by Tim Lebbon
They passed through the wooded area, and just as they emerged close to a lake several shadows rose from the ground before them. Rook skidded to a halt, startled, and Lucy-Anne bumped into him. She maintained the contact.
Rooks flapped and cawed somewhere out of sight.
The shapes were people, naked, caked in mud, hair set in extravagant designs. Their limbs seemed too short, too thin. When they moved, Lucy-Anne saw why.
They had reared up from their stomachs, and the first woman slumped down to the ground and curled away through the undergrowth. She shifted from side to side as she went, withered, sore-covered arms dragging along on either side and legs fused along their insides to form a long, thin tail.
As Lucy-Anne gasped, the woman hissed. The two other snake people eased back down onto their stomachs and followed the woman, and soon they were lost from view.
“They were…” Lucy-Anne said.
“Lucky we surprised them,” Rook said. “Let's hurry before they come back.”
“Are they poisonous? Constrictors? Do they…how much like real snakes are they?”
“You want to stay and find out?” He ran and she followed him, skirting around the lake's edge but not getting too close. Things were splashing in there. From the dark came wretched cries. It must hurt them, she thought. Such a huge change, so quickly. It must hurt! Though scared of them, she also felt pity.
Rook ran over a small footbridge that passed over a stream leading into the lake, and without pause headed across a wide area of long-grassed lawn spotted with occasional clumps of trees and wooden seating shelters. Moonlight silvered the land, setting fire to treetops. To their left and right shadows ran to keep pace with them, but Lucy-Anne could only assume that Rook knew about them. A rook landed on her left shoulder, its surprising lightness startling her, and a thought came unbidden: They're graceful and beautiful. She understood some of Rook's attachment to these creatures then, and for the first time she felt a pang of jealousy at his incredible abilities. Perhaps because he was closer to them than he ever could be to her.
They approached another small wooded area. She wondered why Rook was leading them into the trees instead of around them, and then she saw the shadowy humps across the grassland to their right. They moved slowly, sluggishly, but they seemed to be much larger than normal people. She was so glad that darkness mostly hid them from view.
“What the hell?” she asked, but he did not answer. He was focussed, committed to getting them across the park safely, past the mutations and the dangers, and she had to wonder why. He was not the heartless boy she had assumed when they had met. If anything he was confused and conflicted, hiding behind his grief over his dead mother and brother, sheltering emotions with his unusual abilities and the deadly opportunities they afforded him. Perhaps being with her was the first chance he'd had to properly express himself in two years.
They entered the wooded area, and as she opened her mouth to call him to a stop, to hold him and thank him, a shocking sense settled over Lucy-Anne that she had been to this place before.
With my parents, my brother, on one of those days we came to London? Surely I wouldn't recognise it still, especially in the dark and with how much things have changed? Maybe I saw pictures? Maybe it's a famous view of Regent's Park that's used for—
And then she smelled blackberries.
It was her dream. And soon would come the park bench smothered by shrubs, and then the monkey-man swinging down from the trees at her, and then the ground would open up to swallow Rook, and she would look down into the hole to see—
“Rook!” she shouted, and he skidded to a halt before her. The sense of déjà vu was still all-encompassing, and she tried to break it. If she could move on from the conviction that this had all happened before, maybe she could change things. Not every dream comes true, she thought. Rook and me in the house, making love…that hasn't happened, yet. And she stepped forward and reached for Rook, grasping his jacket and pulling him close, ignoring his startled expression and pressing her lips to his. He was unresponsive and cold, and he shoved her away.
“No,” she said, “no, don't. Just…thank you. For doing this. But…” She looked around. There was no bench, and no man swinging down at her from the trees. She sighed, and it shook her whole body.
“What?” Rook asked. He took her hands in his and waited until she looked up at him. “What is it?”
“Blackberries,” she said. “I smell them.”
“Not in season.”
She took in a breath and smelled damp soil, rain, and the warm tang of evergreens.
“No,” she said. “You're right. Not blackberries at all.”
Frowning, he grasped her right hand tight and tugged her on. The first few steps were painful because she expected the ground to open at any minute and for them to tumble into the pit. But when that did not happen, and they emerged close to the northern edge of the park, she started running more freely. She experienced a moment of utter delight and well-being, and when they reached the boundary wall she grabbed Rook again and kissed him properly. This time he relaxed slightly into her embrace, but his eyes remained open and alert.
A rook landed on his shoulder and stared at her quizzically.
Lucy-Anne laughed. There was a hint of hysteria to the sound, and Rook looked as befuddled as his bird.
“It's okay,” she said. “It's fine.”
“Well, we're through the park, at least,” he said. “Come on. Long way to go.”
In the streets, that feeling of well-being left her as quickly as it had come. When the first piercing shriek rang out, and was taken up by many others, Lucy-Anne wondered whether they had actually avoided anything at all.
As they walked through the twilit streets of a changed, ruined London, Jack started to experiment with the universe of possibilities he had been given. Each time he probed in towards the sparks of potential inside he tasted Nomad's finger on his tongue. It was an exotic, scary taste, and he thought perhaps he might become addicted.
