Thompson No More Heroes

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-909762-13-8
Verlag: Jacaranda Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

Reihe: Jacaranda

Simon Weekes becomes an overnight celebrity after his heroics during the 7/7 Bombings. But Simon can't afford the newfound fame and attention - he has too much to lose. July 7, 2005. Simon Weekes is travelling on the London Underground when his tube carriage is wrecked by a bomb blast. Virtually everyone is killed and almost all the survivors are severely injured. Except for Simon. Having quickly and calmly organised the small band of survivors out of the wreckage and to safety, word of Simon's heroics get out in the days following the bombing. Now under the full glare of the media spotlight, he becomes an overnight celebrity, hounded for interviews and regularly approached in the street by autograph hunters. The only thing is, he doesn't want all the attention. He can't afford it. He has too much to lose.

Stephen S. Thompson was a highly acclaimed novelist and screenwriter, born in Hackney to Jamaican parents. His feature-length single drama Sitting In Limbo was broadcast on BBC One in June 2020, and won the BAFTA for Best Single Drama in 2021. Toy Soldiers, his debut novel about a young man's attempts to overcome his drug addiction, was published in 2000 to critical acclaim. He has since written several plays and novels, including No More Heroes (Jacaranda Books, 2016). Stephen lectured in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College and the University of Edinburgh, and taught screenwriting at Central Film School in London. He was also a member of the influential Royal Court's Young People's Theatre. Founder and editor of the online literary journal The Colverstone Review, Stephen also co-founded the creative writing retreat The Page. He also wrote for The Observer, The Voice, Wasafiri, Five Dials, and Arena Magazine.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thompson, Stephen

