“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
The others were bustling. Andrew’s appearance was a shock, but now they were filled with a new sense of urgency and purpose. Jack’s frustration at not being able to help had been palpable, and his insistence that he would do alone what Fleeter said was impossible together had been a sign of his desperation. Now, there was another way.
Lucy-Anne only hoped the man was still where Andrew had left him.
“Come with us?” Lucy-Anne asked.
“I’ll be watching you,” he said.
“My guardian angel.”
“I wish.” Andrew lifted a weightless hand and moved it close to her face, but not close enough to touch. She guessed he did that for her; to not feel his presence might be too much. But she could see from his eyes that he also did it for himself.
Andrew could no longer feel, and much about his sister must remain a memory.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. The tears came, quiet but forceful. Andrew watched, helpless, able only to soothe her with hushed words. He whispered of their parents and how proud they would be of Lucy-Anne for carrying on, and being strong. He sang a song they’d made up when they were both young, nonsense lyrics about a frog and a toad walking a long road. It made Lucy-Anne laugh, and cry some more. She felt far too young to suffer from painful nostalgia, but Doomsday had made everyone grow old. That was one of its unspoken effects—it had made everyone involved, and the country as a whole, age.
“Ready,” Sparky said. He stood behind Lucy-Anne and placed his hand on her shoulder, and she closed her eyes and pretended the contact was from Andrew. When she turned around and opened her eyes, Sparky was staring wide-eyed at Andrew, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Whoa,” he said.
“Yeah,” Lucy-Anne said. “And yes. Ready. All of us together.”
Sparky leaned in and gave her a wet kiss on the cheek, and as she pushed him away she was surprised at the sound of her own laughter.
They were preparing to leave the restaurant, possessed of a newfound urgency. Even Rhali seemed more lively and alert, and Jack had to shove his guilt over her to the back of his mind. He should be supporting her, listening to her story and helping her overcome whatever had happened to her in the Choppers’ custody. Instead, he was rushing her back across London.
But individual needs were meaningless in the face of the catastrophe hanging over them. Millions had already died in London, and for Jack that made any more needless deaths all the more painful.
Lucy-Anne stood close to the front of the restaurant where the ghost of her brother cast no shadow. Sparky and Jenna gathered whatever drinks they could find, and knives for weapons.
Fleeter paced. Losing her constant smile suited her, because Jack no longer felt mocked. But he could still not trust her. That could only come with time they didn’t have.
And then Emily crossed Jack’s mind, so vibrant and there that for a moment he looked around for her. Then he smiled and closed his eyes, and knew that he could reach out to her so easily. Perhaps that would help. Knowing where she and his mother were, sensing their safety…maybe all that would help him through what was to come.
He grasped the talent and a dizzying surge made him sway. He heard and sensed hurried movement and held up one hand.
“Okay, I’m okay,” he said. “Give a minute. I just need a minute.”
Emily became his centre, and he allowed himself to drift towards her. He saw beyond London. There was no longer a sense of movement, but his perception shifted over the shattered city, past the devastated Exclusion Zone, and across the heads of the military still encircling what was left. Fields and roads passed beneath him, and small, deserted communities that had been abandoned after Doomsday. Scale changed as he dipped down, skimming over the landscape, then rooftops, and then settling at last in the playground of an old country primary school.
Emily was there, along with his mother. His sister grinned and squealed his name, jumping up and rushing around the playground with her arms held up, trying to grab him. His mother smiled and looked up at the sky. She believes, too, Jack thought, but of course she did. Doomsday had made her something special—a healer—and she knew that he’d been touched by Nomad.
Jack, I did it! Emily said. I spread the word, and the photos, and everything is changing.
It is, his mother said. London’s story will change again very soon.
At first Jack thought they were talking about the bomb. But there was no way they could know, and as his consciousness dipped closer to his mother, he saw her confident smile.
They’re coming! Emily said. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I did it just like you said, and—
—a jolt as Jack saw what she’d done, relayed either from her own memory, or perhaps painted by whatever talent had taken hold of him.
Emily with the camera she’d retrieved on her way back out of London, through the tunnels, Fleeter guiding her and her mother, a brief flash of violence as Fleeter—
Emily and his mother, alone now, hurrying across countryside with the weight of London behind them. Lights speckle the landscape; farms, hamlets, places where normal people are living almost-normal lives so close to the toxic city. His family are glad to be out, but sad that Jack is not with them. Go to Cornwall, he’d told them, but he can see from the set of Emily’s face that—
She has no intention of doing what he’d told her. Instead, they break into the school under cover of darkness, do their best to seal off a small office by covering the window with several layers of curtains, and fire up the computer. It’s a decent laptop with a good Internet connection. Emily connects the camera and downloads the pictures she’s taken, and the film clips, and then—
Their mother finds some food and drink, and sits back while Emily works. The love she exudes for her daughter is overwhelming. As is her sadness at the two years of her daughter’s life she missed. Jack sees his mother’s tears even though Emily does not, and that makes him wonder—
I’m ready, Emily says, sitting back and stretching her stiff limbs. Don’t hesitate, their mother says. I wasn’t. I was just enjoying the moment. I wish Jack could be here to see this. She presses return and—
She has learned so much. Jack never knew she’d been watching him so closely, and Jenna when she worked on their computer in their buried camp in the woods—Camp Truth they’d called it, and now everything Emily had learnt there would be put to the test, the real truth its burden. Emails are sent in small blocks to avoid spam filters, attachments encrypted, any text bland and inconspicuous. Twenty, sixty, a hundred, worming their way through wires and across the ether, and while within the first second a large percentage are intercepted, examined, catalogued, flagged for inspection, and locked away in secure servers across the southeast, a few get through and find their intended recipients. Then the true dispersal begins. Sleeping computers wake, dormant servers fire up, and automated email accounts start forwarding emails to millions of addresses across the country. Most are caught and deleted by provider spam programmes, many more are attacked by security code written to look for precisely these messages—images scanned, tones and colours and content analysed by algorithms so complex that they require terabytes of power. From every million emails sent, perhaps a hundred land in inboxes, and of these maybe thirty are opened. From there, it is out of the virtual hands of the web and into the consciousness of human beings.
While emails fly and die, further messages are sent to the computer in Camp Truth. They’d christened it Marty so they could talk about it in company, and Jenna had treated it like another friend. Alone, it beeps and buzzes as its fan whirrs up, and the screen comes to life to illuminate the place where so many of their hopes had been kept alive. Jack senses the scene, and whilst exciting, it is also sad. The people who had been there mere days ago have all changed now, and discovering the fates of their various family members means they will never be the same again.