“We came the right way,” he said. “I'm sure.”
“Here,” Emily said. “Is this what she meant?” She was looking over the top of the culvert, filming across ground level at whatever lay beyond. Jack stood beside her.
The large area before them held several ground-tanks, all of them covered with heavy metal covers. Pipes and frames hung over them, many bent and twisted by some unknown force, and rust stained much of the metal.
“Sewage treatment plant,” Jack said.
“Oh, great. That's going to smell just lovely.” Emily panned the camera around and lowered it, dropping back down to sit in the ditch.
“It's dry down here,” Jack said, joining her. “And I doubt this has been treating anything for a couple of years.”
Emily looked up sharply, lifting a finger to her lips.
Jack looked back along the ditch, and moments later he saw the shapes coming towards them. Sparky first, bent over so that he could not be seen above ground level. Jenna followed him, and behind her came Rosemary and Lucy-Anne, Jack's girlfriend keeping close to the older woman.
“I don't think there's anyone around,” Sparky said when he reached them. “If we were seen, they'd have come for us by now.”
Jack could not help recalling some of the stories from the drops close to Camp Truth—kidnappings, disappearances, executions. And he could see in Jenna's haunted eyes that she was thinking the same. Her father had been taken, and returned, but now he was a different man. A lesser man. Capture would mean the end for all of them, whether that end was death or something else.
“You need to lead us from here,” he said to Rosemary.
“It's not far,” she said, gasping for breath. “We'll be out of the sun again in a minute.”
“And next time we see it we'll be in the Toxic City,” Lucy-Anne said. Her eyes were hard, and when she glanced at Jack he sensed a shocking distance already growing between them.
“We still like to call it London,” Rosemary said. “It hasn't been toxic for a long time.”
Lucy-Anne nodded, still looking at Jack. What? he wanted to say. What is it? But he had never really understood her.
Sparky stood, looked around for a long time, then nodded. Rosemary climbed from the ditch and hurried across an area of long grass until she stood on concrete paving between metal tank covers. The others followed.
Beside the closest tank cover, there was a small hatch in the ground. The cover was metal as well, but light. Rosemary took a hooked metal manhole key from her pocket, curved it into a recessed ring in the cover and swung it upward. As she started down the small concrete staircase revealed beneath, she glanced up at the others. Her face softened, and for the first time Jack wondered whether she was a mother, and if so, where her husband and children were right now. He felt terrible for not asking, but now it seemed too late.
“It's not far now,” Rosemary said.
“Back down into the dark again,” Lucy-Anne said. There was something in her voice Jack had never heard before. He thought maybe it was fear.
“Yes, dear, but not for long. We're almost there.”
“If there's anything else you need to warn us about—” Jack began.
“The dogs are dead,” Rosemary said. “You killed them, together. I can't pretend the city isn't dangerous, but then you all know that, don't you?”
Emily separated from the small group and trained her camera on them. “The final descent before we rise into the Toxic City,” she said. “And then we'll go to find who we came for.” Even keeping the camera before her eye could not hide the tear that streaked her cheek.
“I'm not afraid,” Lucy-Anne said. But as she followed Rosemary down, every jerky, determined movement she made was testament to her lie.