Contagion (Toxic City) (2 page)

Out in the street she turned south and started to jog, and doing something positive made her feel safer.

Behind her, a shape parted from shadows and followed.

In the cool night, Nomad sat in the shattered thirteenth floor window of an office block, looking out across a city that should never be dark. Starlight silvered the buildings and roads, the tree canopies of parks, and the uneven contours of car parks filled with vehicles that would never move again. Night neutralised colour, and hers
was a grey London tonight. Out there she could still sense her boy Jack, struggling with the changes she had planted within him whilst attempting to save his family. She could sense Lucy-Anne, that girl who had been special even before Doomsday. And she wanted to protect them both.

That was why she was here. High, quiet, apart from the violence that sometimes ruled the streets down below, she breathed in the scents of her city. The pain still nestled in her chest, and she knew what that meant. Many across London suffered the same sickness. But pain was fleeting and temporary. Even though she bled from her nose when she reached outward, and her head throbbed blindingly when she listened, she could not let it matter.

Beyond the pain she heard time itself.

It grumbled in the settling of a thousand old brick foundations, and many more newer beds of concrete. It whispered in the imperceptible flow of old glass, gravity urging it slowly, so slowly down. It sang in the straining growth of countless trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses, and murmured stiffly in other plants’ demise. Time's flow swept the city forward and drove the clogged Thames, corroding, worrying at bridge supports and the concrete banks built up to stop the flooding that would inevitably occur one day. Every breath was a moment further away from time's beginning, and every footfall was one step closer to the end. She flowed with it for a while, enjoying being in tune with not only nature itself, but the inscrutable time that moved it ever-onward. The pains became dulled with time's promise that pain would always end. Then she focussed, listening and sensing for those ways in which humanity made itself aware.

In the distance, the
tick-tick
of a wrist watch on someone still living. Further afield, the heavier clicks of a wall clock passing each second. She heard and disregarded countless sounds, senses, feelings,
passing them by in her search for the one that mattered. When she found it, its nature and purpose were obvious.

It counted backwards.

To the south, in a locked place so well shielded from outside that the air inside must smell of almost two years ago, the city's destruction sat in an object barely the size of a suitcase.

Seventeen hours, thirteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds…

The pains kicked in again, possessing her bones and blood and seeming to melt away her whole body as if caught in a terrible blast. She shivered, and groaned.

“Oh, no,” Nomad muttered. More words stolen by the breeze. They added to the utterances of desperation and hopelessness made since Doomsday and still echoing from old brick and stone, and Nomad rested onto her back as she gratefully withdrew into herself again.

Seventeen hours
…

Jack could not sleep. Dawn smeared London's jagged horizon, its palette slowly illuminating the crossroads in front of the furniture store. He lay on a double bed deep in the shop, hands behind his head, watching through the dusty shop front as the West Kensington street scene was revealed. Several cars had burned, and sometime since Doomsday they had been shoved onto a pavement across the road, leaving a swathe of melted, blackened tarmac.

Every time he blinked, he wondered at the names of the three men or women he had just killed.

Someone sat on the bed beside him. Rhali. Jack shoved down his self-pity. She might not have killed, but she had been through so much more than him.

“The others are asleep,” she said. Her accent was smooth and calming, her voice soft.

“Sparky and Jenna,” Jack said.

“Yes. They told me their names. They're within the chairs.” At the rear of the shop they'd found a circle of fifteen luxury armchairs, obviously formed since Doomsday. Dust patterns showed that they had not been used for some time. Jenna had muttered something about a protective circle, and for some reason she and Sparky felt safer there.

Rhali lay down beside Jack, lighter than she should have been, more fragile.

“How are you feeling?” Jack asked.

“I was about to ask the same.”

“I'm okay,” he said.

“They were trying to kill us.” Her voice, still soft, now somehow lacked emotion. “They are
always
trying to kill us. If you hadn't done what you did, they would have come closer, and shot us, and left us there for the dogs and rats. Cats too, I've heard. Have you heard that? Cats are eating the dead.”

“Never liked cats,” Jack said. “Crafty. Always thought they'd eat us in the end.”

Rhali breathed quickly, an almost-laugh. She drew closer to Jack and pulled at his left arm, lying on it, her side against his. There was nothing sexual about it at all. She needed contact, and they both took comfort from it.

“Sparky and Jenna have told me what's happening,” she said. “I say let it burn. London is nothing now. Even the memories are fading. Have you smelled the air? It's almost clean. London should never smell like this.”

“You were born here?”

“Peckham. Mum and Dad…” She trailed off, and he did not prompt her. Some kept their stories inside because they were too painful to tell.

“I don't want to save the city, I want to save the people.”

