‘Admirable sentiments,’ said Freeman. Wow. He actually sounds sincere.
At that point we decided that we would indeed bugger off, agreeing to stagger our exits so as not to attract attention. Sharon and Connor went first, Sharon asking me if I wanted to go back with them, but I elected to stay with Lauren. I wasn’t even entirely sure why, but Sharon accepted with a smile, and Connor didn’t seem bothered. I didn’t try to talk about what was going on, just shook his hand. ‘See you soon.’
‘Hey,’ said Daryl. ‘You . . . could I maybe . . .’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Definitely. I mean, sorry, if you don’t mind, Lauren? He’s clean and well-behaved. Ish.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Lauren. ‘I was hoping to get to chat to Stanly’s talking dog, actually. Wasn’t quite sure what to make of it when he told me about you.’
‘Been talking about me, have you?’ said Daryl.
‘Just saying that you’re a bit fat,’ I said. ‘And rubbish.’
I wanted to fly back to Lauren’s but it seemed like tempting fate, considering we’d managed to steer clear of trouble thusfar, so we took the tunnels again instead. When we got back to her house she excused herself and jumped in the shower, and I lingered over giving Kloe a call. She’d sounded so angry the last time. And it was dangerous . . .
I had to check they were okay, though.
‘Hello? Stanly?’
‘Hi, love. How . . . sorry. Pointless question alert. How’s it going?’
She laughed a tired laugh. ‘It’s all right. Tara’s in bed. We went for a little walk in the woods today. It’s actually quite nice. Apart from the being trapped and scared aspect.’
We talked for as long as I felt was safe, which was definitely not as long as I would have liked. She didn’t seem angry today, and I could tell that she was relieved to hear my voice, but there was a weariness in hers, and a sadness, and it stayed with me when we said goodbye, stopping me from doing anything. The meeting hadn’t exactly filled me with confidence, and things were still a bit awkward between Daryl and me, and now I felt even less like catching up, let alone making up. Lauren made him up a nest in the corner of the living room – I definitely wasn’t ready for him to be sleeping at my feet again – and eventually I made my excuses and went to bed, making sure they couldn’t hear me crying.
Chapter Seventeen
I KNEW SOMETHING WAS wrong as soon as I woke up. Before I woke up, in fact. There was a knowledge, lurking beneath the jumbled residue of stupid dreams and last night’s tears, waiting for me as I forced my eyes open. The light bleeding through the window was dim and . . . weird, somehow . . . and I threw off the covers and scrambled across the bedroom, yanking back the curtains. ‘Lauren,’ I called. ‘Lauren! Daryl!’
Lauren came running in, wrapped in a dressing gown, hair tousled, followed by a galloping beagle. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘What’s . . .’ Her voice trailed off. Daryl rose up on his hind legs, front paws on the desk, staring out.
‘Well, shiiit,’ he said.
The city was covered in a layer of snow. It was definitely snow, I could tell by the way it fell, that strange thick grace . . . but it was black, like shiny dark soot. It reminded me of learning about volcanic eruptions and cities being coated in ash, but there was no volcano, no giant fire. Just a solid ceiling of deep grey cloud and streams of snow, blacker than sharks’ eyes. There were a few people out in it, but they either stood, slumped, staring in disbelief, or were running their hands through their hair in despair. No happy kids with sledges, no dogs clumsy with eager confusion. I put a hand on Daryl’s back, and Lauren put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I think we’re running out of time,’ she said.
We had to assume that the whole city was covered, but information was not forthcoming because whatever was causing the black snow – here, have three guesses – was also interfering with the radio, TV and phone signals. A couple of times we managed to get an internet connection, but it was too slow and stuttering to even attempt to call up a search engine. It was like having a particularly senile, stroppy dial-up connection. The browser that we used to access the deep web was already slow at the best of times and didn’t seem to have been particularly affected, so we could at least check for messages.
