by Tim Lebbon
He tried not to think too much about what he was doing. He was aware that he was shaking—and that his friends were holding his hands tightly, unable to help but keen to show they were there—and he could feel the immensity of the power he was tapping into. In his mind’s eye he orbited the giant star of this ability, drawing dregs away for himself and all the while wondering what would happen if he plummeted inside.
“Wait!” a Chopper shouted, and Jack swayed where he knelt, his vision clearing, expecting to see a machine-gun barrel swinging his way and lining up on his face.
Something yowled along the alley and a shape scampered up a wall, leaping from sill to sill, back and forth across the alley as it gained height.
“Bloody cat!” a woman’s voice said. “Scared the crap out of me, almost shot—”
“Quiet!” someone hissed. “They might be nearby.”
The Choppers advanced, leaving two of their number at the alley’s entrance facing outward. Their fear was obvious, and Jack tried to put himself in their shoes—hunting strange people with powers they could not understand, and some of whom only wanted every Chopper dead. It was a war like no other. But Jack could not stretch to feeling sorry for them. Not after everything he’d heard about what they did.
And not now that they had his mother and sister.
He glanced up and back at Fleeter, and in her eyes he saw a glimpse of what he had been feeling. She looked down at him and raised her eyebrows. But he shook his head and relaxed down again, concentrating, knowing that soon they would be able to get away.
Murder could not be the answer. The more fighting and deaths, the harder it would be to set aside arms and rein in powers when the time came. The fighting had begun because people had changed, and it would only stop if everyone was able to change some more.
They waited there for ten more minutes, until the Choppers realised that they’d lost their quarry and ran back along the alley. The soldiers bickered and swore at each other, and a couple of them laughed. Jack knew they were venting, and perhaps also relieved that they’d lost their targets. Their comrades lying dead back at the crossroads were testament to what another contact might bring.
Fleeter moved away from Jack, and as he relaxed and breathed himself back to normal, she disappeared in a blur, air smashing in to fill the void where she had been standing.
“Who the hell is she?” Sparky asked.
“Fleeter. Reaper sent her to watch over us.”
“Your father?” Jenna said. “Why?”
Jack shrugged. “Don’t know. She might be watching us now, though. She can take herself out of phase with everyone else. Speed up, so that everything’s slowed down. She’ll be to the end of the street and back again while we can blink.”
“And now you can do it too,” Sparky said.
“Yeah.” Jack nodded, looked at his friends, and released their hands. They did not comment or back away, but he could still sense that strange distance between them. It made him incredibly sad.
“So what’s it like?” Sparky asked. Jack was so grateful to his friend for even asking, but before he could respond Fleeter was back. With a clap! she appeared before them, litter and dust swirling from the displaced air.
“They’re gathering their dead and leaving,” she said. She was a stern woman, her features seemingly sculpted rather than grown, and Jack could not help wondering who and what she had been. The short dress seemed incongruous on this woman; this killer.
“So now what?” Jenna asked.
Fleeter raised her eyebrows, looking at Jenna and Sparky properly for the first time. Then she stared at Jack again, and he could see confusion bubbling beneath her outward confidence.
“Now you take me to Reaper,” Jack said.
“What?” Fleeter said.
“Reaper. My father. You take us to him.” Jack stood, remaining close to his friends. “I’m sure he’ll want to see me. He sent you to watch over me, after all.”
Fleeter started glancing away, as if unable to hold Jack’s gaze. She’s scared of me, he thought. And though that idea did not sit comfortably with him—he had no desire to instil fear in anyone—he also knew that it might help.
“Thanks for saving us,” Jenna said. “They’d have probably killed us and taken Jack.”
“Probably,” Fleeter said. “He’s special. You’re not.”
“Everyone’s special,” Jenna said.
“I’m not,” Sparky said, trying to joke. But no one smiled.
“We’ve seen horrible things since we came into the city,” Jenna went on. “The stuff the Choppers do to Irregulars, and sometimes people like you. People who call themselves Superior. And we’ve seen what you do to the Choppers, too.”
“They deserve it!” Fleeter said.
“After what they did to my father, I shouldn’t argue,” Jenna said. She nodded at Fleeter’s questioning glance. “This reaches way beyond what’s left of London.”
“I don’t care about anything beyond,” Fleeter said. “That no longer exists.” She moved away from them all slightly, standing close to the alley entrance and leaning to look out along the street.
“Then you’re blinkered and stupid,” Jenna said. “You must know this can’t all go on forever.”
“The more they send, the more we kill,” Fleeter said.
“And what about the illness killing people even now?” Jenna asked.
“We’ll find a cure.”
“No,” Jenna said. “There won’t be a cure. Not from in here, at least. What were you? A solicitor? A reporter? Checkout girl?”
“What I was before doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does!” Jenna said. “You might be able to skip here and there without anyone seeing, and…and slit people’s throats before them even knowing. But you’re no doctor or scientist. No one will cure what’s killing people like you until London is exposed, and outside help comes in.”
“People like me?” Fleeter asked, and for a moment she seemed furious. But then she calmed as quickly as she had become enraged, and looked down at her feet.
