London Eye

wondered just how close she'd come to dying, and she thought about asking Rosemary the next time they had a quiet moment. But on the other hand, she wasn't sure she really wanted to know.

It wasn't exactly the same, she kept thinking. But dream memories are deceitful things, and the more she thought about it, the more reality and dream had begun to merge.

“This tunnel's another reason I think this was a church,” Rosemary said. “It's long, and there are a few places where it used to branch off. I think it might have been an escape tunnel between churches hundreds of years ago.”

“Escape from what?” Emily asked.

“Persecution,” Jenna said. “People of one religion not liking people of another. Hunting them. Sometimes killing them.”

Emily snorted. “That's just stupid.”

They left the basement room splashed with droplets of their own blood and the promise of rot. Sparky and Rosemary went first this time, Lucy-Anne walking on her own behind them, the others following her. Jack approached her a couple of times, but she gave him a distant smile and shook her head. Not yet, she thought. I need to get things square in my own mind first.

As she walked, she tried to remember the other strange dreams and nightmares she'd been having. But though she knew they were there, they kept themselves hidden well away.

Underground for a couple of hours, and already we've all nearly died, Jack thought. The tunnel was so narrow that in some places they had to go in single file. In these places Rosemary insisted on going first, perhaps some small penance for what they had been through.

Emily walked just ahead of him, filming again. He could see the viewing screen of her camera, and noticed that much of the time it was focussed on Lucy-Anne's back. Good, he thought. My little sis knows where the mystery is.

“So who do you think left the picture of your mother?” Jenna asked quietly. She was walking at their rear. Jack glanced back at her and shrugged.

“At first, I thought it was obvious. Her. Rosemary. But now I'm not so sure. She swore she didn't put the pictures there, and why would she lie if she did? We'd already committed to coming in with her. We'd have committed to it even if she told us about the dogs.”

“She was just being cautious,” Jenna said. “I guess there was always a chance we'd never meet them.”

“A chance, yeah.”

Emily must have heard them chatting, because she turned and walked backward for a while, training her torch and the camera lens on them. Jack gave her a thumbs-up, and Jenna laughed and waved.

“The intrepid explorers venture deeper into unknown territory…” Emily whispered into the microphone, hurrying on ahead until she walked beside Sparky. He gave her a goofy grin and started making faces at the camera, obviously enjoying the attention.

“So if it wasn't Rosemary, then who?” Jenna asked. “Bit of a coincidence.”

“A lot of one,” Jack agreed. The tunnel was wider here, and he and Jenna started walking side by side. It was easier to talk that way, and he enjoyed making eye contact with her. She was a good friend. “I dunno, I feel a bit…”

“I know,” Jenna said. “You know your mum's alive, but Sparky and Lucy-Anne are walking into the dark.”

“That's one way of putting it.” Jack smiled and reached out, squeezing Jenna's shoulder. She surprised him by leaning in quickly and giving him a strong hug, then going on ahead.

“Your turn to bring up the rear,” she said. “The quiet we've left behind gets heavy after a while.”

“I've got big shoulders.”

They went on, and Jack discovered that Jenna was right. Before him was subdued chatter, the sound of shoes scraping the floor and clothes brushing against the walls. Behind him…nothing but darkness and silence. They both took on weight very quickly.

He thought a little about what Lucy-Anne had said before the dogs attacked, about dreaming it. Strange, but she was a strange girl. Back when they'd still been sleeping together, she'd frequently woken up with a start, always claiming to not remember the nightmares that had woken her. She'd suffered more than all of them, he supposed, being left on her own in that big, empty house. She must have a head full of nightmares.

The tunnel ended in another room, smaller than the basement where the dogs had attacked. From here Rosemary led them through a series of small chambers and connecting tunnels, and here and there they passed through tumbled walls, crawling and squirming their way through narrow gaps. Beyond, they entered a place that kept its origins a mystery: tunnel or cave? It was difficult to decide, and Jack spent half an hour trying to make out which was the case. The place had an uneven floor and fissures across its walls and ceiling, but here and there he was sure he could make out tool marks.

Sparky's shout startled him from his contemplation.

“Hey, you lot! I'm bloody starving! Rosemary says there's a place up ahead where we can stop for lunch.”

At the mention of food, Jack's stomach rumbled. The fact that he was still hungry after what they had been through, he saw as a good sign. Need to go moment by moment, he thought. The past has gone. The future is waiting. It's the here and now that matters most.

They found somewhere beautiful. It was so unexpected that Jack had to blink several times to make sure everything was real. They climbed some stone steps and emerged inside a ruined church, its walls blackened by an old fire, charred ceiling timbers littering the floor, windows long-since vanished and steeple tumbled down. But the walls were still solid, and because the roof had gone, the insides were a riot of wild undergrowth, unchecked for many years. A thick, heavy curtain of clematis covered two walls, smothering window openings and bursting with pink and yellow flowers. Another wall hung with wisteria, swinging with pendulous sprays of mauve blooms, and the final wall, below which the remains of what may have been an altar lay in ruins, was home to a gorgeous, heavily thorned yellow rose. The floor of the church was awash with colour and a low, tangled plant that Jack could not identify.

“Wow,” Jenna said. Nobody else could think of anything more suitable, so they stared around in silence.

“Sorry,” Rosemary said. “I forgot to tell you about this place, as well.”

Jack smiled. And then Emily was running, dashing here and there, filming, lifting shrub branches and delving beneath, and a robin landed on a bush close to where they all stood.

“Seems quite tame,” Lucy-Anne said. “How close are we to people in here?”

“We're right on the edge of the Exclusion Zone.” Rosemary spoke quietly, as though to mention those words could spoil this place.

“This has been ruined for more than two years, though,” Sparky said.

Rosemary shrugged. “I assume so. Just another part of the route that Philippe gave me.”

“So where to from here?” Jack asked.

“A dangerous part,” the woman said. “The riskiest when it comes to being seen. A dash across the old churchyard, then over a narrow road that used to lead to a housing estate. It leads nowhere now, but it's still close to the Exclusion Zone, and there may be military patrols.”

“After that?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“Down again. A dried-up stream that leads to an old sewage treatment works. A tunnel. Then under the Exclusion Zone, and we'll be in London.”

“We're that close?” Sparky said.

Rosemary nodded at the clematis-covered wall. “It looks like a clear day. Take a look.”

Sparky glanced at Jack, frowning, but Emily had been listening and she was there before all of them. She snuggled herself through the trailing clematis plant, pushing through with the camera, and then they all heard her intake of breath. Jack did not realise just how much she had been nattering commentary at the camera until she stopped.

“Emily?” he said.

“It's all gone.” Her voice was very small, and very vulnerable.

Sparky and Lucy-Anne pulled aside the hanging plants, and the four of them pushed their way through, standing beside Emily by one of the empty window openings.