Contagion

^{CHAPTER ELEVEN} SIX

“Six hours,” Jack said. “We’d better hope this is all true.” It had not escaped him that they had put their futures in the hands of a ghost. And that they were following him, or it, to where he said the saviour of that future now hid.

“Yeah,” Sparky said. “We’d be hard pushed to get to a safe distance now, anyway.”

“Jack could,” Jenna said. There was no accusation in her voice at all, but Jack knew exactly what she was insinuating: that he could pass on a power to help them all escape.

And he was still fighting with that. He wasn’t sure exactly what delving into that bright red star of potential would do. He was fairly certain that he could bestow powers, though he was not sure how he could choose which ones to give, nor the control he’d have over them. But he also thought it likely that he would pass on the contagion itself, just as Nomad had to him. Even thinking about it planted the taste of her finger on his tongue. In him, the threat of contagion was a bright red promise, yet it was contained. If two people possessed it, that containment was no longer assured. And if he passed it on to all of his friends…

That red star could change the world, and Jack did not feel that he had any right to do so.

But would he let his friends die? If it came down to it and they were an hour away from the explosion, would he not touch them all, give them Fleeter’s power, and flee from London with them?

He wasn’t at all sure. He saw the way Lucy-Anne looked at Andrew’s wraith, and knew that there were some things worse than death. And if all went well, he would not even be faced with such a decision.

“We’re close,” Andrew said.

“Look,” Rhali said. She had been silent since crossing the river, almost ghostlike herself. Now she pointed along the road, and only then did Jack see the movement. Perhaps Rhali had sensed it for some time.

A group of three strange people were passing across the street, emerging from a narrow side-road and clambering over stalled cars. Creatures from the north.

They ducked down low.

“Rhali?” Jack whispered.

“They’re heading for the museum,” she said. “There are many more there already, and even more still travelling.” She frowned, her thin face pinched. “And there’s something else.”

“What else?” Sparky asked.

“Choppers,” Rhali said. “At least, I think they’re Choppers. They’re moving as I’m used to seeing them moving.”

“And how’s that?” Jack asked.

“Quickly.”

“Could be more of them,” Jenna said, nodding towards the shapes. A man loped like a wolf. A woman seemed to flow across the road, trailing gossamer limbs that barely touched the ground.

“So where’s this man?” Jack asked. No one answered, no one moved. “Andrew!”

The wraith turned its head, and Andrew’s ghost seemed to be dreaming.

“I said where’s the man who can stop all this?”

“His name’s Hayden,” Andrew said, pointing along the road at a multi-storey car park. “And I left him there, hiding.”

“Let’s hope he listened to you,” Jack said. “If he tried to move on alone, he’ll probably be dead.”

As it turned out, he had not listened.

They climbed the concrete staircase, and Andrew showed them the Range Rover where he’d told the man to wait. It was empty, doors open. There were no signs of violence, but neither was there any sign of Hayden. Wherever he’d gone, and why, he had left them no message.

“Shit!” Sparky said. “So now what?”

“Now we look for him,” Jack said.

“Something spooked him,” Sparky said. “This place sure as shit spooks me.”

Jack nodded in agreement. The car park was half-filled with cars, all of them left here two years ago by people who’d all expected to return.

“So where would he have run if he was spooked?” Jenna asked.

“Up,” Jack said. “Further away from the street.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Sparky said. He slapped Jenna’s butt and ran back towards the staircase door.

“We’ll take the other staircase!” Jack called after him, and Sparky waved over his shoulder. Jenna followed him. She looked scared as she smiled at Jack, and he knew why, because he felt it himself. I don’t like us being split up. Not this close to the end, whatever that end might be. He watched the door swing closed then led the way up a ramp towards the car park’s opposite corner. He didn’t want to miss Hayden by letting him slip down one staircase while they climbed another.

The car park was built on a series of split levels with wide up and down ramps at either end. Jack had been in scores of places like this with his parents, and as a kid he’d loved them, and had even had a model car park at home in which he stored his large collection of toy cars. He didn’t love this one. The parked cars were testament to lives ruined or lost, and now it had become a vertical maze in which their one last hope might be hiding.

