The engine roared into life. The man floored the accelerator, yanking the wheel and spinning us round to face the camp. Lights had sprung up all around it, shining into the sky. If it’d had walls, it would have looked like a football stadium.
There was a crackle on the dashboard and I looked down. It was some kind of radio, like in police cars. A voice shouted through the bursts of static.
“Quinn, you there?”
“Yeah,” the man said. “I’m here.”
“It’s started earlier than before. It’s coming faster too.”
“I know,” Quinn muttered, dodging the blackened husk of a fallen tree. “Just get the perimeter up.” His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. He licked his lips, and gripped the steering wheel harder as the truck sped forward.
I twisted in my seat to get a better view. Iris was slumped in the back, unconscious. Behind us red dust clouds billowed up, only to be swallowed by the storm. The Darkness lashed out, chittering madly, but every time it got close to the rear lights it sizzled and pulled back.
I could hear sirens now, just like the ones in war films, the ones that wailed high and low and high and low. Outside the window, the Darkness overtook us, fingers of rippling black slamming against the glass. Fear stabbed through the fog in my head. I gripped the seat so hard my knuckles turned white, and willed the truck to go faster.
Quinn flicked on to full beam, and in front of us the Darkness peeled away.
I looked down at my rags again. The elbows were torn, the knees mud stained. But a few minutes ago, I was in my school uniform leaving the house. This wasn’t my world . . . it was like I was trapped inside a horror movie. I didn’t understand it—any of it—and the more I thought about it, the more light-headed I felt.
“How can this be happening?” I whispered, more to myself than anything.
Quinn glanced at me sideways.
“You’re sure it didn’t touch you?” he said.
How could I tell? It was just a storm cloud, wasn’t it? And yet—
It was so much more.
“I don’t think so,” I said finally.
We were approaching the center of a city now. Light flooded out from cracks in the abandoned buildings and holes in the broken roofs. Every street lamp was on too. All along the road people were manning huge floodlights, hooked up to even bigger generators, which glowed green and thrummed with life. They all shone up, into the sky, creating a huge dome of piercing white light. And we were heading straight for it.
A blood-chilling shriek split the gloom as the Darkness lashed out one last time. But the truck was too fast. We pulled away, getting closer and closer to the light—
And then we burst through the protective dome, skidding along the narrow streets.
As we shot through the gap between two broken-down buildings, I realized . . . this place, whatever it was, was just like the Cambridge city center. Well, not just like it, because Cambridge was alive and green and filled with people, and its buildings were so pristine that you could buy them on postcards. I didn’t think these buildings would ever be on postcards. None of them were whole. Almost all of them had been reduced to piles of broken brick and rubble. Every now and then we passed a wall that still resembled a shopfront, but the windows were smashed and the roof above them was caved in. Out of all of the holes shone dazzling light, adding more strength to the barrier.
The storm slammed into the light, but it couldn’t follow us, it couldn’t break through. There was a hiss and a crackle as the jet-black clouds rippled over us. Inside the dome, it was as clear as day, but above us the Darkness turned the sky into never-ending night.
I’d been gripping the seat so hard my knuckles ached, but now I let go and flexed them, working out the pain. My hands were shaking, so I sat on them to cover it up. My rags were drenched in sweat.
I didn’t dare let my guard down. We may have escaped the storm, but we were hardly safe.
Quinn slowed the truck down near an open space, which, I realized now, would have been the market square in the real Cambridge. I stared wide-eyed at the buildings around us, all of them pumping out great beams of light, the exact opposite of those stories you heard about the war. In wartime, families had to turn off their lights so they couldn’t be spotted by enemy planes flying overhead. These houses wanted to be seen now. They wanted to be big and bright.
Around the market, some shops had been patched up and repaired. Cloth canopies stretched out from crumbling walls, with stalls spread out underneath them. In the middle of the square was a large table with a steaming pot on top. All around it, other tables were loaded with books and CDs, and the kind of stuff you’d get at a charity shop.
“You found some gas,” Quinn said, and before I could tell him that it wasn’t me, it was Iris, he went on, “That’s good. That’s really good. I’ll take it to the refilling station. You two need to get to Cleansing.”
I nodded, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. Cleansing? I didn’t want to go anywhere but home. This place . . . The blackened buildings, the lifeless earth. It made my skin itch. I pinched myself, trying to wake up.
Nothing.
Just a sharp pain and a red mark on my skin.
I didn’t know you could feel pain in dreams . . .
The truck pulled up and Quinn leapt out. Iris stirred as he carried her out and helped her to stand. She was alive, at least. She hadn’t—
She hadn’t died. That was what I was going to say. But the thought felt strange. Could a storm really do that? Could it kill? Where had I got that idea from? Then I thought back to the way it screeched, the way it moved, and suddenly it didn’t feel so stupid.
“W-what . . .” Iris stammered.
“Don’t worry,” Quinn said. “You’re safe. You both are.”
I hesitated, then slid out of the truck into the buzz and hum of the electric light and the droning wail of the siren. It was still blaring now, even though the Darkness was trapped outside the barrier. I watched as the storm clouds billowed, blacker than midnight, hanging over the camp like the shadow of some giant spaceship.
Those memories . . .
Mum in the hospital, crying in Dad’s arms.
Somehow the storm had dragged them back up.
I needed to get away, to try to find a way to wake myself up. Pinching myself obviously wasn’t going to do it, but maybe something else would.
A wave of nausea flooded through me just as another man came rushing up to us from the square, muttering in a low voice to Quinn. I squinted at him, eyes streaming. I thought I recognized his voice from the radio in Quinn’s truck.
“Get these two to Cleansing,” Quinn said. “Then check the lights. Make sure we’re secure. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
My legs buckled. I clutched my stomach, trying to steady it. I staggered. The last thing I saw was the concern in Quinn’s eyes as the ground reared up and smacked me in the face.