London Eye: 1 (Toxic City) Read Online Free PDF Page B

just beyond the veil of reality before which most people lived their lives. Rosemary led them through places that seemed forgotten, cast aside or ignored, and sometimes they could hear, and even see the worldgoing on around them. It was like a route leading back from what the world had become towards what it might have been before, though he knew that at the end of this route lay something else entirely: London as it was now; the Toxic City.
    The path from the viaduct led between the rear gardens of two rows of abandoned houses. Many of the structures seemed unsafe and close to collapse, and one or two had already taken the first tumble into ruin. One long spread of buildings on their right had been burnt out, roof joists blackened and exposed to the sky. Few windows remained. Gardens were overgrown, and here and there Jack caught sight of children's playthings clogged with bramble and grass, dulled primary colours showing through the green foliage. He wondered why so many houses had been abandoned at once.
    The path stopped against a blank brick wall, a tall boundary construction that seemed to close off the garden space between the two terraces. Rosemary waited for them there, then started down a set of steps almost completely overgrown with brambles. She descended silently. At the bottom, surrounded by banks of undergrowth and overshadowed by the high wall, they huddled together before a boarded area at the base of the barrier.
    “Old canal route,” Rosemary said. “It was drained and decommissioned when they built these houses, over a hundred years ago. It's dark in here. You might want to get your torches out.”
    “How far does it go?” Jenna asked, amazed.
    “This goes out to the edge of town. From there, we go underground almost all the way into the Exclusion Zone.”
    “Underground how?” Jack asked. While everyone else was taking torches from their rucksacks, he stared at the timber boarding, one rotten corner of it recently detached.
    “You'd be surprised,” Rosemary said. “There are plenty of places beneath the surface of things.” She grabbed the corner of a plywoodsheet and tugged, popping it from a couple of loose nails and resting it back against the board beside it. “People have been building in this country for thousands of years. Much of what's underground is unmapped, uncharted, and forgotten. Philippe has the talent to find it, which is something new. I suspect he knows of places that haven't been seen, or trodden by human feet, for many centuries. Canals, underground rivers, storage basements, tunnels, subterranean hiding places, cave networks, roads built over and blocked off.”
    “Looks spooky,” Lucy-Anne said, but Jack could hear the excitement in her voice at the prospect.
    “Oh, it's bound to be haunted,” Emily said. She had picked the camera from her rucksack, not her torch.
    They all stood there for a moment longer, and Jack looked up at the narrow spread of blue sky above them. The sun was behind the brick wall, and he could barely feel the summer heat down here. But he was ready. Darkness, shadows, and secret ways beckoned, but beyond that, the revelations he had been craving for two years.
    And his mother. The picture was in his pocket, her stern, beautiful face waiting for him whenever he needed a look. He and Emily had mentioned their father only in whispers, afraid of what their mother's expression might mean.
    “I'll go in last,” Emily said. “I really need to get this.” She stood back with her camera, and Rosemary led them away from daylight and into the night.

…and the advice is to remain indoors and await further instructions. Government sources state that there is, as yet, no credible claim for responsibility. What is clear is that there has been a massive breakdown of communication into and out of London, with mobile phone networks down, satellite systems malfunctioning, and land lines dead. We understand that the prime minister will be delivering a