Tim Lebbon - London Eye

“What word?” Jack asked, and he thought, To some of them, she's a god.

“The word of change.”

“You've changed everything anyway,” Jenna said. “You were the one. You were the terrorist.”

“Terrorist?” Nomad's flowing walk continued, and she seemed to be tasting the word, considering its meaning. “It was all about freedom,” she said. “And it's only just begun.”

Jack tried to step forward but could not. Rosemary seemed to have entered a trance-like state, still muttering words none of them could hear. “Why is Rosemary so scared of you?” she asked.

“People are scared of what they cannot know.”

“I'm not,” Sparky said.

Nomad did not answer, and Jack saw Jenna reach out and take Sparky's hand. He did not know whether it took a strength of will, or if Nomad allowed them the contact.

“I think you're the one I want,” the woman whispered in Jack's ear. He felt her breath against his neck and a sexual thrill warmed through him. But when she paused before him, halting at last, he knew this was much more than that. Beneath the sexual excitement nestled a fear he had never known before. A fear of the unknown, not without, but within.

“Me?” he said.

“Jack?” Emily said. His sister was scared, but he could not even turn to look at her. This woman, this Nomad, held his complete attention in the palm of her outstretched hand.

“I always knew I'd need help,” she said, slipping her index finger into her mouth. Then she reached out, pointing at Jack's mouth. He pressed his lips closed, but still they opened. He leaned back, but stretched forward. He closed his eyes but saw, and he understood that none of this was her. It was all him. Whatever it was she offered, he wanted it completely.

Her finger passed across his tongue and it tasted unknowable. When she withdrew it the taste was gone. But he would know it forever.

“Jack?” Sparky asked.

“It's okay,” Jack said, to all of them. “I'm fine.”

Nomad gave him that coy smile one more time, and then without another word she walked past them and along the street.

They turned to watch her go. Rosemary slumped down and started shaking, but the others could not take their eyes off the strange woman. She drifted away. Even when she turned out of sight along another road they watched, as if the ghost of her passing would always be here.

“Well, that was weird,” Sparky said. He was looking at Jack. “What was all that about?”

“Don't know,” Jack said. He moved his tongue about his mouth, and still recalled the taste of that alien touch. He had no idea what she had done, only that she had done something.

“That was Nomad,” Jenna said, amazed. “Even after all this time, I was never really sure. But to be here, and to see her…” She looked at Jack as well, and he thought he saw a flash of jealousy in her eyes.

“Bugger,” Emily said. She was looking at the display screen on the back of her camera, pressing buttons to snap between pictures and bits of film. “It wasn't filming.”

“Rosemary's coming to,” Jenna said. The woman was looking around, seeing them as if for the first time.

“Is it gone?” she asked.

“Nomad?”

“Is it gone?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “She's gone.”

“Which way?”

Jack pointed along the street, back the way they had come.

“Then we go that way,” Rosemary said. She pointed in the opposite direction.

When they started walking again, Rosemary would not answer any of their questions. She shook her head when they mentioned Nomad, refused to elaborate on her fear, said nothing when Jenna talked to her about the strange woman. Jack felt angry, but he let his anger filter away, carried on his own thoughts of Nomad.

A few minutes later, still walking in silence, they paused in an old garage forecourt while a group of a dozen people ran by. They were dirty and wild, some of them naked, others dressed in scars. A few growled or whimpered as they ran, and several dribbled blood and mucus from their mouths.

Some loped like animals.

Rosemary did not seem too concerned about hiding.

“The sick ones?” Jack asked. Rosemary did not reply, so he answered for himself. “The ones who can't take it.” They all watched the people disappear along the street, and a couple of minutes later Rosemary led them away again.

They walked quickly and as they reached the mouth of Stockwell Tube Station, the healer seemed pleased when they left the sunlight and found cool shadows.

“Down,” she said. “We'll be there soon. But once we reach the platform, remember the twins. You'll see things that scare you. But they're not really there.” Without another word she pulled a small torch from her pocket and started down the escalators.

Jack and the other followed. Back into the darkness.

And when they stepped onto the platform, Jack saw the first of the giant scorpions.

He could see why the unwary would choose to go no further.

The scorpions were as fat as Jack's head, their legs as long as his arms, and there were too many to count. Some were bright yellow, stings dripping tears of poison that sizzled small holes in the floor tiles. Others were black, with red markings on their backs and spikes along their legs on which rotten meat festered. They hissed and spat at each other, crawled up the shattered tile walls, balanced along the dulled rails where trains used to run, dropped from the ceiling, and a group of them further along the platform worried at a pile of fresh bodies, ripping flesh, and breaking bones.

They're not real , Jack thought. Rosemary walked into a scorpion and it disappeared around her feet, melting away into a breath of mist and shadow. Living in my mind, that's all. They're not here. They're not real. He closed his eyes and opened them again, and the scorpions were multiplying and growing larger.

“I can't!” Emily said. “The snakes. The snakes!”

“I see scorpions,” Jack said. He held his sister's hand, and the sweat on her palm added to his own.

“Chickens,” Sparky said.

“Chickens?” Jack laughed nervously.

“Ten feet tall,” the boy said defensively. “Beaks are covered in blood, and-”

“You are truly weird.”

“They're not here,” Rosemary said, her voice cool and flat. “None of this is here.”

“What do you see?” Jack asked, but the woman did not respond. Since their meeting with the Nomad she had been distant, and he vowed to ask her why. But right now, his mind was focussed on his mother. She was down here in the dark, his dear, lovely mum, and soon they would be together again.

Emily looked at him and smiled. “Not real snakes,” she said.

“Not real scorpions,” Jack said.

“I see moths as big as seagulls,” Jenna said.

“My chickens will take your moths any day,” Sparky said, and they all laughed. The edgy banter continued as they made their way along the platform, helping each other walk past and through their own unique fears. Jack's attention turned inward, and he tried to sense whether the twins Rosemary had mentioned were touching him inside to plant these fears, or causing him to project them himself. If he closed his eyes he could still hear the scorpions, though he had yet to feel their cool, sharp touch. He could understand how the twins were such an effective defence: what he saw was terrifying, even though he understood it was not real. To anyone unsuspecting, seeing a Tube platform crawling, squirming, or sliming with their own personal fears would be unbearable.