Contagion

^{CHAPTER TWELVE} FIVE

In darkness and nothing, Jack thought he was with the monsters.

He had an awareness of who he was but not why he was here. He wanted to call his friends, but could not remember their names. He floated, or sank, or rose through darkness so complete that it had form and solidity. It was like swimming in black water, but here he could breathe.

The taste on his tongue was blood.

After an unknown time he started to make out a glow in the distance. At first it was a smudge on the night, a sheen in the blackness. He moved towards it, out of the stark nothingness where there were monsters, and it started to take on form. Countless points of light manifested, like sprinkles of salt on a black sheet the size of a field. The closer he approached, the clearer the image became, and the larger and more malevolent the deep blackness behind him.

That’s my universe. His words were comforting. And as he thought them, the spread of light expanded rapidly until it filled his field of vision and he was inside it, enveloped and part of the light himself, and the blackness was banished to the distance.

Yet he still did not feel safe. He passed through this place that was his, and just off-centre was a warm red glow. It should have been inviting but was not. The warmth should have made him feel safe, but the opposite was true.

The glow was contagion. But it was not his to give.

“And it wasn’t Nomad’s to give either,” he said. His voice was so loud that the stars shimmered, and somewhere beyond he felt a reaction to what he had said. My friends heard me. They fear for me. But I have to make sure. He moved closer to the throbbing red glow and saw that it was a star on its own, but one that contained universes. Impossible, incredible, terrifying universes that he could pass on with a touch, just as Nomad had passed this on to him.

None of this was natural. None of it should exist. His universe was a falsehood made real by a mad woman, and humanity could not endure it.

I’ll always keep it to myself. Always. No matter what.

“Is he dead?”

Hayden had been the last to climb from the car and follow them, but now he was the first to speak.

“No, he’s not bloody dead!” Sparky said. “And thanks would be welcome right now.”

“Thanks?”

“For rescuing you?” Lucy-Anne said. She hated Hayden already and she hadn’t even told him her name.

“Oh, right. Thanks.”

Jenna had parked close to the front of an old discount furniture store, and carrying Jack between them they’d entered and moved quickly through to the back entrance. Lucy-Anne had pulled aside a pile of damp, rotting mattresses to reveal a fire escape, and she’d opened it with a kick. Sparky had then slung Jack over his shoulder and followed Lucy-Anne outside, passing across a small courtyard and along a narrow alley before emerging onto the next street. There, an abandoned Starbucks had become their hiding place. If those things had been pursuing them, they hoped that they’d now shaken them off. But if they did still follow, there was little they could do.

None of them would leave Jack behind, and Lucy-Anne was shocked at how vulnerable she now felt. Without realising it she’d quickly come to rely on Jack to protect them all.

“See if you can find any water,” Jenna told Rhali. “Lucy-Anne, tissues or napkins, anything clean to mop away the blood.”

“Me?” Sparky asked.

“Best keep watch,” she said. Lucy-Anne caught the glance between her two friends; they knew how defenceless they all were now.

She climbed behind the counter and looked for napkins. The place had been ransacked at some point, but a drift of napkins remained on one of the lower shelves. Rhali found some bottled water, and Jenna went about cleaning Jack’s wounds.

“I think it looks worse than it is,” Jenna said.

“You shitting me?” Lucy-Anne said. “His eye’s out, Jenna!”

“No. Eyelid’s slashed, and that makes it look like his eyeball’s damaged. But I don’t think it is.” She mopped blood, and Jack’s eyes rolled.

There were other cuts all across the right side of his face, from his jaw up into his hairline. Jenna cleaned them with bottled water, but that thing that had attacked him, its horrid pincers…Lucy-Anne didn’t like to wonder what germs it carried. She watched Jenna dab at the cuts, and then examine the deep bruise already forming across Jack’s temple and into his hairline.

“That?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“Fractured skull,” Hayden said. In a flurry of movement Sparky was up and at him, a seventeen-year-old boy pushing this thirty-year-old man back against the wall, forearm pressing against his throat, other hand fisted and drawn back ready to punch.

Hayden looked terrified.

“You haven’t earned the right to say a single word about my friend,” Sparky said. He released Hayden as quickly as he’d pushed him, turning back to Jack and squatting beside him. He leaned in close and examined the wounds that Jenna was tending. “So is it fractured?”

“I don’t know,” Jenna said. “I…I don’t really know what I’m doing, Sparky. I can dab the blood away. Given the right kit I might even be able to patch his eye and bandage him up. But…”

She cleaned gently, lovingly. Jack shuddered.

“Come on, mate,” Sparky said. He held Jack’s hand and squeezed, moving his arm up and down, slowly so as not to shift him too suddenly.

“He’s just knocked out,” Rhali said. “That’s all. The thing banged his head.”

“It’s really hard to be knocked out,” Sparky said. “Not like in the movies. You have to do damage to knock someone out.”

Oh no, oh no, Lucy-Anne thought. She had to lean against a table to prevent herself from slumping to the floor, biting her lip and drawing blood. She briefly considered letting herself drop into dreamland, dreaming Jack well again. But it might never last. And her wider fears included not only Jack.

