Contagion (Toxic City, #3)(32)

“What do you mean?” Jack asked.

“I've dreamed of the bomb,” Lucy-Anne said. “I see Nomad and then the bomb explodes. Except…” She frowned.

“Lucy-Anne?” Jenna prompted.

“Except now it's mixed up with another dream. I see Nomad, and she kills me.”

“We can't just stop an atom bomb with a bloody dream!” Sparky said.

Lucy-Anne didn't seem to hear him. She was frowning, lost in her own world, and Jack went to her and touched her chin. Her tears were cool. He lifted her face.

“We'll do whatever we can,” he said. “And with everything that's happened, I do believe a dream can help. I do.”

She smiled past her sadness and loss.

“Eight hours,” Jack said, turning around to face the others. “Four hours to do whatever we can to stop the bomb or find a safe way out. And then if none of that works, we go west, meet Breezer and the others, and try to get out anyway. What do you think?”

No one replied, but everyone nodded. As plans went, it was woolly. But it was all they had.

Moving north towards the Thames, Andrew saw a man about to die.

The man was wearing no uniform, yet he had the bearing of a military man—cropped hair, slim build, a neat moustache. He carried no weapons. If he had, there was a chance they might have saved him from what was about to kill him. But even then, Andrew thought it unlikely.

The creature circled him. It had been human once, and though still retaining some vestiges of humanity in appearance, its actions and movements were alien. Taller than the man and thinner, its legs long and chitinous, torso human-sized but covered entirely in a sleek, shiny shell, it was its head that still reflected humanity—human eyes, long hair, a head longer and thinner yet still recognisable.

It clicked and snicked, circled the man, drooled.

The man was begging, and it was his words that drew Andrew into the confrontation. Any other time he would have moved away, not even turning when the screams and noises began. Those inhuman creatures did not concern him, because they could always sense that he too was no longer wholly human. And he knew that even they found him troubling.

“I can stop it!” the man said. “Please, please!” He was panicked, verging on hysterical. Andrew wondered where he came from.

“Stop what?” Andrew said. He crossed the road and stood on a traffic island, ten steps away from the desperate man. The creature only glanced at Andrew before seeming to disregard him.

“The bomb!” the man said. He gasped when he looked at Andrew, uncertain that he was even there.

“You're normal,” Andrew said. “You're not one of us.”

The man uttered a sharp, insane laugh. “What the hell is it? What the hell are you?”

“How can you stop the bomb?”

The man's shirt was soaked through with sweat, and he carried a small rucksack over one shoulder, grasping the strap as if it was precious.

“Because it's what I was sent in to do,” he said.

“So you're one of them,” Andrew said. “One of the people keeping London hidden away as a dirty, dark secret.”

“Do you blame us?” he asked, nodding at the creature scratching sharp claws across the road surface.

“Yes,” Andrew said. “Completely. But if you can stop the bomb, perhaps you amongst all of them can redeem yourself, a little.”

“That's what I want,” the man said. “I lost an uncle and three cousins to Doomsday. All dead, not…changed. Not like you. And when we heard that madman Miller had triggered the countdown, I was one of the first to volunteer to come in. Deactivate it.”

Andrew moved towards the man, passing the creature and sensing the startling intelligence its appearance seemed to belie. The man cringed back a little, but not too far. He seemed used to the strangeness that London now harboured. Though he had never seen anything like Andrew. “So what happened?” Andrew asked.

“We were attacked. The Superiors. Only three of us got away, and we hid, discussed what to do. And we decided…between us…to carry on.” He touched his jacket. “Tried to dress more normally. There was no talking to them! No reasoning! They attacked us, but did they know what we were coming to do? Do you think they even had a clue?”

“So what happened to the other two?” Andrew asked, ignoring the question. He knew about Superiors. They would have attacked the Choppers without pause, and without mercy. Killing those who might, this time, save them.

“We split up. I lost touch with them this morning.” The man took a phone from his pocket.

“Let me hear,” Andrew said. The man did something to the device and then hesitantly held it out. Andrew closed his eyes and listened.

The hollow, low moan of eternity. Andrew had heard it when he died, and the sound haunted him now, as if mocking his unnatural state and assuring him that, soon, he would be where he belonged. There was a sickening sense of scope to that noise, as if it was the underlying note to an infinite universe, nothing to echo from, its travel never-ending. If Andrew had possessed a body he would have shuddered.

“They're both dead,” he said, opening his eyes.

“And…you?” the man asked.

Andrew simply stared at him.

The creature scuttled forward and Andrew turned, insubstantial hands held out. “No! He's important,” he said. “You came down from the north because of the bomb, and he might be able to stop it.”