by Tim Lebbon
“We could if we really wanted to,” Reaper said. It sounded like schoolboy bluster, and it was Jack’s turn to snort.
“There really aren’t many of you, are there? A few of you living underground, planning grand schemes, killing a few soldiers here and there to make yourself feel important. Special.”
“Watch your tone, child.”
“I’m no child!” Jack whispered, and without even thinking he imbued those words with a hint of the power Reaper himself possessed. They became heavier, harder, seeming to travel farther, and by the time they were uttered they had picked up a deadly momentum. Reaper took a step back and dropped his bottle, and as it smashed at his feet, a dribble of blood ran from his nose.
Jack tried not to show his surprise at what he’d done. Now more than ever was the time to display complete, conscious control. Because this is the moment everything hinges on, he thought. Reaper can choose to fight back, and we’ll destroy each other in this room. Or Dad will make himself known.
But Reaper did neither. He smiled without threat or affection, and dabbed at the blood dribbling from his nose. Unbidden, a slew of memories came to Jack—this man as his father, doing fatherly things and being a solid core around which his life used to proceed. For the past two years that physical core had been absent, but Jack had been able to continue looking after his younger sister precisely because he kept hope alive that he would find his father and mother again. He had found both…yet they were both still lost to him.
“I’ve killed a hundred people for doing far less than that,” Reaper said.
“A fine lesson for a father to teach his son,” Jack said.
Reaper looked at his blood on his fingers, then up at Jack again. “So I assume you have a plan?”
“Of course,” Jack said. “You and the Irregulars, together.”
“They’ve suggested that before. But they’re no part of my life or outlook. Weak. Ineffectual.”
“And dying,” Jack said. “How about you and the Superiors? Any of you sick?”
“We’ve evolved way beyond human diseases,” Reaper said, and Jack could not read him at all.
“They might be weak, but they can help you find Camp H. You and them together. Pooling talents. Feeding off each other’s powers, instead of using them to repulse each other. You’ll be…the New.” Jack smiled, pleased at his moment of inspiration. “That’s what you’ll call yourselves. Work together to find Camp H, rescue Mum and Emily, and get us all out of the city. Then we blow the whistle on everything that’s been happening in London. It all changes. Exposure.”
Reaper said nothing, but he looked thoughtful.
“If everything stays as it is, everyone will die,” Jack said softly. “And death surely isn’t the only way out. The New, Dad. It’s the only way.”
Reaper nodded slowly. “If we do this—and that’s ‘if’—we’ll need to congregate without being seen.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “I’ve thought about that. And I’ve got it covered.”
“You have?” Reaper said. Well done, Son, Jack wanted him to continue. I’m proud of you, Jack. You’re grown into a strong young man, even though I wasn’t there to…
Jack glanced away, feeling tears threatening. When he looked back, Reaper was watching him, smiling.
“What?” Jack asked harshly.
“You’re interesting. Impressive. Maybe you’ll be as much a Superior as me.”
“No,” Jack said. “I might be able to do things, but you know what? I’m just a normal boy.”
He would have liked to believe that. As they left the room and Reaper spoke to a couple of his people, Jack did his best to find the truth in the statement. But when he knocked and entered the small room where Sparky and Jenna were resting, and saw them both glance up at him with momentary fear in their eyes, he knew that they had been talking about him, and that he was moving farther away from normal with every breath he drew.
CHAPTER NINE
THE WILD
Nomad never slept, but still she dreamed. These moments came at calmer times when she remained motionless for a while, letting her limbs and body settle and her mind wander. She would drift, and return, and she had always assumed that what she saw were echoes from her earlier life. Memories shaded by the change within her. She had been something far different before Evolve.
But recently she had been dreaming of the girl with purple hair…
She walks towards Nomad along a lush riverbank of waving reeds and gorgeous orchids. Hummingbirds flit from bloom to bloom, bees buzz in the sunlight, and the grass underfoot is soft and healthy. There are straight edges and corners somewhere, but mostly out of sight. The verdant growth is the future, and it is a fitting cloak with which to mask the less-perfect present. Nomad goes along with it, even though she knows it is a lie. Even though she knows that the present is her fault.
The girl reaches for her and calls. But then Nomad sees something—her stance, her face, the way her fingers claw at the air—that promises only pain. The girl is desperate, yet Nomad turns away.
Light dawns. The explosion blasts away the plants, flowers, and hummingbirds, and as they are scorched to nothing they revert to their true forms—melting metal, flying glass, flaming things scarring the air.
The purple-haired girl screams at her. Nomad moves towards the blast, hoping that she can stop it. But no one is that special.
The girl promised fire and death. Nomad had no sense that her random dreams were visions of the future, and yet they could surely be nothing else? She had never seen the girl before, and now knew that she existed. What was that if not prophecy?
The explosion would kill everyone. That, Nomad did not mind. She had killed so many through her actions, and more would only add to her damned tally.
But…
I cannot allow Jack to die. He is my greatest hope, the pure version of every impurity I seeded. He has to survive to make everything right. And perhaps…perhaps for Jack to survive, the girl has to die.
