If Necessary Alone

Chapter 2: Well, Some Of It Was True

Lestrade

The sun was setting on Coventry. Lestrade and his crew had spent the earlier part of the day talking to the other attendees at the police conference, and then they all went to talk with the Chief Constable of Coventry. The Chief Constable had agreed to let the Brits and the Irish attending the conference patrol on their own recognizance, but the delegates from other countries were only allowed to patrol with Coventry constables. It had been a hell of a day. The constables were absolutely back in the Dark Ages without radios or mobile phones and Lestrade had seen more people cry in one day than he had in a whole year on homicide.

From what Lestrade could gather, it didn't sound like a good situation. The power plant was severely damaged, and neither the water treatment plant nor the sewage treatment plant could run without electricity. No lights, no heat, no refrigeration. As soon as the clean water stored at the water treatment plant ran out, people would have to boil their water or treat it chemically. But electric stoves wouldn't run, and there was a limited amount of gas. And England wasn't known for its forests anymore. Maybe the weather would warm up early this year.

Lestrade and Donovan had gone out patrolling door-to-door with the other available officers to warn people about treating the water. Most people did have chlorine bleach or iodine in their homes, but it would only last so long. The amount of water already treated by the water plant certainly wasn't enough for everyone in Coventry to store even a few days' worth of water. The constables had also warned the householders about staying completely inside a building when it started raining, to avoid radioactive particles washed out of the sky by the rain. Of course this worried some of the householders, since the radioactive rainwater was likely to end up in their water supply.

Lestrade and Donvan had just had another crying woman close the door on them, and they headed down the front stairs into the road again. The woman of the house had asked if Donovan worked for the police too, despite Donovan's clearly displayed badge, and Donovan had kept a stiff upper lip about it. But since a dozen other people had asked the same exact thing over the course the day, she was looking a bit irritated. She was starting to clench her jaw in that way she had when she was just about to bite someone's head off. "It must be the jogging outfit," Donovan said, "I guess I'll just have to pack my dress uniform the next time I'm going to be stuck in Coventry!" Donovan stopped bitching and lifted her head. "Do you smell that?" she asked as they turned a corner. "Smells like a burning car."

"No, I don't smell anything," Lestrade answered. "I can't see the smoke. Is it still getting stronger in this direction?" Donovan definitely had a better sense of smell than he did. It seemed most women had better senses of smell than most men he knew.

Lestrade and Donovan picked up their pace as they walked back and forth, tracking down the source of the smell. After a few minutes, they could hear distant shouts and they headed towards the noise. As they got closer, the voices became clearer. These sounded like happy shouts and cheering, not panicked screaming and crying.

The two constables came around the corner and saw that a city bus in the middle of the street was on fire. There were about a dozen teenagers near it, some of them wearing bandannas over their faces. Most of the young people were standing around drinking and watching the fire, but a few were running around more actively, and hitting the bus with sticks or throwing things through the bus windows. Were these out-of-town troublemakers, or were they locals? Either way, something had to be done.

Lestrade and Donovan were definitely outnumbered, but most of these kids didn't look too tough. The teenagers' clothing was not overly professional, but most of them had their faces uncovered, and didn't look like especially malicious characters. It had been a few years since Lestrade and Donovan had had to deal with rioters, but the pair of them had a typical strategy for this sort of thing. Generally, Lestrade would draw the attention of the criminal, since the criminal would usually focus on him first anyway, leaving Donovan to circle around behind and get the jump on them. This kid attacking the bus didn't exactly look like a hardened criminal, and his friends all appeared to be the sort to retreat in the face of danger, but Lestrade kept his eyes moving, making sure none of the kids who were watching had decided to go on the offensive.

"Sir, please put that pipe down," Lestrade said loudly. Lestrade moved slowly to his left as Donovan moved away to her right. "I'm Detective Inspector Lestrade and I would like you to put down that pipe and stop damaging that bus." Most of the onlookers turned their heads towards Lestrade when he started talking, and suddenly remembered they had left their stoves on at home. One man, though, the one who was beating the side of the bus with a length of pipe, turned around and started walking towards Lestrade. He dragged the pipe along the ground in a menacing manner. By the sound of it, it was definitely a metal object. Two of the other young men present stood far away and yelled encouragement at him.

