Contagion

the map on the board at the entrance showed how vast it was. Straight through would be far easier than skirting around it. And at least from what she could see there was less traffic clogging the roads.

As soon as she entered, the noises began. Clanging, dragging. Something following her across rooftops. Something with claws.

She ducked into a large unit and hurried through to the other side. It was stacked with countless boxes of computer screens, millions of pounds in value now worth nothing. They weren’t edible, couldn’t burn, and would be useless as weapons. She hurried through, still listening for those sounds of pursuit.

She found a fire escape that hung open, the door propped against the sad skeletal remnants of someone who’d wanted to die in the sunlight. She listened, heard nothing.

But she knew that meant little.

Why the hell couldn’t I have wandered into a unit that made machine guns and bazookas? she thought as she burst from the door.

Heart hammering, she glanced up at the sky, expecting to see rooks following her progress. But the sky was a bright, blank blue. A beautiful day.

She was thirsty and hungry, her head throbbed, and she was not used to such excessive exercise. But still she ran. She heard something scampering across metal, but she couldn’t tell how heavy the something was, nor how far away. She passed by a white van slewed across the road and caught sight of its contents through the open side door—piles of board games, still stacked as if ready for children to take their pick. She thought briefly about jumping into the driver’s seat and slamming the door, but if the engine did not fire she might trap herself in there while those pursuing things came for her.

She drew the knife from her belt and held it blade-forward, ready to jab and slash.

Inside another unit, and here the smell was so familiar that it made her gasp aloud. Shoes. Storage racks were stacked with thousands of boxes of new trainers, and a few were scattered around beneath the shelves, bright white and coloured objects that looked so out of place. These were proper running shoes, and she remembered shopping for them with her mother when she had taken up running several years before. She’d watched her mother on a treadmill while the shop assistant analysed videos of her gait, prescribing a certain type of shoe and bringing out her recommendations. Afterwards they had gone to a Starbucks and Lucy-Anne had eaten a shortbread while her mother drank coffee and examined her shoes. The smell conjured this completely detailed memory, and also the more recent dream during which Lucy-Anne had sensed her parents buried in one of London’s mass graves.

Tears beaded in her eyes, and she wiped them away.

Approaching a door at the rear of the unit she skidded to a stop. There was a huddle of bodies against the wall, shrivelled, dried skin hanging on grinning skulls. More stories she’d never know. The door was closed, and she checked it quickly for locks. The moment she opened it she wanted to be running, and if she made a noise rattling the handle against locks, then—

Loud impacts sounded from the high metal roof. The noise filled the previously quiet unit. Lucy-Anne cried out in shock, then pressed down the handle and swung the door, darted into the open, and ran. She crossed a car park and dodged around several cars, then heard thuds behind her as things dropped from the roof.

She stopped and spun around, backing up against a truck sat on flattened tyres. This is where I make a stand, she thought, and she was filled with a dreadful sense of foreboding. She had not dreamed this at all. As she saw what faced her, she wished she could have fallen instantly asleep to un-dream it.

She was going to die here, and her bones would be scattered across the moss-covered concrete.

There were three of them stalking closer to her, cautious but confident, and she could sense their hunger. Each breath ended with a gentle growl.

“So what are you supposed to be?” she asked. Her voice wavered, and none of them gave any indication that they had heard.

They were smaller than adult humans, but she had no sense that they were children. Vaguely ape-like, their arms and legs had grown long and thin, yet still wiry and strong. Their naked bodies were covered with a fine brown felt-like fur, and their heads had elongated, mouths protruding and ears flattened against their triangular skulls. The teeth were long and vicious. Their eyes were startlingly human, yet they held little sign of any intelligence she could understand. One of them had a tattoo on its upper arm.

She was certain that they wanted to eat.

“Come on then,” she said, waving the knife before her. But she felt no real bravado. She would fight when they came, but she could not kid herself. She might wound one or two of them, but they’d take her down within seconds.

She only hoped it was over quickly.

I’m so sorry, Jack, she thought. Sparky, Jenna. I’m so sorry. I only hope you get out anyway, but I can’t pretend that I’m sad at what’s going to happen to London. She blinked and saw Nomad once more, silhouetted against the nuclear blast that would sweep away all that had gone wrong, and every twisted thing that London had birthed.

When she opened her eyes again, someone else was there.

Lucy-Anne frowned, squinted, trying to make sense of who and what she saw. It was a shadow on the light where no shadow was cast, and when it moved it was like a blind spot in her vision. It flowed from the doorway of the sports shoe unit, and then the ape-things were screeching as it moved amongst them. They darted away, one of them passing so close to her that it collided with the truck’s hood, tripped over the bumper and sprawled on the ground, scrabbling for purchase before sprinting away on all fours. One took a huge leap up onto the building’s roof and disappeared from view. The others ran across car parks and roads, vanishing between units. In moments they were gone, and Lucy-Anne was alone with whatever, or whomever, had saved her.

Someone new, she thought, but she instantly knew that was wrong. This was someone she already knew. She dropped the knife, barely noticing the sound as it struck the ground.

“Rook!” she whispered as the shadow formed before her. A shape where no shape should be, his features manifested from the light, coalescing into the form he used to take. Almost solid, but not quite. Nearly there, but still absent in some fundamental way.

And not Rook.

“My sweet sister,” Andrew said.

CHAPTER FOUR FOURTEEN, THIRTEEN

Hurrying through the streets towards Trafalgar Square once more, Jack felt the weight of responsibility press down on him. He’d seen the way Jenna had been glancing at him, and he knew what she would have to ask again soon: Why can’t you warn everyone? And he was trying. He truly was. Now that he knew the mystery of that huge red star he was more at peace cruising his internal universe of potential. But that didn’t mean he was no longer afraid of it. Perhaps he even feared it more.

He moved from here to there, acknowledging powers he had already tapped, searching for those that might help him now. He discovered amazing things—the ability to implant false memories; cold breath that could freeze; a touch that could turn any solid into a liquid, and then a gas, without heat—but there was nothing to communicate en masse to everyone left in London. The more he looked, the more hopeless it seemed.

Jack wished everything was the way it had been before coming to London.

He thought of Camp Truth, their place in the woods where he, Lucy-Anne, Sparky, Jenna, and sometimes his sister Emily used to gather, collecting scraps of information about London left to them by similarly minded individuals. They’d sit there for long hours, talk, make plans, and then go home to the respective houses to dream away another night. Sparky would work on the old Ford Capri that reminded him so much of his brother, his parents ghosts of what they had once been. Jenna would try to talk to her father, but he was cold now, changed by whatever had been done to him. Lucy-Anne went from home to home, never settling because dreams of her