Leseproben

Prologue It was unusual for me to leave Theodore’s so early in the morning, but that afternoon I was working back in Duddenham and didn’t want to be late for my shift. At Kings Cross I got caught up in the rush hour crowd and was swept down the escalator towards the Circle Line. I reached the platform to find it thick with commuters, three or four lines deep. After missing a couple of trains due to overcrowding, I finally boarded one heading for Paddington. Barely able to move, I positioned myself near the entrance, thinking it would be quicker to get off at Paddington but as it turned out, it wasn’t the best decision. With each new stop, I was jostled both by the people getting off the train and the ones getting on. By the time we arrived at Edgware Road I was feeling hot and tetchy, and my mood wasn’t improved when the train got held up. All the passengers were ready and waiting to leave but the doors remained opened for several minutes. We could breathe at least, and Edgware Road is above ground so at least we weren’t stuck in a tunnel, but even so, as the delay grew longer, a few people started tutting and sighing and one or two leaned out the doorway to see what the problem was. I was expecting to hear an announcement about the cause of the delay, but none came. While we waited, I became conscious of being observed, and turned slightly to my left to see the man I now know to be Mohammad Sidique Khan staring at me. He was sitting on a row of four seats, two in from the double doors. I remember him very clearly because, unlike the rest of us, he looked cool and unflustered, without so much as a hint of sweat on his face. He gave me a squinty-eyed stare but I had the impression he wasn’t really looking at me, rather he was somehow looking through me. Eventually he glanced at his watch then started fidgeting with the backpack on his lap. It wouldn’t be true to say he unnerved me, you get used to all sorts of people on the tube, but instinctively I moved a little further along the carriage. At long last we heard the driver say, ‘This train is now ready to depart. Please stand clear of the closing doors.’ A tall white man in a crumpled grey suit who was standing in front of me said, ‘’Bout bloody time.’ The engine hissed and grumbled, the doors slid jerkily together and the train crawled away from the platform. It was only eight thirty in the morning, but as soon as the doors closed I felt the heat rising. We were in the second carriage so it wasn’t long before the train entered the tunnel. The walls were lined with power cables and studded with lamps and there was a patch of daylight coming in from the open platform we’d just left. It was also very wide, with enough space for two trains, and high enough for me to see the soot-covered roof. What I remember next was a hissing sound and out of the corner of my eye a white searing light. Just as I turned to get a better look at it, there was a moment of eerie silence followed by an almighty blast that blew me clean off my feet sending me crashing against the window opposite. I bounced off the window and landed on my stomach on the floor. The carriage immediately went dark and filled with dust and debris. For several seconds nothing happened, I saw no movement, heard nothing except the loud ringing in my ears. Convinced that everyone was dead except me, my survival instincts took over. Dust filled my nose and mouth. To avoid choking to death, I wriggled out of my jacket and tied it into a makeshift bandage around my face, which was stinging and caked with grit. I was thinking I should stand up when the moaning started, quickly followed by the haunting cries for help, and then, soon after that, the piercing, chilling screams. As the dust began to settle, I noticed a man sitting on the floor next to me, slightly hunched over, his legs splayed out to the sides like a rag doll. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were open but expressionless. An arm was missing and there was blood spurting from his wound. I jumped up. It didn’t even occur to me that I might be injured. When I was on my feet I suddenly thought to check myself for signs of serious damage. Everything seemed to be working. All my bits were there but the ringing in my ears seemed to be getting louder, my eyes were streaming from all the dust and even with my makeshift mask I was coughing so hard I could barely breathe. Above the screams a male voice shouted, ‘For the love of God, shut up!’ Instantly the screams died down. Strange, how one’s person voice had immediately quietened the entire carriage. Now standing, I started looking around. It was dark, but the light coming from the carriage behind was enough for me to see the extent of the damage. There was broken glass and debris everywhere. Lumps of metal and electrical wires dangled from the mangled ceiling. The seat cushions were in shreds. I took a step and almost fell into a gaping crater in the floor, the chunky metal warped and blackened and folded in, slick with grease. The area immediately around it was littered with personal effects – credit cards, wallets, keys – and spattered with human entrails. People were trapped under huge pieces of metal, some of them with arms and legs missing, some with half their heads caved in, others with no heads at all. Lodged in the crumpled window frame I saw a woman’s severed arm, a watch still on the wrist. The double doors had been completely blown off and from where I stood I could see a man lying on the tracks below. He’d lost both his legs, from the knees down, but he was fully conscious, his eyes were open and he kept swivelling his head left and right, as if he was only temporarily incapacitated and was preparing to get up and walk away. I knew he was without hope and it seemed to bring me to my senses. I began looking for a way out. The door to the carriage in front had collapsed and couldn’t be opened, but the one leading to the carriage behind was still intact and was actually ajar. A knot of people fighting each other to get through it caused a bottleneck. Those who couldn’t get through the adjoining door eventually lost patience and started clambering down through the double doors, using their arms to lower themselves on to the track. I did the same. Down on the tracks, people were jumping from the other carriages and running back towards Edgware Road station and all at once I was hit by the horror of the situation. Many people were dead; others were dying in agony. I felt for them but at that moment I was mainly concerned for my own safety. I was about to take off when I saw the guy with the missing legs lying on the tracks and something happened to me. I just couldn’t leave him there by himself. Several people had stopped to inspect him, and one woman had actually crouched down and held his hand before saying she was going off to get help. For some reason I asked him his name. He was called Stuart. I was no doctor but I didn’t need to be to see the danger he was in. ‘You’ll bleed to death if we don’t get your legs bandaged. We have to do it but it’s gonna hurt. You understand?’ He looked at me, like a helpless dog, and nodded. I took off my shirt and started ripping it. I had zero first-aid knowledge and it showed. In my anxiety to cover the bloodied stumps, I became all thumbs and had real problems tying knots in the tourniquets. The blood was running so freely, it immediately soaked through the material and made it almost impossible to get a grip on it. I managed it, though. Surprisingly, Stuart never once cried out or even winced. I guess he was in shock. While I was tending to him, I saw a black man hurrying towards me wearing a high-vis jacket and a safety helmet and clutching a walkie-talkie. I thought he was someone from the emergency services but he turned out to be a London Underground employee. His name was Charles and I later found out he was from Ghana. He hadn’t been in the job a year. He couldn’t have been more helpful. He told me to leave Stuart with him and to make my way back to Edgware Road. ‘The tracks are not live so it’s OK.’ I hadn’t even thought of the possibility of being electrocuted. ‘Go!’ Charles screamed, ‘It is too dangerous here.’ ‘What the hell happened?’ ‘No idea. They are saying it might have been a bomb.’ ‘A bomb? You mean, as in a terrorist bomb?’ He waved me away. ‘Why are you still here? Go now.’ I looked at Stuart. He seemed to be passing in and out of consciousness. Charles assured me that the emergency services were minutes away so I stood up and started heading down the tracks. As I was leaving, I noticed there were still people moving about in the bombed out carriage, which, from the outside, looked like a semi-crushed sardine tin. From the tracks it was difficult to see exactly what they were doing but I knew they must have been trying to help the injured. Using my arms, I clambered up through the blown out doors. Charles saw me and shouted for me to get down, warning that the carriage could ignite at any moment, but I ignored him. I once heard a war veteran talking on the radio about what it was like to fight on the beaches in Normandy. He said it didn’t take him very long to get used to the death and destruction. ‘You quickly learn to ignore your surroundings, you concentrate on the job in hand.’ That’s how I felt when I went back into that carriage. I was now so focussed on helping people I hardly...