Fleeter led the way, incongruous with her blood-spattered hands and party dress. Sparky and Jenna followed her, walking close together. Jack brought up the rear. He had not asked Fleeter where they were going. He and his friends were exhausted—since entering London they had been pushed from one trial to another, with barely any time to rest—and he craved some peace. If Fleeter kept her words to take them to Reaper, perhaps they would find some.
Or maybe everything would get worse.
They were walking along a narrow residential street. Dark windows observed their progress, and Jack grasped a spark, letting it seed in his mind and grow into something amazing. He probed towards one house and felt his way inside, tasting the happiness that had once dwelled there. He heard children laughing, adults loving, a dog barking as it played with a young boy, and the chiming of a music box in a little girl's pink room. He smiled…but then felt suddenly queasy when the reality of that house now hit home. The parents sat dead and decomposed in the living room, and the children were not there at all. The family had died apart.
Wiping tears from his eyes, Jack snatched at something else.
His fingers tingled. Sparks jumped beneath his fingernails, lightening his quicks and shadowing the bones of his hands against red flesh. He touched one of the cars still parked neatly along the kerb, and the sizzle of electricity snapped at the metal chassis, cracking the windscreen and drawing smoke from the half-flat tyres.
Sparky and Jenna jumped and span around, eyes wide. Seeing what he was doing did nothing to lessen their shock. Lightning danced across the car's roof and bonnet, and illuminated the dank insides.
“Come on,” Fleeter said, feigning boredom. But he saw the interest even in her eyes.
Jack snapped his fingers and sparks jumped from them, fading in the air around his head. Sparky and Jenna were watching, and he smiled. They smiled back, but their uncertainty was clear.
As they walked, he tried to dip in to other abilities. Sometimes
it worked, sometimes not. He heard his friends’ heartbeats from a dozen paces away, but when he tried to lure a kestrel down from above the bird ignored him. He sensed an Irregular watching them from behind a dusty window, felt the woman's sadness and fear, and he could almost taste the sickness settling upon her. But when he attempted to grasp the star that might enable him to communicate with her—to tell her, without speaking, that he promised to do what he could to help—he failed. Feedback squealed in his own mind, voice distorted and pained.
Uncertainties haunted him. Incredible powers were his, but so too was doubt, and a fear that when the time came to access these powers to save his friends, or himself, he would fail. The vast scope of potential within him was growing, but perhaps he could not move fast enough to keep up.
Jack jogged past his friends until he walked level with Fleeter.
“So where are we going?” he asked.
“To Reaper, just as you asked.”
“You're sure? You're not taking us somewhere else, like…a trap. Trick us, lock us away for a while?”
“You don't trust me?” she asked.
Jack said nothing. He wasn't sure of the answer.
Fleeter chuckled. “You'd just pick the lock anyway. Or melt it, snap it, or make it not there.”
“I don't know,” he said.
“I've never seen anyone like you,” she said, but she trailed off, moving quickly ahead.
“But you've heard about someone like me,” he said. “Nomad.”
Fleeter gave no sign that she'd heard. At the road junction she turned left, then cut a quick right through an alleyway.
“Where are we going?” Jack asked again.
“Trust me,” Fleeter said.
“I don't trust her as far as I could throw her,” Sparky said aloud, and Jenna laughed.
“I don't think you'd ever get close enough to try.”
“You two okay?” Jack asked.
“Yeah,” Jenna said.
“Dandy,” Sparky said.
Jack nodded. He felt the weight of responsibility upon him—it would be down to him to talk to Reaper, persuade him of their cause, convince him not to simply abandon them, or worse. But having his friends with him meant the world.
Changing, he needed them now more than ever.
He wondered what his mother and Emily were doing right now. He tried to imagine them safe and sound, perhaps locked in the same room in Camp H. They would support each other, and Emily would likely be lively and chirpy, singing songs and insisting that her mother sing along.
All the while, though, a different image played behind that one. The more he tried to ignore it—the metal bed, dissection equipment, gutters running with blood—the clearer it became.
He searched for a star that might show him his family, but found none.
“Damn it,” Jack said, shaking his head and fighting the tears. But the more he fought, the more insistent they became. “Damn it!”
“Jack?” Jenna said.
“We don't have much time,” he said. “Fleeter. Hey. How soon?”
She glanced back over her shoulder. “Almost there.”
“Almost where?” Sparky asked.
“Almost…” she said, trailing off, walking on.
Jack's friends comforted him, but neither asked what he had seen or sensed to bring on his tears. He wished they had. He wanted to tell them that it was nothing but a normal, very human fear for his loved ones.
Fleeter paused with her hand held up and then vanished with a clap! that echoed from surrounding buildings, leaving them abandoned and alone.
Jack started pacing, but Jenna urged him to remain calm, convincing both Jack and Sparky that the woman would be back. “Why lead us all this way just to disappear?” she asked.
“Trap?” Sparky suggested.
Jack tried to search around them, sense out danger, but his heart was too hurried. He could not concentrate. And when Fleeter appeared before them again, he slumped against Sparky and sighed with relief.
“Choppers,” she said. “Come on.”