‘Well,’ said Daryl, too brightly. ‘We could go for a nice walk in the snow.’ Lauren and I exchanged grim looks, and the dog sighed. ‘Jeez. Just trying to lighten the mood.’
Space and time needed to be filled, so I asked Daryl some questions. He’d met Maguire’s other two associates, Fitz and Box, and said that they seemed trustworthy enough. ‘Fitz is pretty funny, actually,’ he said. ‘I managed to get Skank to tell me a little bit more about how they knew each other.’
‘The performance poetry scene,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t quite wrap my head around that.’
‘The experimental performance poetry scene, as well,’ said Daryl. ‘Fitz apparently used to spit venomous, confrontational punk verse. Sort of makes sense that he’d become a heavily-armed vigilante freedom-fighter type. At least he’s putting his money where his mouth is.’
‘And Skank? He was a poet?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Daryl. ‘Apparently he played theremin in some mythological sci-fi prog rock jazz funk spoken word outfit called An Armada From The Lost Moon Of Mars, or something like that. They used to get booked for all kinds of weird gigs and festivals. Usually got put on when the drugs were starting to kick in.’
I nodded. ‘Right. Of course. What else would he have done?’
‘I know, right?’
‘And didn’t he say the early Nineties?’ I said. ‘I thought he was like twenty-eight or something.’
‘I always figured he was about thirty-five.’
‘This guy’s your friend, right?’ said Lauren. ‘And you have no idea how old he is?’
‘To be honest,’ said Daryl, ‘if I found out that he was an ageless demi-god existing outside of linear time, I probably wouldn’t be shocked.’
We managed to have a laugh about that, but conversation dried up pretty quickly and I ended up pacing around the house, trying to get a phone signal at every window. I managed a few bars once or twice, but they always faded before I could attempt a call. It was getting on for five by the time we managed to get some solid broadcasts – the radio and TV came back on, albeit laced with static, and we found a legible news channel. The snow was all over the city. Scientists and meteorological offices and authorities were all ‘baffled’, which wasn’t surprising. People were being strongly advised to stay in their homes as a precaution, and emergency powers had been given to the army. To all intents and purposes, they – and by extension the Angel Group – were in charge of things now.
I glanced down at the phone and saw three whole shining bars of signal, and my first thought should probably have been to call Eddie, but of course it wasn’t. ‘I’m going to try Kloe,’ I said. I moved towards the window and was about to dial her number when I caught sight of an army truck rumbling down the road. I moved swiftly aside, out of view.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Lauren.
‘Truck.’
We observed through the window, taking care to remain hidden. The truck halted a few houses down from us and sat there with its lights off. Nobody got out and the engine stayed running, the vehicle just squatting there in the dark snow. It stayed that way for what felt like a very long time. ‘I don’t like this,’ muttered Daryl.
‘Hold on,’ said Lauren. ‘Look.’
Two figures had emerged from the truck, familiar black-armoured soldiers, faces obscured entirely by those awful helmets. They were moving in our direction. ‘Oh shit,’ I said.
‘Wait,’ said Lauren. ‘Look up the road.’
I looked in the other direction in time to see three guys, black bandanas tied around the lower halves of their faces, hurl a brick and two glass bottles at the sold
iers. The brick bounced off the rear window of the truck, which was presumably bulletproof, one bottle shattered on a soldier’s head and sent him stumbling, and the second smashed on the ground just in front of them. It wasn’t just a bottle though, because it exploded on impact, pumping a ring of fire out across the snow. The soldier who hadn’t been hit the first time was knocked onto his back.
‘Have that, you Nazi bastards!’ one of the guys yelled. ‘This ain’t a police state!’
A huge amplified voice responded from the truck. ‘Get down on the ground now. This is your final warning.’
Each of the guys threw another bottle in response. None of these exploded, they just broke on the truck and scattered shiny, ringing shards of glass on the ground. Two more soldiers jumped out of the truck and aimed their weapons.
‘Get down on the ground!’ one of them yelled.
‘They’re not,’ whispered Lauren.