The cries of inhuman things welcomed them to the north. They were awful, alien sounds, and they set Lucy-Anne’s nerves on edge. First from one direction, then another, they seemed to sing across the dark city, imparting secrets that everyone but she knew, and however much she tried to deny it, she could not shake the idea that she was at their centre. The shrieks had an intelligence to them that she found disconcerting, and Rook had no answer when she whispered her fears. That he was also troubled made everything that much worse.
She had rarely ever experienced true night. Society steered away from darkness, consciously or not. During the day the sun stood watch overhead, but at night there was need for artificial suns to keep at bay those demons and monsters from less enlightened times. In the village where she’d lived alone for two years since Doomsday there were street lamps, exterior lights on houses, and the cool borrowed glare of TVs behind curtains, all of which bathed village streets and gave them at least a pretence at daylight. Since the tragedy that consumed London, the worst monsters had been on the inside. Perhaps they always had been. So fending off darkness with artificial light was a token gesture that was easy to make.
Here in the wilder, most deadly north of London, darkness had found a home. With a newly overcast sky there was barely any light at all, and their surroundings existed beneath a diffused night-sky sheen. Shadows watched them from everywhere.
Lucy-Anne held Rook’s hand tightly as they walked through the tree-lined streets of Primrose Hill. She feared that if she let go she might lose him; he and his rooks wore the night rather than drawing back from it. She could see him only because he was close, and she could not see the birds at all. They were shadows wafting by her cheeks, or occasionally cawing from above.
The avenue’s trees were little more than ghostly stumps, the street’s uneven surfaces broken with creeping weeds, vehicles wrecked like the memories of long ago. It seemed that the farther north they came, the farther back in memory a healthy London existed.
; Maybe they can change time, Lucy-Anne thought. Maybe everything is older here now. They’re gone ahead, evolved even more, and we’re invading somewhere we should never be.
“We’re being watched,” Rook said softly, and without slowing down.
“By what?”
“I don’t know. Just keep moving.”
Lucy-Anne looked around but could see only shadows within shadows. But though sight was stolen by the almost-unnatural dark, she could still smell the stench of beasts.
The terrible, shattering idea that Andrew could be one of these had already hit home, though she refused the idea time to take root. It was simply out of the question that her brother had survived only to become a monster. If that had happened, everything about him would have changed. Those people they had seen in the park were barely human, and the sense of things around them now was truly alien, and other.
The man in the hotel had sensed Andrew as part of her bloodline. And the strange woman Sara had narrowed his smell to Hampstead Heath. Surely they would not have been able to do that if he had not remained human?
But in truth, she did not know. She was clutching at straws.
“How far to Hampstead Heath?” she asked.
“Couple of miles.” Rook’s reply was clipped, stressed. She squeezed his hand but received nothing in response.
A rook landed on her shoulder. Its claws dug in and she winced, but did not cry out. She turned, face-to-face with the bird, and in the faint light she could just see its head jerking left and right. Another landed beside it, and the two of them flapped their wings to try and maintain purchase on her jacket, wings whispering across her face. More landed on Rook—two on each shoulder, one on his head, and then two more when he extended his free arm.
“What?” Lucy-Anne whispered.
“Scared,” Rook said, and she wasn’t sure whether he meant himself or his birds.
More birds drifted down low, fluttering as they attempted to fly as close to Rook as possible, and soon her vision was obscured by shadows that moved rather than those that hid. Her dream came back to her—the birds attacking her—but she knew this was far from that. This was something worse.
Rook started running, pulling Lucy-Anne with him. His grip hurt her but it was a welcome pain. Secure. She could not imagine letting go and losing him in this darkness, where anything might dwell.
Shrieks came again, closer this time. And for the first time she thought perhaps they came from above.
“Flying things,” she said, and Rook’s brief squeeze confirmed that he already knew.
Something passed above them. Lucy-Anne gasped and looked up, unsure how she had sensed it—smell, or motion, or sight, or perhaps a combination. She saw nothing, but the sense of being watched increased to an overwhelming extent, and she waved her free arm over her head, terrified that she would feel something above her. There was only air.
The rooks started caw-cawing, flapping their wings but not taking off. Lucy-Anne squinted as a wing slapped across her eyes and stung, blinding her for a moment. It made little difference. She blinked rapidly until she could see again, and Rook was steering them across the street towards a hulking shape.
More shapes passed overhead, and something reached down and snatched at Lucy-Anne’s hair. She screamed as a tuft of hair was ripped from her head, and felt the warmth of fresh blood spreading across her scalp.
Rook whistled, and above them Lucy-Anne heard rooks impacting something larger and more vicious. Birds cried out and immediately started raining down around them, broken and torn. She stepped on one and felt the gentle give as its bones crumbled beneath her foot.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. Rook tugged hard on her hand, urging her onward.
More birds swooped in and something else screeched above and to the left. It was a terrible sound—pained, angry, and undeniably human.
“In here!” Rook said. He shoved her towards the shadow, and she saw it was a vehicle of some kind. The door scraped as he pulled it open, then she was thrust unceremoniously into the driver’s seat and the door slammed behind her.
