“This is so screwed,” Lucy-Anne said.
“Yeah. Tell me about it. Come on.”
Jack took the steps three at a time. Another staircase, another building, and he expected at any moment to be shot at or attacked, because it seemed that’s what his life had been since entering London. Nomad’s touch throbbed within him, manifested as that amazing, terrible red star, and it had made him the centre of things. None of them had wanted any of that. All of this had been forced upon them, and he felt a sudden rush of intense love and respect for his friends and the way they were handling everything. They could have walked away, but none of them had.
None of them would.
Four storeys, eight flights of stairs, and the stench of the stairwell brought an uncomfortable flash of familiarity—it stank of piss. Every car park staircase he’d ever been in seemed to smell the same, and for a disconcerting moment, before they emerged onto the car park’s open upper level, Jack thought perhaps everything was back to normal.
Then they emerged onto daylight, and awful reality came to the fore once more.
Two creatures from the north were attacking a car. They looked almost human apart from their limbs, which were black and shiny like a beetle’s. They were using them to score metal and pummel glass, and it looked as if they had been there for a while. The car was a mess. Jack thought they’d be inside within minutes, and whoever they were seeking would be finished.
“Hey!” Sparky called from across the car park, emerging from the stairwell on the other side. “Hey, uglies!”
“No, Sparky!” Jack shouted.
The creatures both jumped on the car and watched, back to back, limbs raised in front of them in a defensive gesture.
“Hayden,” Andrew said, and Jack had already seen the pale face at the car’s rear window.
Jack ran. Sparky’s shout had been brave but foolhardy; if they went after Sparky, he and Jenna had nothing to protect themselves with. This was all up to Jack.
He delved deep as he ran, but he already knew that these things were beyond his ken. They had evolved physically, a painful, shattering change that had left most of them half-mad from the continuing agonies, and raging. Even if he could find and touch the ability to do the same, he would not. He thought perhaps that darkest part of his universe—beyond the stars, way out past everything he knew and many talents he did not yet know—was the infinity of their pain, and he had no wish to go there at all.
But perhaps he could communicate with them. Along with their monstrousness came a high level of intelligence, and if he could appeal to that, maybe this would not have to end in more violence and death.
He paused a few steps from the car and nodded at Hayden, trying to communicate a sense of calm. The man looked terrified, and Jack could not blame him. The things resembled humans in form, but the resemblance stopped there. Their eyes were dark and shiny. Faces were slick, skin smooth and featureless. They exuded no personality, and looking at them was distinctly unsettling. But Jack did his best not to look away.
“The man in the car is precious,” Jack said. “He can stop something terrible from happening. You might know about the bomb, you might not. But I want him alive and safe. And I don’t want to have to fight you for him.”
One of the creatures hissed, the other raised its heavily clawed arms, and Jack turned his head and shouted, channelling the talent he had already used so devastatingly. He put a lot into it—this was no time for a subtle demonstration—and he felt power thrumming through him, setting him on fire. He liked it. But he berated himself, because relishing it was what had turned Reaper bad.
The reinforced concrete wall, topped with a heavy metal railing, shattered out into space, and four cars were forced out after the shattered rubble, bodies crunched, windows shattering, wheels screeching across the concrete floor. They tumbled from view and then impacted the ground below several seconds later. Even before the two creatures had recovered from their shock, Jack had moved closer to them. He was almost in touching distance.
They looked at him with wide eyes.
“Move away from the car,” he said. He was shaking with the remnants of the tremendous power, and he had to breathe deeply to cast it down.
One of the creatures laughed.
“Jack!” Rhali’s voice, and it was coming closer.
The creatures scampered from the car and clattered away, but not too far. They slipped behind a big BMW and peered out at Jack, and he couldn’t shake the conviction that they were waiting for something.
“Jack!” Rhali burst from the stairway into the open air, panting, sweating, looking as if she was about to collapse. “Jack, there are things coming!”
“What things?”
“I don’t know, they’re like people but…” She saw the two creatures watching. They’d become braver now, and they emerged from behind the BMW and scratched threateningly at the vehicle’s paintwork. “Yeah. Like that.”
“Jack can waste them all!” Sparky shouted. He and Jenna drew close, and though danger was also approaching, Jack felt better that they were all together once more. Even Andrew was still there, close to the car. Lucy-Anne had helped the man open the distorted door, and he was standing slowly, utterly terrified. Jack thought perhaps he’d been driven mad.
“You can do this?” Jack asked.
“Wh…what?”
“Hayden. That’s your name, right?”
He nodded.
“So Hayden, you can stop the bomb if we get you to it?”
Hayden half-nodded, shrugging at the same time.
“Don’t do that!” Jack shouted. “Don’t give me any doubts! I might have to kill people, now. These things, they’re still people. Just as much as the poor sods you bastards have been cutting up are people.”
“I haven’t cut any—”
“So tell me you can stop the bomb!”
Hayden nodded. “Given time.”
“How much time?” Jack asked.
“I’ll need an hour with the bomb. And peace and quiet. And the right tools.”
“And how would you like your fucking steak cooked?” Sparky asked.
Jack laughed, high and loud, and felt his own sense of control wavering. He almost puked.
“Everyone in that one,” Sparky said, nodding at a Mazda estate car.
“Plan?” Jack asked.
“If there’s any battery left I can hot-wire it, and it’s down to them to get out of the way.” He slapped Jack’s shoulder, and the gesture proved he knew so much about his friend.
“Good plan,” Jack said. “And if everything goes wrong…”
“Then we’ve got you,” Sparky said. “Superman. Our secret weapon. Hulk, smash!”
“I’ll smash you in a minute. Get the bloody car started!”
Sparky saluted, grinned, and they all ran to the car. The door was open. The wheels weren’t completely deflated. And there wasn’t even a mummified corpse in the driver’s seat.
Bonus! Jack thought. Maybe things are turning our way.
Then he froze as, on the next level down, he heard the sharp, rapid scraping of chitinous limbs.
Andrew drifted away, and when Lucy-Anne started after him Jack held her arm.
“I don’t think they can hurt him,” he said. Andrew glanced back and seemed to nod, and then he passed between two parked cars and disappeared from view.
“Come on, come on!” Sparky said. He’d opened his pocket knife and forced the covering beneath the steering column, and now he was hunkered down, bent almost double in the driver’s seat as he spread a knot of wires, stripped some, then sat back. “Send a prayer to the god of car thieves,” he said, and he touched two wires.
The engine growled…and then wound down with a tired yawn.