by Dana Fredsti
“You’d do well to keep the crowbar in hand, I think.” Without waiting for an answer, Blake liberated the tool from its backpack loop and handed it to her. She switched the staff to her left hand and hefted the length of iron in her right.
He drew his rifle and together they moved cautiously forward into the boggy landscape.
14
The air seemed to grow thicker and the temperature rose by at least ten degrees. Maybe the thick canopy of trees trapped heat and humidity. Whatever the reason, Amber felt as if they’d walked into a slice of an entirely different world. One she couldn’t wait to leave.
There were new sounds, as well. The persistent buzzing of winged insects. A chirping noise which might be crickets. A low chorus of what sounded like very big frogs. Underneath it all were occasional splashing noises, as if things slipped in and out of the water. She looked around nervously, but saw nothing other than ripples.
Blake moved slowly and cautiously, choosing each step with care. Amber made sure to follow closely in his footsteps, gripped by an almost morbid fear of stepping off dry ground. As they moved deeper into the trees, brackish green water covered more and more of the terrain until they were hard put to find a path on which to walk. She grew uncomfortably warm in her coat, yet didn’t dare stop to remove it. Sweat dripped down her face and neck, pooling in between her breasts. A little while ago she would have been grateful for the heat, but this felt wrong. Out of place.
How could the air go so quickly from the cold, dry climate of the grasslands to this sickly, almost tropical humidity, thick and smelling of disease? Amber shook her head, wondering if the miasma in the air was making her loopy, not to mention overly dramatic. The further they ventured, the less this reminded her of some cheery Disney ride, and more like the Dead Marshes in Lord of the Rings. She couldn’t stand to look down, for fear of seeing what might float just beneath the oily surface of the water, barely visible in the undergrowth.
No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than something grabbed her foot. Amber looked down then, and what she saw made her choke back the scream that rose in her throat. The only sound that emerged was a strangled sob, enough to make Blake turn back.
Blood-streaked fingers with incongruously well-manicured nails clutched desperately at one of Amber’s pink high-tops. The hand belonged to a pale arm emerging from the murky fen. A woman’s face, skin leached of color, breached the surface near the water’s edge. Blood dribbled out of her mouth, forming graceful swirls of pink in the water.
“Oh god,” Amber breathed.
The woman’s fingers scrabbled weakly at her foot, catching hold of the laces and holding on as if they were a lifeline.
“Oh my god, she’s alive!”
Blake immediately hunkered down and reached into the water to grasp the woman under her arms. As he started hauling her onto the hummock, she gave a weak scream that still managed to convey agony. When he’d pulled her halfway out of the bog, Amber saw why.
Her right forearm was covered in blood to the elbow. Something big and toothy had bitten into the left side of her chest, and her left thigh was a mangled mess. She was clutching an ugly wound on her abdomen—it had been sliced open by a claw or a blade. Her eyelashes fluttered open, the remnants of heavily applied mascara smeared around and below her eyes, giving her an almost clownish appearance.
How is she still breathing? Amber thought, appalled at the extent of the injuries. It was terrifyingly reminiscent of the little girl back at the Romford Arms.
Blake gently eased the woman down so that her head rested on a patch of moss, then carefully lifted what was left of her legs out of the water. Amber knelt at her side, reaching out to take hold of the hand on the woman’s uninjured arm.
“It’s okay,” she lied softly. “You’re safe now.”
The woman’s eyes closed again, her breathing shallow and labored.
“We have to do something.” Amber looked up at Blake. He was sitting back on his heels, just behind the woman’s head.
He shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do. The stomach wound alone is enough to kill her.”
“We can’t just leave her here,” Amber insisted.
“Even if she weren’t dying, she’s too injured to travel,” he said with brutal honesty. “And there are no ambulances out here.” The woman moaned, although whether it was from the pain or because she understood Blake’s words, there was no way to know.
“But we can’t just leave her here like this,” Amber argued. “What if—” She dropped her voice. “What if whatever did this comes back?”
“Then we don’t want to be here.”
Amber stared in disbelief.
“How can you be so callous? There has to be something we can do!”
Blake stared back, his expression unreadable. Finally, he nodded.
“Move away,” he said. Amber started to do as he said, but stopped when the woman’s eyes opened again.
“Please don’t leave me…”
“We won’t,” Amber reassured her. “My friend is going to help you, okay?”
Blake cleared his throat. She looked at him and then struggled awkwardly to her feet, using her staff to prevent the weight of her backpack from sending her tumbling backward off the relative safety of the hummock.
Blake took her place at the woman’s side, placing one hand on her shoulder, the other reaching for something in his belt.
“Everything will be fine,” he said softly.
He shifted just enough for Amber to see the combat knife in his right hand. Before she could do more than gasp in horror, he sliced the blade across the woman’s throat in one swift cut. What little blood was left in her body welled out of the gash. Her eyes stayed open, staring sightlessly at the canopy of trees above.
“There,” he said. “Nothing else can hurt her.”
Amber stood there, shock freezing her in place as she tried to parse what had just happened. A very small voice in her head told her that there had been no other option. That Blake had done the right thing. It was the lack of regret in his eyes that made the voice hard to hear.
