London Eye

by Tim Lebbon

  “Jenna.” He knelt beside her and leaned over, trying to catch her eye. She saw him, and he knew that she saw. But she was doing something far more difficult than trying to communicate. Every breath she had, every shred of strength, was spent trying to keep herself alive.

  “What happened?” Jack asked Sparky when his friend knelt next to him.

  “We'd made it down to the ground floor. Stupidly thought we should run across the foyer.” Every word was a gasp. “Someone was waiting behind the desk. Started shooting. She…fell. I dragged her into a doorway, down some steps, then I heard more shooting from up above. Screams. Whoever shot at us didn't follow us down. That's it. Been trying to stop the bleeding, but…” He shook his head. “You seen Lucy-Anne?”

  “No,” Jack said. “Rosemary!”

  “Is the bullet still in there?” She stood behind them. Emily was beside her, trying not to look at the blood but unable to look anywhere else.

  “Don't know,” Sparky said.

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  “If it is, I can't do anything. Can't—”

  “Don't tell me you can't!” Jack stood, cringing at his raised voice but unable to help himself. “After everything, don't tell me that!”

  “If it's still in there and I heal the wound, it'll do no good. I can't take bullets out of people, Jack. But—”

  “Can't you make her better?” Emily asked.

  “If the bullet's gone through, then yes, dear, I can. If not, and I heal it inside, she'll probably develop an infection and die.”

  “Sparky,” Jack said. “Help me.” He searched around on the ground, shifting old leaves aside and picking up a fallen branch from one of the neighbouring garden's trees. He snapped a short section from it, eight inches long.

  “What are you doing?” Sparky said.

  “Seeing if the bullet came out the other side.” He pressed the stick to Jenna's lips, and her mouth opened, teeth biting into the wood. She knew what he was doing.

  “Not here,” Rosemary said. “It's too dangerous!”

  “Have your bloody gun back.” Jack lobbed the weapon at her and she caught it, uttering a startled cry. She turned to look up at the tall face of the hotel behind them.

  “On three,” Jack said. “One…two…three.” He pushed Jenna up by the arm, Sparky pulled one of her legs, and as she turned onto her side she screamed into the wood, biting down hard enough to crack it and send splinters and shreds of bark spitting out.

  Jack looked. Her jacket and shirt were soaked with blood all the way around. He lifted them up, exposing her bare back, and used her shirt to wipe across her skin. The blood smeared and smudged, but he found no exit wound there, and no sign that anything had broken the skin.

  He hated doing this to his friend. He could see Emily's expression as she watched, and he hated what all this was doing to her, as well. It had gone so wrong so quickly that he could not imagine things ever being right again.

  The wood snapped in Jenna's mouth and she screamed, unable to hold it in any longer.

  Sparky was in front of her. He looked down at her stomach, turned away, and vomited.

  “Not here!” Rosemary said. “We have to take her away, I know someone who might help, but not here!”

  Jack leaned across Jenna to see why Sparky had puked, and her wound was pouting, something that could only have been her intestine protruding through the rip in her flesh. He closed his eyes and swallowed his bile, looking up at Emily. Wide-eyed, blinking slowly, pale, he suddenly saw himself in her, courage and love mirrored.

  “Help me,” he said, and his nine-year-old sister came to him without question, helping him pull Jenna's shirt tight across her stomach. Jack undid and unthreaded his belt, then tied it around Jenna. He had no idea whether he was doing the right thing. Rosemary, the healer, was looking the other way, and he hated her right then.

  “Who can help?” Jack asked. He wanted to shout, but he could hear voices coming from somewhere far away, or echoing from close by.

  “We need to get away,” Rosemary said. A helicopter buzzed overhead, streaking across the hotel. Another one was coming in from the distance, and Rosemary was actually pacing back and forth. “Now!” she said. “We have to leave now! They'll be bringing reinforcements, and we'll never get away in one piece if that happens.”

  “One piece?” Sparky said, spittle hanging from his chin.

