NaNo'17-End of Before

Final entry of the "Before" section, with the latest from Anthony and Holly.

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 – Anthony –

Kay had popped out for a cup of tea. Anthony did not fancy one, preferring the jug of water.

It was noisy outside; nothing heated, he guessed from the tone of the muffled voices, but anxious, unhappy, and relieved, all at once. He imagined the news trickling through, first via one phone, then a conversation starting, the others get sucked into. He was glad he could not hear clearly. It must be strange, Anthony thought, for so many wards to be full of people all there for the same reason, and all doing the same speculating. All looking for someone to blame. Well, he thought, here I am.

No, he scolded himself, Kay’s voice clear in his head. Not your fault. Who could have predicted this? Not Steve, not Chirag. Certainly not himself. Not the bosses, either, though he knew their thoughts ran only to profit.

He had never imagined that the promising chamber of shale gas out beneath the Dogger Bank, enough to power the country for a year or two, had been hiding an even larger one beneath it, far deeper than they had ever though the gas might exist. He wondered what the pressure must have been like at that depth? Did it remain as a gas down there?

Kayleigh returned soon after, with a cup of Costa and a tray of grapes. ‘Didn’t have any bloody chocolate,’ she sniffed. ‘Barely had any tea left at all. There was some right little madam down there demanding a latte or some bollocks. No idea what it was, but it sounded made up.’ Anthony smiled for the first time that day, but Kay soon settled herself down, sipping the tea, devouring the news on her phone, and tapping out a rhythm on her thigh. Live blogs, Reddit pages, and a dozen different Twitter feeds; Anthony didn’t know how she kept it all straight, but she seemed to, keeping up a steady stream of updates that he murmured acknowledgements to. The rhythm probably helped.

They knew each other so well, though, after twenty-four years together. She was speaking because she needed sound. He was mumbling because it was too awful to contemplate. It just needed time to work out.

He wanted to settle down and sleep, but the bustle outside was too distracting.

Besides, he had another visitor.

‘It’s mad out there, Tony,’ Steve remarked, hanging his soot-blackened coat on the peg by the door of the private ward. ‘Morning, Kayleigh. No trouble getting here?’

‘All fine, Steve,’ Kay replied, evenly, though there was a glint in her eye. ‘No trouble except you getting my husband out of bed at half five in the bloody morning and the world going to shit!’ She was standing, fists balled. Steve backed away a pace. Anthony tried to intervene.

‘Kay, let it alone,’ he said.

‘Just got out of this bloody place!’ she went on. ‘Just a month out! You know how long the op took, don’t you?’ Steve looked like he wanted to wrench the door open, but he was rooted to the spot. ‘You knew full well he wasn’t due back on early starts for another month, and now look!’ She pointed back at the bed. Anthony had wondered how long it would take before he got dragged into this.

Steve stammered a retort. ‘Kay, I’m sorry, I really am! But I thought –’

‘Thought?!’ Kay shot back. ‘What with?’

Anthony was secretly enjoying this, though he felt he should say something, but Steve was now quite angry himself.

‘Look, it fucking blew up, alright? It blew up and we lost a good man!’ he fumed. ‘Had to call Tony, he’s been in the business longer than any of us. And yeah, it blew up. And now the world’s going to shit!’

Kay glared at him, but apparently could think of nothing further to say; Steve had admitted everything was shit and she was running out of anger.

‘Just… oh, just sit down, Steve,’ she relented, and she retreated to her seat at Anthony’s bedside. Cautiously, Steve stepped forward and sat on the other side. Kayleigh was buried in her phone screen once more.

‘So, what’s going on now?’ Anthony asked.

‘At the plant? No idea, mate. You know police fall back was the next village?’

‘Yeah,’ Anthony agreed, remembering he had advised the police officer to pull the line back a little bit further, to be on the safe side.

‘Well, that’s all underwater, now,’ Steve went on.

‘How far inland, do you know?’

‘Didn’t make it as far as Hull,’ Kayleigh piped up.

