London Eye Part 20

"Because he's forgotten who he is. I'm going to remind him."

"Please keep them safe," Jack said to Rosemary.

The old woman smiled. "Keep yourself safe. Good luck with Reaper."

"His name's Graham. And I'm looking forward to seeing my father again." Jack knew what she wanted to hear: I'll speak to him, persuade him, plead with him if I have to. But he could not say that yet, because his priority was completing his family. Perhaps the two aims would run side by side, or maybe they would collide. Time would tell.

Jack, Sparky, and Jenna watched them leave the underground hospital. Jenna put an arm around Jack's shoulder.

"Wimp," Sparky muttered, and Jack coughed, half-laugh, half-sob.

Jack saw his mother and sister pa.s.s out of sight, and he could not fight away the feeling that he would never see his family again. Standing there with his two best friends in the world, he had never felt so alone.

Birmingham is the new capital city of Great Britain.

-Government Proclamation, 3:44 p.m. GMT, July 29, 2019 L ucy-Anne was too terrified to ask him about his dreams. Her own scared her enough. So she walked with Rook in silence, and he told her they had somewhere special to go.

"But I need to find Andrew," she said.

"And you've told me where he is. 'North of here,' you said."

"Yeah."

"Girl...where north of here?" She still hadn't told him her name, because in some ways it still felt distant to her. It belonged to a girl with other friends, another life.

"Well..." she began, but there was little else she could say. Your brother is alive north of here, she remembered a man saying, and if that was all he'd said, perhaps that thing in her mind would not have snapped. But he had gone on, told her more.

"North is a big place," Rook said. "And like I mentioned, it's a wild place." He looked up at the clear blue sky, speckled with hundreds of dark spots where the rooks kept pace with them. "Everywhere in the city is wild now."

"So where are you taking me?" she asked.

Rook laughed, and high above Lucy-Anne heard the cawing of many birds.

"Girl, I don't believe I can take you anywhere. But if you'll come with me, I'll introduce you to some people who might help."

"Why might they?"

He frowned a little, looked away, but then smiled at her again. "Because I'll ask them."

The boy seemed friendly enough to Lucy-Anne. And he was strong, not just in his wiry frame, but mentally. He exuded a power that frightened her a little, but alongside that fright she had to admit it turned her on as well. His was a power she had never imagined, and something about the fact he had changed his name made him seem closer to the city. She had come to this place with friends, but they paled when compared to Rook.

"Okay," she said. "But first I have to pee."

Rook glanced around, then pointed at an overgrown parking lot beside a burnt-out pub. "Public toilets!" he said, giggling at his own joke.

Lucy-Anne dashed across the road, feeling his eyes burning into her back. His dark eyes. So like a rook's, she thought, almost lifeless. But the rest of his face made up for it; he always wore a smile, and there were laughter lines in his young man's skin.

He was dangerous, but for now she felt safe around him.

For now.

Rosemary had told them which way to go. No one really knew where Reaper could be found, but there were rumours. North, across the river, into the heart of the city, and look out for the rooks. One of the boys that runs with Reaper communes with them. Last I heard, they were seen above St. James's Park.

As they crossed Vauxhall Bridge, Jack remembered a dozen movies that had used this place as a setting. He'd often heard his father describing London as a giant film set, and now here he was, in a depressing movie about a sad future. Two years ago, who could have believed that London would ever look like this?

The Houses of Parliament, once home to the British Government, was a ruin. One half of it looked as though it had suffered sustained bombing, and there was little recognisable left. The other half had burned, and though most of its walls were still standing, they were swathed in a thick green climbing plant erupting with violet flowers. The once-smart lawns outside, where Jack had watched countless politicians being interviewed for TV and Net-News, was a plain of waist-high gra.s.s and graceful bamboo.

The Big Ben tower was still there, but the clock faces had been blown out, and Jack could see straight through its upper section. The bell itself seemed to have gone. Perhaps they would find it, if they looked long enough, fallen and covered in moss. But that would gain them nothing. Time flicked at him with its cruel whip, though as yet Jack was unsure why he felt such urgency.

Perhaps it was those dying Irregulars in the underground hospital.

