order.
Adam leant over and snapped the television off. He turned to look at his men, two squadrons of gunners, forty young lads; a good half of them still in their teens and sporting pubescent acne; but all of them silent and anxiously regarding their CO.
He looked across at Sergeant Walfield.
The sergeant shrugged casually. ‘I believe, sir, the shit ‘as just gone an’ hit the fan.’
Adam nodded. ‘I think we had better get on with securing this place.’
Chapter 14
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
The foreign man looked up at Jenny from the steaming bowl of chowder, and around at all the others who had gathered in the mess to get a good look at the new arrival.
‘Valérie Latoc? Is that right?’
He nodded, spooning soup into his mouth. ‘Yes. I am from the south of Belgium, Ardennes region originally.’ He pushed a tress of dark hair out of his eyes; brown eyes that her gaze lingered on longer than she wanted.
‘We don’t get many visitors out here,’ she said.
Which was true. The community had grown over the last five years as a result of the people they’d come across whilst foraging ashore for essentials. People in small numbers; a family here, a couple there. It was an unspoken rule, though, that no one could join them on the rigs until Jenny had sat down and spoken with them. The Jenny Sutherland Entrance Examination, that’s what she’d overheard Alice scathingly call it.
There’d been those she’d turned away, those she considered might cause trouble for them. Those she didn’t trust. Some she simply didn’t like the look of. Unfair, discriminatory, but Jenny didn’t give a damn what was being muttered, the last thing she was going to allow aboard was some schizo who might go off like a firecracker amongst them.
It was men mostly. Men she didn’t trust; males of a certain age. Young boys and old men she felt comfortable with. But men, particularly very masculine men, who oozed testosterone and smelled of hunger; who looked upon her female-heavy community with hungry eyes like a child in a candy store . . . they had no place here.
‘I want you to tell us about yourself,’ she said.
Valérie spooned another mouthful of chowder, wiped the hot liquid from the bristles of his beard. ‘From the beginning?’
‘From the beginning.’
He shrugged wearily. ‘I was living in Bastogne in Belgium when it happened. The second day, the Tuesday, you remember your Prime Minister’s television appearance?’
She nodded. Everyone behind her nodded.
Valérie shook his head. ‘A big can of snakes he opened. No . . . worms, is it not? Can of worms?’
Jenny nodded for him to continue.
‘It was on TV5 Monde only minutes after. Your leader was the first one to come out and tell the people how bad things were. Then our President Molyneux had to do the same, and then every other leader. It was the significatif word, you know? The trigger words that people heard; ration, curfew, martial law . . . words like this that made people panic and riot.’
He sat back in the chair. ‘Le jour de desastre. Like a modern day Kristallnacht, you see? Every shop window in Bastogne was broken that night.’ He sighed. ‘We had power in Belgium at the time, you know - nuclear power from France, not like you British needing the Russian gas and oil. But even so, we also lost our power on the Wednesday. There was the complete black-out. The French stopped the power to us . . . or their generators had problems. But we had better order in our country. No riots yet. Our government had made much emergency preparations for this kind of thing. Much more than yours, I think?’
He was right. Jenny recalled the appalling state of panic the British authorities went into during the first few days. A complete lack of communication from the Cabinet Office during the first twenty-four hours, the Prime Minister’s disastrous performance on the second day, then there was nothing else from them except one or two junior members of government wheeled out to broadcast calls for calm.
‘But then things became much more worse for us in Belgium in the second and third week. There were millions of people who come up into northern Europe. They were coming from the east, from Poland, from Czech Republic, from Croatia, from Bosnia. We had much, much many more come north, up through Spain, from Morocco, from Algeria, Tunisia. Even from further south; Zimbabwe,