  Rosemary looked down at Jenna. “She can still be helped,” she said. “Trust me. If that wasn't the case, I'd be telling you to leave her where she is.”

  Between them, Jack and Sparky lifted the wounded girl. Mercifully she passed out, screaming herself into unconsciousness as Rosemary led the way along a narrow alley stinking of rot and filth, across a narrow street, and through a park where people had once sat to have lunch but which now was home to a band of noisy, angry monkeys.

  The deeper they went into the Toxic City, the more Jack doubted they would ever find their way out again.

  …although it's clear that this is a disaster the likes of which has never been seen before. London is effectively isolated, with no traffic entering or leaving. Reports of the death toll vary wildly, from a few hundred admitted by the British government, to several hundred thousand suggested by independent sources. A promised statement by the British prime minister has yet to materialize, and the questions have to be asked: What of the terrorists? Is the prime minister even still alive? And if he is, why has he not yet spoken to his people? In this time of global communication, it seems incredible that so little is being shared.

  —CNN: Tragedy in London, 3:35 a.m. EST, July 29, 2019

  Lucy-Anne had forgotten her own name. But she knew the name of her brother.

  “Andrew,” she muttered as he ran north. The word worked like a talisman, parting the air before her and thickening it behind, drawing her ever-forward towards its owner. “Andrew,” she said, and London heard the name. Thousands of fat pigeons watched her go by, and a parade of cats paused in the middle of a wide, vehicle-strewn road to sit and observe this strange sight.

  The sounds behind her had ceased. Everything behind her had ended, because that was a place far in the past. Even her nightmare of dead parents…a memory, fading like a photograph left out in the sun.

  Forward was the only place that existed now.

  Your brother is alive north of here, she heard. She could not remember the voice or who owned it, but the words were her fuel. She would need food and water soon—her throat was parched, her sight blurry—but while there was still daylight in the sky, she could not waste any time.

  She passed a place where a battle had taken place. Several trucks had been parked in a rough square, and their bodywork was pocked with hundreds of bullet holes. A couple of the trucks had burned, and their pale grey skeletons had rusted. Birds sat on the twisted metal, and something large moved ponderously in the cab of one of the unburned vehicles. She had no reason to stop and see what it was, because it was not her brother.

  “Andrew,” she gasped, and the word drew her on.

  With every step, she lost more of herself. And every step made her past seem like a darker, older place.

  They followed Rosemary, carrying the wounded girl between them. Jenna was in and out of consciousness, groaning, moaning from the pain. Jack wanted to check on her wound, but he feared that if they stopped they would never get going again. The strength had been knocked from them. Sparky looked beaten and pale, tired and shocked. Jack thought he seemed smaller than before, as though confirmation of his loss and what they had been through had lessened him somehow.

  “Sparky,” he kept saying, just to hear his friend's name and hoping to see the familiar confident, cheeky smile in response. But Sparky's reply was always slow, and weaker by the minute.

  Emily walked beside Rosemary. She seemed to be handling things better than any of them.

  They dodged from street to alley, square to park, and with every step they took the sounds of conflict receded. At one po
int they passed an area that seemed to have been flattened by bombing, and Jack asked Rosemary whether what had just happened was a regular occurrence.

  “London suffers,” is all she offered in response. “We're almost there.” She went ahead, carrying the gun awkwardly and approaching the front door of an innocuous house in an unremarkable street. She lifted a plant pot containing the skeletal remains of a rose bush, picked up a key and opened the door.

  “Is this where he lives?” Jack asked.

  “I need to go and fetch him, and I'll be faster on my own.” She glanced at Jenna. “And you two can't carry her much further. She's losing a lot of blood.”

  They went inside. The living room had a wide window looking out onto the wild back garden, and they laid Jenna on the sofa. She stirred, groaned, and then relaxed again. Her face was pale and sweat soaked her hair into thick, dark strands.

  “Pain killers in the kitchen cupboard,” Rosemary said. “Don't unlock the front door to anyone but me. If there's a knock, or any sign of the Choppers, get out the back door and run as fast as you can. Key's in the lock. There's a gate at the bottom of the garden, and—”

  “We can't run anywhere with her,” Sparky said.

