“They’re sending out squads,” Jones whispered.
In some areas the streets were patrolled by nervous-looking locals swinging makeshift weapons and wearing cobbled-together armor. Most UnLondoners knew a fight was coming, but didn’t yet know what the sides were, let alone which one they were on.
“Don’t forget the Concern, and those they pay,” the book said. “There are plenty who’ll line up with the Smog, when it comes to it.”
Order was breaking down: once, in the distance, the travelers saw the looming heads of giraffes in the loonlight, far from their usual hunting grounds. Once they thought they saw the distinctive helmets of London police, and hid until the officers, if there were any, went by.
“Was it them?” said Deeba. “The same ones? Did they get out?” But no one had seen them clearly: everyone was on edge. “Let’s just get going.”
Hemi led them to a moil house, with eccentric walls of variegated trash.
“How do you know this is safe?” Obaday said.
“Better avoid the obvious emptish houses now,” Hemi said. “We don’t want just anyone walking in on us. But that?” He indicated a set of scratches by the front step. To Deeba they looked random. “It’s a sign from a local…guild. Safe house. There’ll be a bit of food; it won’t be watched.”
“What guild?” said Obaday.
“Guild of extreme shoppers,” said Deeba, and Hemi laughed. He strained against the door, oozed out of his clothes and through the entrance itself, opened it from within, and held out his hand for his outfit, to get dressed again before he’d let them in.
Inside, Deeba leaned her head against the dark glass of an oven door, part of the moil wall. She rested her hands on broken toasters embedded in see-through mortar.
“This is a thieves’ hideout!” the book gasped. Obaday looked up, startled. He nodded in horrified realization, opened his mouth to say something— then met Hemi’s eye. The half-ghost raised an eyebrow.
“Oh…” said Obaday to the book eventually. “Hush up.”
The house on Unshrink Street was opposite an official newswall, showing headlines like ALL GOING WELL! BE READY TO RETREAT FROM ATTACKED AREAS! and instructions such as REPORT ANY UNUSUAL ACTIVITY OR YOUNG VISITING LONDONERS TO THE PROPHESEERS! THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY!
Like several they had seen, this one was scrawled over with counter-graffiti, from more than one group. E = A, someone had sprayed. It had been crossed out vigorously, and next to it written PROPHS R SUCKY SELLOUTS! Deeba read. On one patch was written CHOSEN ONE ROOLZ!
“Look at that,” sighed Deeba, peeking out at it from under a curtain. The sky was not quite light, and airborne buses were trawling with searchlights. “Zanna’s still getting all the credit.”
Deeba woke to mutterings, and sat up in sudden shock in a newly crowded room. The travelers were no longer alone.
They’d been joined by a small group of locals, as varied and bizarre as most collections of UnLondoners, talking quietly to Hemi and the others, while Skool kept an eye on the door. They greeted Deeba with great, though hushed, excitement.
“It’s wonderful to meet you,” said a large woman wearing a dress made of insects’ wings “May I see the UnGun? Of course if it’s inconvenient…”
“You helped my sister up by the abbey,” said a man shorter than Deeba but more muscular than Jones. “I wanted to say thank you.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with the Propheseers,” said a third person, who was tall and wore thick glasses and whose sex Deeba couldn’t tell. “’Course, people like us’ve never seen eye-to-eye with them entirely, but I always understood them before. But now their instructions make no sense.”
“Who are these people?” Deeba hissed to her companions. “Why are they here?”
“Rumors travel faster than we do,” Hemi said.
“How?” said Deeba. “I don’t want nothing traveling faster than us.”
“There was already rumors,” Hemi said. “People must’ve been worried for a while. Now there’s something they can do about it. The first people here are going to be those…extreme shoppers, or people who know them, but I bet you word’s spreading.”
“We have to get rid of them,” Deeba muttered.
“Why?” Jones said. Deeba stared at him.
“What? What are you…? If they can find us, the Propheseers will, too! We have to travel fast, and quiet.”
“People know you’re on the move,” Jones said. “A few— at first just people with connections, like this lot— might find you. There’ll be more. There might be a few you can’t trust, but not all.”
“Don’t panic, Deeb,” Hemi said. He held her shoulders and looked at her steadily. “Don’t you get it?” he said. “You knew the war was coming. This lot are your allies. More than that.
“They’re your troops.”
A slow calm spread through Deeba. She looked again at the newcomers. They might well be outlaws. Several of them would have attracted long glances in London, and at least two would have brought the streets to a standstill and paranormal investigators to the scene.
Here they were just locals, and they were there to join her. None, she realized, carried an unbrella.
She smiled cautiously at Hemi, and he smiled back at her.
“Alright everyone,” she said. The room went silent. In a moment of panic, her words dried in her throat. They’re waiting! she thought.
The anxiety only lasted a second. She coughed and smiled.
“Thanks for coming. Thanks for joining. Let me tell you what’s going on.”
Deeba’s rather convoluted explanation was helpfully intercepted and steered by Obaday and the book, and interrupted by expostulations of rage and disgust from the newcomers. Jones drew a crude map on the floor. There were at least two obvious routes to Unstible’s factory, and they were taking neither of them.
“Rendezvous is here,” said Jones. He didn’t say which way they were ultimately going.
“And listen,” said Deeba. “From now on, wherever you go, or come with us or not…tell people. Not to trust unbrellas. Find other ways to fight. And if the Smog comes for an area, do fight. Don’t just give up like the Propheseers say.”
When they left the house, Deeba saw that the altering graffiti had itself been altered. In front of CHOSEN ONE ROOLZ! someone had added UN-.
“Look at that,” she said, delighted. “It’s accurate now.”
Hemi was blushing.
That night there were more fires, and Propheseer vessels above, and sounds of skirmishes. There was deeper darkness against the black sky: Smog on malevolent missions. The travelers stopped and started, hiding and scurrying, many times.
Twice, those disembodied car headlights swept mindlessly around the travelers as they went. NOT YET GOT UNBRELLA?? the official graffiti said. TOMORROW—BROKKENBROLL & UNSTIBLE TO HAND OUT LAST BATCH!!! DEFEND YOURSELF AGAINST THE SMOG!
Deeba heard the far-off grunting of smoglodytes, and the brutal pattering of coal nuggets and metal bullets.
“Big attacks tonight,” she said. “They’re going to terrify everyone, so the last people’ll get unbrellas.”
“Why doesn’t he send unbrellas after you?” Hemi whispered. “He could fill the streets with them.”