Contagion

^{CHAPTER SIX} ELEVEN

“Andrew’s with me,” Lucy-Anne said. “He knows. He…” She trailed off, confused and scared.

“I didn’t see Andrew,” Jack said. But did I see someone with her? Just for a moment?

“He came with me. From Hampstead Heath. Rook and I went there to find him, and Nomad was there, and Rook fell and I ran, but then Andrew came to me and he’s…dead, but not gone. Not quite gone. He brought me down here…and I dreamed I’d meet you all here!” She went from confused to delighted, her expression changing in a flash as she looked from Jack to Sparky to Jenna. Then her smiled dropped again as if punched from her face. “There’s a bomb!”

“We know,” Jenna said. She held Lucy-Anne and it was strange to see. The girl they all knew was not someone to be held or pitied. “The Choppers planted it, Miller triggered it. We’ve got maybe eleven hours.”

“You know?” Lucy-Anne asked. “Why? Who’s Miller? How did you find out?”

“There’s so much to tell you,” Jack said. “And it sounds like you have a lot to tell us. But your leg’s bleeding. Here. Let me—”

Lucy-Anne frowned and pulled away from Jenna, and for a moment it looked like she was going to jump back onto the pontoon before they’d even set off.

“Andrew?” she said, scanning the shore. “Andrew.”

“You’re back with us now,” Jack said.

“Jack’s told me a little about you,” Rhali said kindly.

Lucy-Anne’s face crumpled. The tears came without warning, and after a few deep sobs she rubbed them away just as quickly. “Oh Jack, I’m so tired,” she said. When she slumped down, Sparky was already there to catch her. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

“Breezer?” Jack asked.

“Yeah.” He pushed a button and the boat’s engine coughed and grumbled, but did not catch.

From somewhere out of sight on shore they heard the hooting from those strange, wild women.

“Breezer, now would be a good time for us to escape.”

“Yeah.” He pushed the button again, keeping it pushed in so that the engine turned and grumbled and turned again, and then it caught. Clouds of smoke belched from twin exhausts at the vessel’s rear, and Breezer slumped in relief.

“Your London river tour is about to begin,” he said, pushing the throttle forward. The boat bumped against the pontoon and then moved away.

Those women had something of the water about them, Jack thought. But when he saw them appear along the riverbank at the metal railing, they paused and watched the boat chugging away downriver. He sensed a moment of indecision in them as they seemed ready to give pursuit. But then they leapt into the water and swam in the opposite direction, moving incredibly quickly across the water’s slugging surface before diving and disappearing from view.

“Trick?” Jenna asked. Jack wasn’t sure. He readied himself, prepared to fight them if he had to. He imagined their slick fingers and tentacles curling around the boat’s safety rail, their unnatural faces peering at him, showing him their teeth. But a few moments later he saw them surface and scramble up onto the opposite bank, and they disappeared south of the river without another backward glance.

“Weird,” Jenna said.

“Yeah. Maybe there’re easier pickings that way.”

No one replied. None of them wanted to discuss what, or who, those easier pickings might be.

The boat was a small tourist vessel that promised “The most picturesque views of London, bar none.” How one boat could offer any more picturesque views than any other, Jack did not know. But right then he thanked the owners of the City Sleeker for running their business on the Thames. He hoped they’d not been in London when Evolve hit, but disaster had struck at the height of summer, and he knew it unlikely. He didn’t want to ask Breezer about where they’d found the Sleeker, nor how many bodies it had contained.

It was about thirty feet long, the front half open, the stern covered with a glass canopy. The cabin was right at the stern, raised a little from the canopy so that the captain could see along the length of the boat. Seating was arranged looking outward, not ahead, with an open area of deck down the centre for those who wished to stand. Life belts were strung beneath seats, and on the covered area’s roof was a lifeboat, strapped down and covered in a tarpaulin. No one wished to be reminded of their vulnerability.

Jack and Sparky uncovered the lifeboat and familiarised themselves with its release mechanism. None of them wanted to go into these waters, and with the amount of detritus in the river, the chance of hitting a submerged object was too high for comfort.

Breezer piloted them upstream. The others sat within the glass-enclosed area, still feeling exposed. The engine sounded incredibly loud.

Lucy-Anne was not asleep, but she seemed to be staring into space. Jack held her leg and gently eased her bleeding. The bullet had barely grazed her, but she would still bruise. Then she went back to her silent contemplation. He guessed she had a lot to think through, and when they were safer he’d talk to her.

Safer. It was not a word that meant much right then.

Rhali watched the river banks, casting out her senses, discovering several groups of people moving around the city to the north. There were some to the south as well, and she quickly gathered a picture of movements which she communicated to the others.

“I think some of them are Choppers,” she said. “And some of them are just…normal people. Like you.” She nodded at Breezer.

