The Rapture (33 page)

With forensic clarity, I picture her broken spine. Specifically, the smashed vertebrae. The break is at T3 level. Maybe T9. The nightmare springs to violent life. My heart volleys with blood.

But a second later - the relief is disorienting - she has jumped to her feet as though nothing has happened, and she's running past us and up a side-street across the road to the left, her giant black T-shirt flapping loosely. I wonder vaguely if someone might have called the police. And whether, in this moment, it might even be a blessing if they came. Up ahead, fork lightning divides the sky, followed immediately by a ferocious thunderclap, shockingly close. The storm is right overhead.

'I,m going after her,' mutters Frazer Melville, flinging open his door to another blare of horns. In a second, he's out. I call after him but he is gone, swallowed into the storm's murk.

The rain is still whipping in through the open back door, flooding the seat. I reach over to the controls and turn on the hazard lights. A young man curses me in Urdu before revving off into the storm. Out of reach of my wheelchair, I am helpless. I can't even close the back door from where I'm sitting. The wet air seethes like a putrid stew. To my left, I can just make out Bethany's tiny black silhouette. Frazer Melville is running after her. They've taken a side-street flanked with plane trees, where three young children are splashing in the downpour. There's a blond man, perhaps their father, in the covered driveway, fixing his car. He straightens up to watch the stubble-headed Goth kid rush past at full-tilt, followed by the big man in shirtsleeves, soaked to the skin, shouting wildly.

Then I see where Bethany is headed. There is a horrible logic to it.

On a patch of wilderness beyond the road, the pylon stands tall as an eight-storey building.

I roll down the window and honk the car horn until the blond man turns. He's in his thirties, wearing an oil-stained sweatshirt with a hood. Chest-hair sprouts out of the top. 'Please come here, I need your help!' I yell through the whipping wind. He glares at me accusingly, then glances back at Bethany and Frazer Melville, who are now halfway to the pylon, and shouts at the kids in a language that sounds Slavic. They ignore him. He shouts again, more brutally, and they run inside the house. Another lightning flash splits the sky in two. I try to indicate I can't move, grinning at him desperately, as animals do when cornered by a predator. Finally, with reluctance, the man ducks his head into the rain and runs over. The next thunderclap resounds with a series of crashes like hurled crockery.

'You got a problem?' he shouts over its dying reverb.

'My wheelchair's in the boot! I can't walk! I need your help!' Coming closer, he peers at my legs with clear scepticism. 'I'm paralysed,' I insist. 'I can't use them. If I could, I wouldn't be asking you for help!' He's wearing a crucifix round his neck. His eyes are pale and mistrustful. 'Our daughter just went crazy on us. She's a drug addict. We're taking her back to rehab. We thought she was clean for the trip, but she's taken something and now she's suicidal.' The man looks wary. 'She's on drugs, do you understand what I'm saying? We nearly had an accident!' The rain smashes at my face, my arms, my lap.

'This is a quiet neighbourhood,' he says. I recognise the accent as Russian. 'You call the police. They deal with it.'

His shirt is soaked through, showing big, hefty muscles, not the body-building, gym-born variety but the kind farmers and workmen have. Muscles I desperately need to borrow. A flare of sheet lightning turns his face into a flash photograph. Then more thunder, like the slow ripping of canvas.

'There's no time! Please, just get in the car and drive. We have to stop her. She's violent.' The Russian clamps his mouth closed, locking it with a resolute shift of his jaw. I realise just how tired and hungry I am. And then how furious. 'Listen to me!' I'm shouting now, right in his stupid stubborn face.

'Hey, calm down, lady!'

'My daughter is about to climb up that pylon over there and electrocute herself! And you're just standing there! We have to stop her. Come on! Get in the car. The keys are in the ignition. So for Christ's sake, just drive!'

We reach the base of the pylon just as Bethany has thrown herself at it. The Russian stops the car, and throws himself out, leaving the engine running and the windscreen wipers on. I peer through the misting glass. Bethany grips a section of the huge scaffold leg, then tips her head back to assess the pylon's height, and starts to scale it, agile as an insect. Frazer Melville is calling at her through the rain, approaching at a run.

'Help him! Do it!' I yell to the Russian, who is speeding after him. But my voice is lost.

Nimble and determined, Bethany is now balanced on the lowest rung, four metres up, and is stretching to get a grip on the next. But it's too far for her to reach. The wind is whirling in all directions, and her feet are slipping on the wet metal.

