Contagion (Toxic City, #3)(16)
They moved as silently and quickly as possible. He saw things that days ago would have traumatised him for life, but which now were merely another part of the landscape. Two withered, dried shapes hung side by side from nooses suspended from second storey windows. A pram sat in the middle of the road, a mess of blankets and clothing inside, mother dead on the road with her skeletal fingers curled around one wheel. A bus had driven into a DVD store, and the silhouettes of its dead passengers were just visible through the dusty windows.
“No one buried them all,” Rhali said. Jack was surprised, and then he remembered that the Choppers had caught her soon after Doomsday. She'd been shut away since then.
“There was no one left to do it,” he said. “London is their mausoleum.”
A clap! and Fleeter reappeared beside the bus. She projected her usual aloof smile, but swayed where she stood, reaching out to the bus for balance. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply.
“We're clear from here to the river,” she said. “No Choppers. But what's coming from that way isn't safe.” She nodded back the way they'd come.
Both Sparky and Jenna looked at Jack expectantly. He in turn looked at Breezer and raised his eyebrows.
“You know what Guy can do,” Breezer said. Jack nodded. He'd seen the small, thin man in Camp H telling the Choppers to drop their weapons. “Whether his powers of suggestion will work on whatever's coming down from the north…” He shrugged. Beside him Guy remained silent, offering nothing.
“Guess it's all on you, then,” Jenna said to Jack.
“I don't want to kill anyone else,” he said.
“You might not have—” Fleeter began, but Jack cut her off.
“I'm not like you! Come on!”
They moved less cautiously than they would have normally, trusting Fleeter's observations, and soon they were closing on the river. Breezer said he and the Irregulars kept two boats moored there, engines services and fuel tanks full, just in case they were ever needed. But they hadn't started the motors in over a year. Too noisy, too risky.
Close to the river was an open square, landscaped and with several large stone sculptures on marble plinths. The sort of place office workers might have come to for lunch, and tourists might have chosen to have their pictures taken with the river and London skyline in the background. An ice cream van sat in one corner on flattened tyres, a line of bodies sprawled on the ground before its open window. It illustrated again the speed with which disaster had befallen London. In the distance, on the other side of the river, Jack could just make out the upper third of the London Eye, its graceful arc marred by the damage from the helicopter crash that had started everything.
“They're coming,” Rhali said, and moments later four shapes burst from a side street across the road from the square.
“What the hell are they?” Sparky said. No one answered. Everyone drew close together and squatted down, sheltering behind a sculpture but knowing that it would not protect them for long.
Jack probed inward and prepared himself, balancing two talents, ready to use either. His heart hammered and he felt sick. Even though these things no longer looked quite like people, the thought of killing them was horrible.
A woman wore flowing clothes, but they did nothing to camouflage her lengthened limbs, or her scaled skin. Her eyes shone with a purple membrane, and her teeth were long and crowded into her mouth. She hissed as she ran by, tongue tasting them on the air. A man followed, bounding on hands and feet. He was naked, body elongated. Long spines protruded from his back, and on either side grew rudimentary wings. Blood dripped down his side, and when he roared it sounded full of pain. He followed the woman, away from them and towards the river. But the other two arrivals slowed as they crossed the square. The two women hooted to each other as they both turned to stare at the huddled group.
“Don't think much of yours, mate,” Sparky whispered, and Jack almost guffawed with nervous laughter. But he had to be in control. Everyone here was depending on him.
The women's skin was so pale it was almost translucent, bodies incredibly thin, breasts reduced to nothing. There was something fluid about them, both in the way they moved and how they looked—as if their skins contained molten innards, rather than flesh and blood. They hooted again, and countless tiny tentacles extruded from their forearms and palms, waving as if caught in a breeze.
“Do you think—?” Jenna began, and then both women roared and came at her. Their inhuman voices cried hunger.
Jack stood and pointed at them, keeping his arms and shoulders relaxed, and as he exhaled both women were lifted from the ground. He held them there using the talent he'd first seen in Puppeteer, and he felt the potential thrumming through his arms—he could throw, squeeze, crush them. They thrashed and squirmed, and one grasped hold of the sculpture. Her tentacles flexed and curled around the concrete, pulling hard, but Jack only felt the slightest tension. His power was not muscular.
“What now?” Rhali asked.
“Ice cream van,” Jack said. “Doors.”
Sparky, Jenna and Breezer rushed to the van and tugged open the driver's door. Jenna winced back at whatever was inside, but Sparky turned and gestured to Jack.
Jack started walking, still pointing, and the two strange women drifted through the air before him.
“Stand back,” he said, and he guided them in through the door.