“Don't know,” Sparky said.
“Why?” Jack asked.
“If it is, I can't do anything. Can't-”
“Don't tell me you can't!” Jack stood, cringing at his raised voice but unable to help himself. “After everything, don't tell me that!”
“If it's still in there and I heal the wound, it'll do no good. I can't take bullets out of people, Jack. But-”
“Can't you make her better?” Emily asked.
“If the bullet's gone through, then yes, dear, I can. If not, and I heal it inside, she'll probably develop an infection and die.”
“Sparky,” Jack said. “Help me.” He searched around on the ground, shifting old leaves aside and picking up a fallen branch from one of the neighbouring garden's trees. He snapped a short section from it, eight inches long.
“What are you doing?” Sparky said.
“Seeing if the bullet came out the other side.” He pressed the stick to Jenna's lips, and her mouth opened, teeth biting into the wood. She knew what he was doing.
“Not here,” Rosemary said. “It's too dangerous!”
“Have your bloody gun back.” Jack lobbed the weapon at her and she caught it, uttering a startled cry. She turned to look up at the tall face of the hotel behind them.
“On three,” Jack said. “One…two…three.” He pushed Jenna up by the arm, Sparky pulled one of her legs, and as she turned onto her side she screamed into the wood, biting down hard enough to crack it and send splinters and shreds of bark spitting out.
Jack looked. Her jacket and shirt were soaked with blood all the way around. He lifted them up, exposing her bare back, and used her shirt to wipe across her skin. The blood smeared and smudged, but he found no exit wound there, and no sign that anything had broken the skin.
He hated doing this to his friend. He could see Emily's expression as she watched, and he hated what all this was doing to her, as well. It had gone so wrong so quickly that he could not imagine things ever being right again.
The wood snapped in Jenna's mouth and she screamed, unable to hold it in any longer.
Sparky was in front of her. He looked down at her stomach, turned away, and vomited.
“Not here!” Rosemary said. “We have to take her away, I know someone who might help, but not here!”
Jack leaned across Jenna to see why Sparky had puked, and her wound was pouting, something that could only have been her intestine protruding through the rip in her flesh. He closed his eyes and swallowed his bile, looking up at Emily. Wide-eyed, blinking slowly, pale, he suddenly saw himself in her, courage and love mirrored.
“Help me,” he said, and his nine-year-old sister came to him without question, helping him pull Jenna's shirt tight across her stomach. Jack undid and unthreaded his belt, then tied it around Jenna. He had no idea whether he was doing the right thing. Rosemary, the healer, was looking the other way, and he hated her right then.
“Who can help?” Jack asked. He wanted to shout, but he could hear voices coming from somewhere far away, or echoing from close by.
“We need to get away,” Rosemary said. A helicopter buzzed overhead, streaking across the hotel. Another one was coming in from the distance, and Rosemary was actually pacing back and forth. “Now!” she said. “We have to leave now! They'll be bringing reinforcements, and we'll never get away in one piece if that happens.”
“One piece?” Sparky said, spittle hanging from his chin.
Rosemary looked down at Jenna. “She can still be helped,” she said. “Trust me. If that wasn't the case, I'd be telling you to leave her where she is.”
Between them, Jack and Sparky lifted the wounded girl. Mercifully she passed out, screaming herself into unconsciousness as Rosemary led the way along a narrow alley stinking of rot and filth, across a narrow street, and through a park where people had once sat to have lunch but which now was home to a band of noisy, angry monkeys.
The deeper they went into the Toxic City, the more Jack doubted they would ever find their way out again.
Chapter Twelve
…although it's clear that this is a disaster the likes of which has never been seen before. London is effectively isolated, with no traffic entering or leaving. Reports of the death toll vary wildly, from a few hundred admitted by the British government, to several hundred thousand suggested by independent sources. A promised statement by the British prime minister has yet to materialize, and the questions have to be asked: What of the terrorists? Is the prime minister even still alive? And if he is, why has he not yet spoken to his people? In this time of global communication, it seems incredible that so little is being shared.
Lucy-Anne had forgotten her own name. But she knew the name of her brother.
“Andrew,” she muttered as he ran north. The word worked like a talisman, parting the air before her and thickening it behind, drawing her ever-forward towards its owner. “Andrew,” she said, and London heard the name. Thousands of fat pigeons watched her go by, and a parade of cats paused in the middle of a wide, vehicle-strewn road to sit and observe this strange sight.
The sounds behind her had ceased. Everything behind her had ended, because that was a place far in the past. Even her nightmare of dead parents…a memory, fading like a photograph left out in the sun.
Forward was the only place that existed now.
Your brother is alive north of here, she heard. She could not remember the voice or who owned it, but the words were her fuel. She would need food and water soon-her throat was parched, her sight blurry-but while there was still daylight in the sky, she could not waste any time.
She passed a place where a battle had taken place. Several trucks had been parked in a rough square, and their bodywork was pocked with hundreds of bullet holes. A couple of the trucks had burned, and their pale grey skeletons had rusted. Birds sat on the twisted metal, and something large moved ponderously in the cab of one of the unburned vehicles. She had no reason to stop and see what it was, because it was not her brother.
“Andrew,” she gasped, and the word drew her on.
With every step, she lost more of herself. And every step made her past seem like a darker, older place.
They followed Rosemary, carrying the wounded girl between them. Jenna was in and out of consciousness, groaning, moaning from the pain. Jack wanted to check on her wound, but he feared that if they stopped they would never get going again. The strength had been knocked from them. Sparky looked beaten and pale, tired and shocked. Jack thought he seemed smaller than before, as though confirmation of his loss and what they had been through had lessened him somehow.
“Sparky,” he kept saying, just to hear his friend's name and hoping to see the familiar confident, cheeky smile in response. But Sparky's reply was always slow, and weaker by the minute.
Emily walked beside Rosemary. She seemed to be handling things better than any of them.
They dodged from street to alley, square to park, and with every step they took the sounds of conflict receded. At one point they passed an area that seemed to have been flattened by bombing, and Jack asked Rosemary whether what had just happened was a regular occurrence.
“London suffers,” is all she offered in response. “We're almost there.” She went ahead, carrying the gun awkwardly and approaching the front door of an innocuous house in an unremarkable street. She lifted a plant pot containing the skeletal remains of a rose bush, picked up a key and opened the door.