But what if he isn’t? he thought. What if he fled an hour ago and is out there in the streets? Jack tried to shake the idea, but his imagination was running riot. Even though he hadn’t yet met Hayden, he saw him being chased along streets by misshapen people, their teeth bared, hunger giving them energy and pace. They would catch him and rip him apart. And somewhere in the mess of brain matter spattered across the dry gutter would die the memory of how to stop the bomb.

“Hurry!” he said to Rhali and Lucy-Anne. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry!” He barged through the door into the stairwell and started up, and then came to a sudden standstill. Rhali bumped into him.

“What?” she said, startled.

“The ramps,” Jack said. “Stupid of me! He could easily just slip down the car ramps while we’re trying to find him.”

“I’ll stay,” Rhali said. “I’ll wait on this level, and if I see him I’ll shout as loud as I can.”

“But what if—?” Jack began.

“I don’t think he’s a threat,” Andrew said. His voice was chilling. “He only wants to do what you want to do and stop the bomb.”

Jack didn’t like any of this, but could only nod in agreement. He watched Rhali walking back between the parked cars as the door swung closed, and he couldn’t help thinking that he would never see her again.

“This is so screwed,” Lucy-Anne said.

“Yeah. Tell me about it. Come on.”

Jack took the steps three at a time. Another staircase, another building, and he expected at any moment to be shot at or attacked, because it seemed that’s what his life had been since entering London. Nomad’s touch throbbed within him, manifested as that amazing, terrible red star, and it had made him the centre of things. None of them had wanted any of that. All of this had been forced upon them, and he felt a sudden rush of intense love and respect for his friends and the way they were handling everything. They could have walked away, but none of them had.

None of them would.

Four storeys, eight flights of stairs, and the stench of the stairwell brought an uncomfortable flash of familiarity—it stank of piss. Every car park staircase he’d ever been in seemed to smell the same, and for a disconcerting moment, before they emerged onto the car park’s open upper level, Jack thought perhaps everything was back to normal.

Then they emerged onto daylight, and awful reality came to the fore once more.

Two creatures from the north were attacking a car. They looked almost human apart from their limbs, which were black and shiny like a beetle’s. They were using them to score metal and pummel glass, and it looked as if they had been there for a while. The car was a mess. Jack thought they’d be inside within minutes, and whoever they were seeking would be finished.

“Hey!” Sparky called from across the car park, emerging from the stairwell on the other side. “Hey, uglies!”

“No, Sparky!” Jack shouted.

The creatures both jumped on the car and watched, back to back, limbs raised in front of them in a defensive gesture.

“Hayden,” Andrew said, and Jack had already seen the pale face at the car’s rear window.

Jack ran. Sparky’s shout had been brave but foolhardy; if they went after Sparky, he and Jenna had nothing to protect themselves with. This was all up to Jack.

He delved deep as he ran, but he already knew that these things were beyond his ken. They had evolved physically, a painful, shattering change that had left most of them half-mad from the continuing agonies, and raging. Even if he could find and touch the ability to do the same, he would not. He thought perhaps that darkest part of his universe—beyond the stars, way out past everything he knew and many talents he did not yet know—was the infinity of their pain, and he had no wish to go there at all.

But perhaps he could communicate with them. Along with their monstrousness came a high level of intelligence, and if he could appeal to that, maybe this would not have to end in more violence and death.

He paused a few steps from the car and nodded at Hayden, trying to communicate a sense of calm. The man looked terrified, and Jack could not blame him. The things resembled humans in form, but the resemblance stopped there. Their eyes were dark and shiny. Faces were slick, skin smooth and featureless. They exuded no personality, and looking at them was distinctly unsettling. But Jack did his best not to look away.

“The man in the car is precious,” Jack said. “He can stop something terrible from happening. You might know about the bomb, you might not. But I want him alive and safe. And I don’t want to have to fight you for him.”

One of the creatures hissed, the other raised its heavily clawed arms, and Jack turned his head and shouted, channelling the talent he had already used so devastatingly. He put a lot into it—this was no time for a subtle demonstration—and he felt power thrumming through him, setting him on fire. He liked it. But he berated himself, because relishing it was what had turned Reaper bad.

