London Burns Page 3

  Beck talked as he ran and his men fired their weapons. “Chaos, Tango Charlie Forty. Car wrecks, looting, citizen to citizen violence. We’ve engaged hundreds of violent people. It has for no discernible reason thinned out since the helo with the package left. Some of the people we’ve had to shoot do appear to be surviving lethal gunshot wounds. I hate to say this, but shots to the head are doing the trick. Over.”

  “Roger. Say again last? Over.”

  “Some of the people we are shooting are not dying. That or they are dying and continuing to attack us. Head shots appear to be lethal. Over.” Beck laughed. The absurdity was profound.

  “God’s speed Echo Bravo One, For Queen and Country. Over.”

  “Roger. Out.”

  “So we’re proper fucked, yeah?” Corporal Averill yelled during a lull in the fire. He hollered over the distant sirens that could be heard from the direction of rising plumes of smoke.

  “Proper, yes,” Beck replied, shouldering his rifle to fire, but holding his trigger finger straight. The man he’d seen stumble around the corner of an alley wasn’t one of those… things, and he wasn’t turning towards them. He got a reprieve, so long as he kept heading away from Beck and his team.

  “What’s the plan, Sarge?” the goofy and long faced private Motterhead asked. The slowest of the bunch, he had to yell loudly for Beck to hear him.

  “Head to the palace and get inside their defenses is the goal. First step we procure ourselves ground transportation. Check the cars as we pass them, gents. Anyone know how to hotwire a car?”

  No one responded.

  “Well I suppose we should hope for keys. Everyone affix your night vision to your helmets and make a quick check of your ammunition.”

  The men rummaged on their chests and felt their full magazines. They barked out in sequence what their count was. “Three mags.”

  “Four mags.”

  “Four.”

  “Five,” lance corporal Patil said.

  “Three mags, sergeant.”

  “Patil, what are you waiting for? Five magazines. Shoot something please. Give a magazine to Thurgood so we all have four. Shoot anyone that approaches us with hostility. Motterhead and Thurgood move to the front. You’re on car duty. Find us something we can start. Everyone else, cover them. We move west.”

  The men barked out their acknowledgment, and then moved. Not until after Patil gave his extra magazine to Thurgood and shot a shirtless man with a hole in his chest covered in a stranger’s blood.

  *****

  “Bugger!” Motterhead belched as he ripped his hands away from a Volkswagon’s door handle. “No keys.”

  On the other side of the street the smaller Thurgood echoed the statement. Beck spat on the ground and watched in the distance between the rows of brick and stone buildings as thousands of Londoners ran in the streets. Most had the good sense to run in the opposite direction of him and his unit.

  “Move into the roundabout. Take up positions in the center,” Beck shouted. His men moved.

  They ran across the dead streets of the main thoroughfare with haste, threatening anyone who dared cross near them. Scores of frightened residents and tourists who had hoped earlier for a photo with the lions of Trafalgar Square ran in every direction, all desperate to leave the overpopulated city and the danger posed by their fellow humans. In the distance Beck watched as a cop punted someone’s very expensive digital camera on the ground as he too, ran away as fast as he could go. The camera hit the side of a building and exploded into a thousand shards of plastic.

  “Fucking coward,” Corporal Averill cursed as they formed a loose circle at the center of the roundabout near the famous lion sculptures. The Marines watched as the black uniformed policeman disappeared around a corner, heading north and away.

  “I hope he gets bitten by one of those freaks. Do you think it’s a bite that spreads it? Like in the movies?” Motterhead asked as he took a swig of water from his black plastic canteen.

  “Shut up Motterhead,” Corporal Averill said as he took a drink from his own bottle. “This isn’t a movie.”

  “What if it’s a book? What if we’re characters in some asshole’s shitty novel? What if he’s written us as the victims that are intended to die? Which one of us do you think is the hero?” Motterhead asked. “I hope I’m the hero.”

  “Don’t be daft, I’m the fucking hero,” Beck said. “You’re too ugly to be the hero. I’m Christopher Robin and you’re our Eeyore. Now shut your bloody trap and cover your sector. Catch a breath.”

