Adrift 2: Sundown (18 page)

The London Eye was on its final rotation of the day. The vast Ferris wheel built at the turn of the century offered a magnificent, panoramic view of London from its slow-moving passenger pods, but to Hideo Kagome, the view had already been boring for at least twenty minutes.

Hideo’s parents still seemed enthralled, though that didn’t mean a great deal; Hideo thought they were enthralled by pretty much
everything
in London. It was, after all, the vacation the Kagome family had been waiting to take for several years, combining a visit to Hideo’s older, UK-based brother Kasamo, with an opportunity to take in some of the most famous tourist spots in the world.

And it was all so
boring
.

Kasamo had barely been able to get any time off work, and so only saw them in the evenings when he was tired, and London? London was dusty old buildings and people with angry faces. Places where someone supposedly important had lived or died, like,
hundreds
of years earlier. Museums that took all day to trample around. Who cared?

At least the Eye had been an exciting prospect, like a giant fairground ride. It had even looked cool from a distance, sitting right on the south bank of the Thames, soaring high above the nearby buildings, all lit up like Christmas as dusk began to settle over the city.

But it was
so
slow. The egg-shaped pods, each large enough to hold twenty-five people—and which you couldn’t even lean out of—sealed up for the duration of the ride, and that was it for the next forty minutes: crawling up into the sky inch by boring inch until the city was laid out below…and then crawling back down. Hideo’s time would have been far better spent on his
PS4
, no doubt about that.

At least it was nearly over. He pressed his face to the curved glass, trying to look straight down. The pod was, he guessed, still at least a hundred feet above the ground. Far below, the queuing area was a functional square of concrete, spattered with token splashes of greenery. It was almost empty, most of the tourists having moved on.

Suddenly, his attention was taken by movement to his right. Something on the water. He glanced toward it, expecting to see yet another slow-moving riverboat, and frowned.

Nothing there.

He squinted into the last rays of the sunset, certain that he had seen
something
out there.

And movement erupted directly below him.

Hideo’s mouth dropped open, his boredom forgotten.

So fast
.

The thing—a dark shape that he could not even begin to identify—leapt from the water up onto the path that ran alongside the river with ease, landing with a fluid motion like an uncoiling snake. It took a couple of loping strides forward and then launched itself onto all-fours, galloping like a cat toward a small knot of people sitting outside a coffee shop which overlooked the river.

It barrelled into them at full speed, oblivious to their fearful screams…

…scattering tables and chairs like matchsticks…

…and began to tear them apart.

Hideo’s eyes widened painfully as he saw an enormous splatter of blood—dark in the failing light—arcing across the pale concrete below. And then another. It looked like somebody had been ripped in two at the waist, the obscene
pieces
that they became tossed aside like garbage.

He screamed then, his mouth making the noise all by itself, and he stumbled backwards, away from the window, colliding with his stunned mother and sending her crashing to the floor.

He didn’t even hear his father yelling at him as he helped her back to her feet. For a moment, all Hideo could hear was the noise of that distant splatter; inaudible and deafening at the same time. His eyes glazed over.

Somewhere below, a loud thump jolted him back to the present.

The thump became a shatter.

Glass breaking
, Hideo thought in horror, and he scrambled to press his face to the window once more. The pod was closer to ground level now, ninety feet or less, and suddenly the giant fucking wheel was moving far too
fast
.

It’s gonna deliver us right to it.

He searched, panicked, for some sign of the terrible creature, but all he saw was the bodies it had left behind. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, it had already moved away from the Eye. Jumped back into the river, perhaps. Or it was in the pod at the bottom of the giant wheel, tearing the passengers to pieces…

Hideo gagged as he stared at the remains of the group of people who’d been enjoying their last ever cup of coffee, and began to offer silent thanks that he hadn’t been down there when the monster had leapt out of the Thames.

His relief withered and died as the creature erupted from one of the pods directly below his, swinging easily on the frame of the Ferris wheel with long, gangling limbs, as comfortable climbing up the steel lattice of the structure as a primate.

Oh, no
, Hideo thought.
Oh, no, please don’t—

With a screech, the creature swung up to the next pod, smashing the thick glass with a single blow and leaping inside, out of sight once more.

Distant, muted screaming.

Hideo turned to face his mother and father, and saw his terror reflected in their eyes. They, too, had seen it. He wasn’t going crazy; the monster wasn’t a product of his imagination. It wasn’t what his mother would smile and label
teenage hormones running amok.

It was real.

They were all about to die.

He opened his mouth to say something, though he wasn’t sure what that might be.
My final words
, he thought numbly. How could a sullen fourteen-year-old boy possibly conjure up the right ones?

“Mother,” he began to say, and the window behind him imploded.

The words, whatever they might have been, remained unsaid; there was just no room for them as the air thickened with terror. Suddenly, in the slow-moving pod, there was only enough room for screaming.

And dying.

*

Harold Birch patted at the air for a moment before his fingers landed on the cool, rough wood.

He gripped the bench and levered himself down onto it with a sigh, setting his stick against his right leg.

With his left hand, he reached out and ruffled the back of Brody’s neck.

“Good boy. Take a break, Bro.”