The reinforced concrete wall, topped with a heavy metal railing, shattered out into space, and four cars were forced out after the shattered rubble, bodies crunched, windows shattering, wheels screeching across the concrete floor. They tumbled from view and then impacted the ground below several seconds later. Even before the two creatures had recovered from their shock, Jack had moved closer to them. He was almost in touching distance.

They looked at him with wide eyes.

“Move away from the car,” he said. He was shaking with the remnants of the tremendous power, and he had to breathe deeply to cast it down.

One of the creatures laughed.

“Jack!” Rhali’s voice, and it was coming closer.

The creatures scampered from the car and clattered away, but not too far. They slipped behind a big BMW and peered out at Jack, and he couldn’t shake the conviction that they were waiting for something.

“Jack!” Rhali burst from the stairway into the open air, panting, sweating, looking as if she was about to collapse. “Jack, there are things coming!”

“What things?”

“I don’t know, they’re like people but…” She saw the two creatures watching. They’d become braver now, and they emerged from behind the BMW and scratched threateningly at the vehicle’s paintwork. “Yeah. Like that.”

“Jack can waste them all!” Sparky shouted. He and Jenna drew close, and though danger was also approaching, Jack felt better that they were all together once more. Even Andrew was still there, close to the car. Lucy-Anne had helped the man open the distorted door, and he was standing slowly, utterly terrified. Jack thought perhaps he’d been driven mad.

“You can do this?” Jack asked.

“Wh…what?”

“Hayden. That’s your name, right?”

He nodded.

“So Hayden, you can stop the bomb if we get you to it?”

Hayden half-nodded, shrugging at the same time.

“Don’t do that!” Jack shouted. “Don’t give me any doubts! I might have to kill people, now. These things, they’re still people. Just as much as the poor sods you bastards have been cutting up are people.”

“I haven’t cut any—”

“So tell me you can stop the bomb!”

Hayden nodded. “Given time.”

“How much time?” Jack asked.

“I’ll need an hour with the bomb. And peace and quiet. And the right tools.”

“And how would you like your fucking steak cooked?” Sparky asked.

Jack laughed, high and loud, and felt his own sense of control wavering. He almost puked.

“Everyone in that one,” Sparky said, nodding at a Mazda estate car.

“Plan?” Jack asked.

“If there’s any battery left I can hot-wire it, and it’s down to them to get out of the way.” He slapped Jack’s shoulder, and the gesture proved he knew so much about his friend.

“Good plan,” Jack said. “And if everything goes wrong…”

“Then we’ve got you,” Sparky said. “Superman. Our secret weapon. Hulk, smash!”

“I’ll smash you in a minute. Get the bloody car started!”

Sparky saluted, grinned, and they all ran to the car. The door was open. The wheels weren’t completely deflated. And there wasn’t even a mummified corpse in the driver’s seat.

Bonus! Jack thought. Maybe things are turning our way.

Then he froze as, on the next level down, he heard the sharp, rapid scraping of chitinous limbs.

Andrew drifted away, and when Lucy-Anne started after him Jack held her arm.

“I don’t think they can hurt him,” he said. Andrew glanced back and seemed to nod, and then he passed between two parked cars and disappeared from view.

“Come on, come on!” Sparky said. He’d opened his pocket knife and forced the covering beneath the steering column, and now he was hunkered down, bent almost double in the driver’s seat as he spread a knot of wires, stripped some, then sat back. “Send a prayer to the god of car thieves,” he said, and he touched two wires.

The engine growled…and then wound down with a tired yawn.

“Battery’s flat!” Jenna said.

“You. In the car.” Sparky grabbed Jenna and shoved her towards the driver’s seat. Jack winced even before Jenna shoved back against her boyfriend—she wouldn’t be told anything.

“Don’t you treat me like a—”

“We push, you bump start the car!” Sparky said, exasperated. He looked across the split level, down at where those creatures were now sprinting for the ramp up to their level. “Maybe thirty seconds. Go! Second gear, clutch down, lift the clutch when I say, the car’ll jerk a bit, then when it bites ease on the gas. But don’t go without us.”

“Rhali and Hayden, in the back,” Jack said. “Keep the doors open for us.”

