Lucy-Anne was afraid of her nightmares.
The dogs from her dream had come and bitten her, and after everyone had set off from the ruined church, and it was only her and Rosemary left, she'd asked the old woman how close she had been to death. Its teeth nipped your spine, Rosemary had said, but I touched it and made it better.
How close? Lucy-Anne had demanded.
Very, Rosemary had said, before rushing across the road into the ditch.
Now, descending back into the darkness once again, Lucy-Anne waited for other nightmares to make themselves known. She refused to believe it had been coincidence, because after what she'd been through that would be too cruel.
But if not coincidence…what?
Have I had nightmares about falling? she wondered, and her feet reached the foot of the ladder. Rats carrying plague? But there were no vermin that she could see down here. My friends, killing me? She looked around at the others, and she suddenly wanted to fold up and cry out at the betrayal her imagination was capable of.
“Nearly there, everyone!” she said, amazing even herself with her upbeat voice. “We've been waiting for so long, and now we're almost there!”
Smiles were exchanged, and they went on their way.
To begin with, their path was simple. After descending the concrete steps they found themselves in a long tunnel that ran the length of the sewage treatment works, with shorter tunnels projecting off at right angles. The smell was subtle and subdued—much to Emily's obvious relief—and just before they reached the end, Rosemary opened a metal hatch in the wall. They took it in turns, squeezing through, shining their torches on the opening and into the tunnel revealed beyond. This one had a low ceiling that meant they all had to crouch down, and cockroaches scuttled away from their torch light.
This tunnel ended with a blank wall, but an opening had been smashed through, revealing an uneven, sloping route that led deeper. They followed Rosemary, emerging into a large, brick-lined chamber that seemed much older that the treatment plant built just beside it. It was the converging point of four large sewage pipes. This place did stink, even though none of the pipes seemed to be carrying very much. One of them trickled a small, steady flow of dirty water into the chamber, but the other three appeared dry.
“Oh, that's pleasant,” Sparky said. “Reminds me of Lucy-Anne's armpits.”
Lucy-Anne did not reply. Sparky looked at her and she raised an eyebrow, and that was enough to make him smile.
“Rats everywhere,” Jenna said. They did not seem to bother her, but Emily remained close to Jack, even while she trained her torch around the walls and filmed what it revealed.
“You'll see a lot more,” Rosemary. “But there's always a balance. Lots of wild cats in London now, and they keep the rat population down.”
She headed off, confidently aiming for one of the large sewage pipes.
“We walk through there?” Lucy-Anne asked. She hated this; she had never been afraid before. She could not prevent herself from shaking, and she'd seen the way Jack had been looking at her: concerned and confused.
“Not for long.”
The pipe swept this way and that, branching left and right, but Rosemary did not hesitate at all. She took one branch that narrowed considerably, but they were happier to bend almost double, accepting the burning pain in their knees and back, rather than crawl. There was dried stuff here, sewage and dead rats and other things they could not so easily identify.