  “No, you can't.” Rosemary looked grim, and Sparky stepped forward, about to vent his fury. Jack was pleased to see the old Sparky back again.

  “We're not going anywhere,” Jack said. “Just find this person you say can help.”

  “His name's Ruben,” Rosemary said. “And I'll be back with him soon.” She left the room and strode for the front door, gun slung over one shoulder like a novelty handbag. Jack followed her and grabbed her arm.

  “The Superiors,” he said. “My mother. My father. You need to tell me now.”

  “There's no time.”

  “Please!”

  She was holding the front door handle, ready to open it and go out into this dangerous new world once again. She looked exhausted.

  “What if you're caught?” he asked. “What if you're killed?”

  “I can't explain everything right now, Jack, and if I tell you some of it, you'll want it all.”

  “They're alive,” he said, a statement more than a question.

  “Yes. Your mother's a healer, similar to me.” She smiled. “I know her well. She lives in a makeshift hospital deep in an old Tube station. Susan's a good woman, Jack, and she talks about you and Emily so much that…I almost feel as if I've known you forever.”

  He closed his eyes and tried to recall a memory of his mother from before Doomsday. But he could not. He could only imagine her thin and pale, wasted and in despair, that tatty photograph in his back pocket come to life.

  “And Reaper?” he said, looking at Rosemary again. “My father?”

  “Your father,” she nodded. “Jack—”

  “Please, just tell me the basics.” He kept his voice down because he did not want Emily hearing any painful truths, not yet. Not so soon after seeing people killed. And not from anyone but him.

  “The Superiors are Irregulars who have utterly embraced their powers.” Rosemary sighed. “They shun everyone else, spurn humanity, and see themselves as the future. They set themselves apart. As you've seen, they can be brutal, and they're driven. There are those who say they have plans—escape, domination, control—but that their powers haven't yet developed enough to implement them.” She looked down at her feet.

  “And?”

  “And Reaper is their leader.”

  Leader? He blinked, trying to imagine his father—softly spoken, tall, and loving—resembling Puppeteer in manner or intent. “What can he do?”

  “He kills people with his voice.”

  “He's killed people? What does—”

  “I told you there's no time right now! Jenna needs help, and soon. Let me go, Jack. Please.”

  He lowered his head. Without another word, and without a backward glance, Rosemary left. Jack wondered what she felt most: guilt, or relief.

  Back in the living room, Emily and Sparky glanced up when he entered, and perhaps they read something else in his grave expression.

  “Is Jenna going to die?” Emily asked.

  “No!” Sparky said, and he had truly returned, Jack's angry, wonderful friend. “No, she isn't! Not on my bloody watch.” He sat next to Jenna on the sofa and took her hand. “You die, you'll have me to answer to.” Only death would make him let go.

  Jack shook his head. “Rosemary's going to do her best,” he said. And though there was so much more to tell, he did not have the energy to do so right then.

  “I'm hungry,” Emily said, and Jack realised that he was as well. However ridiculous that it may have seemed after what they had been through, and what they had seen, hunger gnawed at his stomach. He looked at Jenna's constant pained movements, her blood, her pale face, and he left the room to find the kitchen.

  Jack felt dizzy. He leaned against the worktop and pressed his hands to the surface, casting prints in dust. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and tried to see past what had happened. But all he could see was red. It's much worse than we ever thought it could be, he thought. So much worse.

  “Is it a war?” Emily said quietly. She'd crept in behind him, and Jack turned and hugged her to him, resting his chin on top of her head.

  “I think so,” he said. “And I'm not sure anymore that we've done the right thing. Jenna might be…” He gasped, unable to say the word. “And Lucy-Anne's gone, none of us know where, none of us have any idea what's happened to her, who's got her, where she is…” He cursed, and this time it was Emily's turn to hold him. “I just can't believe it's all gone so bad like this!” he growled, and every word hammered the guilt deeper.

