I needed to get out of here. Now. Somehow, I’d have to find a way to stay sane while Rebecca was away, or I’d end up with a whole group of imaginary friends before long.
“Goodbye, Karen,” I muttered, quickly exiting the store. “I sincerely hope we never talk again.”
I’d never liked Karen anyway.
Chapter Thirteen
After…
London was silent. I’d only ever been here once before on a school trip, and I remembered being in awe of the gleaming, city landscape. It was a strange integration of old and new architecture, spanning the previous millennium to the present one. A thousand years of human ingenuity in one place, from gothic cathedrals to impossibly high skyscrapers. No matter which direction you looked in, the vista told a different historical story; often brutal, sometimes beautiful.
Various shades of green dominated the urban landscape now. Most of the buildings wore a covering of moss on the windows, along with a vast smattering of bird shite. Ivy had snaked its way into the city from the suburban gardens and quickly smothered the columns and lampposts. Sapling trees grew up through cracks in the concrete pavement while asphalt volcano-mounds littered the roads and pathways, spewing dandelions and all kinds of colorful wildflowers from their crumbling mouths.
We walked carefully, searching for signs that someone might’ve been here recently—something written somewhere, or the remnants of a campfire. Anything.
We passed by a designer clothing store with the entire glass shopfront smashed to smithereens, the tiny shards sparkling in the sun like diamonds. Judging by the tire marks on the pavement, a car had rammed it.
Nate inspected the debris and then stepped cautiously into the store. It’d definitely been looted at some point as the rails were sparse, if not entirely bare.
“Do you think this place got raided recently?” I asked.
He looked down at the floor and made a line in the thick dirt with his foot.
“Not sure,” he replied pensively.
Hope flickered within me.
We left the store and pressed on, finding a half-dozen more shopfronts in a similar state; another clothing store, a health food shop, a liquor store, a pharmacy, a sports shop, and a furniture store, all thoroughly cleared out. All the other establishments in the high street remained locked up and untouched.
“What do you think?”
Nate’s brows knit into a quizzical frown as he glanced up and down the road. “It looks like someone was stocking up,” he said, “For a group of people, I think, unless whoever did this was a compulsive hoarder.”
“Or a kleptomaniac.”
“Exactly,” he chuckled. “But the question is, when?”
Four years or four months ago? There was no way to know right now.
“We should get to higher ground,” he suggested. “Get a better view.”
It was nearly dark when we found a multi-story car park with a decent panoramic view of the city from the roof. By the time we climbed to the top, there was little to see without a light source. We’d have to wait till morning.
Deciding it was a good place to camp for the night, we laid out our sleeping bag in the back of an abandoned pick-up truck and stared up at the stars, tracing patterns out with our fingers, trying to remember the names of the constellations.
I found Canis Major and Orion’s Belt easily enough but couldn’t identify any others. “Where do you think the virus came from?” I asked Nate as I sketched out the shape of the celestial archer with my thumb.
Nate swiveled his head to look at me. “I don’t know. Why? You think it was from space?”
I laughed and shrugged my shoulders. “No. Maybe. I don’t think they ever said, did they?”
“No, they didn’t,” he answered. “It was all very mysterious. The outbreak pattern was unusual in itself—it happened in several major cities at the same time. Generally, these things start off in one place, not in cities separated by thousands of miles.”
“Meaning?”
“Biological weapon, maybe.”
“What else?” I asked.
He sighed. “A contaminated specimen of some kind. Passed from one research laboratory to another for analysis.”
His comment made me sit up. “Like a meteorite?”
“Could be anything. In recent years, we’ve gone deeper into the oceans, further into space than ever thought possible, and drilled down into the polar ice caps…the virus could’ve been hiding anywhere. Dormant. Undiscovered.”
I shivered, disliking the idea of the human race being wiped out by something that’d lived here all along, lurking under the surface and waiting to strike. And the possibility of it coming from space? It was all a bit too out there. Bioterrorism was a less fantastical pill to swallow.
“I’d bet on it being a biological weapon. Or an engineered plague designed to curb our relentless breeding habits. Only, it got out of hand.”
He raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Possibly, but the only people who know for sure are dead, so I guess it’s another one of those things we’ll never find the answer to.”
“I think we’re better off not knowing,” I said, laying back again.
Nate grinned. “As a pursuer of knowledge, I disagree.”
He patted the space next to him and beckoned for me to join him in the sleeping bag. I obliged, snuggling up to his body and resting my head on his chest. I’d gotten used to falling asleep with his steady heartbeat in my ear, drumming like a gentle lullaby.
He slid his arm around my waist and drew me even closer to him. “Sweet dreams,” he mumbled, kissing my temple.
“You too.”
But my dreams weren’t sweet at all.
I find myself back in the red wasteland again, walking along a path of lush, green grass. Everything else around me is covered in a thick layer of ash, falling like snow from a slate-colored sky. The path winds and twists across the desert, and I follow it until I see something up ahead; a lake. The water shimmers and sparkles as if sunlight shines onto its surface, but there is no sun in the sky here. When I look into the lake though, the reflection is beautiful. There is a bright blue sky dotted with bulbous white clouds above a blooming green field of flowers. I reach out and touch my own reflection, causing the water to distort in concentric circles and fan out across the whole lake.