They paused on the bridge for a while, catching their breath, taking a drink and looking down the River Thames. It flowed through a wild place now. Clumps of detritus-plants, branches, broken things-drifted down from upriver, gently bobbing towards the sea. A couple of the old river cruisers were still there, one of them wedged beneath one of the gentle arches of Grosvenor Bridge, the other still moored at river's edge not far from where they stood. From this distance it looked strangely peaceful and serene, so much so that it seemed out of place. A picture postcard image of h.e.l.l.

"I'm glad you two got together," Jack said. They had not talked much since leaving the Underground again, though the silence was never uncomfortable.

"Me too," Sparky said grinning at Jenna.

"I don't know what came over me," she said. "I thought I'd been shot in the gut, not the head."

They all laughed softly, and watched an eagle drift majestically along the river's course and pa.s.s beneath the bridge.

"Wow," Jack whispered. "Wonder where the h.e.l.l that came from."

"You know, Jack," Jenna said, "Lucy-Anne will...we'll find her and..."

He shook his head. "Knowing she's alive is good."

"You believe Nomad?"

"Don't you?"

"Without a doubt." Jenna still seemed awkward, and Jack wasn't sure he wanted to verbalise his thoughts. But really, this was no time for any sort of self-deception.

"Me and Lucy-Anne...I think we were finished before we even started. Thrown together by our backgrounds and histories, not because we fancied each other."

"Good friends," Sparky said. "Maybe that's what you two are."

"Yeah," Jack nodded. "What you two did last night...Well, we haven't done that for ages."

Jenna blushed and elbowed Sparky in the ribs.

"I said nothing!" he protested. But she was smiling, and Jack laughed.

"Let's get on," he said.

"Rooks," Sparky muttered. "Always spooked the c.r.a.p out of me."

"Scarier than chickens?" Jenna quipped.

"Okay, okay, another point to Jenna."

They crossed the bridge and pa.s.sed through Parliament Square, keeping their ears and eyes open.

Walking progressively northward, Jack wondered whether Lucy-Anne had already come this way. He thought of their time together and tried to come to terms with what it had all meant. They'd gone through the usual boyfriend and girlfriend moments; kissing and cuddling in front of a movie, drinking cider when Emily was in bed, progressing on to awkward fumblings and gasped moments of shared pleasure. But the physical side had always felt somehow false and forced, and it was the times when he talked Lucy-Anne through her fury, doubt, and despair that seemed most important to Jack now. Doomsday had left her with nothing and no-one, and more than anything, he had been there to help her through that. And it had been a natural process. He did not feel even a tiny bit used, and he was certain that Lucy-Anne had welcomed every moment of their unusual relationship. She was a beautiful girl, but his fondest memories of her were when she smiled an honest and happy smile, rather than when she lay half-naked on his sofa.

If only he'd realised that she'd been so close to snapping.

I'm so b.l.o.o.d.y grown-up, he thought without much humour. He looked at Sparky and Jenna, saw their shared smiles and the way they sought physical contact, and his envy was a very gentle thing.

Morning pa.s.sed into afternoon, and in a side street they found a grocers that didn't smell too bad. The central aisle display of fresh fruit and vegetables was now home to shrivelled black things, like something excavated rather than grown. But there were shelves of tinned foods that had not been touched, and though the labels were faded after two years of dampness, they found some tinned fruit still fit to eat. It tasted sweet, and good.

"s.h.i.t," Sparky said.

"What?" Jack was immediately alert, but his friend was still sitting down.

"The door."

Jack looked, and at first he saw nothing. Then he made out the faint, curled gleam of a thin wire, nestled by the door jamb. They must have tripped it on the way in.

Sparky was already looking around the shop. "There," he said.

"Old security camera."

"Everything in this place is covered in dust apart from that camera's lens."

"Reaper?" Jenna said.

Jack stood and browsed the shelves, trying to appear calm. "Doubt it," he said. "He's leader of the b.l.o.o.d.y Superiors. Bet he's got people who can do a lot more than a trip-wire and a camera."

"We should go," Sparky said. "Quickly." As they fled the shop, Jack saw Sparky giving the camera the finger.

They ran along the street, disturbing a pack of dogs that were worrying something newly-dead just inside a house's front door. Luckily most of the dogs ran into the house, not out at them, and Jack kicked out at the one mutt that came too close. Its jaws snapped on thin air, but it did not follow.

