Tim Lebbon - Reaper's Legacy

“Jenna?” Sparky asked.

“Sparky,” she said, her voice a croak. “If you ever do that again, I’ll slit your throat in your sleep.” Then she let go of his hand, turned around, and vomited on the pavement.

Jack frowned and stood. And even though his girlfriend was puking, Sparky saw Jack’s expression, and recognised that something was wrong.

“What?” Sparky asked.

“Ever feel like you’re being watched?” Jack asked. He scanned their surroundings—the bus slewed across the street, other cars parked along the road on flat tyres, the silent façades of buildings on both sides. Shopfronts were smashed, burnt out, or the windows were dusty and dirty, hiding anyone or anything that might be watching from inside. A pavement café was a mass of overturned timber tables and rusted chairs. Along the street, an Underground entrance was a burnt-out mess, as if a great fire had belched from beneath London. The taint of fire was still on the air. A breeze rustled litter along the street. Dark circles of chewing gum speckled the pavement around him. He saw and sensed all these things, yet the overriding sensation was of being observed.

And it was not Nomad. Her memory in his mind was already a familiar feeling. This was something else. Something other .

“All the time,” Jenna said. She seemed a little better, and was allowing Sparky to hold her upright, one arm around her waist.

“No,” Jack said. “By someone particular.”

“This one of your powers?” Sparky asked.

Jack shook his head, though he was unsure. “Sixth sense.”

“Prickly-neck feeling,” Jenna said.

“Yeah,” Sparky said. “Tingly balls.”

“We should be moving,” Jack said. “We covered, what, a mile?”

“I reckon two,” Sparky said.

“So we put more distance between us before we take a rest,” Jack said.

“And you know how to find your father?” Jenna asked.

“I’ll figure it out,” Jack said.

He saw the look passing between Sparky and Jenna, and turned away. He was already feeling more distant from his friends, and not because of their growing closeness. He was becoming more and more different.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s run.” Jack led the way. They passed the bus and a wrecked van hidden behind it, and Jack caught a glimpse of a dead face following him from the driver’s window. He gasped with shock, then saw the hollow gaze of a skull. It had been picked clean by carrion creatures and it leaned against the window frame, grinning as they ran by.

Perhaps the bus was full with passengers who would never arrive at their destination. He had no wish to see.

He heard his friends’ footsteps behind him. As he ran he tried to analyse the sense he had of being watched, and why it felt so strong. This was not a new power, he was certain. Perhaps it was merely a self-perpetuating idea that became more definite the more he thought of it.

As they approached a confluence of three roads he was looking up at the buildings, some windows smashed and some dusty and closed, searching for the face of their watcher. Doing so meant that he didn’t see the Choppers.

“Jack!” Sparky shouted.

There were three blue-painted vehicles powering along a road towards them, each of them large enough to hold six Choppers. The front vehicle, a Jeep, bore a heavy angled plough, and it shoved an abandoned BMW convertible aside with barely a pause.

They were a hundred yards away when brakes screamed, and the windscreen of the Jeep shattered into a glittering, blood-red haze.

Lucy-Anne’s fascination with Rook was growing by the minute. And though she was seeing some terrible things, she could not deny that she was also enjoying her adventure. That’s mad , she thought. This isn’t an adventure, it’s a disaster . But she was happy to deny her inner voice.

“What’s your story?” she asked him as they left the Transport Museum.

“Mine?” Rook looked at her in surprise.

“I’m putting my trust in you,” Lucy-Anne said. “You’re taking me into the north of London.”

“I haven’t said I would yet,” he said, but the ensuing silence between them spoke volumes. She already knew that he was interested in her. Now she wanted to know why.

“This way,” he said, nodding along the street. “Let’s keep moving and I’ll tell you as much as I…” He started walking, and Lucy-Anne followed. Rooks drifted above them, like shadows of a shattered night. Much as I want to? she thought. Or as much as I remember?

“I was living in Collier’s Wood with my mother. Dad left a few years ago. Met a stripper in Soho, fell in love, took her to live in Cornwall.” He grinned without humour. “Sordid, eh?”

Lucy-Anne did not reply. She was finding it strange enough imagining Rook with a mother, living in a house. Something normal for this extraordinary boy.

“When Doomsday hit, me and David were on the way home from school. We’d stopped at a pizza place and were eating with some friends. Heard about an explosion at the Eye, didn’t think much of it. Bit of a shock, but we were just kids, you know? There’ve been bombs before. So we were just eating and messing around, and then we left and started for home. There was me and David, and…” He frowned, shrugged. “A few friends. Can’t remember their names anymore.

“It wasn’t ’til we passed Collier’s Wood tube station that we saw something weird. Loads of people rushing from the tube. They all looked scared, panicked. Most of them were on their phones, not looking where they were going or communicating with anyone around them. A fat guy was hit by a car. No one stopped, no one seemed to care. So we took off towards our street, our friends tagged along—they lived past the end of our street, usually came into our place for a play on the Wii or something after school. At the end of the street, they just…dropped. Hit the pavement. One second they were walking with us, the next they fell.”

He was silent for a while, and Lucy-Anne tried to imagine this strange, deadly boy playing computer games and walking home from school with friends. They were such mundane activities that she could not make the connection. But Rook’s expression made it for her; she had never seen him looking so human.

“A load of pigeons gathered on the rooftops took flight and flew in tight circles above us, like living tornadoes. David looked terrified. I knew it was him—I’d known for a while about what he could do, or some of it—but he’d always been afraid. I reached for him to…hold his hand, or something. But they were falling everywhere. Along the street from us two cars crashed head-on, and another flipped over onto its back and smashed down the front wall of a house. There was a really big explosion, and screaming, and then my vision started blurring. David grabbed my hand. I passed out.” Rook held up one hand as if to illustrate his brother’s touch, but then Lucy-Anne realised that he had called a halt. A rook drifted down to land on his shoulder, he tilted his head, and the bird took off again.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Irregulars. Come on.” They walked on, past the entrance to an indoor market and a jeweller’s with rings and necklaces still scattered on the pavement amongst broken glass. Lucy-Anne looked around but saw no one watching them. Whoever it was the birds had seen must have been hiding.

“What happened when you woke up?”

“Everyone was dead,” Rook said. “It was like…waking in another world. London was mostly quiet. Some shouts, screams, from a couple of people stumbling about. We never saw any, though. I suppose we were lucky. We had each other. So we went home. And our mother was dead. Sitting in her armchair, and the TV was still on, then. An advert for washing powder. Her cup of tea was still warm.