A couple of minutes later, as I’m shuffling through the tunnels, someone rushes up behind me. I stop and wait, staring ahead at nothing, hoping it’s a furious soldier or mutant come to cut me down.
No such luck.
“You really screwed us all back there,” Rage chuckles.
“What do you want?” I ask wearily.
“Thought I’d tag along,” he says cheerfully. “The war room’s like a funeral parlor. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take that lot to recover. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll just stand around moping until they drop.”
I turn slowly. There are no lights in this stretch of corridor, but I can make out Rage by the glow from Holy Moly’s eyes, which switched to red when it sensed a possible threat. “You seem to be taking this in stride,” I note archly.
Rage shrugs. “Nothing I can do about it now. If I’d known what you were up to, I’d have stopped you, but it’s too late, so I might as well go with the flow.” He hesitates. “In fact, I’m not sure I would have stopped you, even if I could.”
“Yeah, right,” I snort.
“I’m serious,” he says. “This is a rotten world. I used to think that didn’t bother me. I dealt with it by being rotten myself. But the doc made me believe that we could be more than scum. I let myself hope. When I realized I’d been an idiot, that the world was as viciously ridiculous as I’d always thought, it hurt. I tried behaving the way I did before. Hell, I tried to be even nastier. But I don’t know if I could have gone on that way. It’s hard to revel in the dark when you’ve caught a glimpse of the light.”
I cock my head curiously. “Imminent death has brought out the poet in you.”
Rage laughs. “Yeah. Isn’t that a tragic joke?”
I turn and limp on through the darkness, Rage just behind. We don’t say anything else as we creep through the tunnels, avoiding the battle between the soldiers, mutants and zombies that is still raging in the cavern. Holy Moly senses my glum mood and is silent too.
I’m not sure how long we wind through the subterranean corridors, but eventually we hit railway tracks and make our way to the Tube station at Tower Hill, farther west than I imagined. We join the reviveds who are thronging towards the surface. It must be night up top. They’re setting off in search of prey, no idea that last call is just a couple of weeks away.
Emerging out of the gloom, we cross the road and sit looking down on the famous old Tower of London. I think about the Beefeater who was guarding the entrance the last time I went in. I smile as I wonder if he’s still at his post. Even if he is, he won’t be manning it now—he’ll have set off on the prowl with the rest of his kind, in search of brains. But, if I’m still here in the morning, I’ll have a look before I move on. For old times’ sake.
“I wonder what Dr. Oystein and the others are doing down there now?” Rage muses aloud. “They might turn on each other and finish off the job, rather than wait for the virus to take them. I bet the doc’s gone loopy. Maybe he’s bashed his head open on the floor, all that hard work and planning undone in a couple of seconds by a brutish, ignorant girl. No offense intended.”
“Get stuffed,” I sniff.
Rage laughs and I smile. I don’t mind his teasing. In a way it’s reassuring. It’s nice to know that at least some things haven’t changed.
Rage pretends to yawn. Then he hops to his feet and punches the air a few times, like a boxer warming up. “Right,” he says brightly. “I’m off.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Don’t know. I’ll see where the night leads me. Going to squeeze in a few adventures before the end, live the high life as much as I can. This could be an interesting fortnight.”
“Want me to come with you?”
“Hardly,” he growls. “I don’t want to be seen with the girl who ended life on Earth as we know it. What would that do for my reputation?”
“Drop dead,” I snap.
“Thanks to your little trick with the vial, that’s the one thing you can be sure of,” he grimaces.
And then, without a word of good-bye or a wave, he sets off, whistling jauntily, to round a corner and slip out of sight, never to be seen or heard from again.