by Tim Lebbon
It was cold, down in this place never touched by sunlight or heat. There was a very slight breeze coming from ahead, and without that Jack guessed the tunnel would have stank. Every few seconds someone's torch beam would illuminate the edge of the dried canal, reminding him of where they were and how strange this was. But though it was dark, and unsettling, and the air went from musty to fresh in a breath, there was a palpable sense of excitement. Jack felt enthused, and he could sense the others experiencing their own versions of the same anticipation. Their fast breathing echoed, torch lights bobbed erratically, and a loaded silence had fallen over them. The air felt as if it was about to break.
Jack became fascinated with the ceiling, aiming his torch up there for long periods between brief glances at the uneven ground before him. In places it looked like a cave, with uneven rocky protrusions, stalactites made of some unidentifiable, creamy material, and dark cracks into which even his torch could not delve. Elsewhere he could see the rough concrete that sealed the canal beneath the ground. Perhaps it was an intentional covering-over, or maybe it had been hidden away bit by bit, buildings constructed to span and then smother the old waterway.
“Jack!” Sparky called. Jack paused and looked at where his friend was shining his torch. Just before Jack's feet was a hole in the canal's old bed, several feet wide and at least six deep. Its bottom was a mucky mess, the small pools of stagnant water reflecting only a sick, slick light back up at them. It stank. He'd almost walked into it.
“That would have been a good start,” Jack muttered.
“You'd have smelled worse than usual, that's for sure.” Sparky passed him by with a grin and stepped neatly around the hole.
Jack took more care after that. There was plenty to wonder at, but there was also his own safety to consider, and that had to come first. For two years he had been petrified about leaving Emily on her own. He'd had nightmares about drowning, feeling the darkness of deep water sucking him down, and all the while Emily was alone on a vast pebble beach far away, hands reaching in an impossible attempt to save him, her brother, until the last time he was pulled under, when he saw the shadows gathering at the beach's extremes…watching…waiting to make sure Jack was not about to surface again, before slicking across the beach towards his abandoned sister.
“You okay, Ems?” It was the name he'd used when she was very young, and she usually did not like hearing it. Their parents had used it all the time.
His sister glanced back and smiled, and he saw that she was more than okay. She was enjoying this. That bolstered his mood and drove away the memories of bad dreams, shadows fading on unknown pebbly beaches.
Lucy-Anne and Rosemary maintained the lead. Jack's girlfriend walked apart from the older woman, but Jack knew her well. She was trying to hide her fascination in case Rosemary saw it as a weakness. Lucy-Anne hated being beholden to anyone, and now they were all in the hands of this woman whom none of them knew.
They walked for half an hour. There was little chit-chat, but plenty of nervous energy. Jack wondered about Rosemary's friend Philippe, and how he saw routes and byways hidden to everyone else. What must that be like? How did he manage understanding such secrets? Jack found the world of the Irregulars both intriguing and disturbing, and whenever he tried to put himself in their place, he became afraid. His life had changed enough since Doomsday. He could only imagine what London's few, amazing survivors must have gone through.
The buried canal ended abruptly. Rosemary and Lucy-Anne came to a halt, standing side by side and shining their torches at a blank concrete wall. There was graffiti carved into the concrete, incongruous in such surroundings and more disquieting because of that. ‘We've come heer to hyde.’ The mis-spellings made the pronouncements even more otherworldly.
“Who wrote that?” Jenna asked.
“It looks very old,” Rosemary said. “To be honest, it's the first time I've seen it. I came from the other way, remember?”
“So where is the other way?” Lucy-Anne asked, her question bearing a challenge. Jack thought she was getting nervous.
“Can't you see?” Rosemary said, a hint of humour in her voice that Jack didn't like. She was supposed to be leading them, not testing them. But then, she was from out of London. Perhaps being in a position of power was something she was not used to.
Jack and the others shone their torches around, looking for where their path might continue. The combined lights lit up the whole end of the tunnel, revealing little but wall, ground, concrete ceiling, and the old, crumbling tow paths on either side.
