Reaper's Legacy: Book Two (Toxic City)(19)

“I was living in Collier's Wood with my mother. Dad left a few years ago. Met a stripper in Soho, fell in love, took her to live in Cornwall.” He grinned without humour. “Sordid, eh?”

Lucy-Anne did not reply. She was finding it strange enough imagining Rook with a mother, living in a house. Something normal for this extraordinary boy.

“When Doomsday hit, me and David were on the way home from school. We'd stopped at a pizza place and were eating with some friends. Heard about an explosion at the Eye, didn't think much of it. Bit of a shock, but we were just kids, you know? There've been bombs before. So we were just eating and messing around, and then we left and started for home. There was me and David, and…” He frowned, shrugged. “A few friends. Can't remember their names anymore.

“It wasn't ’til we passed Collier's Wood tube station that we saw something weird. Loads of people rushing from the tube. They all looked scared, panicked. Most of them were on their phones, not looking where they were going or communicating with anyone around them. A fat guy was hit by a car. No one stopped, no one seemed to care. So we took off towards our street, our friends tagged along—they lived past the end of our street, usually came into our place for a play on the Wii or something after school. At the end of the street, they just…dropped. Hit the pavement. One second they were walking with us, the next they fell.”

He was silent for a while, and Lucy-Anne tried to imagine this strange, deadly boy playing computer games and walking home from school with friends. They were such mundane activities that she could not make the connection. But Rook's expression made it for her; she had never seen him looking so human.

“A load of pigeons gathered on the rooftops took flight and flew in tight circles above us, like living tornadoes. David looked terrified. I knew it was him—I'd known for a while about what he could do, or some of it—but he'd always been afraid. I reached for him to…hold his hand, or something. But they were falling everywhere. Along the street from us two cars crashed head-on, and another flipped over onto its back and smashed down the front wall of a house. There was a really big explosion, and screaming, and then my vision started blurring. David grabbed my hand. I passed out.” Rook held up one hand as if to illustrate his brother's touch, but then Lucy-Anne realised that he had called a halt. A rook drifted down to land on his shoulder, he tilted his head, and the bird took off again.

“It's okay,” he said. “Irregulars. Come on.” They walked on, past the entrance to an indoor market and a jeweller's with rings and necklaces still scattered on the pavement amongst broken glass. Lucy-Anne looked around but saw no one watching them. Whoever it was the birds had seen must have been hiding.

“What happened when you woke up?”

“Everyone was dead,” Rook said. “It was like…waking in another world. London was mostly quiet. Some shouts, screams, from a couple of people stumbling about. We never saw any, though. I suppose we were lucky. We had each other. So we went home. And our mother was dead. Sitting in her armchair, and the TV was still on, then. An advert for washing powder. Her cup of tea was still warm.

“After that things are hazy. Time seems weird. We stayed together, I know that. Outside was terrifying and horrible. So silent, and when there were voices, they were screaming or mad. It might have been a couple of days or three weeks, living in our house almost as normal. David made food, washed up, and we dressed in clean clothes every day. And when the TV and radio were off, and the Internet couldn't connect anymore, and David's mobile had no signal and after we'd buried Mum in the back garden, under the thornless rose bush she'd planted by the back gate so that we didn't prick ourselves on it when we were little…after that, when we did start thinking about leaving, a man told us not to.”

“A man?” Lucy-Anne prompted when he seemed to drift off.

“A black man. He looked like he was a hundred years old. I think I'd seen him before, selling flowers at the local market on Saturday mornings. He came down our street at nine forty-three every morning. Same time, exactly. He called himself a crier, like an old town crier, you know? And he told us to stay where we were, because everything was terrible. Told us stories. We didn't believe them, of course.”

“What sort of stories?”

“I'm sure you can guess.” He stopped walking and looked at a swathe of graffiti across a shop's side wall. It was a strange mixture of symbols and images, as if written in an alien language.

“So we stayed at home, and then I discovered that I could…” Rook waved one hand around his head, and seven rooks circled above them for a few moments before drifting apart once more. “It was amazing to me, and strange to David. His own powers were so much greater than they'd been before, and he couldn't handle it. The day the black man didn't come, David went out. He was picked up by the Choppers.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” she asked. Rook glanced back at her, his eyes hard, and Lucy-Anne realised that she'd asked an intensely personal question. If he did know, and it was as awful as she feared, then she had no right asking him to relive it.

“They killed him,” Rook said.

“You…” She trailed off, unsure.

“What?”

“You're sure?” she asked quietly. “Only…maybe the Choppers were trying to help. In the beginning, at least.”