Europe at Dawn (Fractured Europe Sequence Book 4) by Dave Hutchinson

Author:Dave Hutchinson [Hutchinson, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2018-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

THE LID BLEW off Dortmund at a little after ten o’clock that evening. Borussia had been due to play an important European Cup match against Real Madrid and the city council, fearing trouble in the fevered atmosphere of Independence and the general unbearable weather, chose to cancel it at a few hours’ notice. This occasioned a number of lawsuits from the club and their opponents and from UEFA, but by the time these had been served the city had other things to worry about.

Heading back to the hotel, Alice noticed a change in the atmosphere in the city. There seemed to be many parties in the restaurants they passed, and people out on the streets singing and cheering and waving the flag of the newly-minted Republic, but there were also sullen angry groups confronting the flag-wavers. She didn’t see any fighting, but there was a lot of shouting. Independence, unsurprisingly, was not uniformly popular. Things had already been tense in the city, what with the heat and the anticipation of the final vote of the assembly, but now it felt as if someone had turned the tension up to eleven, and she was happy when they got back to the hotel – they had to ring the night bell because the staff had locked the front doors and they didn’t unlock them until Alice had swiped her phone against the reader beside the entrance – and she could put the news on and try to get a handle on things. Meanwhile, outside, as with any catastrophe, a series of unfortunate events was playing out.

Madrid fans flying in for the match were corralled at the airport, put on specially-chartered flights, and sent home again. Some of them made their extreme displeasure about this clear to the riot police sent to control the situation, but there was little violence.

Things did not go quite as well at the main station, where a similar operation to turn back fans – both local and visiting – was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of bodies, who burst out into the plaza, ran across the ring road, and fanned out through the city centre.

Meanwhile, an ad-hoc march by anti-independence demonstrators was coming the other way, assailed by Dortmunders of a pro-independence frame of mind with beer cans and glasses and bits of al fresco furniture from cafés. The two groups ran head-on into the stampede of angry football fans coming from the station.

By midnight, the police had completely lost control.

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