Part 8 (1/2)

It echoed from the buildings around the square, shook the ground, and the lights-red, yellow, and white-slashed through the undergrowth as if it was not there. It ended the shadows in that place, and its motor sounded angry and hungry.

The vehicle turned around the edge of the square, following the two smaller trucks that had preceded it. Through branches and past heavy limbs draped with leaves, Lucy-Anne could see its shape, and it was huge. It reminded her of an oil tanker, but its heavy grey sides looked daunting, the three conical towers on its back ugly and threatening with the stubby black guns that protruded from them. The engine tone lowered for a moment and she thought it was going to slow.

”They can't have seen us!” Emily said, almost shouting to be heard.

Lucy-Anne delved into her pocket for the knife Sparky had let her keep, laughing out loud at how ineffective it felt.

Then the giant vehicle lumbered on, putting on a surprising spurt of speed as it skirted the square and disappeared after the 44s.

For a couple of minutes after the lights disappeared and the vehicles were out of sight, everyone remained where they were. Lucy-Anne listened to the engines fading away, echoes coming back at them and playing tricks with direction and distance. Then Rosemary crawled across to them, her eyes wide, fearful, and perhaps excited as well. ”Choppers!” she said. ”And that big monster was one of their mobile labs. I've watched Irregulars taken into there, never to be seen again.”

”We need to go to your house,” Jack said. Emily was still s.h.i.+vering in his arms. ”It's been a long day, Rosemary, and we need rest. This is all too much.”

”Near miss, eh?” Sparky said, crawling across to them.

”Got it all on here, I think,” Emily said, holding up her camera and smiling weakly.

”There won't be another patrol for a while,” Rosemary said.

”I need to find my family,” Lucy-Anne whispered. Her heart was thrumming, and something had started ticking deep inside her, a timer slowly running out of sand. She was counting down to something, and she had no idea what.

”Not yet,” Jack said.

”Lucy-Anne, we need-” Jenna began.

”My family!” she said, louder this time. ”We've come all this way, been through those b.l.o.o.d.y tunnels...those dogs! And I'm not just going to go to f.u.c.king sleep!”

”Quiet!” Rosemary said.

”Stop telling me to be quiet, old woman!”

”Lucy-Anne.” Jack stepped forward and held her arms, trying to pull her close. She resisted, pulling back, staring over Jack's shoulder at something more distant.

”Where did they live?” Rosemary said. Her voice was calmer now, cooler.

Lucy-Anne glanced at her, but said nothing.

”Answer her,” Jack said. ”She knows the city.”

”She led us to those dogs.”

”Tooting, wasn't it?” Jenna asked. ”Didn't they live near the big police station in Tooting?”

Rosemary sighed and lowered her head.

”What?” Lucy-Anne demanded. ”What the h.e.l.l does that mean?”

”Tooting isn't there anymore,” Rosemary said softly. ”We just walked across it, and now it's called the Barrens.”

Lucy-Anne gasped, and her defences fell from her in a heartbeat. She crumpled in Jack's arms, slumping down as though her knees had given out. She wished he could hold her tight enough to stop everything, just for a while.

”It doesn't mean they're dead,” he whispered in her ear.

No, they're not dead, she thought. And something deep inside seemed to grin.

She pulled away from Jack and stood on her own. She smoothed down her clothes, ran her fingers through her hair, and wiped an errant tear from her cheek. Then she glanced at Rosemary. ”Sorry.” The word was quiet, but they all heard it in the silence.

Rosemary nodded and gave a brief smile. ”We should go. If we hurry, we can be there before it's fully dark.”

They followed the woman out of the square and along a narrow street, as they had been following her all that long day. She had led them out of the world they knew and into one they used to know, but which was now a mysterious, dangerous place. She had healed their wounds after the dogs attacked them, and told them about the strange places beneath London, both old and new. She had walked them across the largest grave the world had ever seen, and pointed out monuments to individual people that seemed, in Lucy-Anne's eyes at least, to be more immediate than the thought of a million dead.

She trusted the old woman, and she didn't. She liked her, and she feared her. And as Rosemary unlocked the front door to an innocuous, terraced house in a street that had once sung with life, Lucy-Anne wondered whether history was too powerful for any of them to change.

There will be a statement from the prime minister on all TV and radio channels at 10:00 p.m.

-Government Statement, all-channel broadcast,

8:15 p.m. GMT, July 28, 2019

I t was a normal house, its owners dead or gone since Doomsday. Rosemary had tacked several layers of thick sheets and blankets over every window and door so that she could light candles without being seen. There were a few lighter patches on the papered walls where pictures had once hung, empty book cases, and piled in a small room at the rear of the house were a pram, bouncy chair, and several bags of baby toys and clothes. She told them that she had tried to depersonalise the house-not to make it her own, but to make it anonymous.

Before Doomsday, she had been a nurse. She did not like stealing someone else's home.

Jack thought they would all have trouble falling asleep. After eating food cold from tins, Rosemary showed them to separate rooms. Lucy-Anne, Jenna, and Sparky took one, while Jack and Emily had another, bickering briefly about who should have the top bunk.

”It's dangerous,” Jack said, and Emily laughed and climbed the ladder.

But when the time for sleep came, Jack closed his eyes and suffered none of the anxieties he feared. He had worried that being here at last, in the Toxic City, would keep them all awake. But he soon heard Sparky mumbling in his sleep and Emily's gentle breathing above him, and before dropping off himself he realised that the dangers of this place extended far beyond the ruins of the Exclusion Zone. London was perilous, but a world where such lies could be told, and such wonders hidden away, was deadly through and through.

For the past two years, none of them had ever been safe.

Breakfast was more cold food from tin cans, but baked beans had never tasted so good. Jack wondered how the Irregulars stayed healthy without anything fresh: no vegetables, fruit, or meat. But he kept having to remind himself that they were not normal people. She's moved on, he thought, watching Rosemary opening several large plastic bottles of water. She's evolved, all of a sudden. Her hands moved smoothly, confidently, the patterns they made almost poetic. What must it be like to have such power? He could barely imagine.

”I'm taking you to a man called Gordon,” she said. ”He's a friend, but not as...accepting of his new gift as I am.”

”What's his gift?” Jack asked.

”He can trace bloodlines,” she said. ”One drip of blood, and he can sense it all across the city.”

”You mean he can smell our families?” Sparky asked.

”It's much more than smell, dear,” Rosemary said, smiling. She held up her hands. ”Just as this is a lot more than touch.”