by Tim Lebbon
“Don’t they give you away?” she asked.
“Most keep their distance until I need them.”
“Most?”
Rook nodded up at the birds circling high overhead. “Some become so…obsessed that I can’t shake them.”
“Obsessed with you?”
Rook smiled. It was the dangerous and deadly face she had first seen, and somehow it comforted her more than the Rook mourning his lost brother. It made her feel safer.
They moved cautiously but quickly along the Thames’s south bank, passing the National Theatre. Hills of litter had blown against its walls and slumped there, dampened and hardened again into a permanent addition to the building. Windows were smashed. Lucy-Anne had no wish to see what might be inside.
She wondered where her friends were now. Rook had told her they had not been caught by the Choppers, knowledge presumably imparted to him by his birds. She hoped they had escaped London. But at the same time she realised that was unlikely, because Jack would never leave without his mother and Emily. A pang of guilt hit Lucy-Anne again, the same guilt that had plagued her on and off since she’d met Rook and realised that she had abandoned her friends back in that hotel.
She’d been mad, for a time. Driven to distraction by the sudden news of her parents’ demise. She should have controlled herself and borne the news better, but after two years of hope, and loneliness, and their journey into London with fresh hope drawing them all the way in, the information had been just too shattering. Somehow in her madness she had managed to sneak out of the hotel while the Choppers had been infiltrating it, and then out into the streets of London, shouting and raging at the unfairness of it all until Rook had found her. Even now she felt the dregs of that madness at the edges of her perception, and it was being nurtured by the new, terrible dreams she was experiencing. She had dreamed of Rook, and he had dreamed of her, and however much she tried to deny it she could not escape this fact.
I’m not special! she had thought, again and again. But Rook called her pure, just like his dead brother, possessing an ability unconnected to what had happened to toxic London. And in truth, she’d always known there was something different about her.
When she was younger, she had experienced frequent moments of what her parents had called déjà vu. Mummy, this has happened before…you picking up the phone, Daddy walking in the door, next door’s dog running across the road…
Déjà vu which, over time, Lucy-Anne had come to realise were dreams relived. It had troubled her little, because they had rarely concerned anything important—a phone call, a running dog. Perhaps exposed to such wonders in London, her talent was now somehow given free rein. Allowed to grow.
As for her friends…Her madness had given way to determination—to find Andrew—and hate it though she did, that meant that her friends were not her top priority. They would look after themselves.
“And when I’ve found Andrew, I’ll go back to them,” she said. Rook glanced back at her, but she did not elaborate. Whether he’d heard or not, he did not pass comment.
He paused by a set of stone steps, head tilted as if listening. Then he nodded and climbed, and Lucy-Anne followed. As they started crossing the long bridge spanning the Thames, Lucy-Anne could not figure out why so many people had discarded their clothes here, leaving them in rumpled piles that all seemed to trail away from a common point. Then she saw the first flash of white, and the first spread of damp dirty hair, and realised her mistake.
There must have been a hundred bodies on the bridge. They had all been running north when they fell, and some even had their arms stretched out as if to grasp the northern shore. The breeze lifted strands of hair and the flaps of rotting clothing. The corpses were mostly rotted away, leaving bones and shreds of dried skin behind.
Lucy-Anne found it sad more than shocking. So many husbands and mothers and brothers lay here, so many children, and all of them had left someone behind.
“It’s horrible,” she whispered. Rook seemed surprised, but said nothing.
They crossed the bridge, and until they reached the northern shore Lucy-Anne did not look along the river at all. She glanced at the bodies she passed, and the abandoned vehicles, and imagined what those bereaved believed about the deaths of their loved ones. At the beginning they had been told the truth about the explosion at the London Eye and the release of some unknown toxic agent. But very soon after that the lies had begun. Now they were told that London was filled with the dead and would not be habitable again for a thousand years.
London Eye, Lucy-Anne thought, and then leaned against the bridge’s parapet and stared along the river.
There it was. Perhaps she’d known since first stepping onto the bridge, and had been unwilling to look. But now she could see the remains of the great London Eye, the giant Ferris wheel that used to carry more than a million people annually, giving them a stunning view of London. Motionless now, the Eye was a sad echo of great, past times.
She fisted her hands, doing her best not to look away. It did not look familiar. That was a blessing, at least. In her dream, the Eye had been a mass of tumbled metal and shattered pods, but in reality it was surprisingly intact, bearing a scar towards the top where several pods had fallen away and some of the structure was bent and charred with fire.
“It’s not what I saw,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Rook asked.
“The Eye.” She suddenly had no wish to tell him about her dream of the woman and the explosion. It felt private.
“Where it all began,” he said. But he sounded uninterested, and a moment later she heard his footsteps retreating across the bridge.
Lucy-Anne looked the other way along the river, northeast towards St. Paul’s. She kept her eyes wide open until they started to sting. There was no flash, no mushroom cloud consuming London. She listened to Rook retreating across the bridge behind her, knew that he would wait, and no one else appeared.
For now, Nomad remained locked away in that strange dream.
