Authors: Chris Cleave
I hadn’t got far when the panic started. I don’t blame people for panicking with the telly reporting a dirty bomb in Parliament Square. If I’d been them I’d of legged it too. I was on Millbank halfway down the Victoria Tower Gardens when people started running out of their offices. Once it started everything happened so quick. The panic was like a living thing Osama it had a smell and a voice. The smell hit me in the guts it was the smell of bodies sweating and struggling. Then there was the horrible noise. It was grown men screaming and sirens going berserk and the crunch of cars reversing into legs and bollards and railings. It was a panic like the darkest dream and the more people ran out onto the streets the bigger the panic got like a monster made of human beings.
I lost my boy and I was running in all directions screaming and looking for him but then the crowd got too thick and I couldn’t choose my direction any more. I was in the middle of all these young blokes in office suits and they were shouting and barging everyone out of their way so I just had to run with them. Then I couldn’t keep up any more and I fell. I lay on the streaming wet tarmac and they all ran over me in their hard leather shoes. I curled up into a ball and when it was finished I got up and walked on down towards Lambeth Bridge.
When I got to the Horseferry roundabout there was this woman in a green Range Rover and there were 2 blokes in suits trying to take it off her. She’d locked all the doors and she was gripping on to the steering wheel and screaming at these blokes to go away but you couldn’t hear her. You could just see her face white and terrified behind the windscreen like a telly with the sound turned off. These blokes wouldn’t let go of the door handles and the woman couldn’t drive off because there were people all around. The 2 blokes started rocking the Range Rover. They were screaming at the woman to let them in.
—My wife! shouted one of the blokes. My wife is stuck at home! I have to get to her. Let us in you bitch you’ve got 4 empty seats in there.
The woman collapsed over the wheel. She was holding her head in her hands and wailing at the pedals by her feet. The poor cow probably didn’t have a clue what was going on. One minute she’d been worrying about house prices and the next minute she was in the middle of a panic. Then one of the blokes lost it. I saw this expression come over his face.
—Right then, he shouted. I’ll show you you fucking bitch.
You could see the spit coming out with each word and splattering across the windscreen. He went round the back of the Range Rover and opened the petrol cap.
—Oh Jesus oh please god no.
The bloke took a Zippo out of his pocket and looked at me and there wasn’t anything in his eyes at all. He flicked the Zippo on and shoved it down the fuel pipe of the Range Rover.
—There you go bitch, he shouted.
The flames shot out of the fuel pipe in a jet and they blew the bloke off his feet. He went down with his suit in flames. It was soaked in petrol it burned white and fierce. It was shocking and the crowd pulled back and made a circle around him. You could see everyone’s faces very white against the grey rainy sky and their eyes glistened with the flames and the shadows of their noses were very sharp and black.
The other bloke who’d been trying to get into the Range Rover just ran off. I smelled my hair singeing and I pushed myself back away from the heat. The woman got out of her driver’s seat and stood with the crowd watching the man burn. The flames went 10 feet up in the air with the bloke twisting and flailing at the bottom. He was screaming for his mum and after a while he was just screaming and if you looked carefully towards the end you could see him lifting his head up and thumping it down on the tarmac again and again. He was trying to knock himself out and I hope he did.
After the longest time the bloke stopped moving and then someone shouted for us to get away before the Range Rover went up. There was another rush then and everyone was kicking and punching each other to get out of the way. I didn’t see the Range Rover go I just heard the
whump
and I felt the heat of it on my back. There were more screams and then I was running again. A hard black line of riot vans was keeping us from turning west up the Horseferry Road and they were laying into us with water cannons and teargas. One of the canisters exploded by my feet and then I was running blind and choking.
