The Black Parade

Excerpt

The Black Parade
Ilana Lindsey © 2026
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

Lysander

Lysander saw his death in the distance, waiting for him like a dull-eyed lizard with sharp grey teeth. He had a week left. Maybe two. He’d survive the Dust, but once Mum died, the loneliness would kill him even before his food and water ran out.

The chemist’s door gaped open, revealing its gloom-drenched interior. A song about the end of the world drummed in his head as he crept inside; its lyrics listed historical events escalating like a brewing explosion. In reality, the end of the world had been much more whimper than bang. That’s how he’d go out too: with a limp, ethereal fade, rather than anything more dramatic.

He wouldn’t think about that right now. He’d think about it tomorrow. The chemist’s shelves held little more than snide shadows, but there had to be something left, even if it only soothed her pain for an hour or two. An assortment of pills speckled the floor—broken, leaking capsules and tablets crushed into powder. The air stank of rot, perfume, and spilled medicine. He stepped over an overturned leaflet carousel and spotted a box of ibuprofen embedded in a puddle of cough syrup. The cardboard ripped as he plucked it from the sticky linoleum. Empty. The looters had taken everything useful and destroyed the rest. He pressed his fists to his temples and waited for the anxiety to subside.

Someone had wrenched a pair of hair tongs in half and tossed them on the shards of a ceramic soap dish. The wilful destruction agitated him, which was ridiculous, because what did it matter at this point? No one would have used the broken things. It was the symbolic waste of it. That was what upset him. There was no need to make things even uglier than they already were.

He kept searching: bath salts, condoms, nicotine gum. He knocked a bottle of diet pills off the shelf and kicked it across the floor.

The Dust consumed more of Mum every day. She’d been sick in the night and hadn’t eaten anything that morning. Her skin too pale and the bones of her wrists too sharp, she’d leaned trembling against the kitchen table. She’d smiled and teased him as usual, but he’d sensed the dread beneath her performance. They both knew she was dying.

Footsteps thumped the pavement outside. Lysander froze.

A middle-aged man in wrinkled trousers and a dirty Oxford shirt stepped through the doorway. He spotted Lysander and halted, sizing him up.

Lysander returned the favour, wrinkling his nose at the stranger’s body odour. Oxford looked a conventional sort, with cropped hair and a soft, fleshy face. He might have been a bank manager or estate agent. He appeared harmless, but you never knew.

Lysander crossed his arms. “There’s nothing here.”

“You sure?” The man wiped sweat off his forehead. “Mary…my missus. She’s in a bad way.”

Oxford wasn’t doing too well either, from the look of him. His voice rasped, and the rash covered his arms from wrist to elbow. Lysander fought off nausea. When had he last met anyone who wasn’t dying?

“I’m here for my mum,” he said, and backed up as the man strode forwards. Lysander was taller, but Oxford had more bulk. Best to leave. He turned to do so and spotted the corner of a box poking from beneath a shelf. Blue cardboard. Paracetamol.

Lysander tried to hide the rush of excitement. He peeked at Oxford to see if he’d succeeded and saw the man’s face brighten with greed.

Lysander was closer. He dived. Haste made him clumsy, and the box glanced off his fingertips. As he scrambled for it, Oxford grabbed his shoulders and hauled him back. Lysander didn’t want to fight. He jerked free and shoved the man away. Eyes wild, Oxford threw him against the wall. Vitamin bottles fell, bouncing and rattling.

The box skittered to the centre of the aisle. They both lunged at once and struggled, smashing into shelves, a wrangle of bared teeth and thrashing limbs. The man punched him, and as Lysander cried out and tried to cover his face, Oxford slid forward, and that was it.

Panting, the man lumbered to his feet. He squeezed the box of paracetamol, gripping it tight. Sweat beaded his hairline.

Lysander gaped at him. He touched his stinging jaw.

“S-sorry,” said the man. “I’m sorry. Mary. She needs it.”

“My mum needs it too.” Lysander stood up on shaky legs. “She’s all I have.” He felt dizzy.

“You can look after yourself. You’re old enough.” The man peered, taking in Lysander’s bare arms, his face. “You’re not even sick.”

“I was issued an antidote.”

“Were you, now?” said Oxford, curling his lip. “Posh little prick.”

“I suppose I should have volunteered to die along with everyone else.” Lysander tightened his hands into fists. “Would that help? If I promised to kill myself?”

“Think it’s funny, do you?”