“Are you sick?” Jenna asked softly.
“No. Not yet. But…”
“But?” Jack asked.
“There are those amongst the Superiors who believe it’s a blight introduced by Miller and his people. To kill us all. Finally turn London toxic for good.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Jack said. They all remained silent for a while, and in the distance they heard motors retreating into the city.
“No,” Jenna said. “No surprise at all. But it’s dooming something wonderful to an early end.”
“Reaper won’t let it happen,” Fleeter said.
“Reaper used to be my father,” Jack said. “He worked in an office, liked banana sandwiches, watched motor-racing on a Sunday afternoon. He went running lots, and my mother never really understood that. He said it was a better mid-life crisis than having an affair. He collected Star Wars figures. Didn’t like milk in his coffee. I saw him crying once when we were watching ET.”
Fleeter went to speak, but said nothing. She shook her head.
“Reaper can’t save you all,” Jack said. “But I’m beginning to think I can. Now take us to him.”
Fleeter turned her back on them. For a moment Jack thought she was going to wink out of existence again and leave them all behind, and he knew he would not follow. But then she walked slowly, cautiously out into the street.
Jack and his friends started to follow.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BLACKBERRIES
“She was there. She was there!”
“I didn’t see anyone,” Rook said.
“There, in that open doorway, watching me!” Lucy-Anne pointed at the building she had only ducked into before realising it was empty and lifeless. She had not been afraid to continue inside, but she had been certain that to do so would be pointless. The woman was already gone.
“Nomad,” Lucy-Anne said. “That’s who she is. The wand
erer. The ghost of London.”
“Nomad’s a myth,” Rook said.
“And what do you think you are to everyone outside?”
Rook looked troubled. He glanced between Lucy-Anne and the empty building, and she could see that he believed what he said—he’d seen no one there, and to him, Nomad was a myth.
“We should get going,” he said. “Dusk soon. Good time to get into the north.”
“There’s a boundary?” Lucy-Anne asked.
“Only in your head.” Rook set off and Lucy-Anne followed, but she paused to glance back several times at the open doorway. The place had once been a hotel, and she wondered how many rooms with closed doors still housed the rotten remains of the dead. Amongst them had walked Nomad, seeking a place from which she could observe Lucy-Anne.
She’s there in my dreams, and now I’m seeing her for real.
Rook took them through the back end of London—hidden places, alleys and areas that only people who knew they were there would be able to find. Some of them wound behind rows of houses, paths overgrown with rose bushes gone wild and clematis given free rein now that there was no-one there to trim it. Other narrow, cobbled roads seemed to be left over from a much older London emerged from hiding, and if it weren’t for the dusty vehicles sitting on flattened tyres, Lucy-Anne might have believed they had gone back in time.
In some places there were bodies. Shrivelled, dried remnants, or gnawed bones scattered by carrion creatures. Lucy-Anne was surprised how quickly the shock faded.
Dusk settled quickly across these hidden places. Shadows seemed to stretch out from where they had been resting during the day, washing across the ground, climbing walls, enveloping everything and striving to hide things from view. Lucy-Anne felt safe with Rook, and she could still see and sometimes hear his birds following them above, or flitting from roof to roof around them. But that did not prevent her from being unsettled as night approached.
Going north made the darkness deeper.
As Rook led the way, Lucy-Anne noticed something of a change come over him. At first she thought perhaps it was the failing light that seemed to bleed some of his confidence. But he moved slower, more cautiously, until he stopped at the end of an alleyway leading out onto a wide shopping street. He stood facing away from her with his arm held out, and a rook shadowed down and landed on his upturned wrist.
The bird was silent, head jerking left and right and looking everywhere but at Rook.
“What is it?” Lucy-Anne asked.
“I’m afraid,” Rook said. As he spoke the bird gave a caw-caw! and flapped its wings, but remained perched on his arm. Perhaps it was afraid as well.
The admission shocked Lucy-Anne. After she’d seen Rook in action with Reaper she’d viewed him in the same way. Despite his protestations, she saw him as a Superior, a person who considered themselves as more than human, and better.
“Afraid?” she asked.
“I can be, you know,” he said.
“I know, but…”
“Can’t you sense it?” he asked, turning around to face her. The bird watched her, dark eyes inscrutable.
She tried to feel what he was feeling, sniffing the air, listening for anything out of the ordinary, and then closing her eyes. But she felt only what she had ever since entering London—dislocation, and an idea that she could never belong here at all.
“It’s wild!” Rook said. He was speaking quietly, glancing about as he did so. Afraid of being watched. “I’ve only ever been this far north once before, and I turned back and ran. Got lost south of the river, and it felt like going home. Back to my mother’s womb. Safe.”
“What’s so terrible about it?”
“London changed, but this part changed more than anywhere. It’s a different place now. Those left behind here don’t even pretend to be what they were before.”
“And everyone else does?” she asked doubtfully.
“Even Reaper admits to being human.”
She glanced past him into the deserted street, lit only by the faint glow of dusk and the rising moon. “Then what about people here?”