Donovan circled out away from Lestrade, so that it would be impossible for the man with the pipe to hit both of them at once. The young man seemed to ignore her. He tilted his head at Lestrade. "What's that, copper? I can't do what?"

Lestrade hadn't had someone pick a fight over a crime this petty in quite some time. Sort of a nice change from murderers, he supposed. The young man raised the pipe in both hands. "Sir," said Lestrade, to draw his attention, and then Donovan came up behind the young man and kicked his knee out of under him. He immediately dropped the pipe and started screaming bloody murder. It was always the most aggressive sorts that complained the loudest. Although, Donovan did kick pretty hard. Within seconds, Donovan had him face down and was handcuffing him. Lestrade stayed standing and kept an eye on their surroundings. The other two hooligans shouted one or two more insults and then ran off down the street. They didn't seem like the sort who would come back with their bigger, scarier friends, but you only had to be wrong once. Donovan said to the young man, "You are under arrest. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

The young man appeared to be attempting to spit on Lestrade and Donovan, but the bandanna over his face was making it difficult. Now getting him back to the station was going to be the hard part, depending how hard Donovan had kicked him. The lack of radios and cars was certainly making things difficult. Donovan had stood up, and she and Lestrade were discussing what to do about their prisoner, when Lestrade saw the two Glaswegian constables coming down the street in their direction.

Lestrade waved his hand as Boyd and MacDonald walked up. The kid who had been hitting the bus was still thrashing around on the ground and making an irritating amount of noise. Boyd said something to Lestrade, who responded, "Sorry?"

"Just a moment," Boyd said.

Boyd laid down flat on the ground so that he was looking the kid right in the eye, and he whispered something to him, which the other constables couldn't hear. The kid looked surprised, and went quiet and still. Boyd stood up and brushed himself off. He was smiling a bit while he did it, and the smile caused the scar which came up from the left corner of his mouth towards his ear to buckle in the most godawful way. This was probably why Lestrade hadn't seen him smile at all at the conference. Boyd continued with what he had been saying earlier, and it took Lestrade a second to tune back in.

"-kids at the University have offered us the use of a pedal bus, although not very many of them are offering to pedal."

"Sorry, pedal bus?"

"Yes. It has eight sets of gears so everyone on the bus pedals, and there's a driver in front who steers. There's also a place for a keg and a bartender, but I don't think they're offering us that, either. Supposedly the Fire Department has managed to find a horse-drawn engine, but they're short a few horses."

"Well," said Lestrade, "would you tell the Fire Department about this and round up some pedallers while Donovan and I watch the prisoner?"

Boyd and MacDonald agreed, and they headed off the way they came. Lestrade chuckled and shook his head as he looked at Donovan. "Blimey," he said, "That'll be one hell of a cub van."

John

It was about 150 kilometres from London to Coventry, but John, Sherlock and Mrs Hudson had only managed to cover about 50 km, a third of the way, before stopping for the night. Even though the electromagnetic pulse had hit in the very early morning, there were still enough cars stopped in the middle of the road to prevent John from driving in the same lane for any distance, and in some places there was enough of a blockage that they had to backtrack and detour onto another street to get around. Not many of the drivers of the stopped cars had stayed with their vehicles until the time John stopped for the evening, but he parked the van out in the middle of the motorway away from other cars, so it would be easier to see if anyone was approaching them. Mrs Hudson slept in the van, and John did the first watch, since he didn't trust Sherlock to wake him up at the right time.

It was so quiet out. Here John was, standing in the middle of the M1, with no other noise besides their van, and no lights except the sky. They were far enough from the sea that the sky had been clear at sunset, and the auroras from the solar activity were very apparent. Green tongues of flame stood all around the darker horizon like burning oil wells. The stars showed through them.

