Jenna’s programmes, worked on so diligently for months, start working. Images are dispersed to scores of websites, and to hundreds of people hiding online under a web of aliases and false provider information. Photographs and films taken within London soon pop up all across the Internet. Reaction is swift—the authorities’ preparedness for such an eventuality shocks Jack, even though he has seen evidence of it so many times before—and websites crash like a series of virtual dominoes. But the spread of information is now speedier than any attempt to suppress it. And while ten websites crash, one will always survive to pass on information.
A film of the Exclusion Zone, with Jack and Lucy-Anne staring around in shock…
Jack’s mother in the Underground station, and behind her the beds taken with dead and dying…
Choppers cruising the streets in their blue vehicles…
Nomad, mysterious, ethereal, with the sad, empty city behind her…
More images that betray the truth that has been kept from the world. Film clips that show the incredible things that have happened within London, and display that it is not a dead, toxic place as the world has been told.
Jack saw the truth spreading across Britain like blood finding its way through an organism’s arteries and veins.
And as he finally drew back towards his universe of potential, he used Rhali’s gift to sense the mass of people moving quickly towards London. Roads were heavy with vehicles. Their gravity was huge. And they were all coming to find people they had lost.
“Bloody hell, mate, I thought you were gone!” Sparky was kneeling next to him, Jenna and Lucy-Anne behind him.
“I was,” Jack said. “I reached out to Emily. Saw what she’s done. And…” He actually laughed out loud, and it felt so good. “And she’s a genius! She’s contacted Marty. She and my mum didn’t get the hell away like I told them to, but are holed up in a school maybe twenty miles outside the Exclusion Zone. She used everything on the camera.”
“And it was all stopped by the Choppers,” Jenna said. “Go on. Tell me that. And they’ll have triangulated on Camp Truth, too.”
“No,” Jack said, smiling. “A lot got through. The word’s out. We’ve done what we always wanted to do, and now there are people coming towards London. Loved ones, those who always half-believed like us, they’re all coming here to see what’s left.”
“And they’re being stopped?” Sparky said.
“I’m not sure,” Jack replied.
“Bloody hope they are.”
“All the more reason to follow Andrew straight away,” Lucy-Anne said. “What if they break through?”
“What do you mean?” Jenna asked.
“The truth got out there are just the wrong time,” Lucy-Anne said. “It’s what we’ve always wanted, but if so many people know, they won’t be able to stop them.”
“The Choppers will stop them coming close, just like they always stopped anyone leaving,” Fleeter said bitterly.
“Really?” Lucy-Anne asked. “How? With force?”
“No,” Jack said. “No, they can’t. Oh. Oh, shit. There’ll be press, reporters, web journalists. They’ll try to stop them, but they won’t be able to use force. And if there are enough people, they’ll just march on London. Everything’s been blown wide open.”
“And because of that, it’s not just London in danger now,” Rhali said.
“That bomb can’t explode!” Jenna said.
“Right,” Lucy-Anne agreed. “And so we follow Andrew.”
Fleeter flipped out, her disappearance causing a thud! that cracked one of the restaurant’s front windows.
For a moment Jack thought of following. But even seconds might count now, and he would no longer desert his friends.
“Come on,” he said. Without another word they left the restaurant and followed a ghost along London’s haunted streets.
Walking behind Andrew was like living a memory.
Lucy-Anne and Andrew had never actually walked the streets of London together. She understood now that it was a proximity thing—people travelled from all over the world to visit London, but when you lived almost in its back garden, the need to visit receded. Her parents had been many times, and she and Andrew had visited separately, both with their respective schools and their parents. But they had never enjoyed these sights together.
Neither did they enjoy them now.
She had to keep reminding herself that this was not really Andrew before her. It was an echo of him, a dream remnant, and his true self was gone to dust on Hampstead Heath. Nomad had lied to her about not finding him, but she understood why. Andrew had not wished to give her hope.
Yet when her own chances had become hopeless, he had come.
Andrew led them along the north bank of the Thames, and at Vauxhall Bridge they crossed and headed northeast. Lucy-Anne wondered if she was in a dream, and realised that much of her time since entering London had felt like that. Sometimes she knew, and sometimes she did not. Sometimes she thought she knew, but then something would happen that would confuse her, send her concept of what was real and what was dreamlike spinning.
It was her friends who connected her to reality now. She was aware of them close behind her, all of them so pleased to see her again, their love for her uncomplicated by London and what it had become. With the city about to be turned into an atomic wasteland, she felt safer with them than anywhere else.
“How far?” she asked.
Andrew answered, “Maybe a mile,” and Lucy-Anne was not sure whether he’d spoken the words or answered in her mind.
Gunfire crackled in the distance. They all dropped, huddling against a timber builders’ hoarding. Lucy-Anne looked back at Jack. He was frowning, and there was something about his eyes that scared her. They looked empty. More vacant than Andrew’s, less human than some of those creatures’ eyes she had seen in the north.
“Reaper,” Jack said. “He and his Superiors are hunting.”
More gunfire, and then they heard the strained sound of a helicopter in trouble. About a mile to the east the aircraft rose above rooftops, spinning slowly as if piloted by someone unused to the controls. As it levelled at last and dipped its nose to power away, something struck it from the sky. The blast wave was not visible, but the helicopter’s rotors were stripped away and flung behind it, its shell deformed, and it dropped quickly. In seconds it had disappeared from view, and a dull crump was followed moments later by a slowly expanding smudge of smoke.
“If Fleeter did go to him, maybe he didn’t bother listening,” Sparky said. None of them had suggested that she’d gone back to the Superiors, but they’d all been thinking it.
“Or maybe he’s just having some fun on the way here,” Jenna said.
“We just saw people die!” Rhali said.
“We’ve seen a lot of people die,” Jenna said, not unkindly. “Come on. I don’t want to stay on the streets. It’s spooky, like someone’s watching me.”
“That’ll be me,” Sparky said. “Watching your arse.”
Andrew had been motionless throughout the exchange, and he headed off again without a word or a glance at Lucy-Anne. I’ll be with him, she thought. When my time comes I’ll be with him, because I’ll dream myself to never die. But she was not sure his was any sort of existence. She’d never believed in God or an afterlife, but surely true death would be preferable to whatever he had now.