Steve nodded. ‘Looks like the worst of it pushed south and east.’

‘Well, the plant’s probably finished,’ Anthony sighed, stretching tentatively. It didn’t feel so bad now; his chest didn’t protest as it had earlier.

‘Yeah,’ Steve agreed. ‘I mean, what if the water table’s all messed up and it never drains?’

‘It’s pretty low lying,’ Anthony agreed.

‘I… uh, I guess that means your car is underwater now,’ Steve ventured. ‘Well, and mine.’

Anthony looked thoughtfully at the window. ‘Suppose so.’ He could not say it was a horrendous loss, certainly not compared to the loss of homes this morning, up and down the country, but he remembered something else and laughed.

‘What?’

‘Well, I won’t need to bother cleaning it.’

Kay cut in, her anger now given new direction. ‘Fucking vandalism. How would they like it, eh?’

‘Vandalism?’ Steve echoed. ‘What?’

‘Some of those little fucking nimby protestor shit eaters,’ Kayleigh snapped, as if she had been wanting to say this for hours. ‘Smearing shit all over the fucking car! Don’t fucking like it? It’s not like we had any say over where the bloody stuff is, did we? Think the coal mines were just put up in places because people had nowt to do?’

Anthony wasn’t exactly sure Kayleigh’s logic was flawless, but he would never have pointed that out.

‘Oh, oh, I see,’ Steve remarked. ‘I did see it, now, come to mention it. When you pulled up. Yeah, they did that to me a few weeks back. I was going to say I know a good place for a cheap respray, if you needed it, Tony.’

‘Steve,’ Kay interjected, and Steve looked up, wary at the directness in her tone. ‘His name’s Anthony,’ she said deliberately. ‘Not Tony, and definitely not Ant. Anthony.’

Steve stared at her bewilderment, then slowly turned to Anthony, who was now munching grapes. ‘That’s… right?’

‘Sure is, Steve,’ Anthony replied, smiling. He felt a distinct sense of relief. He had never found the right moment to correct him before.

‘I… uh… well,’ Steve blustered. ‘Well, I-I didn’t know,’ he said, rather feebly.

‘Never asked, did you?’ Kay sniped, though she was now looking rather friendlier than she had to so far.

‘Sorry, To – Anthony,’ he offered, and Anthony grinned, feeling suddenly better than he had done in weeks, and he offered the grapes around.

 – Holly –

‘I think it’s starting to go down,’ Liam said, standing on top toes to stare as far as he could in all directions. The roof of the Frampton Church tower gave him about ten miles visibility, but the details started to smudge at the edges. Or, perhaps, it was just that there was no definition, now. But it was starting to slosh away, back to the east, and wherever it had been, it left a mark on the land like the one Liam had left on the side of the bath after a particularly muddy Glastonbury. They had been here nearly three hours, now, and in all that time, little aftershocks had kept them alert and fretful. They still could not get any mobile signal, and there wasn’t a wifi hotspot in range.

Holly stood; Fiona had barely moved in hours. She took no interest in the fact they were entirely surrounded by water. All she knew was that no sound had come from the church hall. Nobody, assuming they were still alive in there, had dived and swum out through the open door.

‘They’ll be okay… I’m sure they’re okay,’ Fiona kept muttering, but she didn’t look over the parapet any more. They had seen several helicopters in the distance, but they were busy pulling people from rooftops and had not swung towards Frampton yet. Holly had waved her scarf a few times, to no avail.

Holly walked over to stand beside Liam, watching the headstones start to poke out from beneath the waves. ‘Might have a little look downstairs,’ she said. She could see, from this height, that the windows of the museum had shattered from the force of the flood, and was sure the internal barriers were not leak proof. The one positive was that the shutters might well be keeping the collection inside the building, and Holly comforted herself with the thought that artefacts that had spent the best part of thirteen hundred years underground could probably cope with a day or two in a makeshift bath.