“Irregulars,” Jenna said.

“Whatever name they wish to use,” Rhali said dismissively. “But some of them—a lot of them—are strange. Changed. Like those women we saw. And they’re tortured.”

Jack glanced at Rhali.

“Not like me,” she said. “I mean they’re in pain from what they have become. Imagine changing so much. Imagine what such physical changes must feel like?”

“They’re going the wrong way to be fleeing the city, even if they know about the bomb,” Jack said. “They’re coming south for something else.”

“They do know,” Lucy-Anne said. “And Nomad told me they’re not so monstrous. I think she meant that they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re intelligent.”

“Great,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Sparky said. “Long as what they’re doing doesn’t involve eating us.”

Lucy-Anne started crying, grasping her friend, burying her face in his jacket. Jack had never seen her so vulnerable. Whatever had happened to her, whatever she had seen, must have been terrible. He wondered what had happened to the boy Rook.

But he feared that finding out would only add to the weight of responsibility he felt. He had no power to counter that, no unknown star in his new universe that could temper the fates being piled on him. Rhali, the poor girl who’d had terrible things done to her, and he’d not even had the time to ask what. Lucy-Anne, his old girlfriend, confused and suffering and with so much to tell. Sparky and Jenna, still with him because they valued their friendship so much. Breezer. Even his father. That bastard Reaper, following him and protecting him, or perhaps merely playing with him now that Miller was no longer such an exciting plaything.

The bomb, London, Nomad, his expanding starscape of wonders, and his potential for contagion.

He wished he could shrug them all off and be on his own, unhindered and free. He closed his eyes but it didn’t work. He hadn’t chosen all this at all; it had been thrust upon him. Nomad was to blame.

When he opened his eyes Jenna was staring at him, and he thought of reaching out and touching her, as Nomad had touched him. His vision swam red. Red, for danger. What would I give her? he thought, and then his musings were interrupted.

“Where it all began,” Sparky said. He had moved into the boat’s open bow and was staring to starboard, and they all watched as the London Eye came into view around a bend in the river. It was still quite awesome, even with everything it represented. The scar in its upper reaches was charred black and angry, and somewhere behind it on the embankment lay the remains of Nomad’s helicopter. She had been Angelina Walker back then, a normal human being. She had changed everything.

“Maybe twenty minutes from here,” Breezer said from the cabin. “Make the most of the rest.”

The strange new smells of London, the sights, and occasionally the sounds—today this truly was the best view anyone could have of London, from the river at least. The Houses of Parliament remained as impressive and imposing as ever. Next to them, the clock on Big Ben’s tower was frozen at a moment in time, the bell now silent. The moment meant nothing but the end of the clock’s constant round of maintenance.

The quiet and stillness along the river was as unnatural as in the rest of the city, because this was a place built for life, bustle, and commerce. The only movements were the bow wave from their boat blurring the water’s surface, and the flights of birds startled aloft by the engine. Sunlight reflected from dusty windows, hiding grotesque truths inside. Uneven huddles of clothing along the north and south embankments were too distant to make out fully, and for that Jack was glad. He knew they were bodies, but not seeing them meant he could pretend they were something else.

The stillness could not last forever. Jack saw the first movements just as they passed beneath Waterloo Bridge, and for an instant he was afraid they were Choppers. They’d be drawn to the noise for sure, but he’d hoped their journey would be so rapid that they’d be out of the boat and gone before anyone arrived. It could be that Reaper was still shadowing them—Fleeter didn’t seem concerned with sharing that information, and Jack was not going to humour her by asking—but Jack would still ready himself to protect them. Reaper played games.

“See them?” Rhali asked.

“How long have they been there?” Jack asked.

“I first sensed them just a few minutes ago. They’re not following us, I don’t think. They’re just coming to cross the river.”

“Like those weird women.”

“Yes.”

“So what is it they suddenly want south of the river?” Sparky asked.

Jack glanced at Lucy-Anne, but she seemed not to be listening. Eyes open, she was somewhere else.

“Maybe they know the bomb’s in the north and they’re running from it,” Jenna suggested.

“Maybe,” Jack said. He was watching the movement on the north bank, trying to make out who or what they were. Everyone left alive in London had been touched by Evolve, but now he had discovered a new dimension to Doomsday’s curse—physical change. Nomad might have said they weren’t monstrous, but neither were they natural.

He sensed Sparky and Jenna watching him, and knew exactly what they wanted. He sighed. A brief burst of anger set his limbs tingling, and he rounded on his friends ready to confront them. I can’t magic our way out of everything! he wanted to shout. Not with everything else! Why don’t one of you do something? And he could have reached out and touched them, given them the chance.