“No.” It was a mistake to antagonise him. “I don’t think it’s at all funny.” Maybe he could convince him to share. He grabbed a shelf to keep his balance. “I was fortunate. I got an antidote. My mum didn’t, and she’s as ill as you are.” Cold seeped through his limbs as he pictured her alone in their house. “She’s all I have,” he repeated.

The man didn’t respond. Lysander waited, but Oxford just stared, lips pressed together, radiating hate and pity.

Something scuffled in the corner, and they both jumped. A tiny, grey mouse rooted through the rubbish, nibbling crumbs left in a cereal bar wrapper. The end of the world meant nothing to it. Lucky thing. It crawled to the centre of the aisle and sniffed the floor. The spilled medication would kill it if the mouse licked it up. Lysander blinked until his eyes stopped filling. He stomped his foot, and the mouse darted away.

Oxford cringed and rubbed his temple, examining the paracetamol box. “For fuck’s sake.” With a shake of his head, he said, “Look. I heard a rumour, but it’s probably rubbish.”

“A rumour?”

He nodded. “There’s this bloke at St Thomas’. They’re saying he’s got a cure.”

“That’s a lie.”

He had to get that paracetamol. If he brought Mum’s fever down, she might eat something. He angled his body to block the man’s view and reached back. There wasn’t any choice. He wrapped his fingers around a plastic spray bottle.

“Could well be,” said Oxford. “I can’t… Mary’s too sick for me to leave her on her own, so I can’t go chasing after what’s likely nothing. But you could go.”

“Where did you hear this?”

“Bloke I passed on the road the other day. Whole family with him. Seemed healthy.” He coughed. His eyes were red around the edges. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.” No. He should have lied and said he was younger; it might have drawn out some sympathy.

“It’s just you and your mum?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m not taking the piss. If you can leave her for a few hours, check out St Thomas’.”

Lysander thrust out his arm and yanked the bottle’s trigger. Oxford staggered and yelled as surface cleaner showered his face. As he raised his hands, Lysander snatched the paracetamol.

“No!” The man lurched forward, his eyes half-closed, flailing at the air.

Heart pounding, Lysander retreated. The box’s corners dug into his palm. He could taste cleaning fluid on the roof of his mouth. His foot landed on a vitamin bottle, and he stumbled.

Oxford slumped to his knees—a big, soft man in filthy clothes. His shoulders heaved as he sobbed.

Stinging with shame, Lysander shoved past him.

The man reached out. “Stop. For God’s sake. Please.”

Lysander halted in the doorway, clenching his jaw—it pulsed hot where Oxford had hit him. With numb fingers, he fumbled the box open and pulled out one of the two blister packs. He threw it into the shop and ran.

*

Leaves blotted the skylight above their sitting room, dappling the white carpet with patches of shadow. Lysander nibbled his thumb nail as he waited for Mum to respond. The familiarity of it all—the Eichholtz sofa, Mum’s paintings on the walls, the well-thumbed books filling the white ash shelving—provided no comfort. They looked wrong. Warped and tilted. Mum looked wrong, too, even paler than yesterday, her posture stiff and shaky.

“How long will you be gone this time?” she asked. Her usually deft fingers slipped as she tried to fasten the buttons at the cuffs of her blouse, a burnt-orange Gucci she hadn’t worn in years.

She’d chosen it for the sleeves. She’d worn long sleeves all week, hiding her arms from Lysander. Which meant the rash must have spread.

“Not—” He took a breath and started again. “Not too long. It’s only an hour’s walk.” At least her face was clear. There might still be time if the man in the chemist hadn’t been lying.

Mum cupped his cheek. He leaned into the touch. Her fingers still smelled of oil paint. “It seems a bit mad though,” she said. “Don’t you think, Puffin?”

Puffin. He’d fallen in love with the birds during a holiday in Brittany. She’d laughed when he begged her to take one home, but he’d heard her ask the tour guide if they could be kept as pets. He’d been five years old. She could call him Puffin. He didn’t care. He’d only really minded when she used the nickname in front of other people. That wasn’t a problem anymore.

He feigned composure. “I don’t know. Maybe. It could be real. We have to at least find out.”

“You’ll go even if I ask you not to.” She ran her hands down his arms.

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Wilful brat.”

