Another of his men, eyes wide with alarm at his leader’s sudden, shocking loss of composure, stepped forward, grabbed Jane’s arm, and dragged her over to us.
She took her place alongside me, facing the firing squad. I reached out my hand and our fingers intertwined and grasped tightly.
She leaned over and tried to whisper something to me, but the huge bell in the tower above us began to chime.
The soldiers began to line up.
The first strike of eight o’clock sounded, sonorous and familiar.
They checked their weapons.
The second chime of the hour.
They all flicked off their safety catches.
Third chime.
Cooper bent down and lifted the machine gun from the corpse of the man he’d just shot.
Fourth chime.
He joined the line of executioners.
Fifth chime.
He flicked off his safety catch.
Sixth chime.
He raised his weapon.
Seventh chime.
He shouted “Make ready!”
I turned to Jane and embraced her, clasping her tightly to me, ready for death, eyes closed, ears ringing.
“I love you,” I whispered as the clock struck eight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I BALANCE THE torch on the table then take the scalpel and carefully slice down the side of my shoe, just above the bit where it meets the foam sole. Every tiny movement sends a shock of pain through my foot, so I go slowly. I’m in a small office, sitting in a padded chair, foot up on the table in front of me.
St Thomas’ hospital has been pretty much gutted. When The Cull hit, I was safe at St Mark’s, riding it out behind thick metal gates in the middle of the countryside. I can’t imagine what it must have been like here in a hospital. The flood of sick people, all dying, incurable, hopeless and doomed. The doctors, succumbing themselves one by one but trying to keep the service going as long as possible, filling the beds and trolleys and corridors with sufferers, all hooked up to drips. At some point they must have started euthanising people, adding extra morphine to the intravenous bags, putting people out of their misery. I imagined the final deaths, when there were no more doctors left, the last surviving patients lying here in a building strewn with corpses, feverish and delirious, dying mad and raving.
In our hunt for medicine we came across a small supply room in which sat a skeleton. It wore a white coat and a bottle of pills lay beside its outstretched hand. A doctor or nurse, immune but broken by the horror of it all, retreating into a darkened closet and gulping down pills to make it stop.
I looked at that skeleton and thought that could have been me, if my brother had never got involved with Spider, if I’d completed my medical training, become a doctor. I’d have been on the front line of the hopeless war against the AB virus and it would have killed me, indirectly but inevitably.
I don’t allow myself the luxury of envying the corpse in the store room. Instead, I grab a scalpel and blade, a bottle of antiseptic, a needle and thread and some gauze bandages, then I limp across the hall to an office where I can work.
The blood-soaked shoe drops off my foot and hits the floor with a wet slap. The sock follows suit. I’m gritting my teeth in agony as I work, but I stay focused. Lee is alive and I have to get back to him. I’m the only hope he has.
When I heard his voice echo out of the Lords I felt a powerful rush of joy and horror. Joy that he was alive, and horror that he was surrendering to Cooper. I’ve already lost one man I loved to Cooper’s schemes. I refuse to lose another.
In one respect being shot in the foot was a blessing. Had I been upright when I’d heard his voice I’d probably have burst into tears and run into his arms like a teenage girl in a pop video. But I was already crying in pain and I couldn’t walk, so that wasn’t really an option. I tried to play it cool, not let Cooper see how much I cared for Lee. I treated him like he was just another kid from the school. But I think Cooper knew; I think Lee’s reaction to seeing me shot gave the game away.
I probe the small hole in the top of my foot. The bullet had passed straight through, right next to the bones that run to my big toe. Luckily it’s not hit any of them, so I’m not going to be crippled. The damage is to flesh and muscle only, so if I can sew it shut, sterilise and bind it, then it should heal all right. If I stay off it for about a month, that is.
As I sew the wound closed I say to my guard through gritted teeth: “I’ll need a cast. Go through the store rooms, there should be some somewhere. Hard plastic shell, foam lining, velcro straps, shouldn’t be hard to spot.”
The guard lingers, unsure.
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m hardly going to be running away, am I? Just fuck off and find me a cast, will you?”
He grunts and leaves. I glance out the window.
The moon is just starting to wane, and the snow is still coming down. We took a jeep across Waterloo Bridge to get to the hospital. The snow was so deep it was hard to drive, and I wonder if we’ll find it as easy to get back. I know I’ve got to hurry. Cooper could be torturing Lee right now.
I splash some more antiseptic on the closed wound and stifle a cry of pain. The morphine’s beginning to wear off. No chance of finding any of that here, it will all have been cleared out long ago. I bind my foot tightly and then grit my teeth and try to stand. It feels like someone’s shoved a knife through my foot and every time I take so much as a fairy step they twist it savagely. I collapse back into the chair. No use pretending. I’m hobbled. The cast should help, though. Where the fuck is that squaddie?
I hear the door swing at the end of the corridor. Thank fuck for that.
“Did you find one?” I shout. There’s no reply, but I hear footsteps crunching in the broken glass and detritus that litters the corridor. They sound strange, as if the person is limping, and each alternate step sounds hard and heavy, like a peg leg pirate. The footsteps get closer until I see a figure come to a halt in the darkness outside the room. Whoever they are, they’re too short and slight to be the squaddie. The figure stands there, arms by their side, and I make out a knife hanging from their right hand. I feel a shock of fear. Then I shine the torch on the figure and gasp in surprise.
“Hello, Jane,” says Jack.
I FIRE OFF a thousand questions. How did Lee and the others survive Thetford? Where are they all now? He answers me impatiently until my enquiries are exhausted and I ask him to find me a cast for my foot.
“Will this do?” asks the boy king as he appears at the door again a few minutes later, holding a blue foam cast.
“Yes!” I shout, and grab it off him. I gingerly place my foot in it and pull the Velcro straps tight. Once it’s secured I stand up, waving away Jack’s offer of a helping hand. I take a step and, while it hurts like hell, it’s more bearable.
“Thanks, Jack, that’s much better.”
“You know,” he says with a wry smile, “you could just cut it off. I hear they can do wonders with prosthetics these days.”
I look down at the piece of table leg and foam that he’s gaffer taped to his stump.
“How did it break?” I ask, walking out as I talk. Together we hobble down the corridor, two cripples together, both too proud to join arms for mutual support.
“Lee, this Ranger bloke and me, we’re climbing into Parliament, right? Up a rope, from a dinghy on the Thames,” he explains. “It’s bloody tough going for me, but I manage it. The Ranger, his name’s Ferguson, he helps me in through the window. So he turns back to help Lee climb up, and I grab the kit bag. But as I do that, two soldiers come into the room and tell us to put our hands up. Ferguson spins around, fast as you like, and he’s just a blur, right, all martial arts and stuff. But one of the guys manages to shoot me. I’m standing right in front of the window and I bring the bag up as a shield, but the bullets shatter my prosthesis, I lose my balance ’cause the bag’s so heavy, and I go flying back out the window.”