by Tim Lebbon
But the future where this would matter was far, far distant. The immediate future was less than four hours long. His injuries burned, eye throbbing, and he had yet to fully assess the damage done. But there was no time even for that.
As they approached the Imperial War Museum, Rhali used her gift to warn them of movement ahead. And there was plenty. Andrew also went ahead to scout their route, and he returned several times with tales of creatures wandering the streets. They were all heading in the same direction—towards the museum.
Jack sought ways to communicate with those things they would face. He did his best to think of them as human, although forcibly evolved far from what he understood human to be. But after everything he had seen, he also thought of them as monsters. Like Reaper, they looked down upon the Irregulars as way below them, insignificant as insects to an elephant. Unlike Reaper, they ate them.
His efforts frustrated him. His talents were many, but not endless. And search though he did, he could not perceive a way to touch those creatures from the north.
“We all want the same thing!” he said to Rhali. “They've come down here because of the bomb, though none of them can stop it. And even though perhaps we can, I just don't know how to tell them that.”
“Can't you just talk to them?”
“You've seen some of what I've seen. I think they're beyond conversation.”
Lucy-Anne had already shared with him what she knew of them from her time in the north. They looked wild, but carried a startling intelligence. They were vicious and brutal, but organised as well, sometimes hunting in packs for some of the scarcest food there was—humans.
Jack had asked what they ate in the north, and it had been Andrew who offered the answer. I only saw it once but…think of farms where humans keep cattle. More than that, you don't want to know.
And so close to the museum they called a halt again, hiding behind the innocent facade of a restaurant window, watching darkness fall outside and wondering what to do.
“Nomad is still inside?” Jack asked.
“She showed no sign of wishing to be anywhere else,” Andrew replied. He seemed to flicker before Jack, like reality wavering in and out of focus.
“If she can get in, so can I,” Jack said. “Maybe that is the first thing to do. I'll go inside, look at everything, try and find a way in for Hayden.”
“But how can you get past everything Hayden says they have in there, even with your talents?”
“Nomad did.”
“Nomad's almost a dream,” Lucy-Anne said.
Jack's frustration was growing. Blessed or cursed with such powers, still he sat in an Indian restaurant where no one had eaten for two years, curled menus and neat place settings taunting him with the normality that was no more.
“Maybe Reaper had the right idea,” he said quietly. “A distraction. Not for the Choppers, but for these things around the museum. Draw them away so that Hayden can get inside. Work on the traps. See what he can do. He's the tech guy, after all. Get into the tank and start dismantling the bomb.”
“Me and Sparky,” Jenna said.
“No,” Jack said.
“But—”
“No! You'll be killed. They'll catch you easily. No, it has to be me and Fleeter. We're the distraction, you get Hayden inside, then I'll meet you back at the museum.”
“You're taking on an awful lot yourself,” Lucy-Anne said. “Why don't you let—”
“Where's Rhali?” Jenna asked.
As he stood from the chair he'd taken and moved to the front window, Jack already knew. No, he tried to say, but his mouth was suddenly dry.
He saw Rhali just as she disappeared around the junction at the end of the street, heading for the museum. She's going to get herself killed! he thought. But at the same time he realised that whatever happened when they pursued Rhali could be the distraction they needed. And she knew that.
“Fleeter!” Jack said, readying himself to flip and go to Rhali's aid.
And then all hell broke loose.
For a moment Jack thought something had happened to the sinking sun, shadowing the street outside and concealing everything from view. Then as the creature struck the window and smashed through, he realised what had happened. As they'd been sitting there talking they had been stalked. And now the stalker had closed for the kill.
He squeezed his eyes shut and crossed his arms before his face, yet still he felt the cool kiss of dozens of glass shards across his cheeks and chin, forearms and scalp. He backed quickly away and his legs struck a chair, sending him sprawling. Even before he struck the ground he was kicking back with his feet, trying to distance himself from the window and whatever was coming in, because it was big. It had to be to block out so much light.
