grey froth.
Walter held Jacob closely as his shoulders heaved; more than a family friend - Walter was family. Tami wished Leona was down here, too, so she could hold her; let her open her heart onto her shoulder, soak her jumper with tears.
Oh, Leona . . .
She could see which way this was heading. It was touch and go with Jenny. There was a fair chance she might not pull through. And if she did pass away, young Jacob then would probably quietly leave. Then they’d all be gone; all the Sutherlands; the family who’d started this place.
Chapter 22
Crash Day + 27 weeks 5.45 a.m.
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Lieutenant Adam Brooks blew warm air into his cold hands as he stepped out through the dome’s main entrance into the still-dark morning. Both guards saluted; Gunner Lawrence paired up with one of the Met officers. Lawrence made a better job of it as Adam acknowledged the salute and strode quickly past them beyond the pool of light.
His radio crackled again. ‘Sir?’
‘I’m on my way over,’ replied Adam. ‘How many of them did you say?’
Ahead he could see the faint glint of a torch beam flickering around in the darkness, picking out something beyond the wall of the barricade.
‘Hard to say, sir. I guess . . . I dunno, several dozen of ’em. Maybe thirty or forty.’
That many? His pace quickened, standard-issue heels clicking noisily in the darkness. They’d not had a group that big turn up outside for months. These days they came in twos or threes, often alone; malnourished people who looked like scarecrows, faces rendered blank and immobile.
As he approached the guard point he snapped off his radio and called out. ‘Lieutenant Brooks approaching!’
The torch beam that had been lancing out over the barricade wall swung his way momentarily and picked him out.
Adam winced and shaded his eyes. ‘You say thirty to forty?’ he called out to Gunner Huntley.
‘Yes, sir. Looks about that.’
Adam jogged over to the base of the wall; six-foot-high panels of corrugated iron pilfered from the roof of the factory out in no-man’sland, welded together side by side, and topped with loops of razor wire. He climbed up onto a small crate and stood beside Huntley.
What he was about to say to these people he’d already said to hundreds of groups before. And the response was always the same; the desperate pleas to be let in, hopeless sobbing. Adam took the torch off Gunner Huntley and panned it down across the small crowd of pale oval faces - smudged with dirt, expressionless, eyes narrowed from the glare of torchlight, and all of them shivering from the cool night air.
‘This is London Safety Zone Four,’ he announced with tired formality, a cloud of his breath danced brightly across the torch beam. ‘I’m afraid we can’t take in any more people at this time, unless you have a special skill, in which case you can be admitted for a probationary period.’
There was an expected mewling of defeated voices amongst them.
‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, ‘that’s just the way it is.’
The voices raised in anger and frustration. Adam quickly counted. Forty-seven of them. He turned to Huntley. ‘Better get Sergeant Walfield and a section of men up here, to be on the safe side.’
Huntley nodded, dropped heavily down off the crate, his webbing jangling, and scooted noisily off into the darkness towards the dome.
Adam turned back to them. ‘Look, I’m sorry. We have barely enough supplies for the people already inside. We can’t spread what we’ve got any further.’
Somebody’s voice cut through the chorus of protesting voices. ‘We’ve come from the Cheltenham safety zone.’
Cheltenham? GZ-C?
‘Who said that?’ he asked, panning his beam across their flinching faces.
A hand rose up. A woman; thin and dark-haired, her face almost as white as a ghost.
‘I’m a government worker. One of the emergency workers.’
The others around her suddenly cast suspicious glances at her. Adam noticed a gap growing around the woman and a palpable sense of rage simmering amongst the others.
‘Have you got ID on you?’ he called down.
She fished inside her fleece top as a woman standing next to her spat in her direction. ‘You fuckin’ bitch,’ she hissed, ‘you’re one of them?’
The woman produced her laminated ID badge, dangling from a chain. From where he stood it appeared to be legitimate, the same as that worn by the workers in SZ-4; Home Office logo, name and details, passport photo . . . although from here Adam couldn’t really tell if