Tim Lebbon: Contagion

In the distance, the tick-tick of a wrist watch on someone still living. Further afield, the heavier clicks of a wall clock passing each second. She heard and disregarded countless sounds, senses, feelings, passing them by in her search for the one that mattered. When she found it, its nature and purpose were obvious.

It counted backwards.

To the south, in a locked place so well shielded from outside that the air inside must smell of almost two years ago, the city’s destruction sat in an object barely the size of a suitcase.

Seventeen hours, thirteen minutes, twenty-eight seconds…

The pains kicked in again, possessing her bones and blood and seeming to melt away her whole body as if caught in a terrible blast. She shivered, and groaned.

“Oh, no,” Nomad muttered. More words stolen by the breeze. They added to the utterances of desperation and hopelessness made since Doomsday and still echoing from old brick and stone, and Nomad rested onto her back as she gratefully withdrew into herself again.

Seventeen hours …

Jack could not sleep. Dawn smeared London’s jagged horizon, its palette slowly illuminating the crossroads in front of the furniture store. He lay on a double bed deep in the shop, hands behind his head, watching through the dusty shop front as the West Kensington street scene was revealed. Several cars had burned, and sometime since Doomsday they had been shoved onto a pavement across the road, leaving a swathe of melted, blackened tarmac.

Every time he blinked, he wondered at the names of the three men or women he had just killed.

Someone sat on the bed beside him. Rhali. Jack shoved down his self-pity. She might not have killed, but she had been through so much more than him.

“The others are asleep,” she said. Her accent was smooth and calming, her voice soft.

“Sparky and Jenna,” Jack said.

“Yes. They told me their names. They’re within the chairs.” At the rear of the shop they’d found a circle of fifteen luxury armchairs, obviously formed since Doomsday. Dust patterns showed that they had not been used for some time. Jenna had muttered something about a protective circle, and for some reason she and Sparky felt safer there.

Rhali lay down beside Jack, lighter than she should have been, more fragile.

“How are you feeling?” Jack asked.

“I was about to ask the same.”

“I’m okay,” he said.

“They were trying to kill us.” Her voice, still soft, now somehow lacked emotion. “They are always trying to kill us. If you hadn’t done what you did, they would have come closer, and shot us, and left us there for the dogs and rats. Cats too, I’ve heard. Have you heard that? Cats are eating the dead.”

“Never liked cats,” Jack said. “Crafty. Always thought they’d eat us in the end.”

Rhali breathed quickly, an almost-laugh. She drew closer to Jack and pulled at his left arm, lying on it, her side against his. There was nothing sexual about it at all. She needed contact, and they both took comfort from it.

“Sparky and Jenna have told me what’s happening,” she said. “I say let it burn. London is nothing now. Even the memories are fading. Have you smelled the air? It’s almost clean. London should never smell like this.”

“You were born here?”

“Peckham. Mum and Dad…” She trailed off, and he did not prompt her. Some kept their stories inside because they were too painful to tell.

“I don’t want to save the city, I want to save the people.”

“And your friend, Lucy-Anne.”

“Yes, and her. She and I…we’re good friends. Close.” He remembered when he’d first met her, defiant and rebellious, and how she dyed her hair and wore clothes she thought might annoy or antagonise, and he felt a rush of love. It was deep and old, not passionate; the love for someone he had known for sixty years, not two. Doomsday had aged them all, and perhaps because they had both been through so much, they had earned the right to such affection.

“Some of them deserve to die,” Rhali said. She fell silent, watching daylight dawn with Jack. He waited with her until she was ready to continue, and then pulled her closer when she did. She sounded so cold that he thought she could use some warmth.

“I’d met a boy called Jamie. Soon after everything went bad. He was nice, just as lost as me. We travelled to the south, intending to try to get out, and heard about what had happened to others doing the same. We decided to try anyway. But when we got close, we saw the bodies. They’d put them on display. And every one had…had…they’d taken their brains.” She shivered, and Jack pulled her close. “There were a lot more people back then. Already I could sense something, though I was confused, didn’t yet know what it was. Movement, drifting, like smoke in the night. Jamie and I waited there for a couple of weeks, and then they started bombing and burning. Making their exclusion zone around the city. There was smoke and fire for days. So we turned north again, and that’s when they caught us.”

Something moved out in the street, and Jack felt Rhali stiffen against him.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s just dogs.” One big Labrador trotted along the street, and several more dogs followed. The pack was lean and strong, feral, displaying none of the playfulness of pets. Another sadness.

“They killed Jamie,” Rhali said. “He struggled a bit, and they pushed him against a wall and shot him. Then they took me and asked me what I could do. I thought…I thought they were going to kill me too. I wanted them to. I swore and fought and scratched, and they hit me. Next thing I knew I was in the back of a truck, and he…Miller, that bastard, was sticking needles in me. Taking blood. I kicked him, and he jabbed me a few times just out of spite.”

Jack imagined holding a gun to Miller’s head. He’d done that just several hours previously, and Sparky had reminded him of who he was. Now I’ve killed anyway , Jack thought, and he wished Miller had been the first.

“What could Jamie do?” he asked.

“I never knew,” Rhali said. “I’m not sure he did, either. He died right at the beginning.”

“What a waste.” Jack sat up and pulled her with him, and something made him hug her tight, both arms around her and holding her close. She hugged back, hard. There was a desperation there, and a need to hold and feel someone who was still human. So many people Jack had concerned himself with seemed to have left humanity behind—Miller, the Superiors. Reaper, who had once been his father. What a waste.

“Suppose I should have warned you he was a fast worker,” Sparky said, jumping onto the bed, laughing. Rhali pulled away, and for the first time Jack heard her laugh. It was muffled by tears. He hadn’t been aware that she was crying. He was surprised to find that he was, too. He was relieved at the interruption, but knew that he and Rhali would talk more. She had more to tell.

“You two okay?” Jenna asked. She appeared beside them carrying two cans of Coke. They’d found a stash out back, and though flat they were perfectly drinkable.

“Oh, just bloody dandy,” Jack said. They all laughed then, and it was a release of tension. Jack wondered whether anyone or anything out in the streets heard, and right then, caution be damned, he hoped they did.

It might be the last laughter London ever heard.

Nomad had come here to see, but wished she hadn’t.

The museum had been sealed against intrusion. Its lower windows were smashed, but no one had made it past the metal security grilles. She closed her eyes and opened three sets of doors, and her nose bled as she entered.