Fleeter screamed.
Jack opened his eyes and felt the horrible tickle of shattered glass across his face. He looked at the floor and risked blinking rapidly, and his vision cleared.
Someone shouted. Jack lifted his head and picked up the chair at the same time, but the thing was paying him no attention. Its teeth and claws were concerned only with Fleeter. Its wings were folded around her, claws at their tips curled into her shoulders, and its bat-like face darted down again and again, biting chunks from her arms as she waved them frantically before her face. The creature had long blonde hair, and for what felt like several long seconds Jack became mesmerised by the flowery hair clip hanging from a few thin, filthy strands.
Fleeter's blood splashed his face.
His eyelids drooped and he delved inward, but Jack was not himself. He still felt a deep, penetrating pain from his face and eye wound that he had healed only so much…saw Rhali disappearing around the street corner and into danger…thought of his mother and Emily and whether he would ever see them again…and when he tried to send a freezing exhalation at the thing to still its sickening, gnashing mouth, his breath condensed before his face and fell to the floor in a fine snow.
Fleeter cried out, a single, desperate scream that chilled Jack to the core. Everything is going wrong! Nothing is simple, nothing is safe, and I should be going after Rhali!
From somewhere in the distance came the angry rattle of heavy gunfire.
Jack flipped, but without success. For a moment the scene around him slowed, but then staggered onwards like a film with frames removed. The bat-thing jarred and jerked, and other movement sent sharp shadows dancing across the restaurant's tables.
Shivering, feeling hopeless, trying to gather himself to use his powers as they were meant to be used, Jack could only watch as Sparky leapt across tabletops and powered into the bat monster, grasping its hair and pulling its head back, wrapping his legs around its torso and trapping its wings.
“Sparky!” he shouted. But Sparky was grimacing, his spiked hair spattered with Fleeter's blood from the creature's mouth as he brought up his knife and slashed it across the monster's throat.
It screeched and pulled back, launching itself back through the shattered window with strong, long legs. Human legs, Jack thought, and on one ankle he saw what might have been an Ironman tattoo. Sparky went with it, attacking with the knife and trying to get past one waving wing that the thing had worked free. It struck Sparky with it, and the sound of leathery wing against his head was like a palm against a brick wall.
Hayden was hunkered down beneath the window sill, whimpering.
“Help her and stay safe!” Jack shouted at him, pointing at Fleeter. He could see more blood than skin on the girl's face. But it was his friend who needed him most.
He heard more gunfire, and the sound of a helicopter coming closer.
Taking a deep breath and struggling to settle the turmoil of his talents, Jack leapt out through the window.
As Sparky jumped on the thing and started hacking with his knife, Lucy-Anne heard breaking glass from the kitchen at the rear of the restaurant.
If something gets in behind us…she thought, and Jenna obviously had the same idea. She tapped Lucy-Anne's arm and led
the way back towards the kitchen doors. She glanced back only once, looking past Lucy-Anne at where Sparky fought the thing. Her eyes went wide. Then they were at the swing doors into the kitchen, and Lucy-Anne pushed them open first.
Weaponless, defenceless, she stormed into the kitchen.
The thing stood at the back of the large room, and for a moment she thought it was Shade. Right then she'd have welcomed him with open arms, even though he spooked the hell out of her. At least she mostly knew what he was.
But it was not Shade. And when the thing charged, Lucy-Anne had no idea what was about to kill them. It moved without sound, long limbs waving like fronds and lifting it over food preparation surfaces, body and head kept level and straight and focussed on them. It had dark, fluid eyes. Like a shark. And when it opened its mouth there were too many teeth.
Lucy-Anne darted left, ducking down and frantically scanning for something to use as a weapon. But it was Jenna who saved the day. She swept something from a work surface and hefted it at the advancing creature, and the meat tenderiser impacted its head with a dull thud.