“No,” Sparky said. “I don't see.” He spun around and played his torch behind them, his action instantly making Jack nervous. Trap? he thought.
“Down there,” Emily said. “Look! It looks like a wave of mud, but it's fresh.” She aimed her torch at the base of the graffitied wall, revealing a drift of canal-bed mud resting against the concrete. It looked unremarkable to Jack; just another hump in the old canal's uneven floor.
“Good eyes,” Rosemary said.
“SuperGirl,” Emily said matter-of-factly, and everyone laughed.
Their spirits raised, the others stood back while Sparky and Emily scooped away handfuls of loose dirt, slowly revealing a dark opening at the base of the wall. It was small-barely large enough to crawl through-but Rosemary assured them it was the way to go.
“If I can do it at my age,” she said, “all of us can.”
“So you hid it on your way through?” Jack asked. “Buried it?”
“Yes. Ruined my nails.” The old woman smiled, but in torchlight it looked grotesque.
“Why?”
Rosemary frowned, and Jenna and Lucy-Anne aimed their torches at her face. Jack held back a laugh; it was like an interrogation in some crappy movie.
Cringing against the light, Rosemary turned away. “It's a secret,” she said. “This way, this route, no one knows about it. No one but Philippe and me, and now you.”
The torches lowered, giving light to Sparky and Emily once more.
“Everything's a secret,” Rosemary continued. “We're going towards a place where secrets are currency, and survival means stealth. I never liked London before Doomsday, to tell the truth, but these days, I like it much less. It's as if in moving on, we've also regressed. Trust is a thing of the past.”
“Tell me about it,” Lucy-Anne said, and Rosemary looked at Jack's girlfriend, her eyes sad and heavy with the terrible things they had seen.
“We trust you,” Jack said, surprising himself. Lucy-Anne glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “We do. We trust you. You lead us in, and we'll help however we can.”
Rosemary smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “All of you. But sometimes…” She drifted off and stared at the concrete wall.
“Sometimes what?” Sparky said, panting. He stood, face grimy and hands filthy from the dirt.
Rosemary sighed. “Sometimes, I think we've passed the point of no return.”
Rosemary went first. Sparky offered, but she insisted, waving away objections and borrowing Sparky's torch. Maybe Jack's statement of trust had given her strength, or perhaps it made her want to prove herself more.
Lucy-Anne felt a begrudging admiration for the old woman. But trust? Not yet.
“Only a few feet,” Rosemary said. They watched her crawl into the narrow crack at the base of the wall, pulling with her elbows and pushing with her booted feet, and the light she carried threw back curious shadows, as though there was something down there with her.
“I'm through,” Rosemary called. Her voice was muffled, and came from miles away.
Sparky went next. In his enthusiasm he banged his head on the concrete, cursing and touching his scalp to check for blood. Lucy-Anne giggled, but only briefly, because no one accompanied her.
Fair enough, she thought. Yeah, we all know how serious this is. Rosemary can stop the bleeding, but we're out of the world we know, now. We're facing danger and challenging it to bite back.
Jenna went after Spa
rky, then Emily, pushing the camera bag before her.
“You okay?” Jack asked. They were alone here now, with only the muffled sound of their friends chatting with Rosemary. Lucy-Anne could not quite tell in what way their voices had changed.
“I'm fine. Just…you know.”
“Bit scary, yeah?”
“I guess.”
They stared at each other, knowing that perhaps now there should be a kiss or a hug, or at least something more than this.
“You next,” she said, to break the silence more than anything. Jack smiled and nodded, reaching out towards her and barely managing to touch her hand with his.
She watched him crawl into the hole and, alone at last, she closed her eyes and gave way to a sob that had been building in her throat.
She could remember a dream she'd had weeks ago, when dogs were attacking her in the dark, biting her, eating her, even as she tried to fight them off. The body they'd seen…that had been like a trigger, throwing the dream back at her. She knew it was stupid. She knew they'd say she was a fool. But for a while back there, she'd been terrified.
