'Do you notice something?' Betty said suddenly. 'People don't like these uniforms. They resent us.'
She was right. The steadily thickening early-morning crowds, walking to work through the busless streets, were eyeing them as they passed and the hostility could not be mistaken. Beehive was no longer a secret, that was plain – and somehow Beehive uniforms were recognized.
'I think,' Philip said, 'it would be a good idea if we tried some quieter back-streets. Everyone must know what these respirator haversacks are. We could easily be mugged for them.'
They cut across towards Mount Pleasant Hill. Philip knew there was a footbridge over the River Lea at the bottom of it which would enable them to cross the Marshes without using the Lea Bridge Road bottleneck. One other thing they had noticed; queues were already forming outside shops which would not be open for another hour or two. 'By the middle of the morning, there won't be a bottle of vinegar in any of them,' Philip predicted. 'And after that I wonder what the black-market price will be?'
As they climbed the footbridge over the Lea, they could see Lea Bridge Road a couple of hundred metres to their right. At this time of the morning, the bulk of the traffic should have been westwards towards Central London, but it was unmistakably eastwards. Lea Bridge Road was one of the principal arteries leading out to Epping Forest and the open country of East Anglia. If the eastward flow was building up already, at just after seven in the morning -then the exodus had started. Not a panic as yet, because the flow was moving steadily at a good forty to fifty kilometres per hour. But what would happen when the jam was nose-to-tail, alternately stopping and crawling? How long would tempers stand the strain?…Philip was glad they lived on the other side of the two-kilometre-long bottleneck, which was the only road across the Marshes for at least three kilometres north and south. On the Leyton side there were dozens of quiet side-roads which could be taken towards the Forest and Philip knew them like the palm of his hand.
Visiting home, even long enough to fetch and park the car, was dangerous enough, though he doubted if there could be a police call out for him and Betty yet. Staying there (quite apart from their determination to be out of town as soon as possible) would be out of the question; Beehive, he knew, took very prompt action against defectors and by this afternoon at the latest the local police would be alerted.
'Which way now?' Betty asked. 'We can't cross the Canal. It's either Lea Bridge Road or the railway.'
The Canal ran parallel to the Lea river, two or three hundred metres ahead. Crossing it by the road bridge would be almost direct but Philip thought it was better to avoid it. They swung north across the playing fields towards the railway bridge a kilometre away.
After a minute or so, Tonia stopped, her head on one side. 'Did you hear that?'
'Hear what?'
'And feel it. A sort of rumble.' 'Train coming, perhaps?' 'No-I…'
Even as she spoke, the great shock-wave threw them off their feet. If they all screamed, the sound was lost immediately in a vast thunder of noise. A fissure suddenly appeared in the ground beside them, widening and shooting out lengthwise as they scrambled away from it. 'Keep together, for God's sake!' Philip yelled. They were still on all fours, unable to stand on the jerking, groaning earth. How long it lasted, they never knew; ten seconds, half a minute… They were too overwhelmed with impressions -the railway bridge ahead of them twisting and tilting like soft wax, the crash of falling buildings on each skyline, the terrible metallic clatter of endless multiple pilc-ups on Lea Bridge Road… the deadly grey mist seeping up through the nearby fissure and Tonia crying out 'Respirators -quick!'…
They fumbled with the black rubber muzzles, holding their breath while they pulled them over their mouths. Now we're marked game, Philip thought dizzily – the law of the jungle.
They gazed at each other, stunned by what had happened. It was some seconds before they realized that the world around them was, briefly, almost silent.
And after the silence the screams began. Screams mounting and multiplying from the carnage on the roads; screams, more distant, from the shattered bricks and concrete ahead and behind, where the still-living were trapped and maimed, and the lucky (lucky?) uninjured struggling to free them. In three days they'll be mad… Philip thrust the thought away in horror.
'The river-look!'
The two women turned at his mask-muffled voice and looked. Behind them, surging and tumbling, the River Lea had burst its banks and was rising inexorably towards them.
They took to their heels, watching for fissures as they ran. Philip led them obliquely northwards, in a race to reach the twisted railway bridge before the flood did. They made it with water lapping about their ankles and scrambled to immediate safety among the ruined girders. Below them, by some freak, the Canal bed had drained dry. A giant, Dust-spewing fissure diagonally across it was a possible reason but already the floodwaters were cascading over the wall as though trying to refill it. They whole thing was a Titan's beach-game, transforming in minutes a landscape that had been familiar to Philip since he was a boy.
He tore his eyes away from it and examined their position as coolly as he could.
The bridge was an X-shaped one on two levels, the Clapton-Walthamstow line crossing above the Tottenham-Stratford one and at right angles to it, each at forty-five degrees to the Canal. Both were now a single mass of wreckage, but the south-easterly line, towards Lea Bridge station and Stratford, looked walkable, and protected by the Canal bed from the floods; the water still seemed to be disappearing into the great fissure. It lay in the direction they wanted to go, so they climbed over the wreckage and followed it.
On the way, they kept their eyes open for weapons. They found a solid iron bar, the rusting front fork from a bicycle and a heavy shovel; with these in their hands, they felt safer. Philip worried about the bridge at Lea Bridge station, where the line passed under the crowded holocaust of a road; would they still be able to get through? The station itself was a relic, long closed down, but…
The bridge, when they reached it, had collapsed, but there was still a jagged tunnel of daylight to one side. They approached it carefully, hiding in the empty station, for there were people shouting and running above and still the wails of pain and helpless terror from the injured and the trapped. Once through the gap they ran – not merely to escape the crowds but because to their immediate left the gasworks were burning fiercely and there might be more explosions at any moment.
Their house was in Church Lane, a few hundred metres away across Leyton Marshes recreation ground and through Marsh Lane. It was not until they were in Marsh Lane itself that they came face to face with trouble.
Four youths saw them and one yelled out: 'Bloody Beehivers! Get'em! Get their masks!'
The four rushed them together – the leader holding a knife as though he knew how to use it. Philip did not wait but made straight for the leader, swinging his iron bar, to put the women behind him. The leader slashed, jabbed, and dodged and once nearly reached him; then a full swing from Philip's bar caught his arm, probably breaking it. He fell to his knees, squealing, and Philip swung the bar again, down on to the youth's skull, feeling the bone shatter.
Philip spun round; Betty had already half-blinded one attacker with a jab from her bicycle-fork and Tonia was wielding her shovel like a battle-axe, holding the other two at bay. Philip disabled one with a blow to the knee and the survivor backed away, wild-eyed.