Chapter 3
PULSE Plus 10 minutes 28th August 2022
United States of America
Airline crashes – 400 000 dead
Collateral damage from crashes – 180 000 dead
Patients in operating theatres – 25 000 dead
Patients on life support – 1 400 dead
Vehicle and train accidents – 18 000 dead
Other – 12 000 dead
TOTAL DEATHS USA – 636 400
United Kingdom
Airline crashes – 80 000 dead
Collateral damage from crashes – 120 000 dead
Patients in operating theatres – 5 000 dead
Patients on life support – 300 dead
Vehicle and train accidents – 8 000 dead
Other – 2 000 dead
TOTAL DEATHS UK – 215 300
Chapter 3
Kamua Johnson had turned nine last week. He lived on the twenty-second floor of the Lambeth Towers development. A Thirty-story, horseshoe shaped tenement block that overlooked the sprawl of Brixton. Designed in the sixties as part of England’s Brave New World policy. Blue plywood window surrounds, bare concrete. Planters on the ground floor complete with stringy trees, withered from pollution and lack of nutrients.
The original artist’s impressions had shown lithe figures pushing buggies, playing ball, skipping rope. White, Asian, African. Shaded by tall Plane trees, the ground covered in freshly mown green lawn. The figures were smiling. All of them.
The reality was a crumbling urban nightmare of damp and decay. Disintegrating concrete, bare earth, puddles of rank water that never drained away. A pile of broken shopping trolleys. Without wheels. Twisted and crippled. Teenagers in hoodies. Hands in pockets. No one smiled. None of them.
Kamua shared the apartment with his parents and his grandmother, Gramma Higgins. His parents in one room, Gramma in the other. He slept in the sitting room.
Gramma suffered from Dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. She was also a type 1 diabetes sufferer. But as long as she took her pills and her insulin injections she was manageable.
The problem was that Kamua’s mother administered Gramma’s drugs and neither she nor her husband had come home last night. Kamua had tried to phone her work, using the emergency number that she had left, scrawled on the yellow post-it and stuck to the mirror in the hallway. But the phones were dead. Both the landline and the cell.
So Kamua had waited, staring out of his window. He had seen the planes come down and the fires starting. But they were not close enough to worry him. And he was not yet old enough to appreciate what was happening. He didn’t like the fact that the lights would not work. He was scared of the dark. Monsters lived in the dark. And by the time the sun was fully set he could see nothing in the stygian darkness of the streets below. It was as if he were floating on a raft above a calm black sea of emptiness. Silent. Blind.
Gramma had kept asking for water but, after one glass, the taps no longer worked. The miracle of running water ceased as the pipes ran dry and the pumps at the water towers functioned no more.
So Gramma had pleaded with him. Imploring him for water as her body tried desperately to flush the sugar out of her system. As the night progressed. Her lack of memantine pills had allowed her dementia full rein and she started to scream and swear at Kamua, flashing her withered genitals at him, licking her lips lasciviously, calling him son of Satan and begging him to defile her.
Finally the little boy had locked her in her room. By morning she had stopped banging on the door.
Kamua decided that he needed some help. Adult help. He knew that his mother always filled Gramma’s prescription for her meds at the drugstore on the corner. The man behind the counter always smiled at them and greeted mother like a friend. Kamua would go to him and ask for help.
He took the keys, closed the front door, went to the elevators and pressed the call button. But nothing happened. No lights. Nothing. So, with a child’s acceptance, he started down the stairs.
It took him fifteen minutes to reach the ground floor. He left via the front of the building. Immediately he saw that things were not right. Cars were stopped in random positions all over the road. The glass fronts to the shops were all broken or the steel shutters were pulled down and padlocked with massive brass locks. The street was littered with smashed consumer goods. A radio, half out of its retail package, a broken TV, splintered beer bottles, the pavement still damp from the spilt contents. Kamua didn’t know what looting was. He had never been taught the concept. All that he could see was that the dark had made bad things happen.
The drug store was shut. The steel doors had been pulled down and locked. There were bright shiny scars on the doors where people had tried to smash their way in. But the doors had held.
Kamua stood in front of the store for a while. Some people walked by. Mainly teenagers. Some single adults. No one even looked at the little boy. They did not know him. He was not their responsibility. Eventually Kamua turned and walked back to his apartment block, went in the front and started the laborious climb back up.
On the twelfth floor he came across a fat man lying on the stairs. His hands were curled in front of his chest and his face was bright red. He was making strange grunting noises. Kamua was scared but his politeness won out and he greeted the man.
But the fat man just stared at the little boy and grunted, his breath rasping in and out like he was drowning. Kamua stood with him for a while and then continued his upward travel.
He unlocked his front door, closed it behind him and went and sat on the sofa. He stared at the TV. Blank. Lifeless.
He would wait for his mommy.
And then everything would be all right.
***
There were three of them. Two of them had spent the bulk of their adult lives fighting their way up the corporate ladder until they had achieved the level of success that was measured by the position and square footage of your office. The higher up, the more senior. The bigger the footage the more valuable. Both of them, Mary Blithe and Conran Fisher, had offices on the same floor. The 63rd floor of the London Shard. However, Conran’s office measured out at six square foot more than Mary’s. Hence, he was senior. Just.
The third person was Winston Dube. He was the cleaner for the observation deck of the Shard situated on the 72nd floor and measuring around 8000 square feet or roughly ten times the size of Conran’s office.
So, according to the logic used by Conran and Mary – Winston was the most senior of the three. By quite a long stretch.
However, none of this mattered. All that mattered to the three of them was the fact that they had been trapped in the elevator around the 50th floor. It was pitch black. They had been there all night.
And they were now starting, quite understandably, to panic.
‘I need to pee,’ said Mary. Her voice less of a statement and more a whimper.
‘Hold it,’ retorted Conran. ‘Help will be here soon.’
‘What makes you think that?’ Asked Winston. ‘I mean, we’ve been here all night. I’m not sure what the time is but I guess that it’s late morning. Something’s wrong, man. Something is seriously wrong.’
‘Well what do you suggest?’
‘Nothing to suggest, dude. All that we can do is wait.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Yeah,’ answered Winston. ‘Exactly.’
The smell of urine enveloped them. Acrid and pungent. Like distilled fear.
‘Sorry,’ whispered May.
She started to cry.
And they waited.
***
HM Belmarsh prison, or Hellmarsh as the inmates call it, is a category A prison situated in the South East of London.
The prison service manual states that Category A prisoners are: “Those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security. Offences that may result in consideration for Category A or Restricted Status include: Attempted murder, Manslaughter, Wounding with intent, Rape, Indecent assault, Robbery or conspiracy to rob (with firearms), Firearms offences, Importing or supplying Class A controlled drugs, Possessing or supplying explosives, Offences connected with terrorism and Offences under the Official Secrets Act.”
In other words, Belmarsh prison is filled with some very bad people.
But there is nothing to worry about. Belmarsh is a state of the art facility. High walls, well trained guards and a system of electronically controlled Mag-locks that secure every door on every cell. Even in the event of an EMP or similar power outage there is a hardened back up battery that keeps the cells secure. The batteries last for sixteen hours.
Or until 10.00 am in the morning.
It is now 10.01 am.
Belmarsh houses approximately 880 inmates.
Or, to put it more correctly - Belmarsh used to hold 880 inmates.