John, Sherlock and Mrs Hudson left the car running all night, and they refueled from somebody else's fuel tank when they changed watches. John felt a bit bad about doing that, but those people weren't using their fuel anyway. The sound of the engine would draw attention to them, and cover the sound of anyone approaching, but there might not be enough fuel in the creme brulee torch to restart the van from cold, especially in the March chill.

Mrs Hudson had surprised him again. When it came time to refuel the van the first time, Sherlock had seemed to think that John would automatically be the one siphoning the diesel fuel out of the other cars without even asking him if he wanted to do it. While they were still debating the subject, Mrs Hudson had got the blanket out of the back of the van, knelt down on it, set the bucket in place, and put the hose into the fuel tank.

When John noticed what she was doing, he dashed over and started to object. Mrs Hudson gave him a rather wry look as she put the hose to her mouth. "Really, dear," she said, "In this situation, I'm the professional."

When John awoke after their night camped out in the middle of the motorway, it appeared that the sun was close to rising, but it was somewhat difficult to tell with all the auroral activity. Sherlock was pacing back and forth outside the van, gesturing to himself, his hands passing through the visible puffs of his breath. John waited until the orange edge of the sun shone over the edge of the trees before waking Mrs Hudson. They had a cold breakfast and refueled the van again before heading on. John drove, Mrs Hudson sat in the front passenger seat, and Sherlock sprawled out across the back seat as before.

The sun was just above the horizon, and they had only driven a few kilometres when there was a flash of light, brighter than anything John had ever seen, and a gust of wind hit the car and made it wobble on the road. John heard Mrs Hudson yelp next to him. He held the steering wheel tightly. "Don't look back," Sherlock ordered. He sounded odd.

It took John a few seconds to get the van under control, and then he spared a glimpse to his left. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Mrs Hudson face forwards again and hold her hand over her mouth and nose. What had provoked that reaction? John looked in the rearview mirror anyway; he couldn't help himself. The car slowed as John inadvertently lifted his foot from the accelerator. "I said don't look back!" Sherlock said again. "You'll damage your eyes. Keep driving!" Now John knew why Sherlock had sounded so raspy and why Mrs Hudson had started crying. There was a mushroom cloud rising up from the surface of the earth behind them, in the direction of London. The towering cloud must have been many kilometres high. It was much more colorful than the films of nuclear explosions John had seen. It wasn't the washed-out white and orange of old films; there were swirls of red and purple in the cloud, as it rose up above London's 10 million people. John drove on.

Lestrade

The afternoon of the day after the power went out, there was some sort of commotion outside of the motel where the police attending the conference had been staying. Lestrade pitched the book he had been reading onto his bed and went out to the front entrance of the Blind Tailor Motor Inn. There was a dark blue van with its engine running, and a number of people had gathered around it. And there, right in the middle of it all was Sherlock, demanding to know where Lestrade was.

Lestrade pushed himself through the crowd. Leave it to Sherlock bloody Holmes to somehow hunt up a working automobile when no one else for miles around had one. What could possibly have warranted him driving all this way? John was there, too, next to Sherlock as always, and their landlady Mrs Hudson. She looked terrible.

The smile dropped off of Lestrade's face. Mrs Hudson clearly found Sherlock tolerable, so it probably wasn't the long car ride with him that had made her look like that. It was hard to tell what John was thinking from his expression, but Sherlock didn't look terribly well, either. "What's happened, Sherlock?" Lestrade said.

"Moriarty set off a nuclear bomb in London."

Lestrade kept looking at Sherlock, expecting him to say more. He wasn't making any sense. Something wasn't right about what Sherlock had said, but Lestrade couldn't decide what it was.

"When? Why are you here? How do you have a working car?"

Sherlock tilted his face towards the sky and closed his eyes as he took a deep breath. One of the Israeli constables spoke up. "Was this yesterday morning?"

"No," Sherlock said, "the electromagnetic pulse yesterday appears to have been a natural event. The bomb was set off this morning."

