The Shaking

Chapter Twenty One

Canary Wharf. 12.29.

It took longer than expected for the C24 news duo to get here. If the mobile networks had been working no doubt Kelly Thorpe would've become increasingly irritable fending off Dominic Paige's nagging calls. But the service is intermittent; no sooner does it flicker back into life than it immediately crashes again under the weight of demand.

The closer the pair get to the Isle Of Dogs the slower their progress. Firstly they encounter stalled lines of literally bumper to bumper traffic with scarcely a gap between the vehicles to squeeze through, then they find themselves swimming against a current of quietly desperate evacuees heading in the other direction. The Docklands workforce is estimated at more than 120,000 Thorpe remembers, and it seems as if most of the soberly dressed office workers are pressing against the pair. The streams of people are bizarrely quiet - shocked most likely - as they walk calmly north and away from the riverside. From random snatches of gossip overheard among the subdued hubbub along with brief conversations with a few of the displaced employees Kelly gathers One Canada Square may have begun to lean by as much as two degrees from the vertical or might topple over completely; the markets have been suspended; a mass evacuation of the district has been ordered, and it will be conducted by foot as the complex multilevel nexus of tube, Crossrail, and Docklands Light Railway stations have all been shut. Thorpe wonders how everyone will get away from the area and where they will go.

Getting here they endured a couple of anxious moments. One was when there was an unexplained surge of panic in the crowd and the couple were nearly pushed over in the tumult. Quick-thinking Ethan held Kelly close up against a wall and shielded her with his body until the moment of danger had passed. Being pressed that close to him, feeling his strong warmth was one thing; but looking deeply into his dark brown eyes as he asked if she was OK was like touching an electrified livestock fence. Kelly felt something inside her move, and knows her feelings for him are serious now.

The other was when they reached the elevated section of the Limehouse Link road. As they were about to rush under the heavy concrete flyover a distant figure wearing a security guard's uniform shouted at them to stop. His words were indistinct but they gathered there was a doubt about the structural integrity of the thick grey columns supporting it. Ignoring the warning they sprinted beneath the hulking structure, uncertainty speeding them through even though no cracks were visible.

Those obstacles overcome they begin newsgathering, and manage to find their way through to the North Quay to get a photogenic view of the Canary Wharf complex as a background for a Piece To Camera live report. Though the taller towers were visible from a distance and they had an idea of what was in store, it is only closer to them - here - that the full impact of what has happened can be fully appreciated.

They'd both seen the imposing complex of steel and glass buildings rising above the former dockland pools many times before; but never like this. The silt laying below the normally silver-grey waters of the wharfs has been agitated by the tremors into a dysenteric​ brown suspension; reflecting in a distorted bathroom window privacy glass crazing the once glittering expressions of corporate wealth and power. Now the tableau resembles those darkened post-apocalyptic artists' impressions of a time long after the extinction of humanity, with all of mankind's magnificent works falling slowly into ruin. One of the futuristic brushed silver tubular metal bridges crossing the former port basin has become detached at one end and fallen into the turbid pool. Nearby an eye-wateringly expensive modernist houseboat is listing badly after being swamped by a seiche wave. Against a background of a sepia coloured grimy smoke haze flecked with darker sooty clouds - possibly originating from the reported Millennium Dome fire - the towers still soar proudly, but many of them echo the skeleton frameworks they had been during their construction, with large swathes of their large glass windows having been shaken free. It reminds Kelly of the footage taken when an F4 tornado devastated the business district of Dallas, Texas last year. In the foreground there are still a steady flow of evacuees, like a column of worker ants escaping a doomed nest or a routed wave of human refugees fleeing an advancing alien invasion. "Christ!" she exclaims.