At least now they were moving on.
She turned around slowly and shone the torch back the way they had come. Its beam did not reach very far. Such old, thick darkness, she thought, not sure where the idea came from. She suddenly felt like an invader down here.
The gap was much narrower than she'd expected, so much so that she could not even raise her head without bashing it as Sparky had done. So she stared at the gravelly ground beneath her, pushing with her feet and crawling through on her elbows. It was only as light fell upon her that she realised she was through.
Sparky helped her to stand, playfully brushing dust and dirt from her clothes. “Welcome to the Mines of Moria!” he said, in the gruffest voice he could manage.
Lucy-Anne looked around. “Bloody hell!”
“I think it's an old church basement,” Rosemary said.
The room was twenty steps across and thirty long, supported at regular intervals by thick stone columns. There seemed to be nothing stored down here, and it had the feel of being long-abandoned; dust had drifted against the base of walls, and in one corner an impressive array of spider webs formed grubby curtains. They shone their torches around, searching but not finding a way up into whatever building had once stood, or still stood above them.
“Maybe over there,” Jenna said. She walked toward one corner, kicking through the layered dust at her feet. She looked up at the ceiling, then back at the group, nodding. “Must have been closed in ages ago.”
Lucy-Anne saw the discoloured ceiling above where Jenna stood. The evidence of a blocked in staircase, perhaps, or the remains of where a hatch had once led down to this place.
“Why'd you think it's a church?” Jack asked.
“Over there,” Rosemary said. “In the end wall. That's the way we have to go. You'll see.”
We'll see what? Lucy-Anne thought. She was about to ask when she heard the growl.
Her heart stuttered, missing a beat and taking her breath away when it restarted. Her arms and chest went cold. A sound returned from her dream, as fresh and alive as if she were dreaming it again now: another growl, and a low, throaty bark.
They were all frozen. The sudden stillness would have been comical, were it not for the other growls now answering the first.
“Oh, no,” Rosemary groaned. And she sounded her age for the first time since Lucy-Anne had met her.
Emily dashed over to her brother's side. He glanced at Lucy-Anne, but she could not even blink.
“What?” Jack whispered. He stepped closer to Rosemary, and the others all turned to look at the old woman. Their eyes were wide in the darkness, glittering with strange yellow light. “Rosemary, what?”
“Dogs,” Lucy-Anne whispered.
“Yes,” Rosemary said. “I met them on the way out, but they were much further back, just beneath the Exclusion Zone.”
“And?” Jack asked.
“They're wild, Jack. From London. There are packs in there, big packs.”
“We've heard about them,” Jenna said. All of them had drawn close, subconsciously shielding Emily from whatever danger approached.
“Some of them went down beneath the city,” Rosemary said. “The Tube, tunnels, sewers. Dog, and…”
“Other things,” Jenna finished for her.
Rosemary nodded. Lucy-Anne knew what “other things” meant, because they'd had a series of reports left in the drops close to Camp Truth a few months before. Much could be put down to hearsay and exaggeration, they'd agreed, but it also seemed likely that some of what they read was true. Alligators, snakes, poisonous frogs, deadly spiders, and even a pride of lions, all of them escaped from various zoos and private collections in and around London following Doomsday.
But dogs…
“I dreamed this,” she whispered, and she was aware of Jack's torch shifting as he turned to look at her.
Another growl came, much closer than before, and there seemed to be cunning there, and purpose.
Jack stepped in front of Emily, a four inch folding knife in his hand. Jenna also shielded the girl, and Sparky already had a knife in each hand, torch tucked in his back pocket.
“How many were there?” Jack asked the old woman.
“Five,” Lucy-Anne said.
“Yes,” Rosemary said, surprised. “But I think I broke one of their legs.”
“Four's still enough,” Sparky said. “Shit. Shit! Why didn't you tell us?”
“Would you still have come?” Rosemary asked.