“Halley…” I hear a voice which sounds like it’s coming from the lake, like the water can speak. It whispers again, but I struggle to make out the words.
River…the river…something…
Leaning closer, my ear presses lightly against the cool liquid.
River…
I don’t see the shadow looming beneath me in the water until it reaches out and grabs hold of my shoulders. It pulls me down into the lake, down…down…where the voice is louder.
Not one voice, but many. Thousands of whispers.
“Follow the river,” they say.
****
I woke, whimpering and gasping for air, only to find Nate leaning over me, stroking my face and softly calling my name.
“Just another bad dream,” he said soothingly.
I wiped the beads of sweat from my forehead. “Another?”
He shrugged and flicked on his torch. “You have them most nights, Halley.”
“I do? I don’t remember them.”
He nodded. “Probably for the best.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
He brushed a few tendrils of my hair away from my face and kissed me. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“Do you ever have nightmares?” I asked him.
Considering the things he’d witnessed, Nate had far more reason than me to have bad dreams.
“Used to,” he sighed. “Not so much now. I had this one recurring dream all the time—”
I blinked. “Wasn’t in the desert, was it?”
“No,” he answered, frowning. “It was always the same, though. I’d be in the cabin, and then I’d hear someone knocking on
the front door. I’d try and open it but I couldn’t. No matter how hard I tried, the door would never open. The windows too. I was always stuck inside, never able to reach the person on the outside.”
A chill snaked up my spine. “When I do remember my dreams, I’m always in a red desert and…it’s weird.”
“Weird how?”
I shrugged. “Like I’ve been there before.”
He tried to reassure me. “It’s just your brain trying to find meaning from random electrical signals fired off during R.E.M sleep.”
My uneasiness faded, and I grinned. “Is that the medical definition, doctor?”
“Not exactly,” Nate replied. “Actually, no one’s ever figured out the precise reason we dream.”
Another one of life’s mysteries that would never be solved.
I settled back down, letting him wrap his arms around me in a protective swaddle, and squeezed my eyes closed, hoping I’d fall back asleep quickly.
****
As if it was some kind of cosmic joke, we got up to a very foggy, very damp morning. The visibility from the top of the car park was practically zero, so we decided to walk further into the center of the city, toward Westminster.
If anywhere in London hosted a secret bunker, this was the most likely place. Under the houses of parliament maybe, where a select few government types had concealed themselves. Perhaps, the royal family were all down there too, feasting on out-of-date baked beans and washing them down with a bottle of vintage champagne.
The thought of it made me smile to myself, as far-fetched and unlikely as it was.
There probably wasn’t a bunker.
The Queen was probably long dead.
We were probably just indulging in a bit of post-apocalyptic sightseeing.
By the time we reached Tower Bridge, the fog had lifted a little, but the vapors of mist still draped over the stony turrets and embrasures of the towers, curling around the blue suspension arms and cables. The river Thames flowed serenely beneath its algae smothered foundations, sporadically disturbed by the splash of a fish tail.
We crossed the bridge and carried on, passing by each legendary building or monument and exploring them briefly before moving on.
“I really expected the queues to be longer,” Nate quipped, breaking a moment of prolonged silence.
Sometimes, his sense of humor was a little dark. I hid a snigger.
At midday, he used a net to catch a couple of trout. It didn’t take long as the Thames appeared to be teeming with them. We carried them to a nearby park where he lit a campfire under the long, drooping branches of a weeping willow. It provided good shelter from the fine drizzle in the air, and the ground was dry enough to sit on.
We immediately attracted the attention of a few hundred ducks that swarmed toward us and encircled our camp, waddling and quacking as they inspected us curiously. Still, they kept a safe distance away, though a few loners came a little too close to the fire once or twice, lured by the smell of fish.
“What I wouldn’t give for some plum sauce right now,” Nate said, eyeing a plump looking mallard.
“Poor things. Run!” I shooed the ducks away. “Save yourselves!”
Nate shook his head at me, laughing, and carried on grilling the fish.
“So,” I said, “When do we give up and go home?”
“To your aunt’s, you mean?”
It was at least four hundred kilometers back to the cottage. Getting there would take weeks.
How long had I been gone now? Two and a half months? I’d left Rebecca by herself for all that time. Not my fault. She could’ve come with me. In any case, a few months alone was nothing compared to the years Nate had spent by himself. Rebecca would be okay, although she’d be thoroughly pissed at me for being gone so long. Would she be happy I’d found Nate? I hoped so.
I nodded. “Yes, how long before we call it quits and head to Rebecca’s?”
He considered the question. “I don’t know. The city is a big place. A few more days, at least. Before we go, I’ll leave messages, just in case.”
“Good plan.”
“Maybe I should spray paint ‘Nate woz ere’ on the side of Buckingham Palace,” he snickered. “What do you think?”
I cracked up with laughter. “Go for it!”
