‘Open up,’ he called to the gatekeeper who unlocked the gates and wished them luck as they trooped out of the castle.
It was a dull, overcast day, looked like it might rain later. Ed rubbed his scar as they regrouped on the wide terrace.
‘Thanks, guys,’ he said. ‘I appreciate this.’
‘Will you stop yapping and get a shift on?’ said Kyle. ‘Brain-biter grows hungry.’ A couple of the other kids laughed a touch nervously as Kyle kissed the blade of his axe. ‘Any sicko wants to mess with us will end up a dead sicko – the best kind.’ He rested his axe on his shoulder. He wasn’t bluffing. He was enjoying this.
‘Let’s go then.’ Ed walked off and after a moment’s hesitation the others gave a cheer and followed.
They went down to Lower Thames Street, the road that ran closest to the water. Like so much of London, it was a jumbled mix of old and new. It didn’t run directly along the embankment; large buildings lay between it and the riverside, mostly converted warehouses, factories and offices that had once served the busy river trade, with narrow lanes running between them. It would only be when they reached Victoria Embankment that the road would actually pass directly along the river’s edge.
They moved at a fast jog, sticking close together, with Ed and Kyle slightly out in front. Now that they were on the go Ed felt the familiar cold calm settling over him. There was nothing more to think about. He had made his move. What would be would be.
He could sense Kyle’s mood. Very different to his. Kyle was hyped up, jittery, looking for a fight. He was the most likely to disobey Ed’s commands and Ed needed to keep him under control.
‘Our first rule is to run,’ he said. ‘If we can avoid a fight we will. We’re not doing this to kill sickos, OK?’
‘You might not be, boss, but I am.’
‘Don’t you dare put any of the others in danger.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
Ed sometimes wondered why Kyle was so loyal to him. They had nothing in common, came from very different worlds and had very different views of the world. If everything hadn’t turned upside down they’d never have been friends, but they’d fought side by side at the battle of Lambeth Bridge and Kyle had seen something in Ed. Had latched on to him and now treated him as a brother. Maybe he’d seen that deep down they weren’t really so very different. Ed had to admit he liked having Kyle around. Most of the time he made Ed laugh; the rest of the time he appalled him. In a fight, though, they acted as one and were a pretty unbeatable force.
In these changed times it was good to have a wingman like Kyle.
They ran past the old Billingsgate fish market, a Victorian building with arches ranged along its front and a statue of Britannia on the roof. The next building along was a modern construction of blue glass and steel. Any of these places could house a hundred sickos, more, but so far all was quiet. In Ed’s experience sickos didn’t gather together in big numbers any more. There wasn’t enough food around to feed large groups. They mostly hunted in packs of between ten and twenty.
This was the no-go zone, however, and as he’d tried to get across to the others before they’d set off – the normal rules didn’t apply here.
The sickos had to eat, though, didn’t they? They were still human. That couldn’t change. A person was still a person, even if they might be so badly diseased they acted like some lower species. And as there were no children around here, no plants, no animals, why would a sicko stay?
Ed was just starting to relax and feel a little more confident about the day when Kyle shouted out, ‘Hold up!’ and stopped running. The rest of them fell in beside him.
They’d spotted their first sicko.
It was a father, standing on a walkway that crossed over the road. He was very still, his arms held out stiffly in front of him, his head tilted up to the sky, eyes wide open and unblinking. The kids stared at him and nudged each other.
‘Is he dead, do you think?’ asked Hayden.
‘Dunno.’ Ed shrugged. ‘He’s not moving, that’s for sure.’
‘We could get up there,’ said Kyle. ‘Sort him out.’
‘For God’s sake, Kyle. Leave him.’ Ed shook his head. ‘He doesn’t look dangerous. Let’s keep going, yeah, but we need to be extra careful now.’
They hurried under the walkway and carried on. There was a church to their left. Ed remembered it from his map – the Church of St Magnus the Martyr; that meant that the structure spanning the road on the other side of it was the end of London Bridge. Lower Thames Street dipped slightly as it went under it.
As they got closer, they spotted another sicko, a mother this time. Standing by the side of the road in exactly the same position as the father they’d left behind, still as a statue, with her arms held out in front of her, as if waiting to embrace someone.
