land lines dead. We understand that the prime minister will be delivering a statement at 6:00 p.m. But as of now, far from becoming clearer, the situation seems to be descending…(broadcast ends here)
To begin with, Jack was disappointed. They walked along the dried canal bed, their torch lights flashing here and there like reflections from long forgotten water, and on the old towpaths he made out at least a dozen box structures obviously used as temporary shelters by tramps. Smashed booze bottles littered the ground, bags of refuse lay split open by rats or other carrion creatures, and he saw many broken items from the world above. He had believed that they were leaving the world he knew, but it appeared they had merely entered its underside.
But then Jenna called out from where she had stalked ahead with Rosemary, and the excitement kicked back in: “Oh, this is not a nice way to go.”
They caught up with her and all trained their torches in the same place. There was a skeleton propped against the side of the dry canal. It still wore the faded remnants of clothing, but the bones had been picked clean, and in places there were what looked like teeth marks. One leg was gone below the knee, and both arms were missing.
“Gross!” Emily said. Jack thought briefly of leading her away, but he would not patronise her like that. They were all seeing this together.
“Some bones over there,” Sparky said, pointing with his torch. Jack saw a few loose bones scattered across the ground, splintered and chewed. “Let's just hope he or she was dead before the dogs got to them.”
Lucy-Anne walked on quickly, turning her torch from the body and marching ahead into the tunnel. She paused after twenty yards, and Jack could see her shoulders rising and falling as she panted.
“Lucy-Anne?” he asked.
“I'm fine!” But she did not turn around, and when she heard their footsteps she went on alone.
Beyond the skeleton-as though death could be a barrier, or a border-they found very few signs of human interference. Their bobbing torch beams picked out stalactites hanging from the arched ceiling, and in several places water dripped in unavoidable waterfalls. Emily giggled as she ran through and got soaked, but Jack could not help wondering at the water's origin. He hoped for a ruptured water main, not a foul drain.
It was cold, down in this place never touched by sunlight or heat. There was a very slight breeze coming from ahead, and without that Jack guessed the tunnel would have stank. Every few seconds someone's torch beam would illuminate the edge of the dried canal, reminding him of where they were and how strange this was. But though it was dark, and unsettling, and the air went from musty to fresh in a breath, there was a palpable sense of excitement. Jack felt enthused, and he could sense the others experiencing their own versions of the same anticipation. Their fast breathing echoed, torch lights bobbed erratically, and a loaded silence had fallen over them. The air felt as if it was about to break.
Jack became fascinated with the ceiling, aiming his torch up there for long periods between brief glances at the uneven ground before him. In places it looked like a cave, with uneven rocky protrusions, stalactites made of some unidentifiable, creamy material, and dark cracks into which even his torch could not delve. Elsewhere he could see the rough concrete that sealed the canal beneath the ground. Perhaps it was an intentional covering-over, or maybe it had been hidden away bit by bit, buildings constructed to span and then smother the old waterway.
“Jack!” Sparky called. Jack paused and looked at where his friend was shining his torch. Just before Jack's feet was a hole in the canal's old bed, several feet wide and at least six deep. Its bottom was a mucky mess, the small pools of stagnant water reflecting only a sick, slick light back up at them. It stank. He'd almost walked into it.
“That would have been a good start,” Jack muttered.
“You'd have smelled worse than usual, that's for sure.” Sparky passed him by with a grin and stepped neatly around the hole.
Jack took more care after that. There was plenty to wonder at, but there was also his own safety to consider, and that had to come first. For two years he had been petrified about leaving Emily on her own. He'd had nightmares about drowning, feeling the darkness of deep water sucking him down, and all the while Emily was alone on a vast pebble beach far away, hands reaching in an impossible attempt to save him, her brother, until the last time he was pulled under, when he saw the shadows gathering at the beach's extremes…watching…waiting to make sure Jack was not about to surface again, before slicking across the beach towards his abandoned sister.
“You okay, Ems?” It was the name he'd used when she was very young, and she usually did not like hearing it. Their parents had used it all the time.
His sister glanced back and smiled, and he saw that she was more than okay. She was
Lucy-Anne and Rosemary maintained the lead. Jack's girlfriend walked apart from the older woman, but Jack knew her well. She was trying to hide her fascination in case Rosemary saw it as a weakness. Lucy-Anne hated being beholden to anyone, and now they were all in the hands of this woman whom none of them knew.
They walked for half an hour. There was little chit-chat, but plenty of nervous energy. Jack wondered about Rosemary's friend Philippe, and how he saw routes and byways hidden to everyone else. What must that be like? How did he manage understanding such secrets? Jack found the world of the Irregulars both intriguing and disturbing, and whenever he tried to put himself in their place, he became afraid. His life had changed enough since Doomsday. He could only imagine what London's few, amazing survivors must have gone through.
The buried canal ended abruptly. Rosemary and Lucy-Anne came to a halt, standing side by side and shining their torches at a blank concrete wall. There was graffiti carved into the concrete, incongruous in such surroundings and more disquieting because of that. ‘We've come heer to hyde.’ The mis-spellings made the pronouncements even more otherworldly.
“Who wrote that?” Jenna asked.
“It looks very old,” Rosemary said. “To be honest, it's the first time I've seen it. I came from the other way, remember?”
“So where
“Can't you see?” Rosemary said, a hint of humour in her voice that Jack didn't like. She was supposed to be leading them, not testing them. But then, she
Jack and the others shone their torches around, looking for where their path might continue. The combined lights lit up the whole end of the tunnel, revealing little but wall, ground, concrete ceiling, and the old, crumbling tow paths on either side.
“No,” Sparky said. “I don't see.” He spun around and played his torch behind them, his action instantly making Jack nervous.
“Down there,” Emily said. “Look! It looks like a wave of mud, but it's fresh.” She aimed her torch at the base of the graffitied wall, revealing a drift of canal-bed mud resting against the concrete. It looked unremarkable to Jack; just another hump in the old canal's uneven floor.
“Good eyes,” Rosemary said.
“SuperGirl,” Emily said matter-of-factly, and everyone laughed.
Their spirits raised, the others stood back while Sparky and Emily scooped away handfuls of loose dirt, slowly revealing a dark opening at the base of the wall. It was small-barely large enough to crawl through-but Rosemary assured them it was the way to go.
“If I can do it at my age,” she said, “all of us can.”
“So you hid it on your way through?” Jack asked. “Buried it?”
“Yes. Ruined my nails.” The old woman smiled, but in torchlight it looked grotesque.
“Why?”
Rosemary frowned, and Jenna and Lucy-Anne aimed their torches at her face. Jack held back a laugh; it was like an interrogation in some crappy movie.
Cringing against the light, Rosemary turned away. “It's a secret,” she said. “This way, this route, no one