Every breath with teargas is like dying the shock is horrible. The crowd streamed onto Lambeth Bridge and I ran with the snot pouring down my face. Then things got worse because there were too many people for how narrow the bridge was. You could tell we weren’t all going to get across at that speed but there was no stopping on account of there must of been 10,000 people coming along behind us and there was no way they were slowing down. There was a lot of fighting and shoving and when my eyes cleared from the teargas I saw a lot of people getting trampled. The bridge got more and more jammed. I was pushed towards the edge and I started to see people going over into the river. I fought and kicked like everyone else but I was getting nearer and nearer to the edge. When I finally went over myself it was quite a relief because there was no more screaming and crushing. Just the rush of air while I fell and then the sharp cold splash of the Thames.
I went in feet first and I went very far down. I can’t swim Osama I never learned. I mean there wasn’t much call for it in the East End. We never saw more water than you needed to pour on tea bags. The Thames was cold and it was the colour of the dishwater at the end of the washing up. I remember looking up through it and seeing the light pale brown and far above and wondering if I would sink farther or float up to it. I stayed down for the longest time Osama. I wouldn’t of minded drowning but I did float up in the end. Somehow I always seem to.
When I came up I was right next to one of the pillars of the bridge and I hung on to the stones while people fell from far above me and splashed down all around. The ones that could swim took themselves off to the banks and the others were either lucky like me and found something to hang on to or else they just thrashed around for a bit and went under.
I hung on to the stones for god knows how long. There were gaps between them maybe half an inch wide. It was just enough so you could push your fingers in and wedge your toes and cling on with just your head out of the water and the current trying to suck you away. It was so cold my head hurt and my arms and legs went dead. I don’t know how I hung on but I did and I wasn’t the only one there were lots of us hanging there. A girl with curly red hair was next to me. She was wearing a pinstripe office suit and a white shirt with big collars. She wasn’t wearing a bra and you could see her tits through the wet shirt. She had a tattoo on her left tit. One of those Chinese letters. I remember thinking how strange love I’ve seen your tattoo when all the people you worked with for years probably had no idea. It’s funny the things you think about when you should be thinking about dying.
—I can’t hold on much longer, the red-haired girl said.
—Well you’re going to have to.
—I can’t, she said.
—Yes you can.
She looked right at me and her eyes were furious and exhausted.
—And how the fuck would you know? she said.
She lost her grip and I saw her go under. Her bright red hair sank last of all like a clown’s wig. I was getting so cold I couldn’t feel my fingers it felt like I was holding on with little dead sticks. There was green slime on the stones and you had to keep forcing your fingers and your toes back into the gaps and they kept on slipping out again. When I did think about dying I got so angry. The only thing going through my head was my boy screaming with Mr. Rabbit in his pocket and his Arsenal shirt in flames.
I was so angry Osama I was shouting THEY KNEW THEY KNEW and the other people were staring at me. My shouts were echoing all under the arches of the bridge. That’s when the police boat came. I suppose someone must of heard me shouting. It was only a small boat with one copper driving. I don’t suppose he realised how many of us were under there. You could see the expression on his face when his boat swung round the pillar of the bridge and he clapped eyes on us all. His mouth opened wide and he spun the wheel to turn away but it was no good. The current swept him nearer to the pillar and then the people closest to the boat grabbed hold of it and pulled themselves in. There must of been 20 of us hanging on to those stones and I reckon nearly everyone grabbed on to the boat. The only reason I didn’t was I couldn’t make my fingers let go of the bridge. The police boat started to lean under all that weight. You could see the sides of it dipping close to the water. The driver was shouting no more please no more. He had a long pole with a hook on the end of it and he jabbed it at the people who tried to get in. It was no good. People just kept climbing on and the sides of the boat went lower and lower until the water started to pour in all quiet and brown and deadly.
When the boat flipped over nearly everyone was trapped under it. I didn’t see many people come back up. Maybe just 2 or 3 and they went straight back down again. And then that was that. There was just me clinging to the arch all alone with the police boat floating upside down next to me. The underneath of it was orange and glossy and I suppose it stuck up from the water maybe 6 inches in the middle. There were waves breaking over the boat and it was starting to drift away in the current.
