London Eye

“I need to see her first,” he said. “You can take me down to where she is?”

“Tomorrow,” Rosemary said, her face flushed. “So you'll do it? You'll go to Reaper?”

“I'll go to my father, yes. How will you find him?”

“He's not difficult to find.”

“Then why don't the Choppers come and take him?” Emily asked.

“They've tried,” Rosemary replied. “Often. None of them ever come back.”

My dad's a killer, Jack thought, but the idea was not as reprehensible as it should have been. Perhaps in his mind, he was already viewing his father as a radically changed man. It had been two years, and when they met they would be strangers. Maybe that was the best way for whatever future there was between them to begin.

“Thank you,” Ruben said, his gratitude heartfelt.

“And I'm sorry for…” Rosemary said, but she trailed off.

“All the lies?” Sparky suggested.

Jack laughed. “We're used to them. Didn't you know it's now lies that run the world?”

As the sun settled red across the London rooftops, they heard the sound of a wolf's howl in the distance.

“Is that really what I think it is?” Sparky asked.

“I saw one once,” Rosemary said. She was sitting on the small sofa beside Ruben, eating tinned tomatoes from a large bowl. She'd fetched the food from a house further along the street, saying that keeping safe houses well stocked would take away the safety. “Hyde Park, about a year ago. That's a wild place now. The trees and bushes have gone mad, the grasses come up to your knees, and the first of the mass graves is there. Lots of it was dug up by wild dogs and other carrion things just after the authorities withdrew from London, so there are bones scattered everywhere. And I found somewhere where the bones had been arranged around a copse of trees like some sort of…symbol. I went closer to the bushes, and a wolf came out. It was beautiful. So powerful, so of nature, that I felt…insignificant. Here we are, humans being inhumane as we always have done, and the wolf survives.” She nodded, staring at the wall opposite and seeing into her past.

“Wolves placed the bones?” Sparky asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. I'm more inclined to think it was some sort of offering or worship of the pack.”

“By people?”

“By people. There are some…you haven't met or seen any yet, but Jack, when I take you down to your mother you'll see some of the people she looks after. Mad. Worse than mad…an unnatural insanity, because what happened to us is entirely man-made. And some people haven't been able to handle the talents they've developed.”

“And Mum heals them?”

“She looks after them. They can't be healed because there's nothing wrong with them. It's just that their bodies and minds can never accept the sudden change.”

Jenna stirred. Everyone froze. She smacked her lips, and frowned. “Did someone put a dead rat in my mouth while I was sleeping?”

“Hey, Jenna!” Sparky squealed, leaning down and kissing her hard on the lips.

“Oh, gross,” the girl said, but she smiled as she tried to push herself up on her elbows. Sparky helped, lifting her into a sitting position and placing a couple of cushions behind her back.

“Welcome to the land of the living!” Jack said without a trace of irony. “How do you feel?”

Jenna paled and her hands flew to her stomach. “I've been shot!”

“You're all better now,” Emily said.

“Better?”

Jack nodded at Rosemary and Ruben, both smiling as the girl came around.

“Rosemary,” she said. “Again. Thanks.”

“Ruben took the bullet out,” the woman said, nodding at the fat man beside her.

Sparky produced the bullet from his pocket. “Kept it for you. Maybe it'll make a nice pendant, or something.”

Jenna frowned at the bullet as he dropped it in her hand. She looked around, confused, and her gaze settled on Sparky. “You kissed me?”

“Er…sorry,” he said. “But if it makes you feel better, you're right. You tasted like dead rat.”

“Where's Lucy-Anne?” Their silence was no real answer, so she asked again.

“We don't know for sure,” Jack said. “She never came back.”

“Where are we now?”

Rosemary filled her in on their flight from the hotel, through the streets to this place. She left out the discussion they'd had, leaving that for Jack.

“We have to go and look for her,” Jenna said.

Jack shook his head. “It's too dangerous, and now it's getting dark-”

“She's our friend,” Jenna said, her voice weak but firm. “She's your girlfriend, Jack. We can't just abandon her because she ran away.”

“I've gone through all this,” Jack said, and the guilt came in yet again.

“She could be lying injured somewhere. Shot, like me.” She looked at Rosemary. “Do you know anyone that can find her?”

“Not now Gordon's dead,” she replied. “But that doesn't mean there isn't anyone else.”

“Then we all go and look, starting at-”

“It's impossible,” Rosemary said. “If she'd stayed in or around the hotel, the Choppers would have her by now. If she ran further, then we have no clue as which way she ran. And it's not as if we can walk through the streets calling her name.”

“So we just give up on her?”

Nobody answered for a while, until Emily went and sat beside Jenna. “I think she's gone to find her brother,” she said. “Alive somewhere, in the north. In fact, I'm sure of it.”

“How can you know?” Rosemary asked.

“Because that's what I'd have done.” Emily grinned at Jack, and he smiled at his little sister.

“Maybe,” Jenna said. “I hope so. It just feels so bad…so unfair. God, I need sleep.” She slid down until her head rested against Sparky's shoulder. He froze, delighted, and she grinned, pushing his shoulder around as if fluffing up a pillow before closing her eyes.

Jack smiled. He'd wanted to see these two getting it together for a while. Sparky would be a challenge for anyone, but perhaps being attacked by dogs, chased by government soldiers, blown up, and shot in the stomach was all Jenna had needed.

“We all need sleep,” Rosemary said. “It's been quite a day. There are two bedrooms upstairs. Ruben and I can sleep down here.”

The mention of beds and sleep got them all yawning. Jack and Emily went up first. They used bottled water and toothpaste from Emily's backpack to clean their teeth, then they chose the twin room and closed the door. Emily fell asleep almost before her head hit her pillow, and Jack sat up for a while, staring at his little sister. Tomorrow we're going to see Mum, he thought. He was excited and afraid in equal measures.

He lay down, but was not surprised when he could not sleep. A rush of memories came back to him, good times with his parents that he had long forgotten, and he wallowed in them, smiling at some and crying softly at others. He'd never really known nostalgia as a powerful emotion, but he did now. Before today he'd laboured under the belief that things could, by some miracle, go back to normal. Find his mother and father, escape the Toxic City, go home, live together again as they had been more than two years before. But now he acknowledged the firm reality that his family had changed forever. Nostalgia, as he experienced it there in a stranger's bed, could not allow for things ever being the same again.

He heard the stairs creaking and Sparky and Jenna talking in subdued tones. They went into the double bedroom next door, and for a while he heard their voices, Sparky's low and deep, hers soft and sad. There were tears as well, and then talking again, and after a period of silence he heard the first gentle moans of pleasure. Sleep