“Like I said. Wild. Just…” He reached out and touched her, and it was like a feather across her cheek. “Just be warned.”
“But you’ll protect me,” she said. “You know how.”
“I know how to try.”
“I have no choice,” Lucy-Anne said. “My brother’s out there somewhere. That’s all I am now. Searching for him defines me.”
Rook nodded once, then glanced away. “Follow me,” he said. “We’ll cut across the street, then through some gardens. Then there’s a wide road, and we’re in Regent’s Park.”
“And why are we going there?”
“It’ll probably be quicker passing through the park than along streets.”
“And safer?”
“Didn’t say that.”
The enormity of their task, always at the back of Lucy-Anne’s mind, came to the fore then. Andrew was a needle in a haystack, a pebble on a beach. And now that they were heading into the wilder north of London, the haystack and beach were more dangerous than ever.
There were six corpses propped against the wall at the edge of the park. Each had a small fire lit in its lap, their arms had been interlocked in a grotesque mockery of dancing, and their heads and shoulders were encased in silvery-grey webbing. They were naked apart from their shoes. That’s what Lucy-Anne noticed first, before the rest of the horror. That they all wore shoes.
“What’s this?” she whispered. Rook squatted beside her in the shelter of a bus stop, two of his birds on the ground beside him. A third bird drifted in through the dark and settled on his shoulder, and he tilted his head.
“Don’t know,” he said, answering her at last. “There’ll be plenty we can’t explain. But the coast is clear.” He went to stand, and Lucy-Anne grabbed his arm.
“Clear?” she asked. She did not want to see the bodies, yet that was the only thing she could look at. She wondered if they were Choppers. “Clear?”
“So my birds tell me,” Rook said. “And I trust them. Come on.”
They crossed diagonally across the street, moving away from the bodies with the fires in their laps and towards the hulking shadow of an open park gate. If they were a warning, Lucy-Anne’s every atom told her to take heed. But her mind drove her on towards Andrew.
The smell of burning flesh accompanied them into the park, and she wondered how often this warning was replaced. And as she and Rook passed through the wide gates and onto the first of the curving footpaths, she froze in shock.
Empty, dead London was an unnatural place. Once home to endless bustle, with streets awash with life and millions of separate stories every day, and squares echoing to birdsong and the lilts of a hundred languages, the new silence of the toxic city was alien and unnatural. Before she left for good, Lucy-Anne had once remained behind in school on a dare, hiding until the caretakers locked her in, emerging into darkness, prowling the corridors and classrooms with every intention of performing small acts of rebellion and graffiti. But she had found the place so disconcerting—silence where once was life; breathlessness where echoes should live—that she’d smashed a window to escape.
London felt like that now.
But the park was worse.
They didn’t have to go too far in before they heard the calls and hoots, the whistles and moans. It sounded like Lucy-Anne imagined a jungle would sound at night, except…different. There was an intelligence to some of these calls that sent a shiver down her spine. Strange smells assailed her nostrils, and when she tried breathing through her mouth she tasted something acidic and damp on the air. In the weak moonlight, shadows danced beneath trees seemingly in defiance of the motionless canopies. Wide swathes of lawn had grown into seas of long grasses. Things moved in there.
The sheer wilderness of the place was overwhelming, and Lucy-Anne kept close to Rook.
“Can’t we go around?” she whispered.
�
��You saw what awaited us out there,” he said. “We’re in the north now. The streets around here…” He shrugged but said no more.
“You’ve sent your rooks to see?” she asked. Rook did not reply. He seemed unsettled, tense, so she did not force the issue. Her one desire became to make it through the park and out the other side.
The path they followed soon vanished beneath a spread of tough grass, and Rook grabbed her hand and pulled her towards a wall of darkness beneath a copse of trees. Lucy-Anne did not want to go that way—she felt like a child afraid of the dark—but Rook’s birds swooped in and away again, one landing on his shoulder as soon as another took off. She could only assume that they were imparting information and telling him whether it was safe. Her life was in his hands.
She had not willingly been totally dependent on another person for a very long time.
As they approached the trees Lucy-Anne saw the first shadow moving down amongst the boles. It darted from tree to tree through the shadows, seemingly merging with one trunk before skitting across to the next.
Calls and cries came from across the park, but the copse before them had fallen silent.
Rook paused, head on one side and a rook cawing on his shoulder. “You’ll see strange things,” he said, then he walked on.
Lucy-Anne took a deep breath and followed. Something caressed her ear and she waved at it, expecting to find a drooping branch. But she touched nothing, and when she glanced up she saw a shadow lifting and dipping above her as it flapped its strong, silent wings. Other rooks hovered farther away. Protecting her.
The shape slinked out from behind the first of the trees, scampering through the grass and then standing upright on two legs to glare at them. It was a man, but his arms and legs were deformed and bent like a dog’s. At first she thought he was black, but then she spotted the pale patches of skin across his stomach and abdomen, and realised that he was mostly covered in a heavy, dark pelt. His face protruded, nose wide, wet nostrils opening and closing as he took in their scents.
He shouted at them, and it was a bark. It sounded pained.
“Don’t panic,” Rook said.
