The Shaking

Chapter Forty Four

Dungeness Inner Exclusion Area. 07.12.

"Hold it! What's that? Over there to the left, in the hedgerow! There! Yes; that's it!" Even with the latest image stabilisation technology the surveillance drone's sudden camera movements made Hanns Pichler feel motion sick as he watched the image centre in his monitor.

Pichler's independent media company had chartered the state of the art Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle to breach the Dungeness Inner Exclusion Area and find out what was really going on there. The X-shaped, four propellered flyer had been secretly launched from just outside the French Zone de Controle near Cassel, then skimmed across the Channel to Kent. Initially they had given the Dungeness Power Station complex a wide berth to avoid suspicion; instead flying almost as far north as the south London suburbs before doubling back and hedge hopping across the Kentish weald. Once they arrived on the scene the plan was to quickly circle around the Dungeness spit and hope they weren't detected or attacked by the army units who patrolled the area before barrelling home at just above wave height.

By some miracle they'd entered UK airspace without being jammed, intercepted, or shot down. Either their lazily erratic imitation 'seagull' course had fooled the British radars, or more likely the RAF were preoccupied doing other things. In any case were their presence to become known, they would find themselves treated with extreme hostility. The new British government actively discouraged independent observers of any kind from monitoring the scene of the 'release' as they were now attempting to euphemistically​ label the meltdown.

A fortnight on from the event the official spin was that the situation was under control and contained. The short-lived 'discharge' plume had only briefly blown over parts of Kent, Surrey, London, and Essex before the wind changed back to its prevailing southwesterly direction, carrying the worst of the contaminants out into the North Sea; though needless to say the countries downwind in general and Scandinavia in particular were unconvinced by the reassurances. Many of them were openly sceptical and calling for greater openess from the stonewalling British authorities.

The Dungeness event had been a serious occurrence but not an utter disaster, claimed the new Prime Minister Stuart Pullman in a speech he made to his newly reshuffled cabinet, meeting soon after the national service of commemoration held in a rapidly shored-up Westminster Abbey. Compared to the multiple Fukushima meltdowns or the Chernobyl explosion, the limited duration 'excursion' hadn't been anywhere near as severe, he said. The average radiation exposure of the general public had been "minimal". Plans were in hand to permanently 'encapsulate' the reactor units and enclose any residual problems within the immediate area. In time it would become apparent to all but the ideologically motivated doom-mongers that the facts on the ground bore no relation to the now discredited alarmist first reports. Given that another earthquake of that magnitude was unlikely to occur for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years; the British people, working together, would quickly surmount what transitory difficulties remained.

Already the heroes had been chosen to be written into the official narrative. There was Alan Carter, along with his staff, of course. They were due a nation's grateful praise for their courageous efforts in trying to avert, then limit the effects of the 'incident'. They would be out of the public eye for some time while they received treatment for their radiation injuries. Unmentioned was the fact that many of them - Carter included - were not expected to recover from their exposure.

All of the emergency services had, as ever, responded magnificently to the catastrophe. The fact the government's cuts had left them stretched so thinly beforehand would of course be quietly airbrushed away.

The fearless devotion to their work of Connect24's Kelly Thorpe and Ethan Parr who died while trying to inform the public about the scale of the earthquake would be recognised in due course, along with the sacrifice of the public spirited patrons and staff who died in the Woppa Burga restaurant tragedy. Ordinary people such as Sam Bicknall had risked their lives in order to save others; in his case the pensioner couple he'd pulled from their sinking caravan. Such had been the cloying nature of the quicksand dragging it down, it had sucked their clothes off their bodies as they were rescued. Now the Fennings, who had become minor celebrities, were rehoused in a requisitioned caravan on a Dorset pitch, and no doubt annoying their new neighbours yet again as the pair revelled passionately in their survival. Also not to be forgotten were the actions of the Japanese students, Miyahira Tsuki and Nakagawa Ishi, both now safely returned home to Nagoya. Such examples of selflessness in the face of disaster should be inspirations to us all.