“Let’s go,” he said, coming to his feet in one easy move. “And stay close. Whatever attacked her could still be lurking below.”
Amber followed, sticking next to him despite the desire to run in the opposite direction.
* * *
“I think we’re almost out of this forest.”
After an hour or so of what felt like an endless slog through the fetid swamp, Blake pointed ahead to where it did indeed look like the trees—and hopefully the swamp—were coming to an end. It wasn’t very light, though, and what brightness there was looked strange, as if diffused through a filter.
Closer to the tree line, a thick mist started drifting through the branches, settling lower and covering both water and dry land so that each step forward had to be tested before they could proceed. To Amber, the last hundred feet seemed to take longer than the rest of the journey. She became hyper aware of the sound of things splashing in the pools.
Were the noises growing louder?
She tried to shut the image of that poor woman from her mind’s eye, and kept moving until suddenly they were out of the trees and into yet another landscape, one that appeared with the same abruptness as all of the others they had already passed.
The hummocks and pools gave way to hard-packed dirt, and the tendrils of mist turned into what seemed like a wall of fog that obscured everything around them. Visibility was only a few feet in any direction, and sounds became muffled.
Amber had heard of London’s infamous “killer fogs,” a combination of coal smoke and mist. There didn’t seem to be any pollutants here, though. The dense fog was whitish gray, not yellow or black, and free of any acrid odor.
It could still be hiding things.
It wasn’t as cold as it had been in the grasslands, although her hair now hung in damp tendrils around her face and her coat grew heavy with moisture. At least the grou
nd beneath their feet was dry.
Blake paused to look at his compass. “Just a few miles away,” he said. “Two or three at the most.”
They’d gone a few hundred yards or so when a large object appeared in the mist in front of them. They walked up to it slowly. Amber half expected it to be breathing, but closer inspection revealed it to be some sort of primitive structure made of what looked like dried mud and straw, with a thatched roof.
Wattle and daub, she thought.
They continued around the hut until they came to an opening about shoulder height—at least if those shoulders belonged to Blake. He held a finger up to his lips and Amber nodded. Even if she hadn’t completely understood his need for caution, she wasn’t about to argue with him about anything right now.
He might decide to put me out of my misery.
Even as the thought popped up, Amber knew it wasn’t entirely fair. What else was he supposed to have done? He was right. There were no ambulances just a phone call away. Which meant that if she got injured badly enough that she couldn’t continue, he very well might decide she’d be better off dead.
Worse yet, maybe he’d be right.
Blake took a cautious step to peer through the window. A spearhead shot out of the opening, and he jerked away just in time to avoid being skewered through the throat. As whoever was inside started to pull the spear back, he seized the wooden shaft with both hands and braced one foot against the bottom of the hut.
Small hands emerged, clutching desperately at the other end of the weapon. Blake gave a strong jerk and slammed whoever was on the other side into the wall. There was a grunt from inside and the hands slipped off the shaft, causing Blake to stumble backward a little before he righted himself. He hauled the rest of the weapon out through the window.
Whoever was inside broke into sobs, punctuated by the wailing of what sounded like a little kid. Blake swiftly went around the corner, Amber following on his heels, until they came to a door-sized opening covered by a coarse cloth attached to the top of the primitive doorframe. There Blake used the tip of the spear to push the cloth away, and looked inside.
“A woman and two children,” he said, letting the cloth drop back in place. The wailing grew louder, and she thought she could hear a baby crying, as well. She couldn’t stand it and pushed past Blake before he could stop her.
Amber stopped short when the woman—no older than she was and at least a foot shorter—gave a cry of fright. Next to her were a little girl no older than maybe five, and a toddler barely able to stand, clutching his sister’s leg. All three wore shifts of the same rough cloth that curtained the doorway. The woman’s hair and the little girl’s were pulled back in single braids.
A pile of straw with furs and blankets on it hugged the far wall, and a fire pit sat in the center of the hut, an iron pot suspended above it.
Amber opened her hands as the woman cringed away. The two children screamed in fright.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “We won’t hurt you. We’re friends.”
The woman cowered back even more at the sound of Amber’s voice, pulling her two children behind her. Blake poked his head inside.
“Come on,” he said, “we need to keep going.”
“We can’t just leave them here,” Amber protested. “They’re the first living people we’ve seen since…” She trailed off, not wanting to think about the woman in the swamp.
“We can’t help them,” Blake said, his tone uncompromising. “We can’t even talk to them. She doesn’t understand a word you’re saying.”
He was right.
Amber hated him.
“They’ll just slow us down,” he continued, the cold truth of his words steamrolling over her objections. “And that’s even if we could get her to understand where we’re going, and why. The best thing we can do is stay the course, find out what’s happening. Then we can send someone back to help those in need.”
If there’s anyone but us left alive, Amber thought bitterly.
He laid the spear down on the ground right outside of the hut, pointing to the woman and then at the weapon. Then he gripped Amber by one arm and pulled her out, never taking his gaze off the woman until they were well away from the doorway. She pulled away from Blake’s grasp. She didn’t want him to touch her.