“I get that from you,” he said, smiling back. Her teasing made him ache. “And I can take care of myself.” If he said it out loud, maybe it would be true. “I’m more worried about leaving you on your own. Did you take the paracetamol?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” She lowered herself onto the sofa and curled up. Her hair spilled over her arms and onto the white leather.

She reminded him of a Frederic Leighton painting, warm and golden. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to leave her, not for an hour, not for a second. Who knew how many seconds they had left? He was wasting them with no assurance it would pay off. This was mad. He was a gullible idiot; the man in the chemist was probably luring him into a trap. If Lysander went to the hospital, he could end up as a human sacrifice—there’d been reports of such things on the news before the electricity went out. Or he’d be dinner for cannibals. Or both.

Lysander waited until he could be sure his voice wouldn’t quiver. “I’ll be off, then.” He slid on his rucksack. She would be okay. She’d be okay until he returned.

By the time he reached their front door, he’d decided that the whole thing was stupid, and he’d stay home with Mum instead of putting himself in danger again for nothing.

“Come back to me, Puffin,” she called.

If there was a chance though. Even the slightest chance he could save her.

“I will,” he said. “I promise.”

He forced himself to stop dithering and walked out the door.

*

Lysander wouldn’t kill himself. He took a moment to catch his breath and squint against the sunshine glittering off the shattered glass doors of St Thomas’ Hospital. Even if the rumour wasn’t true—if there was no man with a miracle cure—he would not resort to suicide. He wouldn’t need to. If Mum died, he’d simply evaporate. He’d disintegrate in despair.

Holding his arms out for balance, Lysander raised one pulsing foot to rotate his ankle, then the other. His heels would be bloody with blisters when he removed his Docs. He licked his lips and used the dregs of his courage to close his eyes and listen. He heard nothing but the derelict silence.

He pulled the knife out of a side pocket on his rucksack. It had come in handy when the gang had tried to mug him. He’d handed over his stale water biscuits and the tin of tuna—they’d looked quite hungry—then brandished Mum’s Damascus steel eight-inch before they got any nastier ideas. It had done the trick, and they’d scurried away. They were all Dust poisoned: clammy faces and the rash constellating over their forearms. Two had pink, swollen cheeks and eyes like animals harnessed into a slaughtering machine.

There was nothing warm or friendly about the black-lettered welcome sign above the entrance to the hospital. Onwards, regardless. Fingers tight around the knife handle, he passed an ugly sculpture—two twisted, metallic figures stretched to their limits to grasp each other’s hands—and tiptoed through the debris. Hospitals were unpleasant places at the best of times; Lysander tried very hard to forget his own visits. This dark, empty entrance lobby, however, was nightmarish. It reminded him of the macabre video games Takahashi and Humphreys from Westminster School had been obsessed with.

“You’re as squeamish as they come, aren’t you, Chadwick?” Humphreys had sneered.

“Don’t give him shit,” said Takahashi. “He’s delicate.”

He and Humphreys had exchanged their what-a-queer look. Maybe they were dead. No, Humphreys would have been issued an antidote. Takahashi… Lysander didn’t know what status the government had assigned the wealthy Japanese.

The rubber soles of his boots squeaked against the linoleum floor. Posters lined the walls, instructing people to gather at the Stamford Bridge treatment site. There’d also been treatment sites at Wembley, Twickenham, and the Olympic Park. Only there hadn’t been a treatment. Lysander didn’t like to imagine what had happened to anyone who’d done as the posters bade or why the government had advertised them in the first place.

The air hung thick with the stench of rotting food, and there, on the right of the hospital corridor, he found an M&S concession, a stinking beacon of life. Maybe he’d get lucky and there’d be something edible left. People had avoided hospitals once it became clear they were death traps, so maybe. Holding his nose, he stowed the knife and kept his eyes averted from the mould-encrusted refrigerated section. A thorough search revealed a box of rye crackers, three tins of vegetables, some bags of brown rice, and two bottles of water. Also, miraculously, a bar of chocolate and a jar of Mandarin orange marmalade. He took the latter for his mum. Stooped under the weight of his now bulging rucksack, knife once again in hand, Lysander continued down the murky corridor.

Breathe, he reminded himself. Deep breaths. And listen.

He found no signs of life. Now that Lysander was here, it all seemed even more unlikely: a benevolent saviour, a miracle cure. Maybe he was stupid to listen to rumours, but this was it. If the man in the chemist had been wrong or lying… Well. Lysander had gone over that already.

