Contagion (Toxic City)(15)

“I don't think so,” Jack said. He walked closer to Breezer, lowering his voice in the hope that no one else would hear. His friends most of all. “I'm a mess, Breezer. I have so much inside me, but I'm scared at what I'll do. So no, even if I knew where it was, I don't think I could take that risk. I need time to learn.”

“Don't have time,” Breezer said.

“No. But we've got a plan. A way to get out, perhaps safely. Are you ready to hear it?”

Breezer seemed to shrink into himself a little, slumping down with the unbearable weight on his shoulders. Perhaps he had burdened himself, but that didn't matter. His tired nod did.

“Anything,” he said. “God help us all.”

“Not Him,” Jack said. “Miller. We need to find him, and you should come with us.”

“Let's talk,” Breezer said. He looked past Jack and nodded, and at first Jack thought he was greeting Sparky and Jenna again. But when Jack turned around he saw Fleeter standing back by the stairwell doors. She was smiling her usual faint, superior smile.

“Okay,” Jack said. “First things first, though. You need to tell me about that.”

Nomad lied to me, Lucy-Anne thought. He's not dead at all! But her excitement was tempered, and everything here felt like a dream. She was dislocated from her surroundings. Moments before, the creatures had been facing her with bared teeth and curved claws, things that had once been human ready to eat human flesh. Her fear was rich and deep, her senses alert. Now Andrew was before her and everything had changed. Her surroundings had faded into the background. She concentrated on her brother and what he had become.

Not dead at all, but surely no longer alive.

He moved towards her slowly, and she remembered the expression he wore. Four years ago she'd come home from school and Andrew had been waiting for her in the living room, watching TV but obviously distracted. Their parents were at work. Andrew was seventeen then, and he was always home just before Lucy-Anne, ready to get her a snack and make sure she'd had a good day in school, tell her to do her homework, and generally look after her for a couple of hours before their mother arrived home. But from the moment she'd walked through the door that day she'd known that she was in control. Andrew had looked nervous, contrite, and as he'd walked towards her he'd seemed to lessen in stature. Lucy-Anne, I was playing a game on your iPod and I dropped it in the kitchen, and you know how hard the floor tiles are. I'm sorry. I'll buy you another. Troubled though their relationship was—he was the Good Boy, the hard worker, the apple in her mother's eye—she could not find it in herself to be angry at him.

He looked the same now as he approached across the cracked concrete car park.

If this is my dream I can change it, she thought, and she glanced towards the industrial unit to her left, willing it to turn to marzipan and icing. But the aluminium sheeting remained, dented and spattered with mould. The windows did not turn into chocolate squares, the drainpipes were not liquorice. If this is my dream…She closed her eyes and opened them again, but everything was the same.

“You're not here,” she said.

“I am,” Andrew said. “Enough, at least. But I'm only really an echo. I dreamed myself alive.”

“I dream too!” she said.

“You always did. And your dreams drove you to distraction.”

Lucy-Anne stepped forward and reached for her brother, but he drifted back as she came closer. His feet barely seemed to move.

“What are you? A ghost? What happened?”

“Ghost is as good a word as any,” he said. “And I'll tell you. But you should walk south, and quickly. Those things aren't the only ones moving out of the north today.”

“Because of the bomb?”

“Word is spreading,” Andrew said.

“Aren't you afraid?”

“Only for you, sister. I'm already dead.”

Lucy-Anne closed her eyes and breathed deeply, fighting off a faint. Only useless women in old movies faint at something like this! she berated herself. She bit the inside of her lip, pinched the back of her hand, and for a fleeting instant thought that when she looked again he would be gone. That terrified her. So much so that she found herself frozen, unable to move, unwilling to open her eyes in case—

“Lucy-Anne,” he said, and she felt something almost stroke her cheek.

Her eyes snapped open and he was there before her, one arm outstretched and his hand moving away. He'd touched her face, just like he used to when she was a little girl and he wanted to show affection. He'd very rarely kissed her. A fingertip to her cheek was his greeting, a gentle touch that said more than any words.