Tim Lebbon - London Eye

“It's quiet,” she said, clicking the door shut again. “I'll go first, you follow in a close line.”

“How far?” Jenna asked.

“A mile,” Rosemary said. “Maybe less.”

“What will we be seeing out there?” Lucy-Anne's voice was low and tense, as if she was waiting for something to happen. Jack had tried several times that morning to approach her, talk to her, but she had shrugged him off. He wondered whether they were even together anymore, and guessed not. Perhaps they never really had been.

His concern seemed so childish. And that made his sadness feel all the more indulgent.

“I know the route,” the Irregular said. “Hopefully, nothing.”

Hopefully. Jack squeezed his sister's hand and she beamed at him, full of the fresh new day. Kids. He wished he hadn't had to grow up so damn fast.

They walked the streets of London, past silent homes containing dark secrets, across roads that were already cracked with the soft green force of shoots tired of biding their time, passing shadows hunkered down in alleys and gardens like memories waiting to strike back at those who had made them bad, and for the first time Jack really understood the tragedy of what had happened. It struck him hard, and looking around at his friends he could believe that they were experiencing the same thoughts. Before today, back in Camp Truth, there had been mourning for their missing families and anger at the cover-up perpetuated by the government and military. That's where all their thoughts and emotions had gone, all their mental energy spent mourning and hating, grieving and conspiring-personal things, all tied to them.

None of them had ever really spared a thought for London.

This once-great city was now a ruin. True, buildings still stood straight and square, but the life was gone from here. Each darkened window in a house's facade promised only sadness contained within. The streets showed their age, now, without people and vehicles to pin them to the present. London was London no more, but a fading echo of what it had once been. A dead city.

Feeling sad, sensing London's history growing wilder, older, and further beyond redemption with every missed heartbeat, Jack walked with the others and let the sights and sounds wash over him.

They saw a family of foxes sitting and playing beside a road. The adults looked their way, but they remained on the street, when two years before they would have scampered away to wherever the city foxes hid during daylight. The cubs yapped and rolled, snapping at waving fern fronds growing along the gutter. Emily turned her camera their way, and as if aware of what she was doing, the wild animals fled, and the street felt as though they had never been there at all.

“Lots more foxes,” Rosemary said. “And rabbits, badgers, weasels, squirrels, and rats.”

“Food for the dogs, at least,” Lucy-Anne said.

“It's becoming a wilder place to live.” The woman smiled at Emily's camera and then nodded along a narrow alley between two houses. “That way. There's a body down here, but you won't see much of it.”

The skeleton was almost completely subsumed by nettles and ferns, the stalks and leaves sprouting up between ribs and through eye sockets. Jack wanted to walk straight by, but Emily paused and moved some of the plants aside with her foot. She started a quiet commentary into her camera's microphone.

“Who was this sad person, dead in an alley, killed by the lies told to everyone? They had long hair that might have been blonde, like mine. A leather jacket. A badge on the jacket, saying how much they liked the Dropkick Murphys, and a T-shirt, but it's too faded to see what was written on it. Did they fall here and die quickly, or crawl from a long way away? Were they coming from somewhere, or trying to get somewhere else?” She trained the camera along the body, then stepped away and let the ferns spring back up. “Another grim statistic of the Toxic City.”

“Come on, Emily,” Jack said. She looked at him, scared.

“This could have been us, if we'd come with Mum and Dad. This could have been anyone. We might have been friends.”

“Come on.”

Within twenty minutes of leaving the house, Jack craved the sight of another human being. Rosemary led them along sidestreets, through alleys, and, at one point, over several garden walls and through the small enclosed places that had once been so private and contained. He felt like an intruder, passing across family spaces once used as play areas for children, or barbeque areas for their parents. He saw children's garden toys hidden amongst the long grass and shrubs gone wild, and in one garden he noticed that the French doors leading into the house were open a few inches. He tried to see inside, but a slick green moss covered the inner surface of the glass, turning everything into shadow. He did not feel watched.

“Where are the other Irregulars?” he asked Rosemary as they paused beside an overturned lorry. It had been carrying boxes and boxes of books, the last bestseller now swollen into unreadable humps all across the road.

“We've been seen,” Rosemary said. “There was one in a house just back there, watching from an upstairs window.”

“Did you know them?”

“Don't think so. They'd have probably said hello if I did.”

“So is everyone alone, now?” he asked. “Is this how it always is?”

“Oh, no, Jack,” she said, apparently surprised at how he felt. “I do have some friends. There are people I see regularly, people I mix with. Many of us live on our own most of the time, of course, because it's far safer that way. But we have…not really a community, but an existence. There's plenty of hide and seek, but the Choppers don't bother us constantly. We just have to keep watch for them. And there are Irregulars with gifts that can do that for us.”

“So when do we meet Gordon?” he asked, feeling his friends’ eyes upon him as well as the lens of Emily's camera. “It's not just Lucy-Anne who wants to know about her family.”

“It's not far now. We have to cross a couple of main streets, but we'll be fine.”

“No dogs?” Lucy-Anne asked. “Wolves, lions, bears?”

“I've never heard of a bear being seen south of the river,” Rosemary said, and Jack was not sure whether she was joking.

They crossed the main roads carefully, running in pairs, and very little changed. Jack saw a dozen cats sitting together in front of one smashed-up shop, licking their paws, lazing in the sun and watching the humans rush across the street. It was an unsettling sight, because he'd never seen more than two cats sitting together before. It was as if the loss of their erstwhile owners had given them free reign to exist and adapt as they wished.

After the main roads, Rosemary led them along a lane beside a tall, grand looking building. Several cars had been burnt out here, and they had to climb over the scorched metallic ruins because there was no room between the walls. Jenna slipped on the last car and gasped as raw metal sliced her ankle.

“I'll see to that in a minute,” Rosemary said, and Jack stared at her with amazement once again.

Past the cars, the woman opened a heavy grille gate, which had a chain and padlock placed around it as though locked. When the others filed through after her she replaced the chain, hanging the padlock so that it did not quite click shut.

Jenna groaned, leaning on Sparky for support. Blood dripped from her boot.

“At least he'll have smelled us by now,” Rosemary said, kneeling beside the wounded girl.

“Make him sound like a bloody vampire,” Lucy-Anne said.

“There's no such things as vampires,” Rosemary muttered, and that made them all laugh softly. She looked up, surprised at first, and then smiling along with them. “Fair enough,” she said. “Maybe there are, and I just haven't met them yet. London's full of secrets.”