London Eye

your friends made it down this far, they'll be waiting for us behind the hotel.”

The basement was warren of store rooms, cupboards and corridors ending at closed doors. The air was grimy and grey. Emily pulled a penlight from her rucksack and it complimented Jack's torch, giving them enough light to find their way to a set of doors to the outside.

“Wait,” Jack whispered. He held out his hands for the gun.

“Jack…” Emily said.

“Dear…”

“I'd rather shoot them and be damned, than be dead and morally superior,” he said.

Rosemary handed him the weapon. He'd never fired a gun, but he knew the basics. He checked that the safety was off and held it in both hands, finger resting across the trigger and guard. It made him feel safer. It made him think he could do something to protect Emily, if he really had to.

He remembered Gordon's head flipping back as the bullets took his face apart.

He thought of the soldier he'd just seen shot, the blood and other stuff splashing from her shattered skull.

Slowly, he nudged the door. It was unlocked. It creaked open into the courtyard he'd seen from the hotel room. They could be hiding anywhere, he thought. Ready to take us to Miller, just me and Emily. The fact that the Chopper had said he wanted at least one of them alive did not make him feel the slightest bit safer.

He listened for Lucy-Anne; crying, shouting, screaming. She was not there.

They heard more shooting. It seemed to come from the front of the hotel, the shots echoing from abandoned buildings and giving them voice for the first time in years. There were shouts, yet more gunfire, and then a heavy whump as something exploded.

“Jack!” Sparky said. He appeared from behind one of the cars, and Jack almost did not recognise him. His denim jacket was darkened with blood, his hands red with it, and the look on his face was that of a child. I'm scared, it said. None of this is happening…none of this is real…take me home…

“Sparky! Where's…?” But Sparky had already turned and looked down behind the car.

“Oh, shit,” Jack said. He ran across the courtyard, nursing the gun across his chest as he went.

“Jenna?” Emily called. Jack heard her following him, and he hoped that she had put her camera away, because some moments were meant to be private.

Jenna was on the ground behind the car. It was an old Mazda 6, Jack saw, with one of those fish badges on the back that signified the owner was a Christian. Wonder if it did them any good? he thought, because Jenna was a believer too, he knew. And there she was, dying in a pool of her own blood.

She'd been shot in the stomach. Her hands were pressed there now, as if trying to penetrate to remove the foreign object. She could not lie still; her legs were raised and tensed, her shoulders lifting and falling alternately, and even though her eyes were open, Jack was not sure she could see him. She was in an awful amount of pain, biting her lower lip until it bled to prevent herself from crying out.

“Jenna.” He knelt beside her and leaned over, trying to catch her eye. She saw him, and he knew that she saw. But she was doing something far more difficult than trying to communicate. Every breath she had, every shred of strength, was spent trying to keep herself alive.

“What happened?” Jack asked Sparky when his friend knelt next to him.

“We'd made it down to the ground floor. Stupidly thought we should run across the foyer.” Every word was a gasp. “Someone was waiting behind the desk. Started shooting. She…fell. I dragged her into a doorway, down some steps, then I heard more shooting from up above. Screams. Whoever shot at us didn't follow us down. That's it. Been trying to stop the bleeding, but…” He shook his head. “You seen Lucy-Anne?”

“No,” Jack said. “Rosemary!”

“Is the bullet still in there?” She stood behind them. Emily was beside her, trying not to look at the blood but unable to look anywhere else.

“Don't know,” Sparky said.

“Why?” Jack asked.

“If it is, I can't do anything. Can't-”

“Don't tell me you can't!” Jack stood, cringing at his raised voice but unable to help himself. “After everything, don't tell me that!”

“If it's still in there and I heal the wound, it'll do no good. I can't take bullets out of people, Jack. But-”

“Can't you make her better?” Emily asked.

“If the bullet's gone through, then yes, dear, I can. If not, and I heal it inside, she'll probably develop an infection and die.”

“Sparky,” Jack said. “Help me.” He searched around on the ground, shifting old leaves aside and picking up a fallen branch from one of the neighbouring garden's trees. He snapped a short section from it, eight inches long.

“What are you doing?” Sparky said.

“Seeing if the bullet came out the other side.” He pressed the stick to Jenna's lips, and her mouth opened, teeth biting into the wood. She knew what he was doing.

“Not here,” Rosemary said. “It's too dangerous!”

“Have your bloody gun back.” Jack lobbed the weapon at her and she caught it, uttering a startled cry. She turned to look up at the tall face of the hotel behind them.

“On three,” Jack said. “One…two…three.” He pushed Jenna up by the arm, Sparky pulled one of her legs, and as she turned onto her side she screamed into the wood, biting down hard enough to crack it and send splinters and shreds of bark spitting out.

Jack looked. Her jacket and shirt were soaked with blood all the way around. He lifted them up, exposing her bare back, and used her shirt to wipe across her skin. The blood smeared and smudged, but he found no exit wound there, and no sign that anything had broken the skin.

He hated doing this to his friend. He could see Emily's expression as she watched, and he hated what all this was doing to her, as well. It had gone so wrong so quickly that he could not imagine things ever being right again.

The wood snapped in Jenna's mouth and she screamed, unable to hold it in any longer.

Sparky was in front of her. He looked down at her stomach, turned away, and vomited.

“Not here!” Rosemary said. “We have to take her away, I know someone who might help, but not here!”

Jack leaned across Jenna to see why Sparky had puked, and her wound was pouting, something that could only have been her intestine protruding through the rip in her flesh. He closed his eyes and swallowed his bile, looking up at Emily. Wide-eyed, blinking slowly, pale, he suddenly saw himself in her, courage and love mirrored.

“Help me,” he said, and his nine-year-old sister came to him without question, helping him pull Jenna's shirt tight across her stomach. Jack undid and unthreaded his belt, then tied it around Jenna. He had no idea whether he was doing the right thing. Rosemary, the healer, was looking the other way, and he hated her right then.

“Who can help?” Jack asked. He wanted to shout, but he could hear voices coming from somewhere far away, or echoing from close by.

“We need to get away,” Rosemary said. A helicopter buzzed overhead, streaking across the hotel. Another one was coming in from the distance, and Rosemary was actually pacing back and forth. “Now!” she said. “We have to leave now! They'll be bringing reinforcements, and we'll never get away in one piece if that happens.”

“One piece?” Sparky said, spittle hanging from his chin.

Rosemary looked down at Jenna. “She can still be helped,” she said. “Trust me. If that wasn't the case, I'd be telling you to leave her where she is.”

Between them, Jack and Sparky lifted the wounded girl. Mercifully she passed out, screaming herself into unconsciousness as Rosemary led the way along a narrow alley stinking of rot and filth, across a narrow street, and through a park where people had once sat to have lunch but which now was home to a band of noisy, angry monkeys.