She looked around at the others. Sparky and Jenna at least were thinking the same thing. They’d only known each other for two years, but they’d been through a lot, and she thought they were brothers and sisters. Family. The only family she had left, and she could not bear to mourn any more.

“We’re wasting time,” Lucy-Anne said. “You know that, don’t you?”

None of them answered. Rhali looked up at her, about to speak, but she bit back the words. Hayden shuffled his feet. Jenna paused in her cleaning of Jack’s wounds.

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“I’ll stay,” Rhali said.

“And it wasn’t Nomad’s to give either,” Jack said, and they all held their breaths, ready for him to open his eyes. But he remained unconscious, shuddering occasionally. His skin was growing pale.

“Right,” Sparky said. He stroked Jack’s hand, eyes turning left and right as he thought something through. “Right. How long?”

“About five hours,” Hayden said softly.

“Long enough,” Sparky said. “You said you needed an hour.”

“And peace and quiet. And the right tools.”

“Tools,” Sparky said. “Okay. You and me, we go and find the tools. We’re close to the museum, so the others can rest here, and we go and find what you need.”

Hayden seemed uncertain but he nodded.

“I’ll come with you,” Lucy-Anne said.

“Didn’t for a moment expect you to stay sitting on your arse,” Sparky said, grinning. He knelt beside Jenna. “Half an hour,” he said. “Stay quiet.”

She nodded.

“Stay safe!” Sparky said. He pulled her close and kissed her cheek roughly. “I love you.” There was not a shred of embarrassment to his words.

“We’re going to have to leave him,” Lucy-Anne said as they emerged onto the street. Sparky held a hand up as he checked both ways, then waved them forward. They slipped from doorway to doorway, using parked cars and vans as cover.

“Yeah,” Sparky said at last. “If he doesn’t wake.”

“Even if he does he’ll be weak and have a monstrous headache,” Lucy-Anne said.

“But it’s Jack,” Sparky said. “You know what he can do, how special he is. We need him. Don’t you think? We’ll need him to even get close to the museum, and here we are looking for bloody tools?”

“We have to do our best.”

They never stopped walking. Sparky scanned their route, Hayden between them, and Lucy-Anne kept glancing behind them to make sure they weren’t being followed. Or stalked. But she could sense a hopelessness in Sparky’s movements. He was desperate, and that same desperation was manifesting in her.

She nudged Hayden. “See anything useful?”

“We need a hardware store,” he said. “Maybe a repair shop. You know, washing machines, that sort of thing. A garage. Anywhere that might have a well-equipped toolbox.”

“You were coming to defuse an atomic bomb without a toolbox?”

“The Superiors wiped out our vehicles,” Hayden said. “Me and two others survived, ran, didn’t have time to grab anything. We were lucky to get away with our lives, let alone any equipment.”

“So where the hell are the other two?” Sparky asked.

“Spooky guy told me they were dead.”

“You’re risking your life when you could be running,” Lucy-Anne said.

Hayden glanced back. “So are you.”

“Okay,” Sparky said. “Keep looking. Everything we’ve been through, I don’t want to mess up now ’cos we didn’t have a screwdriver.”

“Let’s cross over,” Hayden said. “Take that side street. I spent some time around here couple of years before Doomsday. I think there’s a locksmith’s down there.”

“That’d suit?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“That’d be perfect.”

They crouched and crossed the street, pausing behind a van that had been turned onto its side. Listening. Watching for movement, and any signs of pursuit. There was a rattle of gunfire far in the distance, and Lucy-Anne glanced at Hayden. His eyes had gone wide and his head was to one side, listening.

“Your lot popping off a few more survivors?” Sparky asked.

Hayden did not rise to his bait. “No. Everyone’s had the evacuation order, far as I know. That’ll be something else.”

“Yeah, guess who,” Lucy-Anne said.

They turned a corner and moved along the new street, and five shops along was the locksmith’s that Hayden remembered. The front door was open.

Sparky and Lucy-Anne waited close to the front of the shop while Hayden disappeared into the workshop at the back. As they kept watch they heard him rooting around for tools, dropping them into a metal box and mumbling to himself.

“Maybe we should just go,” Lucy-Anne said. “Take him to the museum and leave Jenna, Jack and Rhali where they are. Pick them up on the way out, after it’s done.”

“No,” Sparky said. “No way.”

“But with Jack like that—”

“It’s nothing to do with Jack,” he said. “I want to be with Jenna, and I know she wants the same. When the end comes, you know?”

“But we’re doing our best.”

“Can’t you feel it?” Sparky said. “The hopelessness of all this? Night’s falling on London, Lucy-Anne. The end’s close. Everything feels doomed, and what we’re doing just feels so pointless. Clutching at straws.”

“You’ve got to have hope.”

“I do. I have hope that I can die with Jenna. With the girl I love. And all of us together, too, when the time comes. We got more than we ever dreamed really, didn’t we? Always wanted to expose the truth of what London had become, reveal the lie being told to everyone. And here we are in the middle of it all. I never thought…” He chuckled wryly, shook his head.