At least he left them a weapon, Amber told herself as they began walking again. Moments later the hut behind them was swallowed up by the fog.
* * *
The hard dirt beneath their feet abruptly gave way to cobblestones, wending their way in a downward curve. It was a road. Blake nodded in satisfaction.
“Civilization at last,” he said, and he picked up his pace, renewed energy in his stride. Amber wasn’t so sure, but she followed anyway.
Other shapes appeared out of the mist. Buildings flanked them on either side of the cobblestone road, but there was no consistency to their shape or, in some cases, to the materials used. Amber noticed a storefront on one side where the first few feet of the wall looked brand new, while the rest of the wall could’ve been several hundred years old. It looked as if someone had drawn a line between the two portions. The rooftops didn’t match up.
A store on the other side looked as though the signage had been cobbled together by three different people, with totally different ideas as to what kind of store it was and what type of lettering should be used. In places, the cobblestones were replaced by asphalt and sidewalks. It was surreal to the point of nightmare.
Once or twice Amber thought she saw human shapes moving in the heavy fog, but she couldn’t be sure. If there were other people lurking about, they obviously didn’t want to be seen.
Blake appeared not to notice any of this. He seemed so positive that things would be okay once they reached Whitehall.
How could such certainty be wrong? Perhaps when they emerged from the mist, sanity would be restored.
Amber knew that was false logic, but she clung to it the way that Blake held onto his conviction that there was a government center waiting for them just ahead.
Cobblestones and asphalt gave way to grass again and the ground sloped gently upward, making their progress more difficult, at least for Amber. She’d been doing her best to ignore her throbbing feet, but now the muscles in her legs were screaming, as well. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this kind of grueling physical activity. If—no, when—she got back to San Diego, she would start walking every day. Go to the gym, take some sort of physical fitness classes.
They kept forging upward, the gentle rise giving way to a steeper slope. Still the mist swirled around them. When they reached the top, or at least where the ground appeared to level off, Blake signaled for her to stop.
“We’ve earned a break,” he said in what was the closest to a jovial tone he’d used since she’d met him. The fog swirled around them as Amber took off her backpack and Blake plunked down the duffle bag. They each pulled out a bottle of water and a packet of chips.
Crisps, Amber reminded herself, although she supposed it didn’t really matter anymore.
“We’re nearly there,” Blake said in satisfaction, taking a long pull of water. Amber didn’t ask why he was so sure. It was enough that he was.
And oh, let him be right.
They drank the water and ate their chips. Amber did her best to stretch out her legs, trying the exercise he’d taught her the day before. Her hamstrings felt as if they’d been cut in half and then reattached. Short and painfully tight. She wanted to change the Band-Aids on her feet, but didn’t think Blake would want to take the time. He seemed almost relaxed, but his eagerness to reach their destination was obvious.
Instead, Amber pulled out her iPhone and powered it on, waiting for the Apple logo to disappear and the main screen to show up. She punched in her password. The battery was at eighty-eight percent, but there still was no service. Even though she’d expected as much, her disappointment felt like a gut punch.
“What’s that then?” he asked.
/> “It’s my cell phone,” she replied.
Blake didn’t ask any more questions, which seemed weird. Then again, questions might bring answers that he wasn’t ready to deal with. Like the date on the Romford Bee.
“Are you ready?” He stood, hoisting the duffle bag. Amber nodded, albeit reluctantly, and put her phone away. She could’ve used an hour or twenty, just sitting there resting her feet and legs. Not to mention her neck and shoulders, sore from the unaccustomed weight of her backpack. Instead she stood up, muscles groaning in protest, and swiveled her head in a gentle circle to release some of the tension.
A gust of wind blew across their vantage point, chilling the air. Amber was reaching down for her backpack when Blake gave a sudden inarticulate cry. He pointed ahead, in the direction they were going.
“Look! It’s Tower Bridge!”
Amber’s heart gave a leap in her chest. Maybe there was hope after all. She moved to Blake’s side and looked where he was pointing. Sure enough, the familiar shape of one of the bridge’s two towers poked out of the fog, which looked as though it might be dissipating somewhat. The wind blew again, sending the mist swirling, thinning it out down around the bridge.
As they watched, the fog parted below so they could see the entire tower at the far end of the bridge. Another violent gust made it possible to see beyond, where the River Thames had widened out into a tidal flat. The one tower and a small chunk of the pedestrian walkway was all that remained of the iconic Tower Bridge.
Other things rose out of the fog and the water—long spindly things that curved upward, ending in rough oval shapes. One of the oval shapes opened, emitting a long, low noise that echoed across the water. More eerie cries arose as a herd of brontosauruses slowly made their way past what was left of the Tower of London.
Blake dropped to his knees as if someone had sliced his legs out from under him.
“God, no,” he breathed. “It can’t be. It’s… it’s gone. It’s all gone.”
Amber put a hand on his shoulder, not sure if it was safe to do so but needing at least to offer him some comfort. He didn’t shake it off—he just turned and looked up at her with haunted eyes.