A rook landed on the parapet close to her. She took a good look at the bird, breathing softly and feeling a strong sense of purpose. She was more settled than she had been since first undertaking their journey into London, because now she knew where she was going, and why.
“Come on, then,” she said to the bird. She turned to follow Rook and the bird took off, dipping low across the bridge and plucking a morsel from the gutter.
Rook was waiting at the end of the bridge, crouched low to the parapet and looking around. As she approached Lucy-Anne became more cautious, but there was no danger in his stance.
“So where are we going?” she asked.
“A museum.”
“Right. Cool.”
“We need to see someone.” He stood from his crouch, and suddenly seemed taller than he had before, darker. I have no idea who he is, Lucy-Anne thought, and for the first time since fleeing her friends at the hotel she was truly afraid for herself. There was no one else around. Rook could do whatever he wanted to her, here and now, and if she fought back, he had his birds to fight for him. She had dreamed of them attacking her. Not all dreams come true!
“Who do we need to see?”
“Oh, her name doesn’t matter. Come on.”
“My brother! Andrew! You said we’d be going north to find him, and—”
“North is a big place,” Rook said. “And if you think what you’ve seen so far is dangerous, and awful…well, get ready to have your eyes opened.”
Unsettled by this strange boy, and with her brief madness now diluting to allow true fear to settle, Lucy-Anne followed.
Rook led them inside the London Transport Museum, looking casual but alert, and he held an entrance door open long enough for a dozen rooks to drift in past him. They moved silent as shadows, echoing his caution.
The huge building was quiet and cavernous. Rook surprised Lucy-Anne by taking her hand and guiding her across a wide walkway, glancing back and putting a finger to his lips whe
n she tapped him on the shoulder. His grin troubled her. Not because it was frightening, but because it was…
It was beautiful. Her heart skipped a little. She was confused. But in truth, perhaps someone like Rook was what she had always wanted. Jack was sweet and sad and would always be one of her best friends. But he was not dangerous.
Lucy-Anne’s rebellious nature had only grown deeper after Doomsday, and Rook seemed to embody everything she had wished for.
A rook landed on the boy’s shoulder. He tilted his head and listened to its call.
“She’s still here,” he said. “Come on. Slowly. Stop when I tell you. Last time I came, she’d found a machine gun somewhere.”
Lucy-Anne, still full of questions, merely listened to what Rook said and let him lead her.
In the great display hall, they moved slowly between an array of old London buses until a shadow appeared in the doorway of one.
“You come back to taunt me again, you bastard?” the woman shouted. Her voice shocked the silence, and several rooks cried out and spiralled up into the high rafters. “I’ll shoot ’em! I’ll blast your birds from the sky, you freak!”
“Shoot away!” Rook said, and Lucy-Anne knew that he meant it. He seemed to have no love for the birds he was so close to. She’d seen him direct hundreds of them against a helicopter’s blades and engines, the resultant stew of blood, bone, and feather dropping the aircraft heavily to the ground. He’d done so without compunction, and with no sign of regret.
“Who’s that with you, bird boy?”
“A friend who needs your help.”
“Ha!” The woman stepped forward, and Lucy-Anne caught her first good look. She must have been fifty or sixty years old, short and thin, her hair bound with thousands of colourful beads. The gun in her hands looked ridiculously large. But she looked capable and confident, and nowhere near friendly.
“So…what can you do?” Lucy-Anne asked. Rook squeezed her hand hard, as if to say, Shut up! But the woman grimaced and raised the gun.
“Nothing for you Superior bastards,” she said.
“He’s not one of them,” Lucy-Anne said, ignoring another squeeze from Rook. “And neither am I. I’m from outside, and I’ve come into London to find my brother.”
“Outside,” the woman said. “Outside?” She raised her head and took in a deep, loud breath.
Lucy-Anne felt suddenly dizzy, leaning sideways against an old vehicle and blinking at stars bursting across her vision. In the distance she heard the woman saying something, and then hands grasped her beneath the armpits and she was lowered gently to the ground.
Don’t go don’t go, she thought, but then her vision darkened, and all sounds receded until they were little more than echoes.
She can smell blackberries, and she looks down at her hands, expecting the familiar purple stains from when she’d used to go blackberry picking when she was a little girl. That had been when Andrew was barely a teenager and her parents had loved them both equally. But her hands show no sign of berry juice, and the sun is scorching her scalp. It is still the height of summer, the wrong time for blackberries.
She cannot not see very far because of the bushes and trees. Her surroundings are wild and overgrown, yet there is a definite sense that this was once a maintained, ordered place. A large back garden, perhaps, or a park. There is a wooden bench subsumed beneath one wall of shrubs, and a spine of coiled wire splayed across the ground, once used to mark the edge of a planting bed.
Something swings down from one of the tall trees. It is a man, naked, smeared with some sort of dye, and wearing twigs and leaves in his hair. Plant fronds seem to turn towards him as if he is a new kind of sun. He swipes at her, she ducks, and then he is away through the branches.
A woman sniffs along the ground like a clothed dog. Her nails are incredibly long, and she squats by a tree and urinates. She glances up suddenly, growls, then lopes away.