It paused and shook its head, and in a shockingly human gesture it brought one long, delicate limb up to touch its face. It looked at its hand—long-fingered, thin, feather-like—and saw blood.
“Lucy-Anne, use anything!” Jenna said, and she started throwing other kitchen objects. Several glass jars, metal ladles, a wooden chopping board, some hit the thing on its head or dark, upright body, some were knocked aside by its thrashing arms.
Lucy-Anne moved along the side of the kitchen, pulling drawers open and heaving a handful of knives and forks at the creature. She knew that they had mere seconds. It might be surprised, perhaps even a little shocked at the sight of its own blood and the willingness of these people to defend themselves. But if it was as hungry as the other things they had met, and as dismissive of those still relatively normal, then in moments it would come. And bite.
She tripped over the body. It was shrivelled and dry, still dressed in kitchen whites that were now stained an autumn of browns. It rustled and whispered as she fell, and she kicked out in shock, feeling her foot pass through something dry and brittle. The head rolled. Hollow eyes turned to her. And then she saw the knife in the dead man's hand.
Jenna shouted, anger and fear feeding her voice. “Come on you bastard, stupid, stupid thing! You want to eat me? What would your mum say, eh? Would your dad be proud?” Lucy-Anne couldn't see her—the central food preparation area was in the way—but she heard the pots and pans, plates and glasses, cups and cutlery that she continued to throw at the thing, keeping it at bay. The shadows of its waving arms and stalking legs passed across the ceiling above Lucy-Anne as it lifted itself up to leap, and then she stood.
It was ready to pounce on Jenna. Had her in the corner, pressed against the closed walk-in fridge with nothing left with which to protect herself. But it was Jenna's wide-eyed glance past the thing at Lucy-Anne that saved her.
As the creature turned, Lucy-Anne jumped onto the work surface and leapt at it, dead man's knife sweeping around in her right hand. Who were you? she thought. Who did you love, and are they still alive somewhere? But she could not distract herself with thoughts of lost humanity. She was still human, and loved, and she loved others. That was why she was as prepared as any of them to kill.
It lifted one long arm to ward off the knife, but the keen blade had remained untouched by time. It sliced through the light limb and Lucy-Anne's weight drove it forward, burying the blade in the creature's neck. As the thing fell, she fell on top of it.
Its shriek of pain was the first sound they'd heard from it, and it was horrible. Lucy-Anne closed her eyes as she and the thing tumbled to the floor, and she could have been hearing a baby crying out in pain. But then it lurched her aside and fell across her, teeth gnashing, head butting at her even as she brought her left arm up to protect her face.
Jenna stumbled past and raised something in her hands, bringing it down on the back of the creature's head. Lucy-Anne twisted aside just in time, avoiding its head as it was driven down by the impact. She felt teeth grazing across her shoulder.
“Come on!” Jenna said, reaching for her. But Lucy-Anne could not try to escape from beneath the dying creature just yet. She held on to the knife and, with gritted teeth and eyes squeezed shut, twisted and shoved it deeper.
The thing that had once been a person shuddered, uttered a high-pitched keening sound, and then slumped down on her.
Jenna grabbed it and pulled, and Lucy-Anne pushed. She tried to close herself off from what she had done, dull her senses against the evidence of death. Warm blood, the stench of its breath, the sound of its hard skin against her own, the pain in her shoulder…she tried to ignore them all.
“Shitting hell,” Jenna said. “Come on. Up. Thanks. Come on, Lucy-Anne.”
They stood together in the kitchen and hugged, holding each other so tight and both trying to turn so that they could not see the dead thing. Lucy-Anne looked at the door through which it had entered, and there was no sign of any movement. But that route was open now, and she was not sure she could bring herself to kill again.
Its blood was already cooling on her hand and forearm.
“We've got to go,” she said.
From outside in the restaurant, someone shouted. And from further away, gunfire.
