Tim Lebbon - Contagion

But individual needs were meaningless in the face of the catastrophe hanging over them. Millions had already died in London, and for Jack that made any more needless deaths all the more painful.

Lucy-Anne stood close to the front of the restaurant where the ghost of her brother cast no shadow. Sparky and Jenna gathered whatever drinks they could find, and knives for weapons.

Fleeter paced. Losing her constant smile suited her, because Jack no longer felt mocked. But he could still not trust her. That could only come with time they didn’t have.

And then Emily crossed Jack’s mind, so vibrant and there that for a moment he looked around for her. Then he smiled and closed his eyes, and knew that he could reach out to her so easily. Perhaps that would help. Knowing where she and his mother were, sensing their safety…maybe all that would help him through what was to come.

He grasped the talent and a dizzying surge made him sway. He heard and sensed hurried movement and held up one hand.

“Okay, I’m okay,” he said. “Give a minute. I just need a minute.”

Emily became his centre, and he allowed himself to drift towards her. He saw beyond London. There was no longer a sense of movement, but his perception shifted over the shattered city, past the devastated Exclusion Zone, and across the heads of the military still encircling what was left. Fields and roads passed beneath him, and small, deserted communities that had been abandoned after Doomsday. Scale changed as he dipped down, skimming over the landscape, then rooftops, and then settling at last in the playground of an old country primary school.

Emily was there, along with his mother. His sister grinned and squealed his name, jumping up and rushing around the playground with her arms held up, trying to grab him. His mother smiled and looked up at the sky. She believes, too , Jack thought, but of course she did. Doomsday had made her something special—a healer—and she knew that he’d been touched by Nomad.

Jack, I did it! Emily said. I spread the word, and the photos, and everything is changing .

It is , his mother said. London’s story will change again very soon .

At first Jack thought they were talking about the bomb. But there was no way they could know, and as his consciousness dipped closer to his mother, he saw her confident smile.

They’re coming! Emily said. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I did it just like you said, and—

—a jolt as Jack saw what she’d done, relayed either from her own memory, or perhaps painted by whatever talent had taken hold of him.

Emily with the camera she’d retrieved on her way back out of London, through the tunnels, Fleeter guiding her and her mother, a brief flash of violence as Fleeter—

Emily and his mother, alone now, hurrying across countryside with the weight of London behind them. Lights speckle the landscape; farms, hamlets, places where normal people are living almost-normal lives so close to the toxic city. His family are glad to be out, but sad that Jack is not with them. Go to Cornwall, he’d told them, but he can see from the set of Emily’s face that—

She has no intention of doing what he’d told her. Instead, they break into the school under cover of darkness, do their best to seal off a small office by covering the window with several layers of curtains, and fire up the computer. It’s a decent laptop with a good Internet connection. Emily connects the camera and downloads the pictures she’s taken, and the film clips, and then—

Their mother finds some food and drink, and sits back while Emily works. The love she exudes for her daughter is overwhelming. As is her sadness at the two years of her daughter’s life she missed. Jack sees his mother’s tears even though Emily does not, and that makes him wonder—

I’m ready , Emily says, sitting back and stretching her stiff limbs. Don’t hesitate , their mother says. I wasn’t. I was just enjoying the moment . I wish Jack could be here to see this . She presses return and—

She has learned so much. Jack never knew she’d been watching him so closely, and Jenna when she worked on their computer in their buried camp in the woods—Camp Truth they’d called it, and now everything Emily had learnt there would be put to the test, the real truth its burden. Emails are sent in small blocks to avoid spam filters, attachments encrypted, any text bland and inconspicuous. Twenty, sixty, a hundred, worming their way through wires and across the ether, and while within the first second a large percentage are intercepted, examined, catalogued, flagged for inspection, and locked away in secure servers across the southeast, a few get through and find their intended recipients. Then the true dispersal begins. Sleeping computers wake, dormant servers fire up, and automated email accounts start forwarding emails to millions of addresses across the country. Most are caught and deleted by provider spam programmes, many more are attacked by security code written to look for precisely these messages—images scanned, tones and colours and content analysed by algorithms so complex that they require terabytes of power. From every million emails sent, perhaps a hundred land in inboxes, and of these maybe thirty are opened. From there, it is out of the virtual hands of the web and into the consciousness of human beings.

While emails fly and die, further messages are sent to the computer in Camp Truth. They’d christened it Marty so they could talk about it in company, and Jenna had treated it like another friend. Alone, it beeps and buzzes as its fan whirrs up, and the screen comes to life to illuminate the place where so many of their hopes had been kept alive. Jack senses the scene, and whilst exciting, it is also sad. The people who had been there mere days ago have all changed now, and discovering the fates of their various family members means they will never be the same again.

Jenna’s programmes, worked on so diligently for months, start working. Images are dispersed to scores of websites, and to hundreds of people hiding online under a web of aliases and false provider information. Photographs and films taken within London soon pop up all across the Internet. Reaction is swift—the authorities’ preparedness for such an eventuality shocks Jack, even though he has seen evidence of it so many times before—and websites crash like a series of virtual dominoes. But the spread of information is now speedier than any attempt to suppress it. And while ten websites crash, one will always survive to pass on information.

A film of the Exclusion Zone, with Jack and Lucy-Anne staring around in shock…

Jack’s mother in the Underground station, and behind her the beds taken with dead and dying…

Choppers cruising the streets in their blue vehicles…

Nomad, mysterious, ethereal, with the sad, empty city behind her…

More images that betray the truth that has been kept from the world. Film clips that show the incredible things that have happened within London, and display that it is not a dead, toxic place as the world has been told.

Jack saw the truth spreading across Britain like blood finding its way through an organism’s arteries and veins.

And as he finally drew back towards his universe of potential, he used Rhali’s gift to sense the mass of people moving quickly towards London. Roads were heavy with vehicles. Their gravity was huge. And they were all coming to find people they had lost.

“Bloody hell, mate, I thought you were gone!” Sparky was kneeling next to him, Jenna and Lucy-Anne behind him.

“I was,” Jack said. “I reached out to Emily. Saw what she’s done. And…” He actually laughed out loud, and it felt so good. “And she’s a genius! She’s contacted Marty. She and my mum didn’t get the hell away like I told them to, but are holed up in a school maybe twenty miles outside the Exclusion Zone. She used everything on the camera.”