‘This is freaky,’ said Macca.
‘Freaky, my arse,’ said Kyle. ‘They’re just dumb sickos. And – happy Christmas – there’s another one.’
He pointed with his axe to where a third sicko stood frozen a few paces up the side-street to their right.
‘I’m gonna whack that mother for certain,’ said Kyle. ‘That is easy meat. Too good to leave.’ He took a few paces, but Ed went after him and held him back.
‘Listen,’ he said.
Kyle stopped and they all listened. They could hear a distant, rhythmical tapping noise.
‘What is that?’
‘Sounds like builders,’ said Macca. ‘Or a mad percussionist.’ He mimed a drummer going round his kit with a pair of drumsticks.
‘What would make a noise like that?’ Ed asked.
‘A builder in a rock group,’ said Kyle, and Macca laughed; the two of them shared the same sense of humour.
‘Seriously.’
‘Seriously I don’t know,’ said Kyle. ‘And I don’t really want to know neither.’
‘Can you tell where it’s coming from?’ said Will, squinting as he concentrated.
‘Sounds like it’s coming from all around,’ said Hayden, an edge of nervousness creeping into her voice. ‘I reckon we need to keep moving.’
‘Aw, let me fix the sicko,’ Kyle pleaded.
‘No.’ Ed turned and strode on towards London Bridge. As he went, the weird clicking sound seemed to swell and grow louder, closer …
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap …
He shivered.
Like someone tapping on your coffin lid …
That was a phrase his granny used to say. He’d never really understood it until today.
Tap-tap-tap …
‘Slow as ever,’ said Kyle as he pushed past him. Then came Hayden, trying to outrun them all. Soon all six of them were speeding up, sprinting into the underpass. Like a herd of deer spooked by a hunter.
And then Hayden yelped, staggered to a halt. Deep in the shadows beneath the bridge, standing close to the wall at the side, was another sicko.
‘Jesus,’ Hayden said accusingly as if she was blaming the others. ‘I nearly ran into him.’
It was a father. He could have been a waxwork, he was so still. Kyle crept closer and waved his hand in front of his eyes. No response. Not even a flicker.
‘He’s an ugly bastard,’ said Kyle and nobody argued. The father’s skin was a deep, ripe purple and was split all over, bright pink flesh poking out of the slits. A run of livid yellow boils studded his forehead, and his eyes and tongue were bulging out of his head. Both his ears were missing, rotted away, leaving a pulped, scabby, pus-oozing mess on either side of his skull.
‘You are one krutters piece of roadkill,’ said Kyle, and he gagged on the stench of the man. An unholy perfume of faeces, urine, sweat and decay with a sickly smear of sweetness over the top.
‘I am definitely taking this one down,’ said Kyle, spinning his axe in his hands. Macca giggled.
‘Leave him,’ said Will, sensible as ever.
‘I’ll leave him,’ said Kyle. ‘I’ll leave him for dead.’
‘What’s the point??
??
‘It’s fun, Will, and Brain-biter is thirsty for blood.’
‘It’s not a game, Kyle.’
‘Will’s right,’ said Ed. ‘We’re wasting time.’
As Ed spoke, the father moved or at least his eyes did; they seemed to pulse as if something was pushing them from the back. They bulged out further from his head for a moment, then sank back.
‘Holy crap,’ said Kyle. ‘Did you see that? He’s got rats in his brain.’
The eyes pulsed again, followed by a thin dribble of brown liquid that trickled from his tear ducts.
‘Gross,’ said Kyle.
Adele came and joined him, peering at the father and turning her head to the side.
‘You hear that?’ she said.
‘No? What? You mean the clicking?’ Kyle frowned at her.
‘No, listen.’
Ed strained to hear, but apart from the distant tap-tap-tap he had no idea what Adele might be talking about.
‘What are we listening for?’
‘Like a sort of whining sound.’
‘No.’
‘Yeah, I can hear something,’ said Hayden and she came over to stand next to Adele and Kyle.
‘There’s a really high-pitched sound,’ she said. ‘Like a radio signal or something.’