They tried to lose themselves, hoping that they would shake off any potential pursuers. But then they heard the sounds of motors in the distance, and they paused at a street corner, panting.

"We can't be caught!" Jack said.

"We have to hide." Jenna was pointing at doors both open and closed.

"They might have the whole area wired."

"Well, we can't just stand here arsing about!" Sparky said. "Come on!"

They ran along another street, climbing over a huge wreck where a lorry and several cars had crashed and burned. Jack was aware of a charred skull staring at him through one smashed windscreen, but then something flashed overhead that distracted his attention. A helicopter, its sudden appearance explosive in the street, engine sound dwindling rapidly as it headed away...and then started to turn.

"Chopper chopper!" Sparky shouted, giggling nervously.

"We can't be caught!" Jack said again. "This isn't fair!" He thought of his mother and sister crawling out of London through the dangerous darkness, his father somewhere to the north, and Lucy-Anne wandering the street alone as she searched the ruin of one of the world's largest cities for her lost brother. And such a weight of responsibility pressed down on him that for a moment he could not move, crushed there on that burnt car's bonnet and staring into the skeletal eyes of someone sorely missed.

"Come on," Sparky said, tapping his leg.

"Jack!" Jenna shouted.

Another helicopter appeared above the end of the street, lowering itself slowly between house rows, rotors so close that they whipped dust from the buildings' facades.

"There!" Jenna shouted, pointing at an open door across the street. "We can go through and try to find-"

"Look!" Sparky shouted. He pointed, but there was no need. The darkening of the sky was obvious.

The helicopter pilot was concentrating so hard on not crashing into the houses that he can't have noticed the flock of rooks gathering above him. There were hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, swirling and waving in complex patterns that were as beautiful as they were disturbing.

"Over there!" Jenna said. Along the street, halfway between where they stood and where the pilot was readying to land, someone emerged from a house. Rooks roosted on his shoulders and head, and though it could not be heard, Jack saw that he was whistling.

The helicopter was ten feet above the ground when the rooks dived into its spinning rotors.

"Down!" Sparky shouted. He pulled Jenna down beside him, Jack fell beside the burnt out cars...but they all had to watch.

Thousands of birds exploded in puffs of black and sprays of blood. The houses beside the aircraft were coated in clumps of wet feather and meat, and the combined calls of dying birds was louder that the protesting engine. Some dived into the main rotors, other curved down and flew into the rear rotor blade, their suicides instant and without hesitation.

The helicopter's front windshield was quickly obscured by a mess of diced rooks, and it tipped down and to the left.

Sparky shouted something else, but the noise was too great, the chaos too confusing to hear. The aircraft tilted and hit the ground hard, and the still-spinning rotors smashed across the front of a house. Shards of shattered brick zinged along the street like shrapnel from an explosion, ricocheting from the ruined cars, smashing windows, and whistling overhead. Jack felt something hit his leg, and the impact point quickly turned wet and numb.

The motor squealed, crunched, and then exploded with a pained grinding of metal. A section of brickwork fell from the front of the house directly into the blades, and one of them snapped away, spinning skyward and disappearing over the terraced rooftops. An avalanche of roof slates slid down onto crashed helicopter.

The remaining rotors stopped spinning, broken and dipped, and the aircraft settled at a slant against the house's wall.

Jack could not move. He looked from the ruin of the helicopter, to the boy with rooks on his shoulder, then back to the aircraft. There was movement there, though it could have been the shuffle of dying birds twitching wings or tail feathers. More slates slipped from the roof. An upstairs window fell forward and smashed across a broken rotor blade. The house was still shifting, and the rest of it could come down at any moment.

There were still hundreds of rooks circling above, and the mysterious boy watched them.

A side door on the helicopter creaked open. Two soldiers fell out, stumbling away from the wreck and quickly bringing their weapons to bear.

Behind the boy standing in the house's doorway, Jack saw a shadow move. As it emerged into the light, he could see her face.

"Lucy-Anne!" Sparky shouted. She withdrew at the sound of her name, but they had all seen her. Jenna glanced back at Jack, shocked and afraid, just as Sparky stood and started running diagonally across the road.

One of the soldiers raised his gun and fired.

Jack blinked against the shot, and in the s.p.a.ce of that brief darkness he dreaded what he would see when he looked again.