Silence. And the smell of decay.
“Oh my God,” Lucy-Anne whispered. The passenger door was opened, the sudden sound making her jump, and Rook tumbled in. He held the door for a moment and whistled again, and the inside of the car was suddenly filled with flapping, panicked shapes. He closed the door, the shapes quickly settled, and the silence was shocking.
Something scraped along the roof, like nails on a blackboard. Lucy-Anne shrunk down in the seat, holding her head, bending forward, wishing that everything would go away. I’m back in Camp Truth with Jack, she thought. We’ve just woken up from a snooze, I’ve dreamed all of this, all of it, and there’s an hour before Sparky and Jenna will arrive. We’ll kiss each other, and perhaps more. We can do whatever we want, because I’m just so glad this was all a dream!
But it was not a dream. The big flying things were circling the car and skittering their claws across the roof. And inside the car, something dead sat behind her.
Rook spoke as soon as she shifted.
“Don’t look back,” he said.
“Can they get in?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded calm, but he was looking around like a startled bird.
The urge to turn around was huge. She could smell the mustiness of old decay, a stench that had become familiar since she’d entered London with her friends, and she knew that someone dead shared the car with them. Or we’re sharing their car, she thought. Sorry. Sorry to sit in your car.
Then she saw the key in the ignition, and her thoughts of the dead person vanished.
“I can drive this,” she said.
“What? No! Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Hey, there’s plenty you don’t know about me. I’ve nicked a car or two. Can drive. Even if the key wasn’t there, I could probably start the thing given time.”
“No,” Rook said, and he grabbed her shoulder. It was a surprising gesture, but one she welcomed. “I mean, no one drives cars apart from the Choppers. Too dangerous. Too easy to see or hear.”
“You really think there are Choppers here to see or hear?” she asked.
He was watching her in the darkness. She could just make out the faint glint of his eyes, and his shadows sitting beside her was solid reality. Everything else was ambiguous.
Claws raked across the car roof again, and something big flitted in front of the windscreen.
“Whatever, I’m not going out there,” Lucy-Anne said. A dozen of his birds had entered the car with them, and glancing in the rearview mirror she could see several silhouetted against the rear window. She also caught sight of a larger shape and glanced away again.
“Try,” Rook said at last. “The battery will be flat. The tyres will be down. Water in the engine. Something.”
Lucy-Anne grabbed the key and felt the fob, running her fingers over the cold metal. “Mazda,” she said. “Mum and Dad always swore by them.” She made sure the car was out of gear and turned the key. The engine coughed, hacked a few times, and then caught. She pressed on the gas and revved. The car vibrated with restrained power.
“Wow,” Rook said.
“Yeah,” Lucy-Anne said. “Well. Where to, sir?” Laughing softly, she turned on the headlights. The street before them was flooded with weak light and she gasped with shock.
Three shapes squatted on the broken road, flinching away from the light. They were humanoid, but their bodies were thin and stringy, bare skin pale and diseased, and open sores wept across their abdomens and legs. They had what looked like stumpy wings, useless and malformed. Their faces were bulbous, each feature exaggerated. They looked like gargoyles.
“Oh my…” Lucy-Anne muttered. The gargoyle-people fled, scampering from the haze of weak headlamps and finding shadows once more
“Unnatural,” Rook said. He seemed deeply troubled, his face creased in an intense frown in the pale dashboard light. “Not right. That’s not right.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” Lucy-Anne said, and she slipped the car into first gear. It moved sluggishly, heavily, and she admitted to herself that Rook had been right on one count; at least one tyre was flat. But she moved eventually into third gear and drove slowly along the road, and the gargoyle-people did not trouble them again. Perhaps they had climbed and now hung overhead, watching. Maybe they squatted on rooftops and watched the car moving northward, pushing a pool of weak light before it. Lucy-Anne’s world became the splash of light ahead of them, and the inside of the car, and the place somewhere beyond both where her brother was still alive.
Not like that, she thought. Not with wings and a face like that! Not with withered arms so he can snake along the ground. Not with scales or fur, not changed at all, but just…Andrew. She wished she could fall asleep and dream him well. But since the vision of the nuclear explosion and Nomad’s casual presence, she had been afraid to sleep at all.
“I need something to eat,” she said. “A drink. Water. Something.”
“Soon,” Rook said.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. Never been this far north. But we’ll get something soon.”
“What, bird seed?” Her voice grew louder and tinged with panic, so she gripped the wheel harder and concentrated, breathing long and deep. Losing it again would do no one any good. “What happened to them?” she asked at last.
“Don’t know. Extreme reaction to Doomsday.”
“Extreme?” Loud again, panicked. She slammed the wheel with one hand and they veered to the left, clipping the side of a parked van.
“I’ve only heard the rumours,” he said. “Never wanted to see for myself.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t want to see what I might have become.”
They fell silent. Lucy-Anne concentrated on her driving, pleased when the glare of headlights grew stronger as the battery was charged again. It was amazing that the car had started so quickly after two years, and she wanted to tell someone about that—Jack, Sparky, Jenna. But that opportunity might not come again.