‘I can’t hear nothing,’ said Macca. He looked to Ed, who shook his head.
Then Kyle and the two girls jumped back as the father’s whole body pulsed. A ripple passed through it, starting in his stomach and rising to his head, as his eyes almost popped completely out of his skull. The after-effect was pretty revolting as the father belched then puked up a sticky wash of yellow bile that forced its way past his swollen tongue and spattered on to the floor, causing the kids to jump back.
Through all of this the father had remained standing upright, his arms stiffly extended.
‘I am going to finish this rude boy before he bursts on us,’ said Kyle. ‘Stand back!’
‘I’m not staying for this, you dickhead,’ said Will and he marched out into the sunlight on the other side of the underpass.
‘Wimp,’ said Kyle and he swung his axe in a clean, powerful sweep. From hours of practice at the Tower his aim was good. The blade sliced cleanly through the father’s neck and his head flew off, bounced against the wall and hit the tarmac with a crunch.
Macca cheered as the body crumpled and fell. Kyle gave a whoop of delight and kicked the head to the other side of the road. The girls swore at him.
‘You’d better come and look at this … ’ Will’s voice echoed under the bridge. He had retreated back into the shadows and was looking up at something.
‘What is it?’ Ed and the others hurried over; as they got closer, Will indicated that they should go carefully, then pointed upwards.
Ed sneaked out so that he could see what was going on up on the bridge.
Sickos. A whole mob of them, slowly shuffling along from the south, moving silently and purposefully. Ed hadn’t been worried about sickos coming from that direction. The far side of the Thames was filled with blackened ruins from when a huge fire had nearly destroyed London a year ago.
What were they doing? What had brought them here and where had they come from?
Ed withdrew under the bridge. Shushed the others as they all fired questions at him in urgent whispers.
‘There’s an army of sickos up there,’ he explained quietly. ‘But they can’t get down here. We’re OK for now.’ He quickly scanned Lower Thames Street in both directions. Apart from the sicko Kyle had killed, he could see no more on their level.
‘We go fast,’ he said, ‘and hope they don’t spot us. God knows what they’re up to, but I don’t reckon they’re after us. Not yet at least.’
Macca tried to say something, but Ed stared him down and he fell silent.
‘On my count,’ he said. ‘One, two, three, go, go, go!’
As they ran, none of them saw what was happening to the severed head in the underpass. Even though it had been separated from the father’s body, the eyes were still pulsing, the tongue still moving, as if the dead man was trying to speak. Then slowly, slowly, slowly, the eyes bulged, forcing their way out between the tight, boil-encrusted eyelids. Further and further they came, smeared with pus from the bursting boils, until, with a soft, breathy hiss, they plopped free and rolled out of the skull, followed by a writhing mass of something grey and jelly-like.
36
‘Mate, I didn’t know. They’re nutters. I didn’t know. Sorry.’
Brendan was standing by the cage talking to Sam and The Kid. Talking quietly so as not to attract any attention. He had no idea what all the rules were yet here at the cathedral, couldn’t keep up with them, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be talking to the prisoners.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Sam.
‘They didn’t say,’ Brendan went on, desperate to explain to the two little boys. ‘If I’d’ve known what they were planning to do … Ah, Sam, I’m so sorry, mate. This is well wrong.’
Sam was too miserable to say anything much, just let Brendan talk.
Brendan leant closer, leaning his forehead on the bars and looking at the floor. ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘I was well vexed when I got here. My head was all over the shop. Being kicked out of the Tower like that. Jordan threatening to execute me. Losing all my mates. I was mucked up. And it was mad out there, man. You saw what it’s like, with them sickos on the streets everywhere. I was chased all the way here – thought I was gonna be massacred. Some of their guys found me trying to climb over this big wall they’ve built. Whoa, that felt good, I’m telling you, being rescued like that. I was on a high when they brought me in.
