They found somewhere beautiful. It was so unexpected that Jack had to blink several times to make sure everything was real. They climbed some stone steps and emerged inside a ruined church, its walls blackened by an old fire, charred ceiling timbers littering the floor, windows long-since vanished and steeple tumbled down. But the walls were still solid, and because the roof had gone, the insides were a riot of wild undergrowth, unchecked for many years. A thick, heavy curtain of clematis covered two walls, smothering window openings and bursting with pink and yellow flowers. Another wall hung with wisteria, swinging with pendulous sprays of mauve blooms, and the final wall, below which the remains of what may have been an altar lay in ruins, was home to a gorgeous, heavily thorned yellow rose. The floor of the church was awash with colour and a low, tangled plant that Jack could not identify.
“Wow,” Jenna said. Nobody else could think of anything more suitable, so they stared around in silence.
“Sorry,” Rosemary said. “I forgot to tell you about this place, as well.”
Jack smiled. And then Emily was running, dashing here and there, filming, lifting shrub branches and delving beneath, and a robin landed on a bush close to where they all stood.
“Seems quite tame,” Lucy-Anne said. “How close are we to people in here?”
“We're right on the edge of the Exclusion Zone.” Rosemary spoke quietly, as though to mention those words could spoil this place.
“This has been ruined for more than two years, though,” Sparky said.
Rosemary shrugged. “I assume so. Just another part of the route that Philippe gave me.”
“So where to from here?” Jack asked.
“A dangerous part,” the woman said. “The riskiest when it comes to being seen. A dash across the old churchyard, then over a narrow road that used to lead to a housing estate. It leads nowhere now, but it's still close to the Exclusion Zone, and there may be military patrols.”
“After that?” Lucy-Anne asked.
“Down again. A dried-up stream that leads to an old sewage treatment works. A tunnel. Then under the Exclusion Zone, and we'll be in London.”
“We're that close?” Sparky said.
Rosemary nodded at the clematis-covered wall. “It looks like a clear day. Take a look.”
Sparky glanced at Jack, frowning, but Emily had been listening and she was there before all of them. She snuggled herself through the trailing clematis plant, pushing through with the camera, and then they all heard her intake of breath. Jack did not realise just how much she had been nattering commentary at the camera until she stopped.
“Emily?” he said.
“It's all gone.” Her voice was very small, and very vulnerable.
Sparky and Lucy-Anne pulled aside the hanging plants, and the four of them pushed their way through, standing beside Emily by one of the empty window openings.
They had all heard many stories of the Exclusion Zone, read plenty of eyewitness accounts of what it looked like, and over the past two years there had been at least a dozen drops of photographs of this place close to Camp Truth. But some things simply had to be seen.
Jack could barely believe that such talent for destruction could exist in humankind.