With the straps of his rucksack digging welts into his shoulders, he made as thorough a search of the ground floor as he could. Empty wards, hospital beds, dead machines. Lysander shrugged the rucksack off, slid to the floor, and leaned back against the wall. After rubbing the spots where his muscles would later take their vengeance, he dug out the chocolate bar. Crunchy nuts and sweet, sticky sultanas. It tasted of the world before it died. His attempt to savour it was for naught, and once he’d gobbled it down, he remained sitting, stretching his legs, trying not to give in to sleepiness. Still nothing, not a sound.

He got to his feet again, his knees unhappy with him too now. He dragged himself into a stairwell and climbed to the first floor. As he set his hand against the door, poised to push it open, he heard something. Blood rushed to his head and drowned it out. Once his pulse slowed, he concentrated.

Music. A guitar, someone singing. Well. This was it, ready or not. Friend or foe. Life or death. He repressed a hysterical giggle and pushed open the door.

He stood still, knife clutched hard. The song, muffled, came from somewhere distant amongst the wards. Music. How long had it been since he’d heard music? A month at the very least. He recognised the song—a sad and dreamy power ballad from the mid-noughties. The singer had a golden voice, and the chords floated glimmering through the air; they made Lysander feel giddy. His phone, with all his recorded music, was in the outer pocket of his rucksack. Dead. Empty. He took a step down the corridor, drawn towards the melody, and stopped.

Be careful, you idiot. It could be anyone.

Shaken out of his thrall, he set his pack on the floor, keeping the knife wielded. His heart resumed galloping. Long, slow breaths. He wasn’t brave. He wasn’t, but he had to do this, regardless. With soft steps, Lysander inched along towards the music. Natural light from the windows leaked through the ward doors. Murals of cheerful children holding hands stretched across the walls. The air smelled sour and dusty. He wanted to cough, but held it in.

The singer began an anti-war song from the late sixties. It had a folky rhythm and a nursery rhyme harmony. Lysander was close enough now to see light wavering on the floor outside the ward from which the music emerged. He took another step, and the sole of his shoe squeaked. The music cut off. Fuck.

There was no point in further tiptoeing if he’d been rumbled. He called out. “Hello?”

No response.

He called louder. “Hello?”

Nothing. Why wouldn’t they answer?

He crept towards the doorway and stepped into a fug of body odour and illness. Candles flickered on the floor, on the cheap-looking cabinets. By the windows at the end of the ward, illuminated by a patch of sunlight, a guitar rested on a bed. Faint, laboured breaths rasped from a shape next to it. Lysander adjusted his grip on the knife. He took a step.

A bulky mass clobbered his back and knocked him down. His cheek exploded with pain as he hit the floor, and the knife flew out of his hand. Lysander struggled against the weight on top of him, trying to crawl away. He reached out for something to give him leverage. His fingers closed around the leg of a trolley, but as he pulled, it toppled over and spilled its contents with a clattering racket. An arm shoved the cart away, making it skid across the linoleum. Lysander kicked and scratched as his assailant wrenched him over and pinned him down by the wrists. A hairy face with the eyes of a monster loomed above. It bared its teeth and growled, and Lysander screamed, expecting it to tear his throat out.

It released his wrists and shook him, smacking him hard against the floor. Lysander screamed again and again until a foul, sour-tasting hand slapped over his mouth.

A masculine voice shouted. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

After a few more seconds of blank terror, Lysander realised the beast attacking him was human, rather than werewolf. Werewolves weren’t real. He was losing his mind.

“Why are you here?” said the man. He’d got hold of Lysander’s wrists again and was bearing down on him.

“Get off me.”

“Why are you here?” the man repeated, louder. Spittle misted Lysander’s face.

The man was crushing him; he couldn’t stand it; he was going to scream again. He closed his eyes. “The cure. I heard there’s a cure. Let me go.”

“Why the knife?”

“Because I didn’t want to get attacked by a mad person.”

The wolf man paused, his eyes yellow with reflected candlelight. His thatch of a beard scratched Lysander’s face. “Kind of backfired, didn’t it?”

“It would seem so.” Lysander struggled again, his hands tingling where the wolf man’s grip cut off the circulation. “Let me go. You’re hurting me.”

Wolfie studied him for a few more seconds and rolled off.

As Lysander sat up, he heard a clink. The man had swiped his knife. Splendid. “You will give that back to me,” he said.

“Maybe.” Wolfie sat on one of the beds.

