“You okay?” Jack asked. They were alone here now, with only the muffled sound of their friends chatting with Rosemary. Lucy-Anne could not quite tell in what way their voices had changed.
“I'm fine. Just…you know.”
“Bit scary, yeah?”
“I guess.”
They stared at each other, knowing that perhaps now there should be a kiss or a hug, or at least something more than this.
“You next,” she said, to break the silence more than anything. Jack smiled and nodded, reaching out towards her and barely managing to touch her hand with his.
She watched him crawl into the hole and, alone at last, she closed her eyes and gave way to a sob that had been building in her throat.
She could remember a dream she'd had weeks ago, when dogs were attacking her in the dark, biting her, eating her, even as she tried to fight them off. The body they'd seen…that had been like a trigger, throwing the dream back at her. She knew it was stupid. She knew they'd say she was a fool. But for a while back there, she'd been terrified.
At least now they were moving on.
She turned around slowly and shone the torch back the way they had come. Its beam did not reach very far. Such old, thick darkness, she thought, not sure where the idea came from. She suddenly felt like an invader down here.
The gap was much narrower than she'd expected, so much so that she could not even raise her head without bashing it as Sparky had done. So she stared at the gravelly ground beneath her, pushing with her feet and crawling through on her elbows. It was only as light fell upon her that she realised she was through.
Sparky helped her to stand, playfully brushing dust and dirt from her clothes. “Welcome to the Mines of Moria!” he said, in the gruffest voice he could manage.
Lucy-Anne looked around. “Bloody hell!”
“I think it's an old church basement,” Rosemary said.
The room was twenty steps across and thirty long, supported at regular intervals by thick stone columns. There seemed to be nothing stored down here, and it had the feel of being long-abandoned; dust had drifted against the base of walls, and in one corner an impressive array of spider webs formed grubby curtains. They shone their torches around, searching but not finding a way up into whatever building had once stood, or still stood above them.
“Maybe over there,” Jenna said. She walked toward one corner, kicking through the layered dust at her feet. She looked up at the ceiling, then back at the group, nodding. “Must have been closed in ages ago.”
Lucy-Anne saw the discoloured ceiling above where Jenna stood. The evidence of a blocked in staircase, perhaps, or the remains of where a hatch had once led down to this place.
“Why'd you think it's a church?” Jack asked.
“Over there,” Rosemary said. “In the end wall. That's the way we have to go. You'll see.”
We'll see what? Lucy-Anne thought. She was about to ask when she heard the growl.
Her heart stuttered, missing a beat and taking her breath away when it restarted. Her arms and chest went cold. A sound returned from her dream, as fresh and alive as if she were dreaming it again now: another growl, and a low, throaty bark.
They were all frozen. The sudden stillness would have been comical, were it not for the other growls now answering the first.
“Oh, no,” Rosemary groaned. And she sounded her age for the first time since Lucy-Anne had met her.
Emily dashed over to her brother's side. He glanced at Lucy-Anne, but she could not even blink.
“What?” Jack whispered. He stepped closer to Rosemary, and the others all turned to look at the old woman. Their eyes were wide in the darkness, glittering with strange yellow light. “Rosemary, what?”
“Dogs,” Lucy-Anne whispered.
“Yes,” Rosemary said. “I met them on the way out, but they were much further back, just beneath the Exclusion Zone.”
“And?” Jack asked.
“They're wild, Jack. From London. There are packs in there, big packs.”
“We've heard about them,” Jenna said. All of them had drawn close, subconsciously shielding Emily from whatever danger approached.
“Some of them went down beneath the city,” Rosemary said. “The Tube, tunnels, sewers. Dog, and…”
“Other things,” Jenna finished for her.
Rosemary nodded. Lucy-Anne knew what “other things” meant, because they'd had a series of reports left in the drops close to Camp Truth a few months before. Much could be put down to hearsay and exaggeration, they'd agreed, but it also seemed likely that some of what they read was true. Alligators, snakes, poisonous frogs, deadly spiders, and even a pride of lions, all of them escaped from various zoos and private collections in and around London following Doomsday.
But dogs…
“I dreamed this,” she whispered, and she was aware of Jack's torch shifting as he turned to look at her.
Another growl came, much closer than before, and there seemed to be cunning there, and purpose.
Jack stepped in front of Emily, a four inch folding knife in his hand. Jenna also shielded the girl, and Sparky already had a knife in each hand, torch tucked in his back pocket.
“How many were there?” Jack asked the old woman.
“Five,” Lucy-Anne said.
“Yes,” Rosemary said, surprised. “But I think I broke one of their legs.”
“Four's still enough,” Sparky said. “Shit. Shit! Why didn't you tell us?”
“Would you still have come?” Rosemary asked.
“Yes!” Sparky and Jack spoke at the same time, and the woman looked down at her feet.
No, Lucy-Anne thought, and when she blinked she saw a flash of her dream, a dog snarling with her own meat hanging from its teeth-
— and when she looked again, the growl was real.
The first dog emerged from the tunnel into the large basement, dodging their torch beams, darting from column to column as it came for them.
Chapter Six
News from London is contradictory and confusing. Official sources talk of at least nine separate terrorist attacks, including explosions at the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, London Bridge, Leicester Square, and Buckingham Palace. A source at Scotland Yard has said that several terrorist cells are being actively pursued through London, and that more attacks are feared. There is still no clear news of which chemical or biological agent has been deployed. Eyewitness accounts tell of military roadblocks, bulldozers piling bodies in public parks, and execution-style shootings to contain certain areas of the population. Whatever is true, it's certain that this is a tragedy of extreme magnitude, and CNN will, of course, be broadcasting throughout the day to bring you updates as and when they become available.
Sparky crouched down low, a knife held in each hand, relying on the light from everyone else's torches to give him sight. Jack stood beside him to the left, but Sparky took a step forward, insisting that he be the first.
Jack had once seen his friend get into a fight with someone twice his age and a foot taller than him. The man had stormed in with fists waving and a shit-eating grin, catching Sparky one on the chin. Sparky had staggered back, ducked down, kicked him in the nuts, and when the guy fell over Sparky put the boot in. Thirty seconds later the man was out cold.
Sparky was not one to mess with, and he'd never been afraid of the sight of his own blood. Jack knew what Sparky's brother had become, and sometimes, like now, his friend actually scared him.
More shadows darted from the tunnel at the other end of the room. Torch lights flickered and bobbed after them, but the dogs possessed an almost supernatural ability to dodge into darkness.