Cryptophobia - Outbreak

CHAPTER 9: 1:32pm - 1 Hour, 47 Minutes since outbreak

Ria hung up the phone on Terry.

He always did this and here he was doing it again, late as usual. He wasn't even dependable during a crisis like this!

Containing her irritation was going to be a trial, but at least she was in the town and towns meant shopping.

Despite the belief that it would take a while to calm down, one look at a dress in a shop window and she was back to her usual self. It was a very pretty dress and she was almost certain it would go well with a hat she had back at home and the necklace her mother had purchased for her.

Maybe this wasn't the right time to be thinking of clothes, not after the ordeal she had been through.

She checked her mobile and spotted quite a few topics trending on Twitter, all of which related to London. So the world had already heard about the terrorist attacks it seemed. None of these tags were related to terrorism however, in fact, they were all quite alarmingly different to anything she would have ever thought up. #chaoslondon #attackslondon #londonmet.

The top five trends were purely dedicated to the events occurring in London and looking at the pictures, mostly overhead views, it was clear to see that what was happening here was probably even more than just a terrorist attack. It looked like a riot, a brutal one at that.

A thought suddenly popped to mind, what if she shared her ordeal, it would surely be a tale to tell amongst her friends later, right?

With that, she video recorded herself talking about what she had seen and experienced thus far and uploaded it using Vine, for fun, tagging it #riasinlondon. Within moments, a few of her friends had liked the video as well as her previous tweets and were re-tweeting them. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

She stopped before a crowd of people amassed outside of a Currys store. It wasn't long before it was made clear what it was they were all staring at so intensively. There in the windows were those new 4K televisions showcasing in the highest quality the horrors of the events occurring in London.

As the BBC helicopter hovered overhead and the reporter, Ellie Branning as shown at the bottom of the screen, tried to focus the camera on the scene taking place on the ground, they could just about see panicked people fleeing for their lives and chased by...other people.

There was a chorus of gasps from the crowd as a man was thrust up against a car and his face mauled, as though by an animal as opposed to another human. The cameraman zoomed in to show viewers a close-up of these barbaric creatures calling themselves human and there was nothing in their eyes except hysteria, blind anger, utter madness. The camera remained focused on this one scene until it could do so no more, the fleeing man had been ripped to shreds.

The camera panned away to other fleeing people being chased and people watching outside the store with her covered their mouths in shock.

"I can't believe this is happening", one woman said and her words were met with a crowd of agreeing people. They all began discussing the events occurring on the television.

Ria suddenly felt rather uneasy, she sure hoped this anarchy was contained before it reached her or anyone else, that scene had left her feeling somewhat nauseous and she could only hope that it never happened to her. She moved away from the screen, away from the crowds, away from the morbid scenes unfolding before her and tried to remain calm.

Where was her father already? This was ridiculous. Already six minutes had passed since he last called and he remained nowhere in sight. She pulled out her phone and checked the battery, it was already down to 98% and a full hour hadn't even passed yet.