‘So there’s all these things going nuts in my head – I was mad and I was mad, you know, like angry and crazy and relieved to be alive all at the same time. Matt was good to me. Said I was safe here, gave me anything I wanted. You see, like, they’ve got all this food? And bottles of water. I thought, OK, Bren, things ain’t gonna be so bad as I thought. And Matt wanted to talk to me. Said nobody’d ever come here from the east. He knew Jordan from, like, back in the day and he wanted to know all about what he was up to now. I was happy to tell him what a bastard he is and everything that had happened there. Told him about you two as well. Big mistake. You should’ve seen him. Like he was on fire. Mad eyes he has. I didn’t know what it meant, about all that Lamb and Goat crap. Didn’t know what it was all about. If I had … ’
‘It’s all right, Brendan,’ said Sam. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘If there was anything I could do. Any way I could help you. But they’re freaky here, they give me the creeps, never take their eyes off of you. I don’t know what they’d do to me if I helped you escape. Matt’s as bad as Jordan; the two of them, they’re the same, crazy and cold. I want to get away from here. But they watch you all the time … and out there.’ Brendan swallowed, remembering his journey here. ‘I’m not sure I could do that again. That was the scariest half hour of my life. I was a wreck, man, run out, rinsed.’
He stopped talking and looked up at the boys; they were huddled together; The Kid had his arm round Sam. He couldn’t bear to see them like this.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s not so bad, maybe it’s all a big bluff, yeah? You see, like Jordan? I mean, they can’t seriously be thinking of killing you. I mean, human sacrifice? Come on, it’s nuts.’
‘It’s the blimp, Frank, it’s the blimp,’ said The Kid in a spooky, high-pitched voice.
‘You what?’
‘Ignore him,’ said Sam. ‘He’s in one of his weird moods. He hasn’t said anything that makes sense since they shut me in here with him.’
‘Harry, Harry, I’m back, I’m back. Tell Frank.’
‘Who’s Harry?’ said Brendan.
‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘Harry Hill? Harry Potter?’
‘Harry Houdini,’ said The Kid. ‘Escape artist. Now there was one clever piece of work. Harry w
ill look after us. He’ll find a way to spring us. God bless Harry and God bless me. Thank you and goodnight.’
‘You’ve thought of a way to escape?’ asked Sam, his face lighting up.
‘Not yet,’ said The Kid. ‘Give me time.’
‘Mate, you haven’t got any time,’ said Brendan. ‘I heard them saying they’re going to come and sort you out in a few minutes. That’s why I came over. I had to explain. It’s not my fault.’
‘No,’ said Sam feebly.
‘You’re out of time, guys. I’m sorry.’
37
‘Don’t slow down!’ Ed yelled.
They were running through another underpass. This one went beneath Cannon Street station. The last few minutes had not been fun. There were sickos coming out of the woodwork on all sides now. Waking up from their hidey-holes. Crawling into the light. There was no telling what had triggered it, but a big pack of them were on their tail, lumbering along the road behind them, and Ed could see more of them silhouetted against the light at the far end of the underpass.
‘Up ahead!’ Hayden yelled. She was out in front, her long legs pounding the tarmac. Running came easily to her.
‘Yeah, I’ve seen them,’ Ed shouted back, drawing his heavy sword from its scabbard. ‘We have to keep moving.’
‘How long do we run for?’ Macca asked, short of breath.
‘As long as we need.’
‘We should turn back.’
Ed glanced over his shoulder; the road was thick with sickos.
‘No chance,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot more behind us than there is in front. We push on. Cut through them if they try and stop us.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Kyle, overtaking Ed. ‘They’re gonna try!’ And he let out a war-cry as he burst into the sunlight and slammed into the waiting sickos.
The kids hacked and slashed their way through the first line of sickos before they knew what had hit them. They left five of them lying dead and five more reeling from their wounds.
The kids ran on, whooping and cheering, but their joy was short-lived.
The whole road in front of them was filled with a great crowd of sickos. They were streaming across Southwark Bridge and spilling out as they hit the junction with the road the kids were on. They were way too many for them to be able to batter their way through. Ed had to make a quick decision. They could go back, they could turn northwards and head away from the river, deeper into the tangle of streets that made up the no-go zone, deeper into the part of town that the sickos themselves seemed to be heading for, or they could go the other way, down towards the river. Take their chances there. It was low tide, so there might be enough beach to walk on. It was possible they could use it to get past this milling horde.