Jack, Sparky and Lucy-Anne went to the back of the car and started pushing. They strained and groaned, propping their feet against the wall behind them and pushing harder, and then Sparky shouted, “Take the bastard hand brake off!” Jenna did so, and with a squeal of frozen brakes the car eased forward.

“Now,” Sparky said, “push as hard and fast as you can.”

They pushed. The car rolled. Jack glanced up and saw Rhali’s concerned face watching them through the back window, and he tried to smile. Then through the car and out the front windscreen he saw the movement of things reaching the top parking level.

“They’re here,” he said.

“Then push harder! We need to get close to the ramp. That way if the engine doesn’t start we can coast that far at least.”

“And then?” Lucy-Anne said between them. But Sparky did not answer.

“They’ve stopped,” Jack said, but he held no hope that the things would not attack. They merely seemed to be formulating a strategy. The two that had been trying to get Hayden were conversing with three others in a language Jack could not imagine, gestures and loud clicking sounds replacing the spoken word. They spread out, three stalking forward while two others scampered back down to the level they had just emerged from. They had seen what Jack could do, and were spreading themselves out as much as possible.

Even if Jack and his friends did manage to start the car, they would have a gauntlet to run.

They’re just people! Jack thought, wishing he could communicate, reach out to them. But “just” held no meaning anymore.

“Now!” Sparky said.

Jenna eased up on the clutch. At first Jack felt a resistance, then the vehicle jerked forward and he almost stumbled to the ground. Sparky grabbed him, and Lucy-Anne was already darting for one open side door. The car jarred forward, the engine coughed and growled, Jack caught a faceful of foul air from the exhaust, and then Sparky shouted, “Gas!” Jenna pressed on the gas and the engine roared.

“Yes!” Jack punched the air and ran with Sparky. Jenna slammed on the brakes and dropped out of gear, revving the engine some more. Smoke hacked from the exhaust.

And the creatures were coming. One each on the left and right, leaping across the roofs of parked cars, and one straight for the car. Jack was sure he saw sparks kicked up from their nightmarish limbs.

“In!” Sparky shouted. “Jack!”

But Jack waited until his friends were safely inside, his breath held and a shout ready to be unleashed. He did not want to kill, but if he had to…

Sparky was in and Jack darted for the door. His strong friend grabbed his arms and pulled, and even as Jack sprawled across the others’ laps in the back seat, Jenna gunned the gas and pulled away.

Hayden had climbed into the front seat and he cowered down, terrified. And his fear was good. If he’d been sitting up straight he might have died.

The creature must have leapt directly at the windscreen, jumping over the bonnet of the moving vehicle and using its two arms as spears. The windscreen starred opaque, Jenna screamed, but she did not slow down. Sharp insectile limbs slashed across Hayden’s seat and shredded the headrest. The glass shattered and fell inwards in a shower of diamond shards, and Jenna punched the windscreen in front of her, clearing her view and spinning the steering wheel at the last moment. The Mazda’s bumper scraped across a wall as the car slewed to the right, and the creature emitted an ear-splitting shriek as it was wrenched from the bonnet.

“Floor it!” Sparky shouted. Jenna pumped on the gas and the engine roared, and she spun the wheel again as they bumped onto the next level down.

Jack pulled himself into a sitting position between Sparky and Rhali, and Lucy-Anne was pressed against the door beside Rhali.

“Is he…?” she asked.

Jack leaned forward to look over the seats, terrified of what he might see. But Hayden stared up at him with wide eyes.

“He’s OK. Jenna, you need to change gear.”

“What?”

“You need to—”

“I haven’t got a clue how to drive so just shut up and let me get on with it.”

“Ease on the gas, foot on the clutch, slip into—” Sparky began.

“Shut the hell up!” she shouted. Remaining in second gear she drifted them wide into the ramp to the next level, rebounding from the wall again with a sickening crunch and a laboured screech of tearing metal.

“It’s okay,” Sparky said. “We don’t need the bumper. Bumpers are overrated.”

“Where the hell are those things?” Lucy-Anne asked. Jack twisted in his seat and looked behind at the shapes loping after them.

“Not finished yet,” he said.

“Mate, can’t you do anything?” Sparky asked.

