Tim Lebbon - Contagion

“Still a grumpy bastard,” Sparky said.

“Shall we jump off the roof again?” Jenna quipped.

Jack shoved the closing door and marched through. The open plan office area beyond was bustling with two dozen people, and the smell of cooking food wafted through the air. Dividing screens were still ranked a few feet in from the windows, and the people kept to the central area, careful not to cast shadows that might be seen from outside.

“Breezer!” Jack shouted. Heads turned, and a couple of people told him to Shhhh! Jack laughed. “It’s not a bloody library!” he said. “He hasn’t called you all here to sit down quietly to read. You’re all going to die!”

“Er, Jack,” Jenna said from behind him. Jack raised a hand without looking back. He wasn’t sure where the sudden anger had come from, but it felt good to let it flow. Breezer was not the appropriate target—Miller and Reaper were far more suited for that. But right now, he was all there was.

“Jack, don’t,” Rhali whispered behind him.

“Breezer!” Jack shouted again. The man paused by the dried skeleton of a huge, dead potted plant and turned around. He looked haunted.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Breezer said. “Clinton died this morning. Remember Clinton?” Jack did. The black man sat in a shopping trolley, snatching truths from the air like flies, affected by the same sickness that was taking root in many of London’s survivors. Even Nomad had displayed signs, though she’d denied it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said. He breathed deeply, trying to make sense of his outburst. Fear contributed, he was sure, and fury at what had happened here, what London had become. Anger, too, at the monster his father had turned into. “We’ll get out of London, and out there we’ll find a cure.”

“It does matter,” Breezer said. “He was my friend. Every death matters. And at a time like this…when so many have died…every death matters even more.”

Jack felt himself filling up. Tears burned behind his eyes. He nodded, said nothing.

“We’ve brought as many here as we can,” Breezer continued. “Passed the word however we could. Word of mouth, pre-arranged signs. We’ve even got a woman who can talk with pigeons, use them as messengers. But…two groups have already been caught by the Choppers. Three people hanged from Blackfriar’s bridge. Two more machine-gunned in Waterloo. I’m doing the best…” He gasped, swallowed deeply. “The best I can. And we’re going to make a run for it.”

“Not yet,” Jack said. “Anyone crossing the Exclusion Zone will be slaughtered. Is that the end you want for all these people?” Jack looked around at everyone watching the conversation and wondered what they could all do. It was a room of wonders, but he felt only sadness. He could see several who were obviously in the final throes of the sickness. “Is that what you all want?”

No one answered.

“So how long do we have?” Breezer asked.

“Midnight.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“Would it matter?” Jack asked.

“Can’t you stop it? Nomad’s touched you, so can’t you disarm it, or take it somewhere else? Or…I don’t know…break it?”

“I don’t think so,” Jack said. He walked closer to Breezer, lowering his voice in the hope that no one else would hear. His friends most of all. “I’m a mess, Breezer. I have so much inside me, but I’m scared at what I’ll do. So no, even if I knew where it was, I don’t think I could take that risk. I need time to learn.”

“Don’t have time,” Breezer said.

“No. But we’ve got a plan. A way to get out, perhaps safely. Are you ready to hear it?”

Breezer seemed to shrink into himself a little, slumping down with the unbearable weight on his shoulders. Perhaps he had burdened himself, but that didn’t matter. His tired nod did.

“Anything,” he said. “God help us all.”

“Not Him,” Jack said. “Miller. We need to find him, and you should come with us.”

“Let’s talk,” Breezer said. He looked past Jack and nodded, and at first Jack thought he was greeting Sparky and Jenna again. But when Jack turned around he saw Fleeter standing back by the stairwell doors. She was smiling her usual faint, superior smile.

“Okay,” Jack said. “First things first, though. You need to tell me about that.”

Nomad lied to me , Lucy-Anne thought. He’s not dead at all! But her excitement was tempered, and everything here felt like a dream. She was dislocated from her surroundings. Moments before, the creatures had been facing her with bared teeth and curved claws, things that had once been human ready to eat human flesh. Her fear was rich and deep, her senses alert. Now Andrew was before her and everything had changed. Her surroundings had faded into the background. She concentrated on her brother and what he had become.

Not dead at all, but surely no longer alive.

He moved towards her slowly, and she remembered the expression he wore. Four years ago she’d come home from school and Andrew had been waiting for her in the living room, watching TV but obviously distracted. Their parents were at work. Andrew was seventeen then, and he was always home just before Lucy-Anne, ready to get her a snack and make sure she’d had a good day in school, tell her to do her homework, and generally look after her for a couple of hours before their mother arrived home. But from the moment she’d walked through the door that day she’d known that she was in control. Andrew had looked nervous, contrite, and as he’d walked towards her he’d seemed to lessen in stature. Lucy-Anne, I was playing a game on your iPod and I dropped it in the kitchen, and you know how hard the floor tiles are. I’m sorry. I’ll buy you another . Troubled though their relationship was—he was the Good Boy, the hard worker, the apple in her mother’s eye—she could not find it in herself to be angry at him.

He looked the same now as he approached across the cracked concrete car park.

If this is my dream I can change it , she thought, and she glanced towards the industrial unit to her left, willing it to turn to marzipan and icing. But the aluminium sheeting remained, dented and spattered with mould. The windows did not turn into chocolate squares, the drainpipes were not liquorice. If this is my dream …She closed her eyes and opened them again, but everything was the same.

“You’re not here,” she said.

“I am,” Andrew said. “Enough, at least. But I’m only really an echo. I dreamed myself alive.”

“I dream too!” she said.

“You always did. And your dreams drove you to distraction.”

Lucy-Anne stepped forward and reached for her brother, but he drifted back as she came closer. His feet barely seemed to move.

“What are you? A ghost? What happened?”

“Ghost is as good a word as any,” he said. “And I’ll tell you. But you should walk south, and quickly. Those things aren’t the only ones moving out of the north today.”

“Because of the bomb?”

“Word is spreading,” Andrew said.

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Only for you, sister. I’m already dead.”

Lucy-Anne closed her eyes and breathed deeply, fighting off a faint. Only useless women in old movies faint at something like this! she berated herself. She bit the inside of her lip, pinched the back of her hand, and for a fleeting instant thought that when she looked again he would be gone. That terrified her. So much so that she found herself frozen, unable to move, unwilling to open her eyes in case—

“Lucy-Anne,” he said, and she felt something almost stroke her cheek.

Her eyes snapped open and he was there before her, one arm outstretched and his hand moving away. He’d touched her face, just like he used to when she was a little girl and he wanted to show affection. He’d very rarely kissed her. A fingertip to her cheek was his greeting, a gentle touch that said more than any words.