And, she didn’t know where these mischievous thoughts were coming from, not when she was staring at so much devastation, the damage would probably be so severe that the administrators and the board might very well go bust anyway, and then the Frampton Hoard could take up that place the British Museum had put aside for it. Wouldn’t Keith Cameron, the new head curator parachuted in from that august establishment a year earlier, be happy with that?

‘You think it’ll be safe?’ Liam cautioned her.

‘Not really,’ Holly admitted with a shrug – she really did feel rather light, though she knew she had no reason to. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.’

The lowermost steps of the spiral staircase were slippery, and the water covered the bottom half dozen complete, but the level had clearly gone down a lot. Holly had to crouch to get a good look at the interior of the little church; a pile of pews floated up against one wall, some splintered by impact. The alter was covered in silty mud. The whole place looked forlorn, transformed into this wasteland from its usual tranquillity. Water gurgled, draining slowly out through the broken windows. It was nearly below the level of the windows, now.

Holly returned up the tower, holding tight to the rail. She kept brushing the outer wall, which annoyed her. Clearly, she was suffering from a lack of food. Time on the tower might have thrown her balance out of whack, she thought. All that staring at the waterlogged horizon. The soles of her boots were now wet, and she took care climbing, feeling her feet slipping on the worn stone steps, but a sound of shouting made her abandon caution and charge.

‘What? What is it?’ she gasped, reaching the top. Fiona and Liam stood with their backs to her.

‘It’s them!’ Fiona cheered, standing and waving down towards the church hall. ‘They’re okay!’

Holly staggered to a halt beside them and stared down at Fiona’s colleague, Ben, treading water in the doorway of the little hall.

‘Are you all alright?’ Fiona called down to him. Ben gave a splashy thumps-up.

‘It’s freezing though!’ he replied. ‘Have you got your radio there? Mine got soaked.’

‘No,’ Fiona called back apologetically. ‘Dropped it getting through the window.’

‘Well, once this is safe enough to wade through, we need to do a convoy and get some warm blankets,’ Ben said.

‘Yes,’ Fiona agreed. ‘And you’re all alright, are you?’ she asked again, forgetting the last few seconds entirely.

Ben laughed. ‘Yeah, we go up in the roof space before the water got too high,’ he explained. ‘Stacked some chairs on benches to make a ladder.’

‘Oh, good,’ Fiona said. ‘See you soon,’ and he swam back into the church hall. Holly turned and hugged the police woman, who let out a laugh filled with tears.

Fiona took a much greater interest in their situation now, scanning the horizon for the first time since they had escaped the rising tide.

‘Hey, Holly,’ Liam began, ‘don’t ‘spose you saw my bike down there, did you?’

Holly looked regretfully at him. ‘If it’s still there, it’s at the bottom, Liam,’ she explained. ‘Good thinking, by the way,’ she said, remembering how he had thrown the frame at the stained-glass as the wave approached. ‘Anyway, heard the water draining out downstairs, so we should be able to wade out in a couple of hours, I guess.’

‘Cool,’ Liam murmured. ‘I’ll think I’ll pop down and see if I can see it, though.’

He turned for the steps, and vanished down the narrow steps.

‘We don’t usually patrol out this way much,’ Fiona mused, staring at the little lumps of high ground now emerging from beneath the sea. ‘We’re mostly chasing the scumbags round Ipswich.’ Holly didn’t really know what to say. ‘Do you live out there, Holly?

‘Oh, a couple of miles away,’ and she pointed west. ‘Can’t tell if it’s underwater.’

Fiona squinted at the villages and town in that direction. ‘Oh, I think you’ll be okay.’

‘Assuming it didn’t fall down from the earthquake,’ Holly shrugged. She still felt rather flippant about the whole situation.

‘Hope for the best,’ Fiona advised, and she cast her eyes around again. ‘Hmm… there’s some smoke over there. North-east, I guess?’ Holly turned to look where Fiona pointed. It was very faint, barely a vertical line against the horizon, and Holly couldn’t honestly have said whether it was smoke or just a tall chimney.

But she didn’t know of any tall chimneys in this part of the world.