  “It's not your fault,” Emily said. “It's their fault.” Them, they, their, he and his friends had used those words so much to signify the devious government and military that perpetuated the myth of a dead, toxic London, and Jack had never been sure that Emily knew exactly who or what they were. Now he was sure, and he felt ashamed at ever doubting her.

  “I don't want any more people to die,” he said.

  “Mum and Dad?” Emily asked quietly.

  “They're alive, Emily.”

  She pulled back and looked him in the eye, picking up on his hesitation. “Rosemary told you?”

  “Yeah. Mum's a healer, like her.”

  “And Dad?” she asked, his beautiful little sister, wide-eyed and confused.

  “Alive, but she doesn't know him.” He couldn't tell her yet. There was so much he didn't even know himself.

  “Then that's good, isn't it?”

  “Yeah, Ems, it's good.”

  “Don't call me Ems, Tobes.”

  “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

  Emily hugged him again, and they stood together in the kitchen of a dead stranger's house.

  They looked around for some food, but there was nothing here to eat. If Rosemary and some of her friends used this as a safe house, they certainly didn't keep it stocked. They did find some bottled water, however, and they all swigged down most of a bottle each. Sparky gently lifted Jenna's head, while Emily poured some into her mouth, but it dribbled out when she winced in pain, soaking her neck and the sofa beneath her.

  “We can't let this happen,” Sparky said. “It's not fair.”

  “Rosemary will do her best,” Jack said.

  “We need to do our best, too. We've lost Lucy-Anne, Jack. We just let her go, get lost, and we left her back there.”

  “We didn't have a choice.” He could see that Sparky understood, but Jack felt impotent and helpless. “You do know that, don't you? We could have—”

  “She could be dead, Jack.”

  “We could have all been killed in there, and no one would ever know.”

  “Yeah,” Sparky sighed. “No one's ever going to know about Stephen. How he died, where. Why. Even Mum and Dad won't give a shit, if I ever get out and manage to tell them. They won't believe me, or they won't care. He died much longer ago for
them than for me.”

  “He knew you were a good brother, mate.”

  “You think so?”

  “Definitely.” Jack sat in an armchair across from the sofa, looking at their dying friend.

  “She won't be long,” Emily said.

  “She can't be.” Sparky was still holding Jenna's hand.

  They waited for three hours, and every minute was a lifetime. Jack and Emily used some of the bottled water to wash as best they could, but Sparky refused to leave Jenna's side. She woke up a few times, but she would sweat and moan and cry out, and they were all glad when the pain took her into unconsciousness again. It was better for her, and easier for them.

  Jack was desperate to change his jeans. They were soaked with blood—Gordon's, Lucy-Anne's, and his own—and though mostly dried, he could still smell it. He rooted around upstairs and found a pair of jeans, dusty but whole, that were only one size too large for him. And it was while he was changing that he suddenly remembered the photograph.

  It was soaked. Stained. Beyond repair. He wiped it, licking his fingers and smearing the blood across its surface, dabbing it on old bedding, but his mother's image was marked forever. He hoped it was not an omen.

  He slid the photo into the rump pocket of his new jeans and went back downstairs.

  They talked about Lucy-Anne. Jack was struck with guilt for leaving her behind, but they all agreed that they'd had no real choice. Events had carried them along. They discussed what could have happened to her, and perhaps with Jenna as she was they found it necessary to be honest with each other, and themselves. Maybe she was caught, Sparky said. She might be dead, Emily whispered. Jack nodded at them both, remembering the sounds of chaos and conflict echoing from the hotel even as they fled. And what he had heard the Chopper, Miller, saying to his soldiers gave him little hope.

  When they heard the front door opening and the sounds of people entering, carefully and cautiously, Jack leapt for the living room door, ready to slam it in the intruders’ faces.

  “It's me,” Rosemary said, and Jack slumped with relief.

  She entered the room with a short fat man, his face resembling a nervous rat's. His skin was slick with sweat, and he stared around at them as though they were exhibits, not people. His gazed rested on Jenna, and without a word he sat on the sofa beside her and gently lifted her hands from her wound.