The roar of the crowd was getting louder from the bridge above me now and more people were starting to splash down into the water very nearby. I reckoned if I didn’t do anything now I was finished. I smashed at my hands with my forehead till my fingers let go of the bridge and I pushed myself out through the water to the upside-down boat. I was already starting to sink when I grabbed hold of it. My hands slid and I thought Right that’s it then but I was lucky because my fingers hooked round the propeller. I pulled myself right out of the water and I lay on my tummy on the underside of the boat with the Thames slopping all around me.
I drifted all day till it got dark and no one came to help me. I suppose everyone had their hands full. I was so cold it was agony. I kept my eyes closed most of the time on account of I couldn’t bear to watch all the bodies floating down the river with me.
Once when I did open my eyes it was hours later and I was going under Southwark Bridge with the sun setting very sick and yellow through the Shield of Hope. It was a seagull squawking that made me open my eyes. There was an Asian boy maybe 16 or 17 years old floating in between my boat and the sunset. The boy was 2 feet from me he was floating face up in a McDonald’s uniform. Grey polyester trousers maroon short-sleeved shirt and a maroon baseball cap. The seagull was sticking his head in under the peak of the baseball cap to eat the boy’s left eye. The boy had a name badge it said
HI MY NAME IS NICK HOW CAN I HELP YOU TODAY
? He had 2 out of 5 merit stars on his badge and they glistened in the sunset.
I think I fell asleep after that. It was a miserable sleep because every time I drifted off I felt my fingers lose their grip on the boat and I snapped back awake. That must of gone on for hours until I opened my eyes for good because my boat hit something and I felt a bump. It was dark and there was a huge thing looming over me. I screamed and put up my hand to push the dark thing away from me till I realised it was Tower Bridge. It was low tide and my boat was stuck on a mud bank on the north side of the river.
I let myself slide off the boat into the soft sucking mud. It was a disgrace that mud. It was as old as London and I swear it stank of diseases people forgot the names of 500 years ago. This whole city is built on plague pits and murder holes and I sank into it right up to my thighs and I puked and cried and puked again. When I couldn’t puke any more I struggled through the mud up to the stone wall of the bank. There was a ladder there made of rusty iron hoops and I pulled myself up it. I had to keep stopping. I was so cold and tired and I never was what you’d call sporty.
I came up right under the Tower of London. Everything was quiet. There was no one about at all. I’d lost my shoes in the river and I walked with my arms hugged round me and my bare feet on the cobblestones. I was so cold I was shaking like our washing machine on a spin cycle. I walked past the high walls of the Tower with the stinking mud all over me. Black rats were scuttling and squeaking around my feet. The streetlights were out and it was dark as you like. It had stopped raining. There were gaps in the clouds where you could see a new moon and the stars very bright.
I kept on walking quick as I could to get warm. I kept my head down. You couldn’t see where your feet were going and I was trying not to tread on anything nasty. The churches started chiming 10 o’clock. You could hear their big bells booming through the sound of helicopters. Those choppers were all over the sky and one came down low over the Tower. It came along the street towards me with its searchlight flashing off the wet cobbles. I pushed myself right up against the Tower wall and I watched the circle of light move over the spot where I’d been walking. It carried on down the street and then it stopped because there was a bloke caught in the beam.
This bloke was naked and his skin shone blue white in the searchlight. He was a young chap maybe 20 years old and there was blood pouring down him. The blood was coming out of his mouth and you could see why because he’d bitten his tongue half off and he was still chewing away at it. With one hand he was holding a butcher’s knife and with his other hand he was playing with himself. When he saw he was caught in the searchlight he looked right at the place where I was hiding in the darkness and he screamed with rage. Then I suppose someone in the chopper shot him. I didn’t hear the shot over the racket of the rotors but I saw the chap’s neck explode in a burst of red and I saw his body sit down on the cobblestones. He sat down very neatly on his dead bum with the one hand still holding on to his thing. The searchlight stayed steady on him till the first of the rats started to move in through the edges of the beam. Then the helicopter pulled back up into the night.