I curse my useless legs.

Shouting as he goes, Frazer Melville heads for the thick base strut and throws himself at it, grabbing a rung with one hand. He hangs for a moment, dazed. Then, hauling his weight up, he shuffles precariously across to where Bethany is now hunched, a tiny bundle of wet black clothes. Through the rain, I can hear her screaming at him to fuck off. He signals to the Russian to get directly underneath: he must be hoping to dislodge her. The Russian obeys, but when Frazer Melville reaches Bethany to prise her away, she lashes out at his face with her nails, and he yells in pain. Seizing her upper arm he tugs at her, but she has wound her lower limbs around the metal strut and locked them fast.

'You have to go up there!' I yell at the Russian. He can't hear me. I watch as he hesitates. Then, deciding on the other strut, he starts to climb. After slipping a few times he gets the hang of it and approaches Bethany from behind. She doesn't see him closing in. Frazer Melville, on the other side of her, still has her by the arm but his balance looks precarious. With a forward lunge, the Russian manages to seize hold of Bethany's right leg. She screams and kicks out at him, knocking the side of his face, but he keeps dogged claim, prising her foot away from the strut. Both men have a grip on her now, one at either end, but I know she's resisting with all her force. I can hear her banshee screams, and the two men shouting back in fury. It's Frazer Melville who loses his balance first. But he doesn't let go of Bethany. And nor does the Russian.

The moment has a horrible, slow-motion inevitability. Clinging to one another in a writhing tangle, still fighting, the three of them tilt and fall, crashing to the ground four metres below.

Bethany has been hyperventilating, but her breathing has finally calmed. There's an ugly graze on her forehead. Her hands, still bandaged, are a bloody mess. Frazer Melville's cheek sports a huge scratch, running with dark red blood and smeared with rust. The Russian landed badly. He is limping. They are all wet through and the rain is still hammering down. Both of the back doors are gaping open: The Russian holds Bethany down on the rear seat while Frazer Melville secures her wrists behind her with a scarf from my handbag.

'The sea's going to catch fire,' Bethany gasps, directing her kohl-smudged eyes on the Russian. But she can't seem to focus. She's breathing oddly. 'Do you get what I'm saying? Everyone's going to drown. In a giant wave. You too. You're going to die.'

'I don't know how to thank you,' says Frazer Melville, pressing a wad of cash into the man's hand.

Nodding in acknowledgment, the Russian inspects the money, then stuffs it in his back pocket. 'No trouble, man.' His elbow is bleeding profusely.

'He's not my father, you know,' slurs Bethany, wiping her forehead and inspecting the blood. 'And she's not my mum. But they fuck their brains out. True story.'

Repelled by what he has saved, the Russian slams Bethany's door shut and turns to leave.

'Listen,' I say urgently. 'It's true about the tsunami. They haven't announced it yet. But it would be a good idea to leave before the roads get completely jammed. You won't regret it.'

'You've got a head start,' confirms Frazer Melville, turning the key in the ignition. 'Take your family and drive inland. Go for the highest ground you can find. Or if you know anyone with a boat . . .'

A thousand questions are forming on the Russian's face but we don't have time to answer them. Frazer Melville shoves the car into gear, spins the steering wheel round, and propels us on to the road with an abrupt jolt.

Bethany remains defiant about her escapade. She needed some volts, she said. It would take more than a pylon to kill her. She got a buzz just from the air. A yellowish bruise is developing around the graze on her forehead. There's a first-aid kit in the glove compartment. After attending to the deep scratch down Frazer Melville's cheek, I persuade Bethany to lean her head forward and, twisting awkwardly in my seat, I get rid of her remaining make-up, wash her wound with more violence than is called for, and smear on some antiseptic. Her wrists are still tied with my mother's Liberty scarf and no one is about to free her in a hurry.

The storm has receded to a smatter of rain as we approach London. A pale light, brittle as tinfoil, glints off warehouses and office blocks. Now, as though invigorated by the sun, Bethany upgrades her tuneless humming to a full-throated rendition of a repetitive hymn about 'the love of the lamb'. Aware of my blood pressure, I try to breathe calmly, but the tension is almost choking me. The lamb is becoming a creature I'd happily throttle with my bare hands. Frazer Melville, still fuming after the pylon episode, pleads with her to stop, but as I could have warned him, she is as unreachable as a far-flung galaxy. She laughs and switches to a new hymn. This one's about 'power in the blood'.

