London Eye: 1 (Toxic City)(20)

“I've got big shoulders.”

They went on, and Jack discovered that Jenna was right. Before him was subdued chatter, the sound of shoes scraping the floor and clothes brushing against the walls. Behind him…nothing but darkness and silence. They both took on weight very quickly.

He thought a little about what Lucy-Anne had said before the dogs attacked, about dreaming it. Strange, but she was a strange girl. Back when they'd still been sleeping together, she'd frequently woken up with a start, always claiming to not remember the nightmares that had woken her. She'd suffered more than all of them, he supposed, being left on her own in that big, empty house. She must have a head full of nightmares.

The tunnel ended in another room, smaller than the basement where the dogs had attacked. From here Rosemary led them through a series of small chambers and connecting tunnels, and here and there they passed through tumbled walls, crawling and squirming their way through narrow gaps. Beyond, they entered a place that kept its origins a mystery: tunnel or cave? It was difficult to decide, and Jack spent half an hour trying to make out which was the case. The place had an uneven floor and fissures across its walls and ceiling, but here and there he was sure he could make out tool marks.

Sparky's shout startled him from his contemplation.

“Hey, you lot! I'm bloody starving! Rosemary says there's a place up ahead where we can stop for lunch.”

At the mention of food, Jack's stomach rumbled. The fact that he was still hungry after what they had been through, he saw as a good sign. Need to go moment by moment, he thought. The past has gone. The future is waiting. It's the here and now that matters most.



They found somewhere beautiful. It was so unexpected that Jack had to blink several times to make sure everything was real. They climbed some stone steps and emerged inside a ruined church, its walls blackened by an old fire, charred ceiling timbers littering the floor, windows long-since vanished and steeple tumbled down. But the walls were still solid, and because the roof had gone, the insides were a riot of wild undergrowth, unchecked for many years. A thick, heavy curtain of clematis covered two walls, smothering window openings and bursting with pink and yellow flowers. Another wall hung with wisteria, swinging with pendulous sprays of mauve blooms, and the final wall, below which the remains of what may have been an altar lay in ruins, was home to a gorgeous, heavily thorned yellow rose. The floor of the church was awash with colour and a low, tangled plant that Jack could not identify.

“Wow,” Jenna said. Nobody else could think of anything more suitable, so they stared around in silence.

“Sorry,” Rosemary said. “I forgot to tell you about this place, as well.”

Jack smiled. And then Emily was running, dashing here and there, filming, lifting shrub branches and delving beneath, and a robin landed on a bush close to where they all stood.

“Seems quite tame,” Lucy-Anne said. “How close are we to people in here?”

“We're right on the edge of the Exclusion Zone.” Rosemary spoke quietly, as though to mention those words could spoil this place.

“This has been ruined for more than two years, though,” Sparky said.

Rosemary shrugged. “I assume so. Just another part of the route that Philippe gave me.”

“So where to from here?” Jack asked.

“A dangerous part,” the woman said. “The riskiest when it comes to being seen. A dash across the old churchyard, then over a narrow road that used to lead to a housing estate. It leads nowhere now, but it's still close to the Exclusion Zone, and there may be military patrols.”

“After that?” Lucy-Anne asked.

“Down again. A dried-up stream that leads to an old sewage treatment works. A tunnel. Then under the Exclusion Zone, and we'll be in London.”

“We're that close?” Sparky said.

Rosemary nodded at the clematis-covered wall. “It looks like a clear day. Take a look.”

Sparky glanced at Jack, frowning, but Emily had been listening and she was there before all of them. She snuggled herself through the trailing clematis plant, pushing through with the camera, and then they all heard her intake of breath. Jack did not realise just how much she had been nattering commentary at the camera until she stopped.

“Emily?” he said.

“It's all gone.” Her voice was very small, and very vulnerable.

Sparky and Lucy-Anne pulled aside the hanging plants, and the four of them pushed their way through, standing beside Emily by one of the empty window openings.