Tim Lebbon - London Eye

Jenna was on the ground behind the car. It was an old Mazda 6, Jack saw, with one of those fish badges on the back that signified the owner was a Christian. Wonder if it did them any good? he thought, because Jenna was a believer too, he knew. And there she was, dying in a pool of her own blood.

She'd been shot in the stomach. Her hands were pressed there now, as if trying to penetrate to remove the foreign object. She could not lie still; her legs were raised and tensed, her shoulders lifting and falling alternately, and even though her eyes were open, Jack was not sure she could see him. She was in an awful amount of pain, biting her lower lip until it bled to prevent herself from crying out.

“Jenna.” He knelt beside her and leaned over, trying to catch her eye. She saw him, and he knew that she saw. But she was doing something far more difficult than trying to communicate. Every breath she had, every shred of strength, was spent trying to keep herself alive.

“What happened?” Jack asked Sparky when his friend knelt next to him.

“We'd made it down to the ground floor. Stupidly thought we should run across the foyer.” Every word was a gasp. “Someone was waiting behind the desk. Started shooting. She…fell. I dragged her into a doorway, down some steps, then I heard more shooting from up above. Screams. Whoever shot at us didn't follow us down. That's it. Been trying to stop the bleeding, but…” He shook his head. “You seen Lucy-Anne?”

“No,” Jack said. “Rosemary!”

“Is the bullet still in there?” She stood behind them. Emily was beside her, trying not to look at the blood but unable to look anywhere else.

“Don't know,” Sparky said.

“Why?” Jack asked.

“If it is, I can't do anything. Can't-”

“Don't tell me you can't!” Jack stood, cringing at his raised voice but unable to help himself. “After everything, don't tell me that!”

“If it's still in there and I heal the wound, it'll do no good. I can't take bullets out of people, Jack. But-”

“Can't you make her better?” Emily asked.

“If the bullet's gone through, then yes, dear, I can. If not, and I heal it inside, she'll probably develop an infection and die.”

“Sparky,” Jack said. “Help me.” He searched around on the ground, shifting old leaves aside and picking up a fallen branch from one of the neighbouring garden's trees. He snapped a short section from it, eight inches long.

“What are you doing?” Sparky said.

“Seeing if the bullet came out the other side.” He pressed the stick to Jenna's lips, and her mouth opened, teeth biting into the wood. She knew what he was doing.

“Not here,” Rosemary said. “It's too dangerous!”

“Have your bloody gun back.” Jack lobbed the weapon at her and she caught it, uttering a startled cry. She turned to look up at the tall face of the hotel behind them.

“On three,” Jack said. “One…two…three.” He pushed Jenna up by the arm, Sparky pulled one of her legs, and as she turned onto her side she screamed into the wood, biting down hard enough to crack it and send splinters and shreds of bark spitting out.

Jack looked. Her jacket and shirt were soaked with blood all the way around. He lifted them up, exposing her bare back, and used her shirt to wipe across her skin. The blood smeared and smudged, but he found no exit wound there, and no sign that anything had broken the skin.

He hated doing this to his friend. He could see Emily's expression as she watched, and he hated what all this was doing to her, as well. It had gone so wrong so quickly that he could not imagine things ever being right again.

The wood snapped in Jenna's mouth and she screamed, unable to hold it in any longer.

Sparky was in front of her. He looked down at her stomach, turned away, and vomited.

“Not here!” Rosemary said. “We have to take her away, I know someone who might help, but not here!”

Jack leaned across Jenna to see why Sparky had puked, and her wound was pouting, something that could only have been her intestine protruding through the rip in her flesh. He closed his eyes and swallowed his bile, looking up at Emily. Wide-eyed, blinking slowly, pale, he suddenly saw himself in her, courage and love mirrored.

“Help me,” he said, and his nine-year-old sister came to him without question, helping him pull Jenna's shirt tight across her stomach. Jack undid and unthreaded his belt, then tied it around Jenna. He had no idea whether he was doing the right thing. Rosemary, the healer, was looking the other way, and he hated her right then.

“Who can help?” Jack asked. He wanted to shout, but he could hear voices coming from somewhere far away, or echoing from close by.

“We need to get away,” Rosemary said. A helicopter buzzed overhead, streaking across the hotel. Another one was coming in from the distance, and Rosemary was actually pacing back and forth. “Now!” she said. “We have to leave now ! They'll be bringing reinforcements, and we'll never get away in one piece if that happens.”

“One piece?” Sparky said, spittle hanging from his chin.

Rosemary looked down at Jenna. “She can still be helped,” she said. “Trust me. If that wasn't the case, I'd be telling you to leave her where she is.”

Between them, Jack and Sparky lifted the wounded girl. Mercifully she passed out, screaming herself into unconsciousness as Rosemary led the way along a narrow alley stinking of rot and filth, across a narrow street, and through a park where people had once sat to have lunch but which now was home to a band of noisy, angry monkeys.

The deeper they went into the Toxic City, the more Jack doubted they would ever find their way out again.

Lucy-Anne had forgotten her own name. But she knew the name of her brother.

“Andrew,” she muttered as he ran north. The word worked like a talisman, parting the air before her and thickening it behind, drawing her ever-forward towards its owner. “Andrew,” she said, and London heard the name. Thousands of fat pigeons watched her go by, and a parade of cats paused in the middle of a wide, vehicle-strewn road to sit and observe this strange sight.

The sounds behind her had ceased. Everything behind her had ended, because that was a place far in the past. Even her nightmare of dead parents…a memory, fading like a photograph left out in the sun.

Forward was the only place that existed now.

Your brother is alive north of here , she heard. She could not remember the voice or who owned it, but the words were her fuel. She would need food and water soon-her throat was parched, her sight blurry-but while there was still daylight in the sky, she could not waste any time.

She passed a place where a battle had taken place. Several trucks had been parked in a rough square, and their bodywork was pocked with hundreds of bullet holes. A couple of the trucks had burned, and their pale grey skeletons had rusted. Birds sat on the twisted metal, and something large moved ponderously in the cab of one of the unburned vehicles. She had no reason to stop and see what it was, because it was not her brother.