As Lysander got off the floor, Wolfie held the knife close to a candle and examined the flame’s reflection in its blade. It was impossible to tell how old he was through all that dark, matted hair, but his voice placed him in his twenties or thirties. He wore blue hospital scrubs.

“Are you a doctor?” Lysander asked.

“Nope.”

“But you’re him. Right? The man with the cure?”

He nodded. “Who’s ill? Is it you?”

“No. My mum.”

“How far along?”

“She’s got the rash on her arms.”

Wolfie looked up. “That’s it? Not on her chest or face?”

“Not yet,” said Lysander. “Can you help her?”

“If it won’t take more than a couple days to get there.”

“We’re in Swiss Cottage. It’s an hour’s walk.”

“Right.”

The wave of relief made Lysander dizzy, so he found a chair and sank onto it. “We’ve…we’ve got some food. Bottled water. You can have some of the—”

“You don’t need to pay me,” said Wolfie. “For fuck’s sake.”

“So, you just cure people to be—what? Nice?”

“Nice? I…I can, so I do it. It’s what I’m… You can’t charge people to save their lives.”

“Some people would.”

“Some people would do a lot of things.”

Lysander hugged himself. His face throbbed where it had hit the floor. He hadn’t really believed it. He hadn’t believed he might save her. “Well. Thank you.”

Wolfie looked back towards the windows at the shape huddled on a bed. “We can’t go yet. I’m not leaving him until…” He set the knife down. He got up and slouched towards the back of the ward.

Lysander waited a few seconds, snatched up the knife, and followed to see what he meant.

A man, thin and elderly, lay on the bed, alive but barely. His breath stuttered through chapped lips on a swollen face. Asleep or unconscious.

“She just left him here after I gave her the cure,” said Wolfie. “His daughter. When I told her it was too late, she left with her boyfriend.”

Wispy white hair feathered the man’s skull. He wore a checked short-sleeve shirt, leaving his rash-ravaged arms exposed. A tattoo decorated his right bicep. Morbidly compelled, Lysander looked closer: a human heart clutched in the grip of a green snake with its tongue extended. Two names, Marvin and Eleanor, decorated the snake’s coils. The man’s breath came in soft, wet wheezes. Marvin. Who’d loved Eleanor.

How many fragile old men had died like this? How many people? Billions dead, and Lysander couldn’t hold it in his mind. They’d done it. They’d broken the world. It was all gone, ruined, with nothing left but to die of starvation or skin cancer or murder. He wanted to go back. He wanted things back to how they’d been, with music and running water and pizza delivery, and even Humphreys shoving Lysander’s head down the toilet and Father threatening to stop paying his school tuition and the horrible prime minister and wretched mornings after clubbing, and Mum holding him tight, her fingers in his hair, telling him it would be all right. It was all going to be all right.

“Hey.” Wolfie touched Lysander’s shoulder.

Lysander twitched away. He wanted a world where everyone wasn’t dead or dying. He didn’t want to be alone. A cold, wild energy ignited in his chest. He pointed at the man. “He’s hopeless. You can’t save him.”

Wolfie stared. “I know.”

“But you said you can help my mother, so—”

“I’m not going until it’s over,” said Wolfie. “I will not let him die with no one to comfort him.”

“But my mother… She’s all I have.”

“She can wait a day.”

“He’s not even conscious!”

Wolfie glared with hot, mad eyes. “Not until he’s gone.”

“Please,” Lysander whispered. “You can give it to me. You don’t need to come at all. Give me the cure, and I’ll take it to her.” It was impossible to read the man’s expression through all that hair.

“It’s not… I can’t give it to you.”

“Oh,” said Lysander. “So, what is this, then? Some sort of power trip? Why are you even doing this? You want credit? To feel like a hero? The wolf man hiding in his tower, deigning to deliver a cure to those he deems worthy. You’re like them! You’re just like them, picking and choosing.”

Lysander hit him on the shoulder. Wolfie didn’t flinch. “Why can’t it be easy? Why can’t it just be easy? This one thing. The only thing I need. You aren’t God. You can’t play games with people.” It felt like yelling at his father. He didn’t care. He kicked the man in the shin, trying to get him to respond.

“You don’t—” said Wolfie. Lysander kicked him again, and he backed away. “Stop it.” Lysander hit him. He hit him again, and Wolfie grabbed his wrist. “I can’t give it to you,”

he shouted. “I can’t give you the cure.” He took a ragged breath. “I am the cure.”