“Gotta help the others!” Jenna said. She dashed through into the restaurant, stepping over the body that might remain here forever.
As she followed, Lucy-Anne was already recognising what was happening because she had seen it all before. The shooting, the chaos, the death, and now the screams.
Nomad is coming to kill me, she thought. But fate carried her onwards, and she rode its insistent wave.
Out in the street, gunfire and shouts. The shooting was from some way off—Jack knew it was coming closer, though he could not worry about it right then—and the shouting was from Sparky. He was tangled with the bat thing on the road. They'd rolled out between two parked cars and now fought on the central white line, Sparky slashing with the knife, the creature thrashing to try to buck him off. His shouting was senseless, wordless, exhalations of both rage and fear. If Sparky stopped shouting, he might actually think about what he was doing.
Jack glanced the way Rhali had disappeared, and he actually took three steps in that direction. But his friend was before him, fighting for his life. And back in the restaurant, it was Hayden whom they had to all protect with their lives.
He breathed deeply, gathered his thoughts, and reached out. “Sparky,” he said.
Sparky glanced up and understood immediately, rolling aside, leaving his knife snagged in one of the thing's tattered wings.
Jack lifted it up. It rose from the road, untouched, and paused in its screeching and thrashing to look around in wonder. He didn't know what he was going to do with it. If he simply dropped it along the street it could well come at them again. Once again Jack thought, If only I could communicate with it, maybe—
Something dropped on him. It must have been up on the roof, waiting for an opportunity to leap down on some unsuspecting victim, and it crushed him down to the sidewalk. He lost his hold on the bat thing, fell, cracked his knee and elbow painfully, and as if drawn by pain the creature attacking him reached around and pressed its forearm across his wounded eye, pulling his head back and exposing his neck.
Jack threw his head back hard and felt it connect. The thing grunted and let him go, and Jack took the opportunity to stand and face it.
Beyond, the bat thing was running at Sparky once more.
The woman before him was naked and sleek, and she stank of gone-off fruit. Though not possessed of anything extra—no wings, or stings, or altered skin—still she was distinctly inhuman. Her head was elongated, her limbs too long and her body too thin, but it was her eyes that were most alien. They glimmered with an arrogant intelligence, as if she could see far more. And she looked so hungry.
Jack reached
in and down, pleased at last at the clarity his universe had taken on once again.
Sparky screamed. Startled, Jack glanced across to see what could draw such a shocking noise from his friend, and then the woman was upon him again, knocking him back across a car bonnet. In an instinctive act he surged heat at her, and she groaned as the skin across her right shoulder and upper arm sizzled black. But still she came, falling on him and reaching for his face with both hands.
One finger scratched across his wounded eye. Jack gasped, writhed to dislodge her, punched at her without really seeing where she was. His fist connected with her teeth and he felt a surge of blood across his hand. His, and hers.
Sparky shouted again.
Jack tried to flip, but his universe was in chaos once again. Pain darkened it, and terror at what was happening—to Sparky, to Rhali, his other friends, and perhaps to Hayden as well—made him lose his way.
Gunfire, bullets, the rattle of lead hitting metal and the eruption of an explosion somewhere close by. Jack punched and kicked again but the strange woman was already gone.
A hand closed around his arm and hauled him upright. He blinked at the searing pain in his eye, closed it, and with his one good eye he saw Shade standing before him. He was more there than Jack had ever seen him, and he looked exhausted.
Behind him, Reaper. But this was a Reaper Jack had never seen before. Panting, sweating, eyes wide in desperation, his clothing awry and left arm held awkwardly across his body, desperation had almost taken him back to looking like Jack's father.
“You better still have him, boy,” Reaper said.
At the far end of the street three Chopper motorcycles skidded around a corner. Above them the helicopter came in again, and its heavy machine gun started tearing the street apart.
Nomad's eyes opened and she cried out at the dream she was still having.