  A shot rang out behind Beck. The giant swarm of the crowds yelled and screamed louder, somehow picking up their pace. The violence of a gunshot in a normally peaceful place had to be horrifying. He turned and looked. A woman in her mid 20s was face down in the street, her pale arms and legs splayed wide. Her white purse was still clutched in her dying hand.

  “She was approaching us, sir,” Patil said. His Indian accent was still strong.

  “You don’t need to justify anything,” Beck said, fishing out his own water bottle in the dying light of the day. “Just make sure she’s down for good.”

  “Right,” Patil said. He took aim, and blew a hole in the crown of her skull, sending bits of bone and flesh with the hair attached in every direction. Her leg twitched. Patil did too.

  “How much further? It’ll be dark soon,” Averill said, adjusting his night vision goggles on their helmet mount. They didn’t need the devices yet, but they might soon.

  “We’re a third. Maybe half. The mall will be good. Open territory to run,” Beck said as he searched his brain for the map of the city. He tried to recall what they saw as they flew above not long before.

  “That’s at least another thirty minutes at the pace we’re keeping,” Averill said, angry.

  “Aye,” Beck said. “We need a car.” But none had driven by since they started their run on the Strand. All the cars had somehow avoided coming in their direction. Perhaps it was their rifles, and the way they pointed them at everything that came their way.

  “New plan,” Beck said. “Guns down. We’re scaring people away. We need someone to drive by us so we can appropriate a ride.”

  “Nick it?” Motterhead asked, lowering his rifle slightly.

  “Borrow it. Perhaps just hop aboard for a few minutes.”

  From the direction of the north east up Charing Cross Road the boys heard the familiar noise of rubber wheels leaving skids on the pavement. Many of those fleeing from where they were headed in that direction and as the warriors watched, the crowd parted for a maniac vehicle coming directly towards them, speeding in the wrong direction on the city street.

  “Guns at the ready,” Beck said, taking a knee behind a light post and aiming his weapon at the oncoming and still unseen vehicle. As they prepared for the charge—their proverbial spears at the ready—the people of London scattered.

  A black cab appeared. Its rounded, glossy form dashed through the crowd with remarkable deftness, avoiding the scared and uncoordinated with agility, squealing its tires at a constant rate to put space between it and the pedestrians. Several desperate idiots reached out to try and open the doors of the cab only to have their knuckles broken and their fingers bashed. One man wearing an impeccable suit had his foot run over when he leapt at the vehicle’s door handles. He dropped to the ground, clutching at his crushed foot, yelping in shock and pain.

  At the wheel sat an old cabbie, his white hair wild and held in check by a dingy and stained flatcap. His eyes were wide but focused, and in the fray of his escape from or to something, his crazy eyes caught Sergeant Beck’s, and the cab’s brakes went into action, stopping the black taxi with a screeching sideways slide that vibrated the driver in his seat. The vehicle and its driver came to a stop two yards from the light post where Beck took cover. The gray haired driver turned his head and looked out the open cab window at Sergeant Beck, and tilted his head in the manner of a question.

  “Buckingham Palace?” Beck said, extendi
ng his left arm slowly in the universal gesture to hail a cab.

  The cabbie nodded as the throngs of people looked on, their mad exodus paused to watch the strange occurrence happening in the middle of one of London’s most busy intersections. Beck’s subordinate marines turned and watched.

  “Forty Commando?” the cabbie asked the sergeant.

  “Yes. Out of Taunton. We lost a chopper back at Covent Garden and are on foot to reinforce the Palace.”

  The cabbie hit a switch inside the taxi, and the white light of the TAXI sign turned on.

  “Get in, but this ride’ll cost the crown.”

  Beck hollered to his men, and somehow the five marines squeezed into the back of the London cab. As they peeled out heading west towards the Mall and the Palace, Beck watched as a trio of looters smashed the windows of businesses, and helped themselves to the goods they found.

  He thought of the cop that ran away so fast.

