“We’re leaving,” Jenna said to Reaper. “And because despite everything I think Jack still held out a spark of hope for you, I’m inviting you to come with us. To be who you were before, not who you’ve become.”
Lucy-Anne expected Sparky to object, but he merely stood to one side, head bowed. Remembering his friend.
“Andrew…” Lucy-Anne said, and she pointed across the darkened room.
“I will guide you out,” Andrew said. “I’ve been to the west, and hundreds are gathering there already. But we have to go now.”
Leaving blood and tears behind, they left.
They headed west. It was almost eleven p.m., and London’s silent streets were as haunting as ever. But with Andrew leading them, Lucy-Anne felt a flush of confidence. The fear was still present—she thought that she would always be afraid, and the dark places she’d seen would remain as shadowy echoes in her soul—but alongside was confidence that they would make it. They had to. They could not let Jack’s sacrifice be in vain.
She walked with the help of her friends. Sometimes she seemed to float, as if the weakness and pain from her injuries caused a kind of delirium in her. Other times, she thought perhaps Jack had done something to help keep her going, for a time at least.
Close to the river, Andrew whispered a warning and they left the street, hiding down a narrow alleyway between tall buildings. Sparky and Jenna knelt before Lucy-Anne and soothed her, protecting her with their bodies. Every time they looked at her she saw her injuries reflected in their expressions. They couldn’t help it. She was never once tempted to put her hands to her face.
She swallowed blood. It ran past the hole Nomad had punched in her throat, and each breath she took was thanks to that woman. But every bad thing that had happened to them all was also thanks to Nomad. Lucy-Anne didn’t know what to think about her, so she tried not to think at all.
Something passed the end of the alley, and a dreadful smell wafted along to them. They looked at each other but did not speak. They had no wish to attract the attention of whatever could make such a stench.
Lucy-Anne did not notice the point at which Reaper and Haru drifted away. They’d left the club with them and followed, hanging back a little and yet still obviously a part of their small group. No one had spoken to either of them, and they had remained silent. But when they crossed the river at Battersea, the Superiors were gone. No one commented. But Lucy-Anne was a little sad, because she’d harboured a vague hope that Reaper might redeem himself. Help them escape, show that he cared in some way. It was the least he could do for Jack.
Sparky kept looking at his watch, worried, but Andrew simply drifted on. They could not move any faster than they were.
They met the first of the people at West Kensington. Irregulars, they huddled down in a small park and watched them pass by.
“Come on!” Sparky called to them. “Hurry up! We’ve got ’til midnight.” They did not emerge again, but Lucy-Anne hoped that they would follow.
There were more people in Chiswick, and here they met a group of people who directed them to Breezer. He was waiting for them outside a ruined pub, a table set on the pavement before him filled with canned drinks and crisps. He looked around for Jack, raised his eyebrows, but no one felt like telling him. Verbalising what was happening would have made it all so much worse, and they needed all their strength to get out of London.
“I waited for you,” he said. “Hundreds have passed me already, on their way out. I gathered as many as I could, spread the word as far as possible. And I’ve seen some of those things, too. From the north. We won’t be the only ones leaving London tonight.”
But she wondered how well even the Irregulars would fit in, and whether they would be allowed. She imagined fenced fields with hundreds of people wandering aimlessly inside, guarded by watchtowers and machine-gun nests. She pictured huge labs built in warehouses, and people strapped down while scientists in Chopper colours took their blood and cut them up, examining their muscles, their bones, their brains. She saw a dozen children in a metal storage container, dirty with their own filth and crying for parents who would never come.
But when she spoke of her fears, it was her dead brother Andrew who went some way to laying them to rest.
“The word is out,” he said. “Your friend’s sister and mother planted the seed, and there were so many ready to take it up.”
“Yes,” Sparky said. “We knew a lot of them. And so did Emily.”
“Thousands have approached London,” Andrew went on. “The military tried to stop them but couldn’t. Press helicopters are barely being kept out of London’s airspace. Camps have sprung up all around. The relatives of so many lost in London are there. Lots have come to find people who are already dust. But some of them…they’ll recognise some of the people around us now. Mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, will be reunited soon, and no one will be able to keep them apart.”
“They’ll be registered,” Jenna said, echoing some of Lucy-Anne’s fears. But the girl seemed to hold more hope. “They’ll have to be. And maybe they’ll be kept in quarantine for a while. But when it’s seen how ill so many Irregulars are, a cure will become the priority. And then after that, getting back to normal.”
“Or as normal as anything will ever be again,” Sparky said.
“There,” Breezer said, pointing ahead. “We’re close. I’ve already been this far, but came back to meet up with you all.” They closed on Gunnersbury and the edges of the Exclusion Zone, and saw a haze of light in the distance. It lit the sky like the lights of a town, and aircraft buzzed to and fro within it.
“You?” Lucy-Anne asked Andrew. But she guessed she already knew the answer to that.
“I dreamed myself not dead for you, sis,” he said. “And I’ve done everything I stayed behind to do. It’s down to you now. Survive. Do incredible things with your life. Be amazing. I know you will be.”
“Andrew?” she whispered, sad, resigned.
“Though I won’t be there to see, think of me sometimes, won’t you?”
Lucy-Anne nodded because she could not say anymore.
“Hey, er…” Sparky held out his hand, then lowered it again.
“Thanks,” Jenna said. “You’ll be…?”
“Okay?” Andrew asked, smiling. “I’m already okay. No bomb can touch me.” He turned back to Lucy-Anne. “I’ll wait here for a while longer, just to watch you go.” He drifted away from them, pausing beside a tumbled wall and becoming a part of the night.
With one last smile, Lucy-Anne turned her back on her dead brother and led the way.
Jack felt sad at Fleeter’s death. He hadn’t grown to actually like her, but she’d been interesting, and in her own selfish way she’d helped them more than once. He thought that deep down past the surface arrogance there had still been a little lost girl. He wished he’d asked her name.
They’d left her covered with a jacket, just another corpse in the mausoleum of London.
He was also mourning his lost father, a period of renewed grief that had lasted for two years. And he felt terrible about leaving his dear friends. But thinking too much about them might undo him, and jeopardise everything he was trying to do. He had a plan and he was determined to see it through, because if he did not then it would have all been for nothing. The pain, the suffering and death. He could not let that happen.
He
So he did his best to leave that Jack of grief and sadness behind, and the one who approached the museum was a new, simpler Jack. A young man with a mission, shorn of thoughts that might distract. He had become a memory with a purpose.
The scenario awaiting them was strange and troubling, but he tried not to waste too much time to wonder. The things surrounding the museum—frozen in the moment where they sat, lay, ran, flew, crawled—were amazing and terrifying. Jack walked quickly past them. The air was heavy and still, but sometimes he still caught a whiff of animal scents, unnatural and unknown.
“Hurry,” he said. Nomad had been falling behind, and he’d not wanted to risk a look back. He feared that acknowledging her slowness would give her the excuse to stop, and they had so much further to go.
“I…” Nomad said. “I think…coming from here, to help Lucy-Anne…I dug deep, used everything.”
Jack had to stop then, and he turned to confront Nomad. He was shocked at the change that had come over her. Still ethereal and mysterious, she was tainted now with smears of blood from her nose and the corners of her
