Contagion (Toxic City)(4)

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.