Hurried footsteps on the stone made them turn. Liam appeared, looking like he had just run the whole way up the tower.

‘Holly…’ he panted. ‘How long did you say it would take to drain?’

‘A couple of hours, I thought,’ she replied, though his expression gave her concern. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Come and look,’ he replied, and they both descended, Fiona following after a few moments.

What was wrong became very clear when Holly and Liam emerged into the nave and stood on the floor – a floor that had been under four feet of water mere minutes ago. But what was strangest of all, was the bank of draining flood water that filled the left-hand side of the building, deep by the wall, but thinning out to puddles after only a few metres.

‘This isn’t built on a slope, is it?’ he asked. The waters were visibly shrinking, the gurgling getting louder. Without the water, it now seemed obvious that the whole church was leaning to one side.

‘No…’ Holly pondered, and she cast her eyes around for cracks in the wall, but could see none.

‘It’s going fast…’ Fiona said, catching up with them. ‘Wow… what’s going on?’ she added, when she saw the obvious list in the floor.

‘I don’t think it’s safe to stay in here,’ Holly said. Liam was picking up his filthy bike from where it lay against the alter.

They all rushed for the door, but it opened before they got to it.

‘Ben!’ Fiona cried. ‘What’s going on? It’s draining so fast!’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, and they all exited, emerging into the cold daylight again. It was flowing, running away as if they were on a hill, yet Frampton was low lying.

‘Liam,’ Holly said, voice suddenly urgent, ‘is your bike okay? Can you give me a backsie?’

‘I reckon so,’ he said, scrutinising the frame, testing the brakes, and spinning the pedals. ‘I mean, it’s covered in mud and shit, but it’s probably okay. Why, where’re we going?’

‘We’ve got to follow the water,’ she urged.

‘Hey,’ Fiona cut in, ‘you shouldn’t leave, we need to keep everybody safe!’

But Holly was already clambering onto the back of the bike and Liam wiped down the handlebars with his coat cuffs and before Fiona could do more than open her mouth to protest, they were already off down the street, following the now rapidly returning tide.

‘What’s this all about, Holly?’ Liam asked, as they swayed down the lane out of Frampton. They had glanced very briefly at the museum on their way, but Holly insisted they keep going. The water was seeping away in a hurry.

‘I want to see why it’s going so fast,’ Holly shouted over the rush of cold wind. They halted from time to time, looking for a new route whenever they encountered still-flooded roads. They passed fields that now resembled the Somme, and everywhere they went, they saw fallen trees. Before they had gone a mile, they were both covered from head to toe in sticky, silty mud. Liam tried several more times to ask what was so urgent. Surely, they needed to get back to the museum? What if Lady Eastely was on her way there right now? But Holly did not reply.

She lost track of time, and they barely stopped until the sun was high in the cold sky when, at last, they reached the coast.

Or, at least, what remained of it.

They dismounted and ran the last few dozen metres. The sea was a long way out, now, much further than she had ever seen it, and moving swiftly.

‘Tide goes out before a tsunami, right?’ Liam said in an awed voice.

Holly agreed. ‘That’s what I heard.’

‘But not after?’

‘No idea…’

But the tide was not going out. It was flowing, left to right, from north to the south, and just as on the land, it was rushing away, as if its brief sojourn to the depths of Suffolk had put it off being in this part of the world completely.

‘It’s…’ Holly tried, hoping what she was about to say sounded mental, because it seemed mental to her. ‘It’s like it’s draining? Draining away…?’

She could think of no other way to describe it; a definite shift from one side to the other, rushing like a babbling brook down a shallow hill, except this brook was dozens of miles wide and tens of thousands of cubic kilometres of water.

‘How can it drain?’ Liam breathed. The sea was at least a mile away from the shore, now, brown plains of wet sand sparkling in the bright sunshine.

Holly sank to the ground, her stamina giving out at last. She could barely believe all that had happened this morning. Could it really be that she had been standing in a perfectly dry Frampton village, fumbling with a heavy set of keys only six hours earlier?