“If I need to,” Jack said. “But—”

It must have been on the car roof. Sitting there, planning, scheming, trying to figure out how best to get at the food inside. And the best way was to put their best defence out of action. Jack saw a flurry of movement, heard the dull whisper of strengthened glass breaking into countless pieces, and felt Sparky lean into him as he cringed away from the thrashing limb that swung into the car.

Then the impact across his face, and no more.

Blood splashed across Lucy-Anne’s face. It was a sickening warmth that quickly faded to cool, and she knew that Jack was dead.

Rhali screamed. Jack slumped to the side and rested against her, bleeding on her, and she started hyperventilating, trying to shove him away and hold his face at the same time.

“Jesus Christ!” Jenna shouted, because she’d seen everything in the rearview mirror.

“Drive!” Lucy-Anne shouted. She could taste Jack’s blood when she opened her mouth. “Just fucking drive, Jenna!” If they stopped now—if they let those things get into the car—Jack was no longer here to do anything to help them.

Jack was no longer here…

She couldn’t dwell on that, and neither could she check him out to make sure. Sparky was struggling and he needed her help, and really, everything might depend on her. Everything. Because Hayden was crying and gibbering in the front seat, and Rhali could only look at the bloody mess that had been Jack’s face.

Not yet, not yet, Lucy-Anne thought. I’ll look in a minute. I’ll try to find my best friend’s pulse in a minute.

Sparky had grasped the thing’s limbs and was holding it up against the ceiling, pushing with all his might. It was dark and shiny like a beetle’s carapace, ending in a sharp pincer-like arrangement that was even now shredding Sparky’s shirtsleeve and the car’s fabric ceiling. The thing was scrabbling up on the roof trying to maintain its purchase, and as Jenna swung them down another ramp and bounced from another wall, the limbs shifted position as the creature slid.

Lucy-Anne leaned across Rhali and Jack and thrust her hand into Sparky’s jeans pocket. She worked her fingers against the folds and creases and found the knife, tugging it out, ripping the material, opening the blade, and without even looking at Sparky she leaned further over him and started slashing at the limb where it entered the window. Shoulder or elbow she couldn’t quite figure out, but the thing squealed in agony as black blood spattered down across her forearm.

“Sparky!” she shouted. He heaved the limb back towards the window and then let go. The creature slid from the roof and bounced from the boot, squirming and thrashing when it struck the ground.

“Floor it!” Lucy-Anne screamed. She sat back against the door with the knife still in her hand, and realised that the thing’s blood stank.

“Jack?” Jenna asked.

“Get us out of here or we’ll all be dead!”

“Dead?” Rhali said. She spoke softly, but even above the car’s labouring engine they all heard. It was a word that broke through such noise.

Lucy-Anne looked at Jack again, nervous, her heart fluttering. His face was a bloody mess.

“Just drive,” she said.

Jenna seemed to become more confident. Though she did not attempt to change gear, and the engine screamed as she floored the gas between floors, she took the ramps more successfully, avoiding any more jarring impacts with the walls. On the third floor one of the tyres blew out and the car slewed sideways, but Jenna fought with the wheel and straightened them again. On the second floor she crashed into a Ford that protruded from the parking bays. The impact almost stalled the Mazda, but she slammed her foot on the gas, wheels screaming, the stench of burning rubber accompanying them as the Ford was shoved sideways and their car scraped past.

“Where are they?” Sparky said. He was looking behind them, ahead, and leaning cautiously sideways to peer from the shattered side window.

“Given up the chase?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“Maybe,” he said. But they all remained on edge as they drove out from the shadowed car park into daylight.

“Too noisy,” Lucy-Anne said. “Let’s get a street away then dump the car.”

“And we’ll have to see to Jack,” Sparky said. He was taking his first good look at his friend, and Lucy-Anne could see his fear.

“How is he?” Jenna asked. She kept glancing in the mirror. The car engine screamed in second gear. Hayden gibbered in the front seat.

Rhali stroked Jack’s brow, and his face bled.

Her illness washing through her, Nomad raised her head and looked around. The tank was static and terrible. The wires and fail-safes glowed menacingly all around the display hall. All was silent.

“Jack,” she said. She gasped, because something had changed. But whatever the change, Jack had made his choice.

And there was always Lucy-Anne.