  *****

  Smelly human sardines packed in a can, the cab peeled out and headed west, righting itself on the left side of the road as was proper. No feet were damaged in the return to full speed.

  “Now in my day, when chaos reigned as it seems to today, we headed to the country. Cotswalds, as it were, or to the ocean to the north. Bombs rarely fell there. Someplace much safer than this city,” the cabbie said, adjusting his hat.

  Beck sat on the fold down jump seat to the man’s left and peered out of the steering wheel. He watched as the taxi’s meter ticked up and up, counting the price of their journey to the home of the British Crown.

  “And furthermore, I don’t see the need for this level of shite. What’s the real deal with people today? A few car crashes, that helicopter of yours going down at the market, some little pricks buggering about stabbing folks. The cops’ll have this in order soon enough,” the old man rambled.

  “I’m not sure about that,” Beck said, attentive to the city passing by. The vehicle had passed under the Admiralty Arches a moment prior, and now sped along the Mall. Immediately the space opened up, with a wide road flanked by a wide sidewalk. Steel crowd control piping lined the street on both sides to help the visitors to London avoid walking into traffic. Three story tall government buildings already emptied of their workers sat on each side of the road behind the cover of the leaves of green trees under the darkness of the setting sun. Dusk was upon them, and the city’s lights had yet to awaken. A dimness had taken over, and in its shadows demons hid.

  “Oh?” the cabbie responded, his curiosity piqued. “Know something I should?”

  “You should go to the country. Leave as soon as you drop us off at the Palace. Get your wife and whoever you care for and go. It isn’t safe here right now. Might not be for a long time,” Beck said as they passed a staggering man trying to maul all the passersby on the sidewalk. He had thick streams of dark red blood on his white dress shirt, marking where he’d caught at least one person already.

  “Are they rabid?” the cabbie asked in a serious way. He maneuvered the taxi right and left, crossing over the center line doing fifty miles an hour, dodging a pack of fleeing tourists and a car that had pulled over to render aid to someone on their back on the sidewalk. Beck saw the hurt man clutching at his torso. Beneath his fingers a large red stain spread.

  “Something like that. We’ve only just been exposed to the situation. I can tell you this; once they go mad, they’re a bitch to put down. Adrenaline keeping them up for far too long. The only way to put them down is to pop ‘em in the head.”

  “Right in the fucking brain box,” corporal Averill said. He sat in the rear-facing jump seat right behind the driver.

  “Speaking of which, Sergeant, the fare for this joyride…” the cabbie said, eluding a woman carrying a toddler who didn’t look the right way when she tried to cross the street. “Well I don’t need any money.”

  Beck gave the driver a sideways glance. “What do you need?”

  “I would appreciate it if your Browning and the spare magazines for it were to fall out on the floor of my taxi, Sergeant,” the cabbie said flatly. He swerved once more and picked up speed as they hit a clear stretch of the dark street.

  “I uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Beck said.

  “I was at the Fall’s curfew in Northern Ireland son. I know how to fire a weapon,” the cabbie said, steering them around another threat to their progress. Up ahead Beck could see the barest hint of the roundabout in front of the palace. He could see some of the white stone building up from the crowd and the twinkle of the light bouncing off the gold statue at its top. He caught the vague image of an angel’s wings and couldn’t decipher whether it came from memory, or his actual sight. Cars and pedestrians fleeing in their direction obscured much of the ground `view.

  “What side were you on?” Motterhead asked, a hint of challenge in his voice.

  “Fuck you, son. I was first battalion, 52nd Lowland Volunteers. You shut your horse face pie hole or you can bloody well walk to the palace,” the cabbie snapped off.

  The rest of the men laughed.

  “Give me your name and when this simmers down, I’ll get it back to you. You’ve my word,” the driver said.

  “I’ll see if the strap comes undone when we get out,” Beck said. “That’s the best I’ll do for you.”

  “Well enough,” the cabbie said. “Lock and load, boys. There’s a bit of a crowd ahead. If you can get in touch with the men at the gate I’d advise it, Sergeant.”

