“Yes.”
He pointed right. “Thataway.”
They splashed through the deepening water, staggering across a road, past dead traffic lights and cars like boulders in a stream, and people everywhere, struggling to get to safety.
18
Another descent for the chopper dipping down toward the carcass of London, another rescue routinely handled by the AxysCorp crew, this time of a mother, child and grandmother stranded in Wapping, an area of old dockland converted to river-view flats. Lily helped strap the refugees into their bucket seats.
The rotors growled as they bit into the air, and the chopper pushed on further upstream to her next job. The bird was already nearly full of old folk and women and kids wrapped in silvery emergency blankets, but she was going to keep flying until she ran out of fuel or reached her capacity; she could hold as many as a hundred refugees packed in tightly.
Glancing through the open door, Lily saw water black as oil soaking down the streets of London, and across the squares and parks, the river exploring the contours of the flood plain that had long been denied it. Choppers flew everywhere like busy insects, both yellow search-and-rescue vehicles and military machines-even Sikorskys that must have been flying out of American bases. Boats of all kinds, small private powerboats and inflatables and police launches and lifeboats, buzzed around houses and office blocks where blankets dangled limply from upper windows. Away from the central flooded areas Lily could see thin lines of traffic barely moving on the blocked arterial roads, and emergency vehicles moving against the flow in toward the disaster area, blue lights flashing. It was a July evening and still bright, but you could see the areas where the power had failed where streetlights failed to shine, and ad hoardings stood mute and blank. She had an AxysCorp handheld, and the little screen showed her frantic images of soldiers racing to save key installations, Royal Engineers and the Royal Logistical Corps building levees and laboring with pumps to try to keep the water out of substations and water-treatment plants. London’s flood plain was crowded not just with office blocks, shops and houses, but with the city’s core infrastructure, even hospitals and police stations.
The handheld bleeped, flashing a headline from outside London. The news was from Sydney. There the flooding had struck deep into the heart of the city. The state government was trying to organize a managed evacuation west along the route of Highway Four, toward the higher ground beyond the Nepean River some thirty kilometers west of the city. Reception centers were being set up further west yet, in the higher ground of the Blue Mountains. The Aussie government was struggling, the commentators opined. The country had never been hit by such a calamity. Floods in Sydney and in London, Lily thought, floods on both sides of the world. How strange.
The pilot murmured, “Wow, look at that.” The chopper banked again.
Lily put down the handheld and looked out.
They flew past the Eye, a circular necklace of glass beads, stationary now, its base in the water. People were clearly visible, trapped in the cars, tiny stick figures like flies in amber. And on the far side of the water Lily saw boats crowding around the Palace of Westminster, like explorers cautiously approaching sandstone cliffs.
Suddenly Lily was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all. She looked away and wiped her face with a gloved hand, pressed her eyes.
The old lady she’d just strapped in reached over to pat her hand. “There, ducks. It’ll sort itself out, you see.”
The chopper surged and banked again, buffeted by the continuing storm.
19
From Kristie Caistor’s scrapbook:
Three days after the flooding hit, Kristie snipped a report from BBC News about the efforts in flooded London to rescue thousands of people who had been trapped for days by power failures in electronically locked hotel rooms. This in itself would have been a major incident at any other time. It struck Kristie as funny.
20
August 2016
Kristie was on spotter duty that morning. “There’s the waterman!” She came bundling down the stairs, her wooden-soled clogs noisy on the bare floorboards. It was not quite seven in the morning.
Amanda was just about ready for work, in a crumpled suit that could have done with a dry-clean. She wore sturdy walking boots and waterproof gaiters, and had work shoes shoved into her backpack handbag. She clutched a coffee in one hand, the last dregs of last night’s thermos. She winced as Kristie came flying downstairs.“God, Kris, do you have to make so much noise?”
Kristie, eleven years old, was too full of life to care. She rummaged through the heap of buckets and plastic bottles they kept by the door. “Come on, Auntie Lily, it’s you and me again.”
Lily shoved a last bit of bread into her mouth and got up from the table, making for the door. Her bare feet felt cold on the swollen floorboards. She kicked her feet into her slip-on rubber boots, and began to collect bottles for the string bags. Kristie was fixing their improvised yoke over her shoulders, a broomhandle padded with an old blanket and bearing two plastic buckets. Lily said,“I thought it was Benj’s turn this morning.”
Amanda snorted, primping at her hair, using the TV’s blank screen as a mirror. The power was off, as usual.“That slug’s still in his bed. I swear he’d spend the whole school holiday in that pit if I didn’t kick him out of it.”
Lily ruffled Kristie’s tight mop of curls. “Oh, it’s just his age. Just as well you’ve got a willing worker in this one.”
Amanda, stressed as ever, softened a bit. “Well, I know that. And I’m glad you’re here, Lil. I don’t know how we’d be coping if not. God knows how we’ll get on if things are in the same sort of mess when the schools go back.”
“Just earning my keep.” She grabbed Amanda’s gardening gloves. “Come on, then, kid, let’s get this over.” Kristie opened the front door.
Amanda called, “I’ll be gone when you get back. I’ll get Benj out of bed to open the door-”
“I’ve got my key,” Kristie called back. “See you tonight, Mum, love you lots.”
“Lots. Bye!”
Kristie let Lily pull the door closed. It had swollen in the flood four weeks ago, and had never quite fit into its frame again. They plodded down the short front garden path, lined with grimy sandbags, and set off along the street.
They walked roughly southwest, away from the low morning sun, heading toward the river. They mostly stuck to the pavement, but there were places where the water had lifted flagstones and you had to step aside. The roads themselves had generally been cleared, but there were still a few abandoned cars lying around, shoved roughly off the road, their interiors ruined, their windows smashed, their hub caps and wheels generally stripped, their petrol siphoned off. Water stood everywhere, in the gutters and parks and gardens, and on the flat roofs of the petrol stations. But everybody knew not to drink it, not even if you managed to filter and boil it; the standing water was full of the filth of a city whose water-treatment works and sewage plants had been comprehensively drowned.
As it had been for days the sky was without a shred of cloud, and though there was the usual rising scent of mud and sewage from the water, a deep freshness in the air told of a hot English summer’s day to come. The air was cleaner than it used to be, actually, since there was so little traffic on the roads.
Kristie said nothing as they walked. She put on a pensive sort of expression, as if she was trying to be