‘They are,’ I said. ‘We have to get out there.’ I made towards the front door, but Lauren grabbed me. ‘What?’ I said. ‘They’re going to kill those guys!’
‘We can’t draw attention to ourselves,’ said Lauren.
‘She’s right, kid,’ said Daryl.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll just do it from in here.’ I concentrated and flipped the soldiers over, smacking them down on their backs, hard. The young guys who had thrown the bottles all started laughing. ‘Now get out of there,’ I muttered. ‘You morons, get out of there.’
‘Not so in charge now, are you?’ one of the guys was jeering.
‘Get out of there,’ I whispered.
‘Yeah! You can’t keep us confined! We got rights!’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Lauren. ‘They’re getting up . . .’
I slammed the soldiers back down on the ground with my mind and finally the three guys turned and ran. ‘Thank God for that,’ I murmured, turning away.
‘No!’ said Lauren.
‘What?’ I looked back. The three soldiers were back on their feet, aiming, and I didn’t have time to think before they fired deafening bursts, brief bright muzzle flashes in the murk. I looked up the road and saw the three young guys pitch over in the snow, face-first. None of them even screamed, they were just down. Their blood didn’t show up on the snow. I slid down to the floor, my hands and face quickly shedding any fragments of feeling. Lauren was crying silently.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered.
‘They just killed them,’ I said, my voice spectral. ‘They just . . .’
‘We should have gone out there,’ said Lauren, through a curtain of tears.
‘We couldn’t have expected that,’ said Daryl. ‘I wouldn’t . . . why wouldn’t they use rubber bullets?’
‘To show they’re serious,’ I said.
‘Might be their first big mistake,’ said Daryl. ‘London folk will put up with a lot of bullshit . . . I mean, they live here, don’t they? But private armies murdering unarmed civilians? I doubt that that’s going to fly.’
By now there was commotion outside, screaming. I didn’t want to look. I could hear the booming voice from the truck telling everyone to return to their homes, that the situation was under control. ‘People might come to the door,’ said Lauren. ‘Questions.’
‘Then we hide,’ I said.
We switched off the few lights we’d had on, drew the curtains and went up to Lauren’s room, using a single candle for illumination. Nobody really spoke for well over an hour, we just half-heartedly played cards, Daryl sliding them with his paw like a seasoned card shark, each of us on edge, waiting for a knock at the door. But none came, and suddenly it was dark for real, although it had felt dark all day. ‘Are you guys hungry?’ said Lauren.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Not hugely,’ said Daryl.
‘Me neither,’ she said, but she went downstairs and started to cook something anyway. I sat in her room and looked at the pictures on the walls, many of which were cuttings from National Geographic magazines showing polar bears and grizzly bears and lions and foxes, all with cubs. I stared at one of a huge black bear and its cub, and something stirred in my mind.
‘I watched a documentary about black bears the other day,’ I said.
‘Yeah?’ said Daryl.
‘Yeah. Apparently you should never play dead if faced with a predatory black bear ‘cos it’ll just maul you anyway.’
Daryl nodded slowly. ‘Good advice, I guess.’
I sighed. ‘God. Screw this. Hard.’
‘Can I ask you a question, chief?’
‘Is it “did you miss me”?’
The beagle laughed. ‘No. Well, maybe after. But . . . why do you want to do this? Be a superhero?’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I mean, why do you ask?’
‘Just wondering,’ said Daryl. ‘I mean . . . I’ve been involved with some pretty freakeh business in my time. And this whole thing, black snow, martial law, monsters, whatever you call our proposed guerrilla shenanigans . . . it’s beyond the pale. It’s a whiter shade of beyond the pale. It’s fifty shades of grey beyond the valley of the pale—’
‘OK, I get the point,’ I said. ‘I . . . why. Why be a superhero . . .’ I stared at him, wanting to laugh, because I couldn’t tell him. He waited expectantly, but after a while I just had to shrug. ‘Truthfully, I have no idea,’ I said. ‘From the second I had my powers, I never really thought about doing anything else. Not seriously, anyway. It just . . . seemed like the thing to do.’