Rook appears from the shadows and rushes towards her. She knows that he is in danger, she can sense it, yet when she raises a hand to warn him back he only waves. His birds flit around him. At the last moment she finds her voice, but what emerges is a name rather than a warning.
Nomad!
The ground crumples and Rook falls into a deep pit. She hears his cry, and knows as she rushes forward that he is already dead.
What she does not expect is the sight of what is eating him.
She screams—
—and jarred awake, sitting up, panting hard, hand fisted against her chest and feeling her heart’s terrified sprint.
“Calm down, calm down,” a woman’s voice said. It was loaded and distant.
Lucy-Anne was on the floor of an old bus, and in the seat beside her sat Rook. He only glanced at her as she caught her breath.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You fainted,” the woman said. “I took you in.” She was sitting on the stairs heading to the top deck, gun leaning against the wall beside her. She stared intently at Lucy-Anne.
“Took me in?” Lucy-Anne looked around, more to escape the woman’s gaze than out of curiosity. It took only a moment to ascertain that the woman lived here. One double seat was piled high with a ragged assortment of clothing, another with blankets and pillows. There were plastic bottles filled with water, tins of food, and farther along the bus she thought she saw a pile of stuffed toys peering over the metal railing of a seat’s back.
“Yeah,” the woman said. “Hey.”
Lucy-Anne looked back at her.
“You’re seventeen,” the woman said. “Looked after yourself since Doomsday. No virgin, but you haven’t loved for a while. Time of the month in…” she shrugged. “Six days.” Her eyes narrowed and she glanced aside, displaying the first sign of emotion. “You just found out your parents are dead.”
“And my brother’s alive!” Lucy-Anne said. “That’s why Rook brought me here, because you can help.”
“Somewhere to the north,” Rook said.
“Yes. The north. And you’ll not want to find him,” the woman said. “Better off dead. Ever heard that saying, girl? I think it all the time, but don’t have the fucking guts. Huh.”
“Lucy-Anne, meet the charming Sara.”
“I do want to find him!” Lucy-Anne said. “And if you know where he is you have to—”
“Have to nothing,” Sara said. She stood and climbed the stairs, disappearing quickly from sight.
“What is this?” Lucy-Anne asked.
“She can scent information,” Rook said.
“So she can sniff out Andrew?”
“I think she already did.”
Lucy-Anne stood and started up the stairs, ignoring Rook’s half-hearted attempt to call her back. He fell he was down the hole he wouldn’t listen when I called. On the top deck she paused and looked around in surprise.
Every seat was taken by a shop mannequin. They were all dressed, some extravagantly, others in jeans and tee shirts. She couldn’t help feeling every eye upon her.
“You met Nomad,” Sara said. She was sitting three seats along the bus, a plastic man beside her sporting a running top and waterproof coat.
“No,” Lucy-Anne said.
“Sounds like you did. Smells like you did.”
“Only in my dreams.”
“Hmph.” Sara looked her up and down. “You’re an odd one. That hair, those clothes. And from outside. I didn’t think…didn’t let myself believe that outside existed anymore. There’s just London, and death, and sometimes one becomes the other. Interchangeable. It’s not a nice place.”
“Tell me about it,” Lucy-Anne said. And when Sara seemed to take that as a cue to talk, she did not interrupt.
“He is to the north. Hampstead Heath, or whatever it’s called now. But, girl…that’s a dead place. You think London’s bad, that’s somewhere else. Removed by what it’s become.” She nodded at the stairs. “Even those so-called Superiors don’t venture there. It’s a no-go place, and if you go there, you’l
l die.”
“What’s there?”
“Bad people, hungry and cruel.”
“I’m going anyway.”
Sara watched her, suddenly growing immensely sad. “I had a daughter, few years older than you. She’d moved away a couple of years before Doomsday, we’d had a row, hadn’t talked in over a year. I wonder…” She stared into space, then turned to look at the mannequin beside her. Perhaps she talked to them. Maybe they were her family now.
Unable to think of anything comforting to say, Lucy-Anne descended the stairs to find Rook still sitting where she’d left him.
“Hampstead Heath,” she said, and his dark expression only echoed what Sara had said. Lucy-Anne didn’t care. She was going, and she knew that Rook was intrigued enough to accompany her.
She tried to forget seeing him fall. Not all dreams come true.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRISONERS
As soon as Jenna could not open the door, Jack knew that they were in trouble.
“Now what?” Sparky said. He stood and rattled at the handle, as if his own strength could undo it when Jenna’s could not.
“It’s locked, Dumbo,” Jenna said.
“Yeah? Watch this.” Sparky took two steps back and braced himself, ready to shoulder-bash the door and probably break a bone in the process.
“Sparky!” Jack said. His friend paused, then relaxed.
“They’ve probably got a guard out there,” Jenna said.
“So what the hell’s going on?” Sparky asked.
“Me,” Jack said. “Breezer wants to see what’s happening to me.”
“And what is?” Jenna asked softly.
“A change,” Jack said. He searched for something else to say, to explain, but he could not. Tears threatened. “I’m really scared, guys.”
“Still a pussy,” Sparky said. But he clapped Jack on the shoulder, then ruffled his hair like a parent comforting a kid.