“And your friend, Lucy-Anne.”

“Yes, and her. She and I…we're good friends. Close.” He remembered when he'd first met her, defiant and rebellious, and how she dyed her hair and wore clothes she thought might annoy or antagonise, and he felt a rush of love. It was deep and old, not passionate; the love for someone he had known for sixty years, not two. Doomsday had aged them all, and perhaps because they had both been through so much, they had earned the right to such affection.

“Some of them deserve to die,” Rhali said. She fell silent, watching daylight dawn with Jack. He waited with her until she was ready to continue, and then pulled her closer when she did. She sounded so cold that he thought she could use some warmth.

“I'd met a boy called Jamie. Soon after everything went bad. He was nice, just as lost as me. We travelled to the south, intending to try to get out, and heard about what had happened to others doing the same. We decided to try anyway. But when we got close, we saw the bodies. They'd put them on display. And every one had…had…they'd taken their brains.” She shivered, and Jack pulled her close. “There were a lot more people back then. Already I could sense something, though I was confused, didn't yet know what it was. Movement, drifting, like smoke in the night. Jamie and I waited there for a couple of weeks, and then they started bombing and burning. Making their exclusion zone around the city. There was smoke and fire for days. So we turned north again, and that's when they caught us.”

Something moved out in the street, and Jack felt Rhali stiffen against him.

“Hey,” he said. “It's just dogs.” One big Labrador trotted along the street, and several more dogs followed. The pack was lean and strong, feral, displaying none of the playfulness of pets. Another sadness.

“They killed Jamie,” Rhali said. “He struggled a bit, and they pushed him against a wall and shot him. Then they took me and asked me what I could do. I thought…I thought they were going to kill me too. I wanted them to. I swore and fought and scratched, and they hit me. Next thing I knew I was in the back of a truck, and he…Miller, that bastard, was sticking needles in me. Taking blood. I kicked him, and he jabbed me a few times just out of spite.”

Jack imagined holding a gun to Miller's head. He'd done that just several hours previously, and Sparky had reminded him of who he was.
Now I've killed anyway
, Jack thought, and he wished Miller had been the first.

“What could Jamie do?” he asked.

“I never knew,” Rhali said. “I'm not sure he did, either. He died right at the beginning.”

“What a waste.” Jack sat up and pulled her with him, and something made him hug her tight, both arms around her and holding her close. She hugged back, hard. There was a desperation there, and a need to hold and feel someone who was still human. So many people Jack had concerned himself with seemed to have left humanity behind—Miller, the Superiors. Reaper, who had once been his father. What a waste.

“Suppose I should have warned you he was a fast worker,” Sparky said, jumping onto the bed, laughing. Rhali pulled away, and for the first time Jack heard her laugh. It was muffled by tears. He hadn't been aware that she was crying. He was surprised to find that he was, too. He was relieved at the interruption, but knew that he and Rhali would talk more. She had more to tell.

“You two okay?” Jenna asked. She appeared beside them carrying two cans of Coke. They'd found a stash out back, and though flat they were perfectly drinkable.

“Oh, just bloody dandy,” Jack said. They all laughed then, and it was a release of tension. Jack wondered whether anyone or anything out in the streets heard, and right then, caution be damned, he hoped they did.

It might be the last laughter London ever heard.

Nomad had come here to see, but wished she hadn't.

The museum had been sealed against intrusion. Its lower windows were smashed, but no one had made it past the metal security
grilles. She closed her eyes and opened three sets of doors, and her nose bled as she entered.

It was musty inside, and sparse. The reception area looked as new as the day it was built. Beyond, the main display hall was vast, and filled with the green and grey of war machines. They stood on plinths, on the floor surrounded by chain boundaries, and hung from the roof structure on strong cables. All of them were frozen in falsely peaceful poses, but each exuded violence. All built to destroy.

And there were traps everywhere.

Just inside the doors was a network of fine trip wires. Above, metal vats painted the same war-colours contained a mix of lethal compounds. Almost without thinking, Nomad knew what they could do. When tipped, their contents would mix and haze into a corrosive gas. Flesh would liquefy. Eyes would melt. Lungs would burn, and anyone in the area would die in suffocating agony.

There were pressure pads on the staircases. She probed further, and found the explosives they were linked to. Small charges—they didn't want to bring the building down—but enough to blow the legs off their intended victims, and perhaps gut them.

There were movement sensors everywhere, and even Nomad grew nervous, trying to lessen her movements as she breathed in the old air and tried to weather the pain. Each spread of sensors initiated different responses—she could smell poisons and gases, feel the slick coolness of guns against her palms, hear the echoes of explosions that would occur if she placed one foot wrong.