“What did you do to them?” Jack asked.
“Slowed them down.” Fleeter grinned. “Punctures. They'll be going home tonight to see their loved ones, don't you worry, Jack.” Loaded with sarcasm the words might have been, still they came as a relief. Jack had seen far too many people die already, and he would do everything he could from now on to prevent any more.
They passed an old indoor market, grand architecture crumbled and ignored long before Doomsday, and Jack became more alert. Something about the way Fleeter moved told him that something was going to happen soon. She looked back more often, smiling uncertainly.
“Fleeter, please tell me that—” he began, but then she was gone again.
“Damn it!” he shouted. Pigeons took flight from atop the market building, and somewhere in the far distance a scream sounded, rising high and then quickly cut off. Jack's wasn't the only drama being played out in London this evening. But it was probably the most important.
“She'll be back,” Jenna said.
“You think?” Sparky said. “Spooks the shit out of me, that one.”
“She's brought us this far,” Jenna said.
“How far? She's dumped us outside this old place, and what the hell happens now? D'you know where we are?”
“Not really,” Jenna admitted quietly.
“Jack?” Sparky asked.
“Well…”
“You could do a Superman to find out, I suppose,” Sparky said. He was becoming agitated, stepping from foot to foot. “But what good's any of that done us so far? Huh?”
Jack's mind was spinning. He searched inside for something to help, some way to move them forward, but his confusion blurred everything. He felt more useless than ever.
“I'll go on my own,” he said. “You two leave. I've dragged you here, too far, too dangerous. And really, it's—”
“You tell us it's nothing to do with us and I'll deck you,” Sparky said, and right then Jack knew that he meant it.
Clap! Fleeter appeared across the street from them, swirling up a twisting cloud of dust and litter. She smoothed down her dress and ran a hand through her hair.
“What?” she asked. Then she smiled, knowing what she had done. “Come on. Reaper will see you.”
“He's near?” Sparky asked.
“Well, quite near. Come on. Bit of crawling to do.”
“Crawling?” Jack asked.
“S'pose we've done enough running, flying, and walking today,” Sparky said.
Fleeter led them around the side of the large market building, and where a huge tangle of old stalls was piled in a rusting heap against one moss-covered brick wall, she went down on her knees.
Back beneath the ground, Jack thought. Breezer and his friends hid under the Choppers’ noses, but it surprised Jack that his father would hide himself away.
Wary, alert for the first aggressive move from Fleeter, he was the first to follow her.
It was difficult to actually tell when they went below ground again. Through the tangle of market stalls, their route led past a tumble of bricks, down a short concrete slope, through a pile of timber slumped with damp, and then they dropped into a larger duct. Fleeter hefted a torch from her pocket. They could almost stand here, but not quite, and they followed Fleeter stooped over. Sparky cursed several times when he banged his head on the pipes and ducting trays above them, and by the time they reached a larger junction area, blood was dribbling down his face. Jenna tutted and dabbed at his scalp with the sleeve of her jacket, and Sparky raised an eyebrow at Jack.
He wants me to fix it, Jack thought. He delved inside and circled the star he thought might help. But there was no time right now, because Fleeter was stopping for nothing. He merely nodded at his friends and then carried on.
Jack tried to keep track of their route. If something went wrong down here—if it was a trap, or something worse—they might have to come back up quickly. But he quickly los
t his way. Crawling, scrambling, and climbing on occasion, he tried to access an ability that might help him map their route in his mind. His senses expanded until he could sense water courses and pipes streaming around them, but they did not need water. He grasped another spark and heard a whisper of voices overlying each other, and quickly withdrew when he realised he was hearing Sparky remembering an argument between his parents and dead brother. He shook his head, feeling grubby, as if he had intruded on something personal. The more confused he became, the greater his anger at being unable to help them. Nomad had seeded an ocean of possibilities within him, but had never told him how to use them.
“I feel like a rat,” Sparky said as they passed along a dry sewer.
“You smell like one,” Jenna said.
“That's the sewer, I'll have you know.”
“Nah. It's dried up. Old crap. The smell's you. You stink of rat.”
“This way,” Fleeter said from ahead, paying no attention.
They left the sewer through a hole in one wall and headed down an uneven slope. It reminded Jack inevitably of their journey into London through the hidden subterranean route, and he kept his ears open for wild dogs or anything else that might cause them problems. But Fleeter moved with a casual confidence, and he thought she had been this way many times before.
He sensed someone watching them. Hairs on his neck bristled and he looked back. In the wavering light he saw Jenna and Sparky also looking around them, their own natural senses piqued. They both looked at him. Expecting something of him. So Jack closed his eyes briefly, drifted through his cosmos of potential, and smiled when he found what he was looking for.
“Through there,” he said, pointing at a gap in the wall none of them had noticed before. “Shade. That shadow guy we saw with Reaper before.”
Fleeter glanced back at Jack, mildly surprised. She aimed her torch directly back at his face, and he turned away, dazzled.
“He's there to make sure no one gets in who shouldn't,” she said.
“Or out,” a voice said from the dark gap in the wall. A chuckle followed, and Jack tried not to show his fear.
