London Eye

Mum's still alive.

The words were fresh in Jack's mind as they left Camp Truth and headed through the woods. Rosemary and Lucy-Anne went as a grandmother and her granddaughter going to visit friends. Sparky and Jenna were pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend, a prospect which delighted Sparky and seemed to annoy Jenna immensely. And Jack and his sister Emily were on a family outing. If anyone asked where their parents were, Jack would only have to say “dead” for the understanding to hit home, and he hoped someone did ask, because his mother was still alive!

Emily fluttered around in excitement, filming everything in sight. Jack wanted to tell her to save the batteries, but he knew she had several spares and a solar recharger, and he liked seeing her so absorbed in something. He could always tell the difference between her being simply distracted, or completely involved in something that took her away from their sad reality. Now, she was just a little girl chasing butterflies.

When they emerged from the woods and walked along the main road, traffic was light, and nobody seemed to pay them any attention. A police car zipped by, pale face at the window. Closer to the bus stop, Jack held his breath as a Capital Keeper wagon roared past. It had once been an army truck, but the camouflage paint had gone, replaced by the now-familiar deep Royal Blue.

“I wonder where they've been,” Emily said. She was so bright. Most kids her age would have asked where they were going.

Their bus was on time, and they sat halfway along the top deck. The sun beat through the windows and made Jack sweat, but he enjoyed the heat. He looked out and watched the world go by.

He saw a field full of cows, and a car that had been stopped by the police, its occupants made to sit beside the road with their wrists bound while the officers ripped the car apart. He saw a lake where people rode jet skis, and three houses set back from the main road that had been burnt out, their blackened windows looking like sad, cried-out eyes. And amongst the faces staring from cars and lorries passing them by, he saw blank sadness that spoke volumes.

Normality, for these times after Doomsday.

“Mum's still alive,” he whispered in Emily's ear, and she grinned.

The journey took a little over an hour, and they were both glad to get off the bus. They weren't used to travelling so far.

They followed the directions Rosemary had given them, watching out for the shop names, and when they passed the Beckham Bistro, they left the pavement and headed down the narrow, rubbish-strewn alley between buildings. At the end of the alley they crossed an area of undeveloped ground. Glass crunched underfoot, and a wild dog barked at them and stalked slowly away. There were lots of wild dogs now-as well as cats, parrots, and snakes-their owners killed in London, and though there were frequent culls, numbers seemed to be increasing. Before Doomsday Jack could remember his father being fascinated with cryptozoology, the study of exotic animals living wild in Britain: wolves, bears, black panthers, cougars, and alligators, all were rumoured to be thriving. He wondered what his dad would make of this.

They crossed the area of rough ground, passed between two blocks of flats that had seen better days, then exited onto the towpath beside a canal.

As they passed beneath a metal road bridge spanning the canal, something changed. It took Jack a moment to spot exactly what it was: everything had grown silent. No more buzzing flies, no rustles in the overgrowth alongside the towpath, no barking from beyond the hedges and walls. It was spooky as hell, and he didn't like it one bit.

“Jack-” Emily began, her voice shadowed with worry.

Someone jumped down from the bridge's underside and pressed something against his back. “Do what I say, or I blow your kidneys all over your shoes.”

Jack glanced at Emily, and her face broke into a smile.

“I really wish I'd had my camera ready for that one,” she said.

“One of these days, Sparky…” Jack said, turning around.

“Yeah?” Sparky was still pointing his finger-and-thumb gun. “You and which army?”

“I thought we were meeting under a viaduct?”

“Just along there,” the boy nodded. “Couple hundred yards. I decided to wander back here, make sure we weren't followed, or nothin’.”

“Everyone get here okay?”

“Fine.” Sparky grinned, rubbing his cheek. “Jenna gave me a right slap on the bus when I tried getting frisky, though.”

Jack examined his friend's red, slightly swollen cheek. He nodded. “Good.”

“Let's go!” Emily said. She ran along the towpath, scaring several ducks into the water.

“You've got to help me look after her, Sparky,” he said quietly.

“You know I will.” Sparky slapped the back of Jack's head, hard, and laughed. “But you know something? I think she'll be looking after us.” Behind the laughter he was deadly serious, and Jack reminded himself yet again how blessed he was with friends.

They descended from the towpath down a steep slope, and when they entered the damp shadow of the viaduct Jack felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. Rosemary, Jenna, and Lucy-Anne were waiting for them there. Lucy-Anne gave him a nervous smile, but he could see that she was excited, too.

“We're about to leave the world you know,” Rosemary said, and Jack's chill seemed to settle into his bones.

