Tim Lebbon - Contagion

Jack reached in and down, pleased at last at the clarity his universe had taken on once again.

Sparky screamed. Startled, Jack glanced across to see what could draw such a shocking noise from his friend, and then the woman was upon him again, knocking him back across a car bonnet. In an instinctive act he surged heat at her, and she groaned as the skin across her right shoulder and upper arm sizzled black. But still she came, falling on him and reaching for his face with both hands.

One finger scratched across his wounded eye. Jack gasped, writhed to dislodge her, punched at her without really seeing where she was. His fist connected with her teeth and he felt a surge of blood across his hand. His, and hers.

Sparky shouted again.

Jack tried to flip, but his universe was in chaos once again. Pain darkened it, and terror at what was happening—to Sparky, to Rhali, his other friends, and perhaps to Hayden as well—made him lose his way.

Gunfire, bullets, the rattle of lead hitting metal and the eruption of an explosion somewhere close by. Jack punched and kicked again but the strange woman was already gone.

A hand closed around his arm and hauled him upright. He blinked at the searing pain in his eye, closed it, and with his one good eye he saw Shade standing before him. He was more there than Jack had ever seen him, and he looked exhausted.

Behind him, Reaper. But this was a Reaper Jack had never seen before. Panting, sweating, eyes wide in desperation, his clothing awry and left arm held awkwardly across his body, desperation had almost taken him back to looking like Jack’s father.

“You better still have him, boy,” Reaper said.

At the far end of the street three Chopper motorcycles skidded around a corner. Above them the helicopter came in again, and its heavy machine gun started tearing the street apart.

Nomad’s eyes opened and she cried out at the dream she was still having.

Lucy-Anne and blood and then there is no more air because…

She stood, cautious still of the bomb and its traps. Summoning every scrap of what she had, everything that had set her apart since Doomsday and still did now, she became less human than she ever had before.

And in the blink of an eye, she went to change the future.

Lucy-Anne stood in the smashed window and looked out at the street, and she had seen some of this before. It wasn’t quite right…but even as she watched, events steered themselves towards what she knew was to come.

Reaper fell back as bullets ripped along the street. Jack was shoved across the car bonnet and fell onto the pavement, and the dark man who’d been holding him dropped behind the car. The vehicle jerked on its suspension as bullets stitched across the roof and windows exploded outwards.

“Jack!” Jenna called. She stood beside Lucy-Anne, eager to help but knowing that to do so would be suicide.

Can it get any worse? Lucy-Anne thought. She looked down beside her at Hayden cowering beneath the window sill. He was holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to Fleeter’s face, and the girl’s limbs were jerking and slapping the floor.

“Sparky!” Jenna shouted. She darted out into the street just as the helicopter passed overhead in a roar and a cloud of dust. It was so low that Lucy-Anne could see the pilot’s eyes as he looked down, and she wondered what he saw. People? Or monsters?

There were both down here.

Sparky was lying across the other side of the street. He was on his back, one hand held up, one knee raised. His blond hair was now dark with blood. The thing attacking him had fled at the gunfire. Probably more sensible than they were.

Jenna was running towards him as the Chopper motorcycles powered along the street.

“Jenna, run!” Lucy-Anne shouted.

Reaper stood and turned towards the motorcycles. Now he’ll shout them to smithereens , Lucy-Anne thought, but he held his chest as he roared, and the result was not as dramatic as she expected.

The lead motorcycle swerved, struck a parked van and flipped, spilling its rider and rolling past Reaper and the prone Sparky. It missed Jenna by inches and smashed against another vehicle, spinning on its side on the street and then bursting into flames. Spilled fuel flowed, carrying the fire wide.

The rider stood on shaky legs, one hand pressed to her side, the other tugging a pistol from a holster on her belt. As she lifted the weapon the air around her hazed and she seemed to crumple, skin glistening with frost. She coughed, and ice formed in the air before her. A tall Asian woman appeared from the shadows behind her and knocked her aside. She knelt beside the fallen Chopper, pressed her mouth across the struggling woman’s mouth, and Lucy-Anne turned away.

The other two Choppers braked, turned, and powered back along the street.

Kill them! she thought, but Reaper was slowly bending over as if winded. Had he caught a bullet? She didn’t know.

The helicopter opened up again and Shade screamed. He appeared from a shadow Lucy-Anne had not been aware of and stumbled across the street, both hands pressed to his guts, blinded by pain. Agony gave him form.

“Shade!” Reaper shouted, but the shadow man seemed not to hear. He staggered directly into the flaming pool of fuel, and his scream turned into a shriek.

Lucy-Anne dashed across to Jack. He was bleeding and holding one hand to his wounded eye. “Do something!” she shouted at Reaper, looking up at the helicopter cruising slowly towards them back along the street. Fire leapt from its machine guns. Bullets ricocheted.

“Lucy-Anne, got to get back…got to…” Jack said. He reached for her, staggered forwards, and she held out her hands for him.

From her right, the roar of motorcycles again. The rattle of small-arms fire.

Ahead of her, Jenna was kneeling by Sparky.

Along the street, Shade was screaming, stumbling, aflame, trying to reel in his spilling guts.

Now , she thought. Now is when Nomad—

Something smacked her in the face, knocked her head sideways.

As she tried to breathe and gargled only blood, she saw what she knew must come.

“No!” Jack shouted. “No, Lucy-Anne, no!” He couldn’t quite understand what he had seen, how her face could have changed shape so quickly. She was still Lucy-Anne, but no longer the girl he had known. The cool, logical part of him knew that she had been shot. But the pure emotional part of him that drove to the fore in this time of confusion and bullets, burning and blood, could not readily accept the truth.

She stumbled to the left, one hand coming up towards her face but never quite touching. Her pale skin was raw now, and her spiky hair was dulled by the colour contrast of her blood. Her eyes started to roll up in her head.

The rush of fury was terrifying. Jack’s heart thudded in his chest, the heaviest impact, and his skin came alight, tempering his thoughts and sharpening his senses until he could see like a hawk, hear like a hound. What happened next was pure instinct, and yet he felt totally in control. For the first time ever, Jack and his new abilities worked completely in harmony. They flowed together, and were one.

As easy as breathing, he turned and pushed a heat wave along the street that peeled paint, melted glass, and ignited gas in fuel tanks. The two motorcycles erupted, enveloping their riders in flames, swerving and striking parked vehicles. Several cars and vans also exploded, and glass and twisted car body parts flew in a deadly flock across the road. One rider screamed, but not for long.

The helicopter pilot pulled up and tipped the aircraft away from the chaotic street. But not soon enough. Jack’s shout caught it and brought it down, and it struck a roof and thrashed onto its side.