“There must be another way out of here,” he shouted in Jennifer’s ear once they were back in Oxford Street. “That, or we have to get under cover.” He looked at the buildings that loomed all about. Every one of them seemed to be closed off with metal shutters. But there had to be somewhere to shelter before those machines began their stuttering rain of death upon the crowd.
Jennifer heard him, but her main attention was taken by the loud and repeated announcement from overhead: “This is an unlawful assembly,” it roared through the noise on the ground. “You will proceed to Marble Arch, where you will be led to safety.” Already dazzled by the glare of the helicopter’s searchlight, she tried to think of an escape. Before she could think of anything, Michael had led her back into the main crowd, which was now shouting defiance up at the helicopter.
“Not that way!” she warned as he took her left along Oxford Street. “That’s what they want.” If Michael had heard, he wasn’t paying attention. He led her quickly away from the crowd. Though hundreds of yards away, she could see the glare of headlamps by the Marble Arch end of the street. Though too late to be avoided, it all made sense. This was an immense sting operation. Every Christian troublemaker in Southern England had been got here on a promise that Christ would come down from Heaven, or meet the Elect half way. Now, they’d all be rounded up to swell the chain gangs in Ireland. There’d be no Rapture—only more of Hooper’s “normalisation.” And this time, she’d be completely in charge. Jennifer had heard this in Radleigh’s flat. And she’d got herself and Michael right into the trap.
But Michael pulled her forward. He also had seen the lights, and, if he knew less than Jennifer, and hadn’t understood the instructions, he could see how danger lay on every side. He’d seen the crowd outside the massive shop. Shutters of steel mesh don’t stand up long to a hundred desperate men. Even as one of the flying machines swooped low above the thin, scampering crowd in this part of the street, the shutter went up with a scrape and a smashing of glass. There could be no escape though that building, but concealment was better than running about like frightened bugs when their stone is lifted.
Then, as Jennifer pulled at Michael, and tried to find words that would make him turn round, she saw a flash of bright orange. It came from ahead on their left. She saw the front of Waterstone’s explode outward, and a great ball of ignited coal gas rise slowly into the sky. She didn’t hear the explosion. Instead, she was knocked backward as if struck by a giant but invisible hand. She fell against the plastic advertising space of a bus shelter, and came to rest, seemingly uninjured, sat against it.
Unable to get up for the moment, she looked stupidly at what had been Waterstone’s. The orange ball had risen hundreds of feet into the air, and its glow was fading. In its place, the whole front of the shop was ablaze with the firing of a hundred thousand books. Screaming with terror, a man ran past her. She was sure she could see bodies in the street amid the burning wreckage of the shops. She looked harder—yes, one of the dark heaps was making with slow movements for the far side of the road. Above the roar of flames that were suddenly coming from shop after shop, Jennifer heard a babble of amplified instructions from overhead.
Where was Michael?
Chapter Twenty Three
Jennifer had known the Greek Outsider for barely three hours. He’d made himself known with a burst of violence so sudden and extreme, it would have scared her witless if she hadn’t been scared already. Since then, she’d exchanged a few introductions and gone for a walk with him through Central London. A sheet of paper put in front of her, she’d probably have been able to write more about the sweepers whose bodies were by now being nibbled at by the few uneaten rats in London. Now he was gone, what had so far still bordered on adventure turned straight to nightmare. She got up and looked at the nearest of the crawling shapes. “Michael?” she asked. It gave no answer. She looked harder. Wasn’t it the wrong size? Don’t let it be Michael, she prayed internally. The shape fell down and moved no more.
Heart going at prestissimo, a dull sound in her ears, she turned right, where a hat shop she’d visited that afternoon was belching flames ten foot across the pavement. She got up, not bothering to check if she had been injured. She pushed fingers that were set like claws through her hair and looked about for where she could run. She had to get away. It didn’t seem to matter where. She had to get away. She swallowed and looked at another of the crawling figures. She took a step forward. “Michael?” she asked again, now louder. To her left, there was a woman howling at the sky. Jennifer blinked and took a moment to focus. The woman didn’t look as if she’d been injured in the explosion. Instead, she’d looted a whole side of ham from one of the department stores, and was trying to keep two men from taking it away. Unable to move, she watched them rave and claw at each other, fighting over what might be their only taste of natural protein since The Break.
“Thank God you’re safe!” a voice cried from behind her in Latin. “I thought I’d lost you.” Michael’s face was white and scared. Before he could speak again, Jennifer clutched hold of him and got him into the crowded doorway of an old Vodaphone shop. They were just in time. As if struck by a rocket, House of Fraser now exploded. The metal shutters of the Vodaphone shop rattled, and the glass it protected shattered inward. She and Michael were swallowed up for a long moment in a blast of scorching smoke.
Dazed and choking, she looked out into the street. The smoke had cleared enough for her to see debris and fallen bodies in the lurid glow of a dozen fires. Michael shouted something in a voice that dripped panic and pulled her into the street. He pointed towards Marble Arch. No longer patiently waiting, the lights of the trap were moving forward. Jennifer ran with him towards the main crowd. Michael stopped beside the junction with Harewood Place, and seemed to be dithering about another attempt to go down it. But he thought better, and hurried them deeper into the main crowd.
The helicopters came directly overhead. They barked warning after warning. Jennifer could hear nothing above the surrounding roar. One arm locked in hers, Michael pressed forward through the crowd. Now weaving, now pushing, he was making for the great separation of building uppers that marked the junction with Regent Street. From the corner of her eye, Jennifer saw someone stand upright on top of a bus shelter. She saw him put a megaphone to his bearded mouth, and heard the ecstatic cry of “Allah al-Akbar!” He dropped his megaphone and reached inside his overcoat. He threw both arms up and launched himself forward into the crowd. The force of the bomb he let off was absorbed by at least a dozen bodies, and the force as these were thrown outward was spent against a crash barrier before it could reach her and Michael.
“We must keep moving,” he shouted above the roar of helicopters and the screams of the injured and dying. Jennifer wanted to ask where they were moving. She had no doubt Regent Street was as blocked as all the other ways out. She had no time to ask. From somewhere else within the crowd, there was another scream and another explosion. She had a sudden glimpse, far off, of a body turned into a blur of glowing mist. Another second, and something wet and very forceful splashed against her forehead. A few more seconds, and there was a megaphoned cry behind her of “Allah al-Akbar!”, and an explosion big enough to shatter the upper windows of the shop on her left.