The brick arch of the viaduct leaked in several places, raining water down around them and turning the ground into a quagmire. Jack had often wondered what would happen if such a canal bridge were to collapse. Would the whole waterway drain away down here? Would everything in its path be washed away? The red brick was swathed in moss, and from the ruts in the ground it appeared that the leaks had been dripping for a long time.

“It's less than ten miles to the Exclusion Zone from here,” Jenna said. “We're walking the rest of the way?”

“Not used to exercise?” Rosemary asked, smiling.

“I love walking,” Jenna said. “It's just that…won't we be seen?”

“Only if people look in all the wrong places. Like I said, we're leaving your world, going somewhere different. Slipping between the lines. It's not a quick journey, but we'll follow paths that will take us all the way into London, undetected and safe.”

“And your friend Philippe showed you the way?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“Yes, Philippe. Though he's hardly a friend.” Rosemary smiled sadly. “London's not an easy place for friendships right now, I'm sad to say. I do have some, but…well, there's so much paranoia.”

“So how do you know you can trust him?” Sparky asked.

“I think I'm a good judge of character.” Rosemary looked around at the five of them, saving her smile for Emily. Then she pointed away from the viaduct and along an overgrown path that seemed to lead into darkness. “We're going there.”

Jack's friends glanced around for a beat, meeting each other's eyes as though waiting for a decision to be made. It was Emily who started after the old woman, glancing back at them all with eyebrow raised.

Sparky started singing. “We're off to see the Wizard-”

“If you sing any more,” Jenna said, “I will kill you in your sleep.”

“The wonderful Wizard of Oz.” Sparky even started skipping.

They followed Rosemary, placing themselves completely in her hands. It was the riskiest thing any of them had done since coming together after Doomsday, but Jack knew it was the right thing, as well. They had all been aware that one day, the time for action would arrive.

Very soon, Jack had the real sense that they were travelling just beyond the veil of reality before which most people lived their lives. Rosemary led them through places that seemed forgotten, cast aside or ignored, and sometimes they could hear, and even see the world going on around them. It was like a route leading back from what the world had become towards what it might have been before, though he knew that at the end of this route lay something else entirely: London as it was now; the Toxic City.

The path from the viaduct led between the rear gardens of two rows of abandoned houses. Many of the structures seemed unsafe and close to collapse, and one or two had already taken the first tumble into ruin. One long spread of buildings on their right had been burnt out, roof joists blackened and exposed to the sky. Few windows remained. Gardens were overgrown, and here and there Jack caught sight of children's playthings clogged with bramble and grass, dulled primary colours showing through the green foliage. He wondered why so many houses had been abandoned at once.

The path stopped against a blank brick wall, a tall boundary construction that seemed to close off the garden space between the two terraces. Rosemary waited for them there, then started down a set of steps almost completely overgrown with brambles. She descended silently. At the bottom, surrounded by banks of undergrowth and overshadowed by the high wall, they huddled together before a boarded area at the base of the barrier.

“Old canal route,” Rosemary said. “It was drained and decommissioned when they built these houses, over a hundred years ago. It's dark in here. You might want to get your torches out.”

“How far does it go?” Jenna asked, amazed.

“This goes out to the edge of town. From there, we go underground almost all the way into the Exclusion Zone.”

“Underground how?” Jack asked. While everyone else was taking torches from their rucksacks, he stared at the timber boarding, one rotten corner of it recently detached.

“You'd be surprised,” Rosemary said. “There are plenty of places beneath the surface of things.” She grabbed the corner of a plywood sheet and tugged, popping it from a couple of loose nails and resting it back against the board beside it. “People have been building in this country for thousands of years. Much of what's underground is unmapped, uncharted, and forgotten. Philippe has the talent to find it, which is something new. I suspect he knows of places that haven't been seen, or trodden by human feet, for many centuries. Canals, underground rivers, storage basements, tunnels, subterranean hiding places, cave networks, roads built over and blocked off.”

“Looks spooky,” Lucy-Anne said, but Jack could hear the excitement in her voice at the prospect.

“Oh, it's bound to be haunted,” Emily said. She had picked the camera from her rucksack, not her torch.

They all stood there for a moment longer, and Jack looked up at the narrow spread of blue sky above them. The sun was behind the brick wall, and he could barely feel the summer heat down here. But he was ready. Darkness, shadows, and secret ways beckoned, but beyond that, the revelations he had been craving for two years.

And his mother. The picture was in his pocket, her stern, beautiful face waiting for him whenever he needed a look. He and Emily had mentioned their father only in whispers, afraid of what their mother's expression might mean.

“I'll go in last,” Emily said. “I really need to get this.” She stood back with her camera, and Rosemary led them away from daylight and into the night.