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across the rubble. Tossed over the ruins of the Foreign Office and Downing
Street, it bounced off the remains of the Home Office portico and then was
carried away across St. James's Park. Along the horizon were the low ragged
outlines of the National Gallery and the clubs down Pall Mall, with here and
there the gaunt rectangular outline of a hotel or office block.
Marshall watched the last moments of the Piccadilly Hotel. The intervening
area, Haymarket and the south side of the Circus, was down, and the hotel was
standing out alone above the tempest. The colonnade between the wings was
still intact, but just as the camera moved across it two of the columns
buckled and crashed back into the face of the hotel, driving tremendous rents
through the wall. Instantly, before the camera had time to move away, the
entire front of the hotel collapsed in an explosion of dust and masonry. One
of the wings tipped over and then crashed to the ground, carrying with it the
remains of a small office block that had sheltered behind it.
The other wing rode high above the chaos like the bows of a greater liner
breasting a vast sea, and then slipped and cascaded to the ground in a
soundless avalanche.
As the camera swung full left onto the House of Parliament, Marshall saw heavy
waves breaking among the ruins of the Lords. Driven into the estuary by the
wind, powerful seas were flooding into the Thames and being carried up as far
as Windsor, sweeping away the locks and spilling over the banks, where they
completed the task of destruction started by the wind. The time-familiar river
façade of Westminster had vanished, and high seas washed across the ragged
lines of foundation stones, spilling over the supine remains of Big Ben,
stripping the clock faces as they lay among the rubble in Palace Yard.
Suddenly the corporal jumped forward, pointing to the set receiving the
Hammersmith picture.
"Sir! Quickly! They're trying to come out!"
They crowded around the set, watching the screen. The camera was mounted over
Hammersmith
Broadway. Directly below in the street, a hundred feet away from them, was the
entrance to
Hammersmith Underground. The tall office buildings in the street were down to
their first stories, walls poking up through piles of rubble, but the entrance
to the station had been fortified with a heavy concrete breastwork that jutted
out into the roadway, three circular doors fitted into its domed roof.
These were open now, and emerging from them was a press of struggling people,
fighting and pulling past each other in a frantic effort to escape from the
station. The doorways were packed with them, some peering out hesitantly when
they reached the entrance, then being propelled out into the open street by
the pressure of the mob behind them.
Like petals torn from a wind-blown flower they detached themselves from the
doorways, took a few helpless steps out into the street and were whipped off
their feet and hurled across the road, bouncing head over heels like sacks of
feathers that burst and disintegrated as they ripped into the ragged teeth of
reinforcing bars protruding from the debris.
The camera swung away from the scene and pointed eastward into the face of the
storm, the panorama obscured by the clouds of, flying stones that poured into
the face of the camera like countless machine-gun tracers in a heavy
bombardment.
Symington was sitting limply in his chair, grimly watching the screen. On the
other side of the table Crighton and the Wren typist watched silently, their
faces gray and pinched. Above them the light bulbs shook spasmodically as the
bunker trembled, illuminating the thin dust falling from the ceiling. It
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drifted slowly across the room to the mouth of the ventilator shaft, where it
swirled away.
The camera returned to the Underground station. The stream of people were
still trying to get out, but somehow they had realized the futility of
stepping straight into the wind and were trying to make their way along the
protecting wall of the concrete breastwork. But no sooner had they gone 10 or
15 feet when they again felt the full undiminished force of the wind stream
and were twisted helplessly from their hand holds and spun away into the air.
Marshall slammed one fist into the other. "What are they trying to do?" he
shouted in exasperation. "Why don't the fools stay where they are, for God's
sake?"
Symington shook his head slowly. "The tunnels must be flooded. The river's
only half a mile away and water's probably pumping in under enormous
pressure." He glanced up at Marshall,
file:///F|/rah/J.%20G.%20Ballard/Ballard,%20J%20G%20-%20The%20Wind%20From%20No
where.txt (44 of 68) [5/21/03 2:23:18 AM]
file:///F|/rah/J.%20G.%20Ballard/Ballard,%20J%20G%20-%20The%20Wind%20From%20No
where.txt smiled bleakly. "Or maybe they're just worn out, terrified to the
point where escape is the only possible solution, even if it's just escape to
death."
Marshall nodded, then glanced at his watch. He looked around the room for a
moment, taking in each of his three companions, nodded to them and began to
move for - the door where banks of teletypes stood against the wall.
"Not much coming through," he said to Symington. "Looks as if we ought to
start pulling out. Might take anything up to a couple of days to reach the
U.S. base at Brandon Hall. No point in trying to be heroes. Get in touch with
them and see if traffic there can pick us up today. I'll look in again in half
an hour."
He made his way quickly along the darkened corridor to the small stairway at [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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