“Trick?” Jenna asked. Jack wasn’t sure. He readied himself, prepared to fight them if he had to. He imagined their slick fingers and tentacles curling around the boat’s safety rail, their unnatural faces peering at him, showing him their teeth. But a few moments later he saw them surface and scramble up onto the opposite bank, and they disappeared south of the river without another backward glance.
“Weird,” Jenna said.
“Yeah. Maybe there’re easier pickings that way.”
No one replied. None of them wanted to discuss what, or who, those easier pickings might be.
The boat was a small tourist vessel that promised “The most picturesque views of London, bar none.” How one boat could offer any more picturesque views than any other, Jack did not know. But right then he thanked the owners of the City Sleeker for running their business on the Thames. He hoped they’d not been in London when Evolve hit, but disaster had struck at the height of summer, and he knew it unlikely. He didn’t want to ask Breezer about where they’d found the Sleeker, nor how many bodies it had contained.
It was about thirty feet long, the front half open, the stern covered with a glass canopy. The cabin was right at the stern, raised a little from the canopy so that the captain could see along the length of the boat. Seating was arranged looking outward, not ahead, with an open area of deck down the centre for those who wished to stand. Life belts were strung beneath seats, and on the covered area’s roof was a lifeboat, strapped down and covered in a tarpaulin. No one wished to be reminded of their vulnerability.
Jack and Sparky uncovered the lifeboat and familiarised themselves with its release mechanism. None of them wanted to go into these waters, and with the amount of detritus in the river, the chance of hitting a submerged object was too high for comfort.
Breezer piloted them upstream. The others sat within the glass-enclosed area, still feeling exposed. The engine sounded incredibly loud.
Lucy-Anne was not asleep, but she seemed to be staring into space. Jack held her leg and gently eased her bleeding. The bullet had barely grazed her, but she would still bruise. Then she went back to her silent contemplation. He guessed she had a lot to think through, and when they were safer he’d talk to her.
Safer. It was not a word that meant much right then.
Rhali watched the river banks, casting out her senses, discovering several groups of people moving around the city to the north. There were some to the south as well, and she quickly gathered a picture of movements which she communicated to the others.
“I think some of them are Choppers,” she said. “And some of them are just…normal people. Like you.” She nodded at Breezer.
“Irregulars,” Jenna said.
“Whatever name they wish to use,” Rhali said dismissively. “But some of them—a lot of them—are strange. Changed. Like those women we saw. And they’re tortured.”
Jack glanced at Rhali.
“Not like me,” she said. “I mean they’re in pain from what they have become. Imagine changing so much. Imagine what such physical changes must feel like?”
“They’re going the wrong way to be fleeing the city, even if they know about the bomb,” Jack said. “They’re coming south for something else.”
“They do know,” Lucy-Anne said. “And Nomad told me they’re not so monstrous. I think she meant that they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re intelligent.”
“Great,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Sparky said. “Long as what they’re doing doesn’t involve eating us.”
Lucy-Anne started crying, grasping her friend, burying her face in his jacket. Jack had never seen her so vulnerable. Whatever had happened to her, whatever she had seen, must have been terrible. He wondered what had happened to the boy Rook.
But he feared that finding out would only add to the weight of responsibility he felt. He had no power to counter that, no unknown star in his new universe that could temper the fates being piled on him. Rhali, the poor girl who’d had terrible things done to her, and he’d not even had the time to ask what. Lucy-Anne, his old girlfriend, confused and suffering and with so much to tell. Sparky and Jenna, still with him because they valued their friendship so much. Breezer. Even his father. That bastard Reaper, following him and protecting him, or perhaps merely playing with him now that Miller was no longer such an exciting plaything.
The bomb, London, Nomad, his expanding starscape of wonders, and his potential for contagion.
He wished he could shrug them all off and be on his own, unhindered and free. He closed his eyes but it didn’t work. He hadn’t chosen all this at all; it had been thrust upon him. Nomad was to blame.
When he opened his eyes Jenna was staring at him, and he thought of reaching out and touching her, as Nomad had touched him. His vision swam red. Red, for danger. What would I give her? he thought, and then his musings were interrupted.
“Where it all began,” Sparky said. He had moved into the boat’s open bow and was staring to starboard, and they all watched as the London Eye came into view around a bend in the river. It was still quite awesome, even with everything it represented. The scar in its upper reaches was charred black and angry, and somewhere behind it on the embankment lay the remains of Nomad’s helicopter. She had been Angelina Walker back then, a normal human being. She had changed everything.
“Maybe twenty minutes from here,” Breezer said from the cabin. “Make the most of the rest.”
The strange new smells of London, the sights, and occasionally the sounds—today this truly was the best view anyone could have of London, from the river at least. The Houses of Parliament remained as impressive and imposing as ever. Next to them, the clock on Big Ben’s tower was frozen at a moment in time, the bell now silent. The moment meant nothing but the end of the clock’s constant round of maintenance.
The quiet and stillness along the river was as unnatural as in the rest of the city, because this was a place built for life, bustle, and commerce. The only movements were the bow wave from their boat blurring the water’s surface, and the flights of birds startled aloft by the engine. Sunlight reflected from dusty windows, hiding grotesque truths inside. Uneven huddles of clothing along the north and south embankments were too distant to make out fully, and for that Jack was glad. He knew they were bodies, but not seeing them meant he could pretend they were something else.
The stillness could not last forever. Jack saw the first movements just as they passed beneath Waterloo Bridge, and for an instant he was afraid they were Choppers. They’d be drawn to the noise for sure, but he’d hoped their journey would be so rapid that they’d be out of the boat and gone before anyone arrived. It could be that Reaper was still shadowing them—Fleeter didn’t seem concerned with sharing that information, and Jack was not going to humour her by asking—but Jack would still ready himself to protect them. Reaper played games.
“See them?” Rhali asked.
“How long have they been there?” Jack asked.
“I first sensed them just a few minutes ago. They’re not following us, I don’t think. They’re just coming to cross the river.”
“Like those weird women.”
“Yes.”
“So what is it they suddenly want south of the river?” Sparky asked.
Jack glanced at Lucy-Anne, but she seemed not to be listening. Eyes open, she was somewhere else.