London Eye

could not hide the tear that streaked her cheek.

“I'm not afraid,” Lucy-Anne said. But as she followed Rosemary down, every jerky, determined movement she made was testament to her lie.

Lucy-Anne was afraid of her nightmares.

The dogs from her dream had come and bitten her, and after everyone had set off from the ruined church, and it was only her and Rosemary left, she'd asked the old woman how close she had been to death. Its teeth nipped your spine, Rosemary had said, but I touched it and made it better.

How close? Lucy-Anne had demanded.

Very, Rosemary had said, before rushing across the road into the ditch.

Now, descending back into the darkness once again, Lucy-Anne waited for other nightmares to make themselves known. She refused to believe it had been coincidence, because after what she'd been through that would be too cruel.

But if not coincidence…what?

Have I had nightmares about falling? she wondered, and her feet reached the foot of the ladder. Rats carrying plague? But there were no vermin that she could see down here. My friends, killing me? She looked around at the others, and she suddenly wanted to fold up and cry out at the betrayal her imagination was capable of.

“Nearly there, everyone!” she said, amazing even herself with her upbeat voice. “We've been waiting for so long, and now we're almost there!”

Smiles were exchanged, and they went on their way.

To begin with, their path was simple. After descending the concrete steps they found themselves in a long tunnel that ran the length of the sewage treatment works, with shorter tunnels projecting off at right angles. The smell was subtle and subdued-much to Emily's obvious relief-and just before they reached the end, Rosemary opened a metal hatch in the wall. They took it in turns, squeezing through, shining their torches on the opening and into the tunnel revealed beyond. This one had a low ceiling that meant they all had to crouch down, and cockroaches scuttled away from their torch light.

This tunnel ended with a blank wall, but an opening had been smashed through, revealing an uneven, sloping route that led deeper. They followed Rosemary, emerging into a large, brick-lined chamber that seemed much older that the treatment plant built just beside it. It was the converging point of four large sewage pipes. This place did stink, even though none of the pipes seemed to be carrying very much. One of them trickled a small, steady flow of dirty water into the chamber, but the other three appeared dry.

“Oh, that's pleasant,” Sparky said. “Reminds me of Lucy-Anne's armpits.”

Lucy-Anne did not reply. Sparky looked at her and she raised an eyebrow, and that was enough to make him smile.

“Rats everywhere,” Jenna said. They did not seem to bother her, but Emily remained close to Jack, even while she trained her torch around the walls and filmed what it revealed.

“You'll see a lot more,” Rosemary. “But there's always a balance. Lots of wild cats in London now, and they keep the rat population down.”

She headed off, confidently aiming for one of the large sewage pipes.

“We walk through there?” Lucy-Anne asked. She hated this; she had never been afraid before. She could not prevent herself from shaking, and she'd seen the way Jack had been looking at her: concerned and confused.

“Not for long.”

The pipe swept this way and that, branching left and right, but Rosemary did not hesitate at all. She took one branch that narrowed considerably, but they were happier to bend almost double, accepting the burning pain in their knees and back, rather than crawl. There was dried stuff here, sewage and dead rats and other things they could not so easily identify.

And at last Lucy-Anne found something to cling onto and calm her, and that was the memory of her family. Their smiles and voices drove away the threat of forgotten nightmares. Whatever happened in the near future, she was determined of one thing: she would discover the truth.

That's what drove them all, she was sure. Not the sense of injustice, and the knowledge that the government had lied to them day in, day out, since Doomsday. It was family that made them able to do this. Jack's and Emily's parents, and Sparky's brother. Even Jenna, who had lost no one on Doomsday, was coming here to avenge what they had done to her father since then.

She felt a momentary flush of hope and determination, and pride in her friends. If they weren't half-crawling through a pipe coated with dried shit and dead rats, she'd have hugged them all.

She could imagine Sparky's reaction to that.

Lucy-Anne giggled. She tried to stop, but couldn't. Her torch light shook as she laughed, and they all paused because they thought something was wrong.

“No!” she said, shaking her head even though none of them could see much down here. “No, it's okay, its…” Her laughter turned manic.

“Gas down here sometimes,” Rosemary said, her voice low with concern.

“Nobody strike a match,” Sparky said, and that only made Lucy-Anne laugh louder.

The sewers ended in another large chamber, and in this one they found a dead body.

It was a woman, sitting back against the wall, long hair tangled across her face and down one side of her head. She wore jeans and a heavy ski jacket, and rats had eaten her eyes.

That's what Jack noticed first, and what he could not help looking at again and again. He jerked his torch back at her face, knowing he should not, knowing that he should be turning the other way and leading Emily across the chamber and into whichever sewer they had to walk along next…and rats had eaten her eyes!

“Oh,” Lucy-Anne said, backing away against the wall of the chamber. But she kept her eyes open.

“Rosemary-” Jack began, but she cut in.

“Not when I came through!” she said. “She wasn't here when I came through.”

“You know her?” Jenna asked.

Rosemary went closer, stepping carefully across the lower part of the chamber, dodging still-wet pools of raw sewage.

“Jack…” Emily said. She lowered the camera. “I don't think I want to film this.”

Jenna was with them then, holding Emily's hand and turning around so that they both faced away from the body.

“No,” Rosemary said. She had lifted the woman's hair from her face and stepped aside, allowing torchlight to fall there. “I don't know her.”

“Then what the hell is she doing down here?” Sparky said. “You said you're the only one who knew this route, you said that Philippe bloke told you the way, and-”

“Lots of Irregulars come down below London,” Rosemary said. She turned her back on the body, hiding it from view. “To escape, to hide. There are some that can't handle what's happened to them, and…” She shrugged.

“She killed herself?” Jack asked.

“Maybe.” Rosemary returned to them, leaving the dead woman behind. “Or maybe she was dying anyway, and she wanted to do it alone.”

“We're still under the Exclusion Zone, right?” Jenna asked.

Rosemary thought about that for a while, then nodded. “Just. But soon, we enter an old Tube station that has been abandoned for years, walk along the line, and then we're there.”

“So there'll be others?” Jack asked. “More people below ground?”

“There are plenty. But I doubt we'll see them. As I said, most of them come down here to be alone.”

There was a heavy torch by the dead woman's left hand, and to her right an empty whiskey bottle lay on its side, a plastic bowl upended beside that. Last meal and drink.

“I wonder what she could do,” Rosemary mused.

“That's someone's mother,” Jenna said, angry. “Someone's sister.”

“We should go,” Jack said. “I don't want to stay down here anymore. Rosemary, I just want to get there and