'Remind me why we let her come,' I murmur. We are still at least forty kilometres from the stadium.

'Some bollocks about ethics. Regretting it?' Frazer Melville checks his watch. 'Two o'clock. Let's catch the news. The story should be out.'

I flick on the BBC to a blare of theme music announcing the bulletin. When the dashboard screen fills with an aerial shot of Buried Hope, Frazer Melville thumps the steering wheel in delight.
Scientists warn of a disaster in the North Sea set to strike Europe
. The image switches to the press conference, where Harish Modak, Ned Rappaport and Kristin Jons dottir sit on a raised stage in a vast hall packed with journalists. They're claiming it's a global crisis on a scale . . . Now that the news is out, relief pulses through me, as welcome and sweet as a dose of morphine. Bethany, apparently indifferent, continues her off-tune singing. I turn up the volume to concentrate.
In the past hour, leading environmentalist Harish Modak has warned of a tsunami in the North Sea which could devastate northern Europe and submerge much of Britain. He says the event has already been triggered by an accident at the North Sea methane rig, Buried Hope Alpha.
'Would you be free-hee from your passion and pride?' warbles Bethany. 'There's power in the blood, power in the blood. Come for a clea-hensing to Calvary's tide, there's wonderful power in the blood!'
Professor Modak, whose team claimed responsibility for the Greenland graffiti that first drew attention to the Traxorac site, says a series of massive sub-sea avalanches . .
. Bethany stops singing abruptly and announces, 'My head hurts.' On the TV, another view of Buried Hope Alpha appears, the arm of the yellow haulage crane cocked at a 4s-degree angle.
While the North Sea Alliance has strongly refuted the professor's claims, unusual marine activity has prompted speculation . .
. An animated map shows the North Sea alive with arrows charting the mass movements of marine life. Harish Modak, Kristin and Ned reappear in front of a map of the ocean floor, and what I assume to be the seismic logs of the site. Our friends from the Norfolk farmhouse have cleaned up well. Clad in a suit, Ned is barely recognisable. He has shaved the stubble from his jaw and his wavy curls are gone, replaced by a sober, corporate-lawyer crop. Kristin, her hair in an elegant chignon, is wearing a dark green jacket and cream shirt, while Harish Modak looks sharp, alert and less frail than in the flesh. If Kristin is feeling nervous, she shows no sign of it as she explains the science, illustrated by figures, maps and graphs. She makes a clear, succinct case. Frazer Melville flexes his hands on the steering wheel, re-energised. Ned is next. He, too, has prepared efficiently.

'In practical terms this means that if you live within ten kilometres of any coast, leave now. Pack food and medical supplies and move to high ground,' he finishes. 'Expect a domino effect.'

If the British public is anything like I was, the warning won't sink in at first, I reflect. They'll go into denial, or worry about peripherals like toothpaste and dog food. When Harish speaks, it's with the regretful air of someone forced to disappoint a child. 'Sudden global warming - with an increase of average global temperatures by four degrees or more - will be the most devastating result of the oncoming catastrophe. It has happened twice before on Earth in the distant past. Now we have every reason to believe it is happening again. We fear it will begin in this part of the world within a matter of hours.'

I think of my father in the nursing home. How fast do chalk cliffs crumble when submerged by a wall of water travelling at the speed of a jumbo jet? How long does it take for an old man's lungs to fill with liquid?

Harish Modak is speaking again, this time over a wash of agitated voices.

'Many won't believe us. And that is their choice. But my associates and I believe in the right to know. Now that people have been warned, they can decide for themselves what to do. And I wish them luck.'

The anchorwoman appears again over running images of the press conference, where reporters continue to bombard the panel with shouted questions.
Traxorac has firmly refuted Professor Modak's claims, denying there's any unusual activity at Buried Hope Alpha. The government has dismissed the alert as wholly unfounded, insisting that the evidence is not credible, and the public should not panic. But while the Chief Scientist has yet to make a public statement, leading figures in the scientific community - among them Kaspar Blatt, Akira Kamochi, Walid Habibi and Vance Oxek, who have all seen the Traxorac data - are supporting mass evacuation. They say the unusual behaviour of marine life, particularly off the Norwegian coast, is further confirmation that an instability on the sea floor could soon become critical
. On the back seat, exhausted by her hymn-induced headache, Bethany is staring blankly out of the window. Ahead of us sprawls the cluttered, uneven skyline of London's periphery. A second later, her eyelids droop.