Tim Lebbon: Contagion

She paused when she was a dozen steps from them. She only had eyes for Jack.

“My boy,” she said. “I’ve come to save you.”

Two of them had been with Jack the time she bestowed her gift upon him. The other was a stranger. But she did not care about those around him. It was Jack who mattered, Jack she had to help. Up to now he had managed to help himself, but this was something more. The bomb was unstoppable. And Jack was going the wrong way.

“My boy, I’ve come to save you.”

Jack released the girl’s hand. She was slumped against the shop facade, sick. Nomad thought perhaps she might never rise again, but right then she did not care. Jack came towards her, and already she could sense the staggering change in him.

“Oh, you’re everything I wanted this to be,” she whispered.

“You’re bleeding.” Jack was staring at her mouth, and Nomad lifted a hand to touch the blood dribbling from her nose. It tasted alien, as if it belonged to someone else. He asked, “You’re sick too?”

“No.” It shocked her that she should choose to lie. That was a purely human conceit, and she had removed herself from humanity.

“Yes,” Jack said. “Just like all of them. So can you stop the bomb?”

“No, Jack,” she said. The others came into focus around Jack now, and for the first time Nomad considered them as more than shadows. They stood together as if they were part of him.

“Why not? You’re Nomad. All powerful, feared by everyone, and if you can do this to me, surely you can do anything!”

“I’m here to take you out,” she said. “Just you. Out of London where you’ll be safe when—”

“I’m not leaving without my friend.”

Nomad glanced at the girl on the ground, the stocky boy, the other girl. “I’ll take them, too,” she said, not sure whether she was lying again.

“Not them. Our other friend. And everyone else. Will you really leave London to its fate after you caused all of this?”

“It’s evolution,” she said. “And you’re the future.”

“No,” he said. “Help us if you can. Stop the bomb, warn everyone. Make it so everyone can leave.”

“Fifteen hours.” Nomad frowned, confused. “That’s how long you have. But I’ll never take you out by force, Jack. You have to want to be special, to be saved. I don’t want you to doom yourself.”

“You’re too late for that,” he said quietly. He was facing up to her and, though scared, so were his friends.

“I’ll be watching you.” Nomad searched inside, trying to grasp something that would change how things were. But Jack was his own boy. She had told the truth—she would not save him by force. He was as special as she was, and he had to want everything she had given him for it to matter.

Jack watched Nomad turn to leave and did not call her back. She was almost not there—ethereal, like an echo of someone who had once been. He wondered what it was like being her.

“Jack, she’s got to help!” Jenna said from behind him, but Jack shook his head.

“She can’t,” he said. Nomad was walking away now, and her gait betrayed nothing. One look , Jack thought, and he took a deep breath and plummeted into the endless space between potentials, swirling, flitting across the void and closing on one star, always aware of that pulsing, glowing red shape that watched him like the eye of God.

As he reached out to touch what might help him know Nomad, he suddenly realised what the red star was.

Shock struck him from all sides. He gasped and went to his knees, pulled instantly back to stark reality.

“Jack!” Sparky was by his side, clasping him and holding him in a sitting position. Jenna was there too, already looking him over for signs of injury. She checked his eyes, felt his pulse, pressed her hand against his chest. Even Rhali came to him, swaying a little and sighing as she sat and leaned into him.

“It’s everything,” he said. The words echoed inside his mind.

“What is, mate?” Sparky asked.

“The red star. The…” He shook his head, because they did not understand. “Inside. There’s something inside I thought was watching me, but it isn’t. It just feels like it because it’s so alive. So vital . It’s everything Nomad gave me ready to be passed on. The red star is contagion.” He held out his hand and extended his finger, remembering Nomad putting her own finger in his mouth and tasting her on his tongue even now.

She was little more than a silhouette along the street, becoming a shadow.

“I can pass it on,” he whispered. Then he fisted his hand. He would not wish this on anyone.

Jenna stared at him for a moment. Then she said, “Come on. She’s gone. If she can’t help us, we’ll help ourselves. We’ve got to find Breezer again.”

“Fifteen hours,” Jack said. “That’s what we’ve got.”

“Midnight tonight,” Sparky said, grim. “At least that gives us something to aim for.”

“It’s no time at all,” Jack said.

Jenna grabbed him beneath the arms and hauled him upright. “Then let’s not waste any.”

Lucy-Anne ran through the dawn, leaving Hampstead Heath far behind, and with every step she became more convinced that she was being followed.

Others ran with her. She’d become aware of them very quickly, and at first she’d believed that they were chasing her. But she’d hidden away several times to let something pass by, and the monsters showed no signs of pursuing anything. They were animals with human attributes—or humans with animal aspects—and they were heading south into London with motives she could not perceive.

She thought of Jack and the others a lot as she made her own way south. She had no idea how she’d find them, or whether they were even still in the city. Rook had told her that Emily and Jack’s mother were safely away at least, but she had no idea what Jack might be doing now. Still, she had to do her best to find them all, and tell them about the bomb.

She passed a small square with a park at the centre. It was overgrown, and the trees’ heavy canopies moved with something other than the breeze. Things whispered in there, secret mutterings that might have been about her. She ducked into an open front door and ran through the property, out across the backyard to the alley beyond, over a high wall into another garden, and smashed a window to gain access to another house. Three people were sitting around a table, dried bodies slumped down in their chairs and a meal gone black before them. Lucy-Anne left them to their peace and opened the front door.

The street beyond was silent, and she ran.

Moments later, something emerged from that house and came after her.

She froze in the middle of the street and turned around, but there was nothing to see. Not one of those monsters , she thought. She didn’t know how she could be so sure, but she clung on to that certainty. It followed, but without malevolence. Perhaps it was an echo of herself, the memory of what she had been or what she might have become had Rook not died. Her dream-shadow.

How she wished she could dream him back again. But she had already seen how that had ended.

“Who are you?” Lucy-Anne shouted. Her loud voice shocked her, echoing between buildings that had been silent for so long. She wondered whether a city could haunt itself. Somewhere so accustomed to the sounds of traffic and human interaction must find silence so strange.

Nothing and no one answered.

“Come out!” she said. “I don’t bite.” She laughed, perhaps a little manically. She was the only thing she’d met in London that didn’t bite.

So she moved on instead, glancing back every now and then, seeing nothing, but knowing nonetheless that something saw her.