Contagion (Toxic City)(43)

While emails fly and die, further messages are sent to the computer in Camp Truth. They'd christened it Marty so they could talk about it in company, and Jenna had treated it like another friend. Alone, it beeps and buzzes as its fan whirrs up, and the screen comes to life to illuminate the place where so many of their hopes had been kept alive. Jack senses the scene, and whilst exciting, it is also sad. The people who had been there mere days ago have all changed now, and discovering the fates of their various family members means they will never be the same again.

Jenna's programmes, worked on so diligently for months, start working. Images are dispersed to scores of websites, and to hundreds of people hiding online under a web of aliases and false provider information. Photographs and films taken within London soon pop up all across the Internet. Reaction is swift—the authorities’ preparedness for such an eventuality shocks Jack, even though he has seen evidence of it so many times before—and websites crash like a series of virtual dominoes. But the spread of information is now speedier than any attempt to suppress it. And while ten websites crash, one will always survive to pass on information.

A film of the Exclusion Zone, with Jack and Lucy-Anne staring around in shock…

Jack's mother in the Underground station, and behind her the beds taken with dead and dying…

Choppers cruising the streets in their blue vehicles…

Nomad, mysterious, ethereal, with the sad, empty city behind her…

More images that betray the truth that has been kept from the world. Film clips that show the incredible things that have happened within London, and display that it is not a dead, toxic place as the world has been told.

Jack saw the truth spreading across Britain like blood finding its way through an organism's arteries and veins.

And as he finally drew back towards his universe of potential, he used Rhali's gift to sense the mass of people moving quickly towards London. Roads were heavy with vehicles. Their gravity was huge. And they were all coming to find people they had lost.

“Bloody hell, mate, I thought you were gone!” Sparky was kneeling next to him, Jenna and Lucy-Anne behind him.

“I was,” Jack said. “I reached out to Emily. Saw what she's done. And…” He actually laughed out loud, and it felt so good. “And she's a genius! She's contacted Marty. She and my mum didn't get the hell away like I told them to, but are holed up in a school maybe twenty miles outside the Exclusion Zone. She used everything on the camera.”

“And it was all stopped by the Choppers,” Jenna said. “Go on. Tell me that. And they'll have triangulated on Camp Truth, too.”

“No,” Jack said, smiling. “A lot got through. The word's out. We've done what we always wanted to do, and now there are people coming towards London. Loved ones, those who always half-believed like us, they're all coming here to see what's left.”

“And they're being stopped?” Sparky said.

“I'm not sure,” Jack replied.

“Bloody hope they are.”

“All the more reason to follow Andrew straight away,” Lucy-Anne said. “What if they break through?”

“What do you mean?” Jenna asked.

“The truth got out there are just the wrong time,” Lucy-Anne said. “It's what we've always wanted, but if so many people know, they won't be able to stop them.”

“The Choppers will stop them coming close, just like they always stopped anyone leaving,” Fleeter said bitterly.

“Really?” Lucy-Anne asked. “How? With force?”

“No,” Jack said. “No, they can't. Oh. Oh, shit. There'll be press, reporters, web journalists. They'll try to stop them, but they won't be able to use force. And if there are enough people, they'll just march on London. Everything's been blown wide open.”

“And because of that, it's not just London in danger now,” Rhali said.

“That bomb can't explode!” Jenna said.

“Right,” Lucy-Anne agreed. “And so we follow Andrew.”

Fleeter flipped out, her disappearance causing a thud! that cracked one of the restaurant's front windows.

For a moment Jack thought of following. But even seconds might count now, and he would no longer desert his friends.

“Come on,” he said. Without another word they left the restaurant and followed a ghost along London's haunted streets.