He served the fish with a side of tinned ratatouille we’d looted earlier from a posh health food shop. The meal tasted good but wasn’t quite enough to sate my hunger, so I munched on a few packets of stale crisps throughout the remainder of the afternoon.
The night fell too soon, and as another day faded, so did my hope of finding other survivors. We camped out in the lobby of a museum, watched over by two dueling dinosaur skeletons, surrounded by fossil and bone displays from various eras throughout pre-history.
Nate found it quite wondrous and fired facts and anecdotes at me as he roamed around the exhibits, like my own personal tour guide.
Growing up in London, his parents brought him here often, until he grew out of his dinosaur obsession at thirteen and moved on to other pursuits—like girls, and death metal.
“When did you know you wanted to be a doctor?” I asked.
“When I was fourteen, my parents took me on holiday to the beach. It rained the entire time,” he laughed. “I went swimming anyway. Suddenly, I see this kid in the water. Drowning. I dragged her out of the water and performed CPR until she started breathing again. That’s when I knew.”
I looked at him in awe. “You wanted to save people.”
“Yes. Later, I became fascinated by the human brain. All the complexities of it. The hidden mysteries. The search for consciousness. I wanted to know everything there was to know—” he must’ve mistaken my enthralled expression for tedium because he abruptly ended his sentence and turned to me with a chuckle. “I’m boring you, aren’t I?”
“No,” I smiled. He really wasn’t. He spoke with such passion that I couldn’t help but find myself captivated. I also found his intelligence incredibly alluring—he could probably enchant me with any subject he chose to speak about; brains, dinosaurs…cucumbers. Whatever.
“What were you into as a kid?” he asked.
“I read a lot. I read everything I could.”
“Favorite book?”
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” I replied quickly. “It was my mum’s favorite book.”
He hooked his arms around my waist and maneuvered me over to a collection of gemstones. “You still don’t say much about her.”
“Sore subject,” I sighed, plucking a lump of smooth, waxy amber from its display stand and rolling it between my thumb and forefinger, surprised at how light it was. “I just find it hard to talk about her.”
Nate kissed the top of my head. “I get it. But it’s not good to keep things bottled up.”
“I know,” I replied, faking a yawn. “We should get some sleep.”
After lighting some candles, we pushed together two vinyl padded, wooden benches and laid down on them, our bodies interlocked inside our sleeping bag.
The ceiling in this room had been painted to resemble a prehistoric sunset, with a few terrifying-looking pterodactyls added in for dramatic effect. The flicker of the tea-light candles caused strange shapes to dance about on the walls, playing havoc with the shadows of the bony beasts around us. I must’ve fallen asleep watching the pseudo shadow-puppet show because the next thing I knew, Nate had shaken me awake.
Drowsy, I sat up. “Was I dreaming again?”
“No,” Nate whispered as he got up and grabbed his torch. All but one of the candles had burned out. “I heard something.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Like what? An animal?”
He stared down the long room to the revolving glass door that we’d come in through and then pulled his trainers on. He snuffed out the remaining flame, plunging the room into total darkness. “No. It sounded like voices. Human voices.”
The statement quickly roused me from my fuzzy-headed state. ‘What? Are you s
ure?’
We stayed perfectly still for the longest time, listening and waiting, before Nate sighed and switched his torch back on, shooting me an apologetic smile.
“Sorry,” he breathed, “But, I was sure I—"
Then, I heard it.
We both did.
A scream. A loud, human scream.
I quickly slipped my shoes on, my heart thumping hard, and went and stood by Nate, who’d already flung his rifle over his shoulder. We edged slowly over to the revolving doors, my hands anxiously kneading the fabric hem of Nate’s hoodie as he moved in front of me and flashed the torchlight out into the street.
There was nothing out there, only darkness.
It was raining hard now. A mixture of fear and anticipation welled in my chest.
Suddenly, a figure darted out from between two buildings. It ran in our direction until it became aware of the torchlight and then skidded to a halt.
It was a woman. I could just about make out the shape of her body before she fled down a side road.
“Wait!” I yelled, impulsively tearing after her.
“Halley! Stop!” Nate shouted as he ran to catch up with me. He caught my arm and stopped me just as I turned into the side road.
“We need to be careful,” he whispered.
He shone the torch down the street, from one side of the road to the other. There were a hundred different places to hide—in between parked cars or in shadowy doorways.
A loud clatter sounded a few streets away, like the sound of something heavy and metal hitting the ground hard. I thought I heard hushed voices too, but the wind was whistling just enough to convince me I’d conjured it in my head.
“Hello?” I called.
Nate instantly covered my mouth with his free hand and shot me a pleading look.
“We don’t know who—or what—is out here,” he muttered, barely audible.
He was right. I hadn’t thought it through before dashing off. Why had she screamed? What had scared her? Why was she running?
Nate lowered the torch and covered it with his hand, leaving a small amount of light leaking from it, just enough to see us safely into the dark arch doorway of a London-themed souvenir shop. He then turned it off, plunging us into such a void of darkness I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I clung tightly to him, his breathing just as fast as mine as we stood silently, listening. As the clouds moved above us, the thinnest slice of moonlight managed to brighten a portion of the dark street.
As the World Falls Down Page 16