“That doesn’t sound like the Sparky I know.”

“Not sure I’m him anymore.”

She wanted to rage, and cry. Instead, she pulled Sparky close and gave him a hard, quick kiss on the lips. Then she gripped his lapels.

“There’s still hope,” Lucy-Anne whispered. After everything, she was surprised that she was the one to say that. She thought of Nomad, and the explosion, and Rook falling and being killed even though she had dreamed him surviving. And the refrain repeated again and again in her mind as Sparky stared at her, unable to respond. There’s still hope…

For a while Jack believed himself dead, because when he tried to rise from his star-speckled darkness he could not. Reality remained obscure and difficult to find. Like some people’s idea of Heaven, it was beyond the universe he now knew.

But then he touched on a talent and plunged inside, and his perception changed. He floated in a blue sea that surrounded him on all sides and in all directions, and in places the sea was marred with frozen places, the ice a deep green colour, cracks seeping pain, sharp surfaces brushing against the sea and spreading more cold.

I know what this is, he thought, and he closed on one berg. The water grew colder and strong currents swirled through the sea, but he kept his course and reached out. The point between water and ice was ambiguous, but Jack felt power flowing through him and producing a warm, comforting heat. The berg began to melt. Green turned to blue. He could make out more details about his surroundings, as if the gift of vision was becoming more defined, and he waited there until the berg was almost completely gone. At its centre remained a solid core, a scar on the blue ocean that would likely remain there forever.

But Jack knew that he had done enough, and he drifted away towards another spread of ice. This was much larger but less defined, like a sea of sludge within this endless ocean of blue. It was a deep purple colour, and shades and tones swirled and flowed in its depths. Jack paused for only a moment before allowing himself to enter. The floating sensation was different—more harsh edges, and the smell/taste was sickly and rich—and he exuded the healing warmth once again.

As the cold ocean around him faded from a rich purple to a comfortable blue, it began to take on more features. His senses burst alight. He could hear the mumble of voices, though as yet the words made little sense. He could feel contact against his skin—a pressure behind him from where he was lying down, and a repetitive caress against one extreme that might have been his hand. And he could smell coffee.

Coffee!

He tried talking, but the shades of purple still swallowed his words. More heat, more healing flow. What he was doing amazed him, though perhaps it should have come as no surprise. He possessed remarkable powers after all, and healing himself was not the most incredible thing he had ever done.

As the purple faded some more he cast his senses farther afield, and when he felt able, he tried to speak once more.

“Large latte, extra shot.” Jack tried to sit up, and Jenna grabbed him beneath one arm, Rhali the other. When he was sitting he looked around at them all, saw the toolbox in Hayden’s hand, nodded. “Good. Right. Let’s go.”

None of them spoke. There was a stiffness and soreness in Jack’s right eye. It felt like someone had punched him there and it was swollen, but when he closed his left eye he could still see, though his vision was blurred.

And his head hurt like hell.

“But…” Lucy-Anne said.

“Mate,” Sparky said.

“What?” Jack went to stand, but Jenna pressed her hand gently on his shoulder.

“For a moment we thought you were dead,” she said. “Then it looked like your eye had been gouged out. And Hayden thought you had a fractured skull, and we weren’t sure whether you’d even wake up or not. There was so much bleeding. You were shaking, and muttering things. And we just…didn’t know.”

“I’m fine,” Jack said. “Bastard of a headache.” He leaned into Rhali and she held him, kissing his forehead. He liked her breath against his face.

“You healed yourself,” Sparky said. “How cool is that?”

“Doesn’t feel like it’s healed,” Jack said. He lifted a hand to his face and touched his right eye, wincing when he felt the knotted flesh there, the hard scars that would probably remain forever.

“Dude, compared to what it was you’re a supermodel,” Jenna said, and they all laughed.

“So you got what you need?” Jack asked, nodding at the toolbox in Hayden’s hand.

“Pretty much.”

“Pretty much?” Sparky asked, and Hayden’s eyes opened wider.

“Yeah, everything, got it all,” he said.

“Right,” Sparky said. “Heard some gunfire to the north, long way off. Other than that, things are quiet out there.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Jenna said. “Quiet things.”

“Nothing close,” Rhali said. “Nothing I can sense, anyway. That doesn’t mean there aren’t small groups of creatures out there. And the museum…” She closed her eyes again, swaying slightly. “Lots.”

“How many?” Lucy-Anne asked.

Rhali shrugged. “Lots. And lots.”

“Bridges to cross when we get there,” Jack said. His rush of joy at surfacing to find his friends around him was quickly receding, and now the future only promised more pain, and trouble, and violence. And they didn’t have very long left.

“What’s the time?”

“Almost eight,” Jenna said.

“Four hours.”

Rhali helped him up and he smiled his thanks. He felt sick and weak, but he could not project that. They needed his strength. They needed to feel he still had their backs, and between blinks he saw that universe of talents he still had access to, and the red star of contagion he would never, ever touch.

“So what are we waiting for?” Jack asked.

Outside, the sun was touching the rooftops in the west.