Her heart felt heavy and cumbersome, her blood slow and thick.
I'm not meant to die like this!
she thought, but she could not deny the sickness that using her talents made worse. She had seen it in others more and more recently, and now she had it herself. She supposed that was fair.

“Even if I get past everything…” she whispered, then held her breath in case she had missed microphones. Nothing exploded, nothing shot at her. The balance persisted, and she dwelled only briefly on the greater problem.

The bomb was locked inside a tank. She could sense its heat, and its terrible potential.

Even if I reach the bomb, how do I stop it? Sixteen hours, only sixteen, and whatever I do could trigger it. There will be safeguards, triggers, to avoid interference. If I look at it wrong, it might explode. If I breathe on it, touch it, attempt to move it…

Nomad was at a loss. London was hers, even now. But this building was no longer part of London. This was the fate that awaited her city, and to avoid it she had to think beyond the physical.

Filled with doubt, Nomad retraced her steps and left the building. And despite the pain and blood, and the confusion in her ever-more diseased mind, she was careful to seal the entrance doors once again.

“So, what's the plan?” Sparky asked. They'd retreated to the rear of the shop and now sat in the chair circle. It felt unaccountably safe, as if the empty chairs were actually occupied by guardian angels.

Jack looked around at his friends, old and new. It was strange how he felt he'd known Sparky and Jenna a lifetime, instead of just the two years since Doomsday, when being left on their own had drawn them together. But he supposed between then and now
was
a lifetime.

Sparky, with his spiky blond hair, broad shoulders, gruff attitude and caring heart. He'd lost his brother, but he was weathering the grief well. Jack liked to think their relationship helped. Jenna mourned her father, not dead, but taken from her because of his interest in London's fate. He was half the man he'd used to be. And
now Rhali, thinner than she should be, bearing the weight of whatever tortures they had seen fit to subject her to, and yet still beautiful. Every time Jack looked at her his heart skipped a little. It was a feeling he'd never had with Lucy-Anne, and for now he tried not to analyse it too much. There were more urgent matters to deal with.

“Plan?” Jenna asked. “As if.”

“Do what we have to,” Jack said. “Spread the word about the bomb, find Lucy-Anne, get the hell out of London.”

“Easy,” Sparky said. “Piece of cake.” He glanced at Rhali.

“We're assuming Miller wasn't lying about the bomb,” Jenna said.

“We have to,” Jack replied. “Big Bindy, he called it. And Breezer seemed pretty sure he was telling the truth.”

“Breezer being completely trustworthy, of course,” Sparky said.

“I heard them talking about Big Bindy,” Rhali said. “I never figured out who or what it could be. But the Choppers I heard were scared of her. Or it.”

“Makes sense,” Jack said. “Miller and his cronies didn't really know all they were dealing with, even after all this time. They did their best to keep London contained, and that seemed to be working. But if they ever found something, or someone, that might have broken out—become a real threat to the rest of the country, for all they knew—they'd have some way of stopping that.”

“So what's changed?” Sparky asked. He stood, hands held out. No one replied. “I don't mean why did Miller press the button. Reason is, he's a dick. Easy enough. What I mean is, how can anyone get out of London, even if we now have to?”

“Dunno,” Jack said.

“I mean, they'll be even more determined to keep the Doomsday survivors trapped now, won't they?” Sparky asked.

“Yeah,” Jenna said. “Make sure Big Bindy gets them all.”

Sparky stared at Jack, waiting for him to respond. Jack felt uncomfortable beneath his friend's gaze, because he knew what Sparky was thinking. Perhaps what they were
all
thinking, including Rhali, who'd already had a glimpse at what Jack could do.

He skimmed the starscape inside, and that throbbing red giant was still there. Watching him. Waiting.

“I can't do anything,” Jack said.

“What?” Sparky said. “
Nothing
?”

Jack shook his head. “I've thought about it. Looked. You've seen what I can do. There's other stuff, but I'm not certain of any of it yet. Some of what I've been able to do has been because I've been close to someone else doing it, like Reaper and his shout. Other stuff has come to me…sort of instinctively.” He shrugged.

“Tell everyone,” Sparky said. “That's what we need to do. Spread the word about the bomb, arrange a meeting place ready to break out of the city. Now that she's not working for them—” He'd nodded at Rhali, and she stood, angry.

“I've
never
worked for them!” she shouted. “Have you any idea what they did to me to make me tell them things? I'll tell you one day. Big, brave boy, I'll tell you.”

“Hey…” Sparky said, and they could all see how sorry he was. “I didn't mean that. Really.”

Rhali nodded, and even offered him a half-smile.

“And there's what Miller said,” Jenna said softly. “About how using the powers has led to people getting sick.”

“Yeah,” Sparky said. “This is all so shit.”