The dog nodded sagely. ‘That’s as good a reason as any in my book.’ He sat there thoughtfully for a moment, then wagged his tail, something he very rarely did. ‘So, did you miss me?’
‘Why? Did you go somewhere?’
He laughed, because he knew.
Later on we finally had some communication from Eddie, a terse email saying that we all needed to meet, but somewhere else this time. Once again it was a long way, although in a different direction. ‘Tubes again?’ I said.
‘Might not be a good idea,’ said Daryl. ‘I’ll wager they’ll suspect that we’ve used them, they’ll be watching. Be good to have a couple of different options, so we can alternate – soon as anyone notices a pattern, we’re screwed.’
‘I might have an idea,’ said Lauren.
It turned out that she had more than an idea – she had a plan. A fairly disgusting plan, in fact.
I’d seen it in films and on TV so many times, trooping through the sewers to stay hidden, and obviously I’d always thought ‘ugh’. But trust me, nothing could prepare you. The stench was about as overpoweringly hideous as a smell seemed capable of being, as though there could never again be a worse smell than this, and it never subsided, not even momentarily. I kept the three of us levitated so we didn’t actually have to touch the floors or walls, but it was still utterly rank, and slow going. The stink was almost solid, it pressed against your face, and then there was the perpetual drip drip drip and the clammy glistening of various unspeakable substances. After the first half an hour I was getting light-headed from holding my breath so often. Breathing through my mouth didn’t help. I just got the smell translated into taste, which wasn’t necessarily worse, just vile in a different way. Lauren had a torch, but it was weak so we could never see further than ten feet in front of us. Luckily she had worked it all out and written down a way through the tunnels in relation to the geography of the city above. She had a good sense of direction, so theoretically it could have been worse.
Forty-five minutes in I stopped. ‘This is ridiculous, it’s taking ages. We might as well fly properly, rather than floating.’
‘If that means we get to spend less time in the city of lost turds, you’ve got all my votes,’ said Daryl. ‘Plus the votes of some dead people whose names I’ve co-opted.’
‘Surely it’
s too cramped,’ said Lauren. ‘And we have to keep changing direction, we might just go slap bang into a wall.’
‘No, we won’t,’ I said. ‘It’ll be OK. You just need to be on the ball with the directions.’
‘Well . . . all right.’ I could tell she wasn’t convinced. I brought us all close together, moved us so we were in as aerodynamic a position as possible, and started to fly. It was cramped, horribly so, and we were sickeningly close to the endless carpet of sewage, but it was certainly faster. There were a couple of occasions when we very nearly hit a wall, but all the precision practice I’d been doing paid off handsomely and I managed to correct my flight every time. When we finally reached our destination, a manhole at the top of a very grimy ladder, Lauren said we’d probably shaved at least half an hour off the journey.
I shook my head. ‘To be honest, in future, I think I’d rather take my chances with the Angel Group and cut down on the travelling time. And the mountains of crap.’
‘I’d take mountains of crap over mortal combat any day,’ said Lauren, from the top of the ladder, ‘especially as they seem to have lost their shyness about killing people.’ She pushed the manhole up with her mind and looked around. ‘All clear.’
Fresh air had literally never been this gorgeous. We leaned against a wall, keeping to the shadows in case of enemies, and greedily breathed in the purity. The three of us were apocalyptically smelly, but at that moment I really didn’t care, I was so grateful to be above ground that for a full minute I didn’t even notice the black snow. Then the relief faded like breath on glass, and I tentatively scooped up some of the unnatural substance. It was as cold and wet in my hand as regular snow and came apart just as easily, but when I stared into it there were no patterns, no artistry. It seemed to radiate a sinister energy.
That makes sense.
The flat was another grotty and downmarket effort and everyone seemed on edge. Sharon still had a hug ready but stopped short of giving it to me. ‘God,’ she said, laughing half-chokingly. ‘Sorry, but . . . you stink.’
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