Lestrade thought Sherlock's words had begun to sink in. London had been nuked? How could that be real? Those weren't words that should have ever been said. There shouldn't have been a way to say that in English. There were millions of people in London. Millions.

"And you saw it? You can identify nuclear explosions?" the Israeli asked Sherlock.

"Yes."

The Israeli-Cohen, Lestrade thought-nodded sharply. The crowd had all gone silent.

Sherlock looked around and straightened his jacket, and then he walked up to Lestrade and shook his hand. They never greeted one another so formally. They looked at each other with tight faces. Sherlock was trying to keep his expression neutral, blank, but even he was failing at it. John shook hands with Anderson, and then Lestrade. John held his hand out towards Donovan, but she stepped forward and hugged him instead. Donovan let go of John, and past them, Lestrade could see Sherlock and Anderson shaking hands. Must be the end of the world, Lestrade started to think, and then it hit him. And then Donovan herself actually went and hugged Sherlock. Sherlock looked a little surprised, but he patted her on the back politely, if awkwardly. Then Mrs Hudson hugged Donovan, and Donovan started to cry in front of them all, a thing Lestrade had never seen her do in all their years working together. Mrs Hudson held Donovan and patted her hair.

After the news had spread through the motel, and a delegation had been sent to tell the Mayor and the Chief Constable the news, the chef at the motel had arranged for lunch for everyone there. The walk-in freezer was starting to thaw, and the owner of the motel had declared there was no sense in letting all that food go to waste. Lestrade had never heard of cooking pizza on a charcoal grill, but that's what the motel did. It smelled good, but Lestrade couldn't bring himself to eat more than a few bites. He did manage a beer, though.

Lestrade, Donovan, Anderson, John, and Mrs Hudson were eating or pretending to eat, all at one picnic table outside, and Sherlock had hidden himself away in one of the motel rooms, apparently to think. Lestrade thought maybe conversation might help a bit. Not much, but perhaps a bit. "Mrs Hudson, John, have either of you been to Coventry before?"

John shook his head. Mrs Hudson said, "I'm afraid I've only passed through on the train."

That was sort of a squib as conversation starters went. Lestrade took another sip of his beer. He said, "Wasn't that the Coventry that was sunk in the Falklands war? You know, the one where the sailors all sang 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'?" Lestrade looked over at Donovan.

Donovan cleared her throat. "I couldn't say, sir. I hadn't had my first birthday yet." Lestrade was amused for a moment, and then he felt a bit ill as he wondered if he was the next oldest Londoner left alive after Mrs Hudson.

What had happened to everyone he knew? Gregson and Dimmock and Hopkins? Molly and Megan and Annie? Even the people he knew who had moved to other countries—what was happening over there?

How big was the bomb that had hit London? He had seen those maps on the internet of the projected damage from nuclear bombs detonating in various large cities, including London, but he couldn't remember how far the damage was supposed to reach for each size of bomb, and he couldn't bloody well look it up now.

Would whoever had done it go for the centre of town? He supposed the best target in London itself would be the Ministry of Defence, so surely anything near that would be absolutely gone. New Scotland Yard was only about a kilometre from the MI6 building, and St Bart's Hospital was maybe three or four kilometres from MI6. How could Sherlock know that it was Moriarty who had bombed London? Certainly, it looked as though the man had murdered a few people, but it was a bloody long way from turning a few individuals into involuntary suicide bombers, to using the sort of bomb that only sovereign states could manufacture.

"God," said Anderson, rapping his beer can on the table. "Even Hitler spared Paris! And the Americans spared Kyoto."

Lestrade looked up at Anderson's comment. Over Anderson's shoulder, he could see Sherlock, furtively sidling off towards the road. Lestrade almost missed him; he was wearing a dark gray hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans-a far cry from his usual suit. "Sherlock!" called Lestrade. "Where are you going?"

It wasn't unusual for Sherlock to ignore social events, but Jesus Christ, London was gone!

"Off to make friends." Sherlock turned and walked away across the parking lot.

Chapter title for first two chapters from "London Calling" by The Clash. Story title from a Winston Churchill speech.