:
We’re trapped.
That was when it dawned on Ben that he was trapped too.
Trapped — like hundreds of thousands of Londoners, now struggling to come to terms with what had happened to them.
Struggling to survive …
Chapter Six
The traffic lights had been red for ages. Charleen, in her Bentley Flying Spur, sighed and put her handbrake on.
It sounded a bit odd outside. Watery.
She looked out at the traffic to either side of her. And noticed the water.
Even as she watched, the surface of the road disappeared completely. The pavements went next, engulfed by mud-coloured water. And then her whole car just seemed to die. The light behind the LCD control panel went dark, the air conditioning fell silent and the almost inaudible throb of the engine, silent as a heartbeat, was still.
£115, 000-worth of Bentley never stalled. It was simply impossible. Charleen cursed and turned the key, waiting for the familiar muted roar under the bonnet which always set butterflies dancing in her stomach.
The engine turned over once and died. She turned the key back sharply and then pulled it out. Something was very wrong. The water must be so deep it had been sucked into the engine. And now she could hear a ghostly, ominous noise …
The roar suddenly grew louder. A muddy avalanche of water and rubbish was rumbling towards her down the road. In seconds, it was up to the doors. All around her, the cars were reduced to windowed pods poking out above the dirty swirling water.