We need exposure.” She looked at Jenna. “That's why I came to find your father. To ask him to come in with me, gather evidence, and then present it to the world. So…will he be here soon?”
“It's
Rosemary's expression did not change at this roll-call of the missing and dead. “The last thing I'd call you is kids,” she said.
Lucy-Anne nodded, seemingly satisfied. When she sat down she held Jack's hand again, but this time it was a gentle touch.
“My dad's out with Mum,” Jenna said. “They go walking a lot. Sometimes they take me, but usually I just want to stay at home. We didn't lose anyone. But Dad…”
“He fought,” Rosemary said.
“Yeah.” Jenna nodded, staring past them all. “Looked for the truth. First they called him an activist, and threatened him with the law. When he ignored their threats, they took him.”
“He was in contact with several people in London,” Rosemary said. “People who could enhance their brainwaves to such an extent that they almost acted as radio transmitters and receivers.”
“‘Could’?” Sparky asked.
“When the Choppers discovered the communication, they took all three. Beheaded two of them in the street, so the word goes, and the other just disappeared. Camp H.”
“’H’ for what?” Lucy-Anne asked.
“Hope,” Rosemary said with a wry smile.
“That was the same time they took Dad?”
“Yes. But we don't think they bring outsiders to Camp H.”
“He never told us where he went,” Jenna said, “or who took him, or what they did to him. When he left, he was so full of fight and anger. Every time I kissed him goodnight, there was a real power about him. He had purpose. He came back two weeks later and…” She opened her hand like a quickly blooming flower. “Pff. Gone. Sometimes I can't believe he's still my dad.” The volume of her voice had grown, but the tears came as well, and Jenna shook with anger and grief.
“Then I suppose he can't help me anymore,” Rosemary said sadly.
“Is it true they implant something?” Sparky said. “When they take people and send them back. Something to kill them if they start investigating again?”
Rosemary shrugged slowly. “How can I know that? This is your world out here. I live in London, but that's a whole new world now.”
“You've heard of it though, right?” Jack asked.
“Rumours.”
“And you still came to ask him for help?”
Rosemary stared at him then, and Jack was certain she was trying to convey some message that she did not wish to voice. He stood, let go of Lucy-Anne's hand and walked to the kitchen sink. Outside, the sunset was burning across the ridges of neighbouring houses. Jenna's parents would be back soon.
“I need to know,” Jack said quietly.
“Me too,” Sparky said.
Lucy-Anne stood and ran her hands through her purple hair. “Yeah.”
Jack turned back and looked at Rosemary; an old woman, worn and tired, scarred and grubby, but filled with an astonishing power that the government had gone to brutal measures to conceal.
Rosemary nodded slowly and smiled. “The second you were all here together, I knew that would happen.”
“Another power?” Jenna asked. “You're an empath?”
“No, dear,” the old woman laughed. “I'm human.”
They split up, agreeing to meet at Camp Truth at dawn the following morning. Jenna and Sparky were taking Rosemary there to sleep. They said it was probably the safest place of all, but the old woman seemed too tired to be afraid.
She scared Lucy-Anne. There was something…different about her. There was that incredible thing she had done with Jack's leg, yes, but she seemed so very out of place here in the village. She sat at Jenna's table and drank tea, ate toast, talked to them and fended their questions, but to Lucy-Anne it seemed as if she were from another world.
In a way, she supposed that was true.
Jack had been keen to get home to his sister Emily, so Lucy-Anne had walked home alone. She'd stopped in the corner shop and bought a bottle of cheap red wine, joking with the boy behind the counter who flirted with her every time she went in. He was her age but seemed so much younger, and she thought it was because he'd lost no one to Doomsday. He seemed happy and content, and blissfully unaware of what had gone on in his world because so little of it had touched him. Sometimes she thought of inviting him home to see if some of his carefree attitude would rub off on her. But she knew that she'd end up showing him pictures, and talking about those she had lost, so she'd left him with a smile and a sway of her hips.
Sitting in the living room of the big, empty house left to her when her family had vanished in the Toxic City, Lucy-Anne allowed the tears to come. Usually they were driven by grief and sadness, but today there was something else: the terror that soon, all her fears would be realised.
She had never, ever let herself accept the fact that they were dead.
She swigged from the bottle. It was half gone already, and she knew she should pour the rest down the sink. Last thing she wanted tomorrow was a hangover. But she was enjoying the fuzziness in her head, and it seemed to relax her muscles, enabling her to sink into the sofa and lose herself in the music blasting from her stereo.
“Sorry, Mum and Dad!” she called up to their bedroom. Led Zeppelin was particularly loud this evening, and she knew they didn't like it very much.
She never went into their room, and kept the door locked.
“Andrew, you always did like good music!”
Her brother's bedroom door was locked as well, but she had not felt able to remove his favourite CDs from where he'd left them scattered around the music system in the living room. Now they were her favourites, too.
She drank a little more, and spoke to her family, because this was the only place and time she would ever allow herself to do so: at home, alone, when no one could see her true desperation.
Tomorrow, everything was going to change.
It looks like a huge, open wasteland, but she can see its ghosts.
There used to be buildings here, and parks, and shops and pubs where people had mixed and chatted, laughing and scowling their way through life. It has all gone now, and their absence seems to make the sky far too large.
Instead there is a vast plain of broken rubble, exotic-looking plants and flattened, blurred areas that look so strange. She sees movement far away across the plain, and she squints into the merciless sun, shading her eyes to see whether it's people…or something else.
She walks towards the movement because it seems the best place to go. It's hot and harsh here, with a warm breeze blowing from the left and carrying a melange of scents: the dust of ages; dry, old rot; and something spicy and forbidden which she cannot identify.
As she nears the thing she saw moving, she finally makes out what it is. The pack of wolves is rooting at something buried deep in the ground. It's one of those strange blurred areas that she had seen, and she can now identify that effect as well: in this rugged plain of a dead city, this spread of land is as smooth as a bowling green.
The wolves growl, but she walks closer. She thought she had a knife in her pocket, still stained with the blood of a friend, but she frowns when she finds her pocket empty. Maybe she dropped it? She feels like a fool, because there are so many dangers out here.
She should be scared of the wolves, but she is not here for them. So she shouts and they flee, casting