“Yes!” Sparky and Jack spoke at the same time, and the woman looked down at her feet.
No, Lucy-Anne thought, and when she blinked she saw a flash of her dream, a dog snarling with her own meat hanging from its teeth-
— and when she looked again, the growl was real.
The first dog emerged from the tunnel into the large basement, dodging their torch beams, darting from column to column as it came for them.
Chapter Six
Point of no return
News from London is contradictory and confusing. Official sources talk of at least nine separate terrorist attacks, including explosions at the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, London Bridge, Leicester Square, and Buckingham Palace. A source at Scotland Yard has said that several terrorist cells are being actively pursued through London, and that more attacks are feared. There is still no clear news of which chemical or biological agent has been deployed. Eyewitness accounts tell of military roadblocks, bulldozers piling bodies in public parks, and execution-style shootings to contain certain areas of the population. Whatever is true, it's certain that this is a tragedy of extreme magnitude, and CNN will, of course, be broadcasting throughout the day to bring you updates as and when they become available.
— CNN: Tragedy in London, 12:42 p.m. EST, July 28, 2019
Sparky crouched down low, a knife held in each hand, relying on the light from everyone else's torches to give him sight. Jack stood beside him to the left, but Sparky took a step forward, insisting that he be the first.
Jack had once seen his friend get into a fight with someone twice his age and a foot taller than him. The man had stormed in with fists waving and a shit-eating grin, catching Sparky one on the chin. Sparky had staggered back, ducked down, kicked him in the nuts, and when the guy fell over Sparky put the boot in. Thirty seconds later the man was out cold.
Sparky was not one to mess with, and he'd never been afraid of the sight of his own blood. Jack knew what Sparky's brother had become, and sometimes, like now, his friend actually scared him.
More shadows darted from the tunnel at the other end of the room. Torch lights flickered and bobbed after them, but the dogs possessed an almost supernatural ability to dodge into darkness.
The first hound emerged from behind a stone column and jumped at Sparky. Jack almost laughed: it was a King Charles Spaniel, its black and white coat smeared with mud, long ears flopping bac
k as it leapt at his friend. But the laughter died in Jack's mouth when he saw the animal's teeth, its lips pulled back in a furious growl, and he realised how wild this dog had become. If anyone had ever stroked it with affection, the animal's memories of such moments were long forgotten.
Sparky stepped to the side and lashed out, but the dog snapped at his arm, catching his wrist with its sharp teeth. Sparky grunted and dropped a knife.
Jack took two steps and kicked the dog just as it landed on all fours. Distracted by the taste of Sparky's blood, it had not seen his foot coming, and his boot caught it beneath the jaw. Its head jerked up and back with a sickening crunch of teeth jamming shut.
Sparky knelt beside the dog and buried his remaining knife in its throat.
The animal squealed and howled, kicking its back legs, pinned to the ground by the blade. The sounds it made were piteous, and Jack glanced back at the others. He was pleased to see that Emily had her face buried in Jenna's shoulder.
“Look out!” Lucy-Anne shouted. She came toward him in a blur, and for a moment Jack was disorientated, his girlfriend's torch flashing across his eyes and blinding him to the shadows.
Something hit him in the hip. It was warm and wet, and he realised that was a dog's nose nuzzling at the fat of his waist, and beneath that was the warmth of blood as its teeth broke his skin and it tried to burrow inside. A dog is trying to eat me! he thought, and the idea jarred him from wherever he'd been. He brought the torch down and smacked it against the dog's head. The animal whined and ran, leaving Jack's hip still feeling wet.
“Pitbull,” Jenna said. “They were banned years ago.”
“Someone forgot to tell that one,” Lucy-Anne said. She was with him now, standing with her back to his so that together they could see all around. “Lucky. You must have caught it just right to drive it away, but it'll-”
“Lucky? My guts are pouring out and-”
“Don't be a wimp,” she said, her voice high with panic. “Just a scratch. Sparky?”