A moment later, Harold heard the soft
whump
as the dog’s generous backside hit the ground.

Harold breathed in deeply, listening to the sounds of Hyde Park. He used to love taking Brody to walk there, and each time they visited, Harold would try to navigate to the very centre of the vast green expanse, judging that he was close to it when the sounds of the city—the background pollution that never truly dispersed—was at its quietest.

The middle of Hyde Park was the only place in central London, in Harold’s opinion, where you could go and
almost
forget that you were in the city at all.

Increasingly, though, the park hosted noisy events; on most nights it seemed that there was some band or other performing there now. Even at times when the park should have been quiet, the relentless noise of London invaded. Kids playing godawful music through tinny speakers, or people chattering loudly—and constantly—on their mobile phones. The various pings, whistles and buzzes of information hitting the electronic devices the whole world now carried everywhere. Everything so damn
connected
. No way to escape any of it and just
be.

Tonight, there was a rock band playing, and so Harold didn’t make for the centre of the park. He skirted the edge of it for a while, just long enough to give Brody some exercise, and rested a while before heading back home. He could hear the music in the distance, the excitable murmur of the crowd.

The music itself was muddy and indistinct: it didn’t travel well across the park; becoming little more than a dirge at distance. Harold didn’t recognise the tune, though that didn’t surprise him. Despite the winter chill in the air, it was still early, just late afternoon, and the stage would be home to a warm-up act at this time of the day. The crowds would gather in greater numbers for the main act in two or three hours. He probably wouldn’t have recognised their music, either.

His ears were well-tuned, though: far closer, he heard the soft swishing of bicycles passing; there were always the fitness freaks lapping the park. Groups of joggers and cyclists, mostly. Occasionally, the heavier clatter of skateboards or rollerblades. The edge of the park was constantly shifting; home to those people for whom stillness and silence were reasons for discomfort.

The benches were set a way back from the wide path, and in the summer they bathed in the scent of flowers. During the warm months, the one that he usually sat on would be surrounded by the hum of insects, and Harold liked listening to their quiet little symphony being played out. Yet the park was so much busier in the summer, so much
noisier
.

In the distance, the crowd erupted in a loud scream, and Harold blinked into the unending darkness, surprised. The main act must have taken to the stage already.

At his left foot, Brody whined, and Harold tilted his head.

“What’s up, Bro?”

The dog whined again; louder.

Harold frowned. Brody’s communication skills were a minor miracle, but this was a noise that Harold hadn’t ever heard the dog make before. A frantic, fearful noise, like Brody had seen something that terrified him.

Harold listened intently.

The bicycles had passed thirty seconds earlier, and he had heard nothing in his immediate vicinity since. As best he could tell, he and Brody were alone.

He reached out to pat Brody, and paused.

In the distance, the screaming intensified, but it sounded odd to Harold now, different in a way he couldn’t place immediately. It took him a moment to figure it out.

The crowd was still screaming.

But the music had stopped.

Brody whined again, once, and then took off.

Harold had been holding Brody’s leash in slack fingers—an unnecessary gesture since the dog was as obedient and even-tempered as a mutt could get—and he was too slow to react when he felt the cold leather slipping across his palm. By the time he closed his fist, the leash was gone.

And he heard Brody sprinting away.

“Brody!”

Harold stood uncertainly, stricken by a sudden anxiety. His stick clattered to the ground. Brody didn’t slow at his call. If anything, it sounded like the dog was picking up pace.

And in the distance, the screaming seemed to be getting louder.

No
, Harold realised.
Getting
closer.

Before the patter of Brody’s fast-receding paws had faded, Harold heard another sound, like rippling thunder.

Footsteps
, he realised, and felt a shard of icy fear lance his heart.
Lots of people, all running frantically. All screaming, heading straight for me.

He crouched and patted the ground until he located his stick. Something bad was happening in the park, something that Harold couldn’t even begin to understand. Without his sight, he relied heavily on his hearing, but right now his ears were filling with a dreadful, incomprehensible cacophony.

Someone rocketed past him.

Screaming the whole way.

Harold turned away from the noise of approaching footsteps, following the direction Brody had taken.

And suddenly, the air was knocked from his chest as someone barrelled into him at full pace. Harold went down hard, slamming a shoulder painfully into the bench he had sat on peacefully only moments earlier. Whoever had knocked him down didn’t stay to see if he was all right; they didn’t even
speak
. Harold listened in astonishment as they clambered to their feet with a whimper and took off again.

And then a wave of chaos broke around him.

Over him.

Feet running everywhere, trampling him, knocking him back down when he tried to get up. A million glancing blows that landed on his limbs as a tide of people broke around him. Screaming, all of them; wordless shrieks that sounded like panicked, primal terror.

Harold tried to get up one final time, and when a foot caught him on the side of the face, he gave up the struggle and curled up in a ball, hands held protectively around his head, and prayed for the madness to stop.

Somewhere beneath the thundering of feet and the piercing yells of fear, Harold heard another noise. Something that sounded like thick paper ripping. A sound that he thought was like branches being snapped, but slightly muffled somehow.

Bones
, he thought, and his terror ratcheted up a notch.
That’s the sound of bones breaking. And the ripping…it must be…