But Rhali was looking at him as well, and everything she had been through seemed to reflect London’s fate. Misused, tortured, abused, she was not what she should have been. His heart sank and he felt an intense sickness at the unfairness of things. She’s so pretty and bright, she shouldn’t be anything but beautiful.

“I’m never going to let anything bad happen to you again,” he said to the girl. Her eyes glimmered with tears, and he looked at everyone else in the boat. He was surprised, and humbled, to see that they already felt included in what he’d said.

He tasted Nomad on his tongue, and he heard her voice telling Lucy-Anne that they were not so monstrous. But he was not at all certain of that.

Rhali’s gift came to him quickly. Holding her hand, he easily homed in on her point of light and plunged in, her talent blooming in him like an ever-expanding sun. It was both terrifying and beautiful, and he realised that he revelled in this. His new universe scared him, but he would have been inhuman if it did not. Yet he also found it wonderful.

He cast his senses up and out and felt the movement of groups of people close to where they were, projected onto his perception as warm glows on a sea of ice. Those nearby were clear, while further away they became smaller and more remote. But it was the closer movements that interested him.

Jack took hold of what he felt and travelled once again. He quickly focussed on one mass movement. There were perhaps eight of them, travelling in a loose group along the path of the river towards a bridge. He homed in on one, attaching himself to its heat and light and life.

He found the star he sought and plunged towards it. As he did so, it became the mind of another.

Jack had planned questions, sought answers, but both became abstract. This was like nothing he knew or understood, and for what felt like forever he tumbled and swirled in this alien place, trying to grab and hold onto something, anything, that made sense. It was only when he accepted that there was little sense to be made that his fall became more controlled.

This was such an alien mind that he might as well have tried conversing with a tree, or a river. But there were still images here that he could perceive, and with some concentration, understand.

He knew what it sought.

“Jack? Jack!”

Slap!

Reality rushed in, a sickening sensation that was nothing like the gentle flow of waking up. Everything hit home, and when he quickly sat up sickness flooded his mouth. He leant sideways and spat it out, breathing shallowly, willing himself not to puke up everything else.

“Gross,” Sparky said.

“You slap me hard enough?” Jack asked.

“Hey, gotta take the opportunities given to me. You’re lucky I don’t carry a hammer.”

“Thanks, mate.”

“Yeah. Well.” Sparky’s voice barely hid his concern, and Jack looked up, making an effort to smile. It was difficult.

“What did you see?” Rhali asked. She was sitting on a bench, looking weak and drained. He wondered whether he had taken anything from her.

“They…” Jack paused, knowing that they were all listening, but unable for a moment to continue. “They’ll still human, deep inside, though barely. Still have their loves and lives, hopes and fears. And yet…so different. Changed so much. And it hurts them.”

“Good!” Lucy-Anne said. Her blank expression did not change, though her voice was filled with venom.

“They can’t help what they’ve become,” Jack said. “And they’re doing their best. To survive. To find the bomb, and stop it.”

“They know where it is?” Sparky asked.

Jack nodded. “South of here, across the river. I saw their destination, and I think I recognised it. Visited it with school a few years back. Imperial War Museum.”

“So they’re all going there to stop it,” Jenna said.

“To try.” Jack nodded and stood up, looking across the silent, dying city. “They barely have a concept of outside. London is their only home now, and they’re doing their best to save it.”

“Can they?” Jenna asked. “I mean, those women we saw didn’t seem, I dunno…intelligent.”

“I saw gargoyle people,” Lucy-Anne said. “Trying to fly. They had claws. And a woman like a dog, pissing against a tree. A man like a monkey. And the worm.” She looked up, but her expression did not change. “There was the worm that ate Rook.”

“So he is gone,” Jack said softly.

“I dreamed him well again, but it still took him in the end. I dream the future. Change it. And it only changes back again.” She frowned and ran her hand through her short hair. “I think that’s what happens, at least.”

“Did they kill your brother too?” Sparky asked gently. His own brother was dead in London, and Lucy-Anne would know that. Such loss was something else that had forged their friendship.

“Oh no, Andrew’s still…he’s still around.” She glanced around the boat as if expecting him to appear. “He said he dreamed himself alive, so when he did die, he didn’t quite go.”

“He’s a ghost?” Jenna asked.

“I guess.” Lucy-Anne fingered a chain around her neck, looking out across the river.

Jack had seen so much that he had little trouble believing in ghosts. But right now, wherever or whatever Andrew was did not matter.

“Knowing where it is doesn’t help us much,” he said. He looked at Fleeter sitting at the bow of the boat. She had been taking all this in without comment, smiling her annoying smile. “You’re sure Miller’s still at Camp H?”

“No,” she said. “It was just an idea.”

Jack felt anger rising, but he drove it down. He needed calmness now more than ever.

“Fifteen minutes,” Breezer said. “We’ll know soon enough, one way or another.”