London Eye: 1 (Toxic City)(26)

“We're still under the Exclusion Zone, right?” Jenna asked.

Rosemary thought about that for a while, then nodded. “Just. But soon, we enter an old Tube station that has been abandoned for years, walk along the line, and then we're there.”

“So there'll be others?” Jack asked. “More people below ground?”

“There are plenty. But I doubt we'll see them. As I said, most of them come down here to be alone.”

There was a heavy torch by the dead woman's left hand, and to her right an empty whiskey bottle lay on its side, a plastic bowl upended beside that. Last meal and drink.

“I wonder what she could do,” Rosemary mused.

“That's someone's mother,” Jenna said, angry. “Someone's sister.”

“We should go,” Jack said. “I don't want to stay down here anymore. Rosemary, I just want to get there and see the sun again. How far?”

“An hour.”

“An hour.” Lucy-Anne was staring at the woman, torch playing unwaveringly on her mutilated face.

“Lucy-Anne,” Jack said. “Come on.” He stepped before her, blocking her view and wanting so much to reach out and hold her. But the distance was still there, and he didn't think he had arms long enough.

The sewer ended in a place of chaos. The pipe had ruptured and smashed, and the solid ground around it had apparently been washed away by some vast underground flood. The void left behind looked precarious and in danger of collapse at any moment. Roots hung dead and shrivelled from the ceiling, and the fractured ends of underground pipes and ducting protruded like broken bones. Rosemary led them across, stepping around and over rocks and cracks in the ground, towards a small crawlspace at the other side.

“This is narrow,” she said, facing the group of friends. “But not very long. And on the other side, there's the abandoned Tube station.”

“Are we under London yet?” Jenna asked.

“Almost,” Rosemary said. She looked up at the roof and the others shone their torches there, as though they could see all the way through. “Very close now. This is part of what they did to the Exclusion Zone, part of the damage.” She shook her head, and just before she turned away, Jack thought he saw tears.

She was right, the crawlspace was very narrow. But they pulled their way through, lured by the promise of an easy walk and the end of the beginning of their quest.

Jack and the others had seen a few grainy images of London's Tube network since Doomsday, smuggled out with other pictures on memory cards tied to pigeons’ legs or dogs’ collars. They usually showed stations they were familiar with, only a little run down; litter on the platform, dust thick on the tiles, the spaces illuminated by heavy torches or small fires. But the place they found when they emerged from the crack in the earth was very different.

“Where the hell are we?” Sparky asked.

Jenna laughed. “I think it must be Christmas!”

The meagre light from their torches reflected from dozens of mirrors arrayed along the platform and down on the line, glitter balls hanging from the ceiling and smashed glass swept in drifts against the platform wall to their left, flooding the station with light. Swathes of bunting zig-zagged back and forth just above head height for the full length of the platform. In many places, tiles had fallen or been smashed from the wall, but the blank gaps left behind had been painted with luminous green, yellow, or blue paint. Halfway along the platform, there was even a crazy tree made from heavy wire, pinned with hundreds of small passport-sized photographs. Jack went to the tree and saw that each photo was of a different person. Some smiled, some frowned, some stuck out their tongues.

But among this colour and the enthusiastic splash of light, there was no sign of recent human habitation. Plenty of rats, true. And Jack saw footprints—a dog's? A wolf's?—which he was sure were trodden in dried blood.

“This station's been out of use for almost twenty years,” Rosemary said. “Really was the end of the line! So those who lived underground—and there's always been a lot of them—adopted it as their own. Decorated it, slept here, used it as a retreat from above. The stairs are blocked off, and I suppose there must have been other ways up and down, but they've long gone.”

“Where are they now?” Jack asked. “If they were…you know…moved from society anyway, how come they're not still here?”

“Doomsday touched everyone,” Rosemary said, “and Evolve seeped everywhere. There are places in London that are graves. Huge graves. You'll see one soon, but…there's no way I can really prepare you for it.” She looked around the group, and her expression truly startled Jack for the first time. She was an old woman, with the eyes of someone who had known far too much sadness, but she looked at them as though she were sorry for them all.