  The windshield at the corner just above the driver’s head cracked. A rifle or pistol round from ahead had impacted the glass, starring it with a round impression the size of a grapefruit. At the center of the impact the bullet remained, like a sliver lodged in the car’s eye. The marines jerked away as the round snapped the glass. The cabbie stayed firm, unflinching.

  The black cab’s speed slowed as they came within a hundred yards of the traffic circle and the looming monument to Queen Victoria. Beyond the creamy stone front of Buckingham Palace rose like the castle it was. Atop the structure a gleaming white light shone upwards on the Union Jack, the flag of Britain.

  “She’s not home,” Motterhead said, relieved.

  “Judging by how they’re shooting at the people nearby, you’d never know,” Patil said in his quiet voice in the far back of the cab. That elicited a laugh from the rest of the men.

  “Be ready,” the cabbie said as he slowed the vehicle more. Several cars flew around the far border of the traffic circle at high speeds and sped past them, heading east. The escaping cars disregarded the safety of anyone nearby, clipping several bystanders who were trying to find their own safety. The cries of a young man clipped by a car’s bumper and sent flying off his bicycle could be heard as they drove by.

  The crowd seemed to be divided by their current occupation. The first group were the spectators unaware that they were in actual danger by standing or sitting where they were. Many of them were gathered on the monument at the center of the roundabout, taking pictures of the madness. The second group of people was the runners, the sweating, panting, frightened herd that had to get away as fast as they could manage. They ran over and past anyone who came between them and where they thought they were going, making the situation worse for everyone else. The third and final group was those laying active siege to the castle gates.

  They ran and leapt over the rows of crowd fencing and charged at the sturdy fortifications that protected the Queen and her home. The reached for the black bars that separated the masses from the crown, and they threw everything they could in the faces of the guards charged with protecting the Queen’s home. They screamed for justice, for safety, for answers, for mercy. They didn’t get far, and few received mercy.

  The policemen who stood inside the thick enameled bars of the Palace walls carried MP5 submachineguns, and after barking out a hundred or more warnings as they dodged cans, bottles, rocks and all manner of projectiles, the men wearing the black body armor and black riot helmets shot car
efully at the people trying to climb the metal fortification. They started with intentional wounding shots to the legs, but when the crowd trying to gain entrance to the palace started to throw debris they ramped up the deadliness of their response. Their carefully aimed rounds moved from legs to hips, hips to stomachs, and as the attackers became more enraged the rapidity of the police’s shots increased, and their accuracy dropped. Errant rounds flew into the city’s distance, striking unknown victims.

  When the black cab carrying the marines came to a stop on the opposite side of the Queen Victoria memorial it wasn’t because they couldn’t drive around it. The cabbie stopped them because if they drove past the stone they would have no cover from the steadily increasing rate of gunfire.

  “Best let ‘em know you’re here,” the taxi driver said. “And kindly if you would, I think this is your stop.”

  The back doors of the cab popped open without Beck’s orders. The men knew they were sitting ducks in the stopped car and as they exited they had their guns up, protecting the vehicle and their fellows. Last of them all, Beck opened his door as he watched over the steps of the monument as the gunfire died off.

  “Thank you. Stay safe,” he said, then shut the door.

  “Oi! About that-“ the cabbie yelled at the closing door. On the floor of the cab below the jump seat rested Beck’s Browning 9mm, and two spare magazines.

  Turns out the snap on the holster was loose after all.

  The cabbie floored the gas pedal in his little black taxi, and sped off towards west London, and a very uncertain future.

  - Part Three -

  The Last Few Steps

  The men were crouched behind the monument in the dark of the first full hour of evening. They had been pinned down trying to radio the palace for almost an hour. Streetlights lit the world around them, and cast shadows in all directions. Beyond the close orange orbs of the streetlights distant fires lit the night. One exceptionally large fire to the west lit the horizon beyond the roof of the palace. The flames had erupted, casting their orange light against the roof of the clouds after a massive explosion not long ago. A crashed airplane perhaps, or a fuel truck.