The Sacrifice

  Ed laughed. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You were one of the clever, shiny ones that didn’t have nothing to worry about. I was an ugly, spotty gonk. You’ve met me halfway, I guess, with that face you got on you now, but I bet, before, you had all the girls sniffing round you.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe … yeah. Maybe, baby. But now everything’s changed. You ain’t so buff. I’ve got skills people need. I’m happy, you’re depressed.’

  ‘You think so?’ Ed asked, surprised.

  ‘Takes one to know one,’ said Kyle. ‘I seen you, boss. You ain’t always happy. You turn in on yourself. You got the darkness in there like me. Mine’s shut away for now, but I know it could come crawling back up. But you, boss, you give in to it.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Ed wouldn’t admit it to Kyle, but he did admit it to himself. There were bad memories inside him and they poisoned his mood if he let his guard down. Too many nights he dreamt of setting fire to Jack’s bed. Watching his best friend’s dead body being eaten by the flames.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sticking by you, boss,’ said Kyle. ‘Cos you’re clever and because you accepted me. Didn’t have to. From the off, though, you fought shoulder to shoulder with me and you fought well, best I ever seen, better than me even. You are a stone-cold killer, dude, and I respect that. We’re brothers now, whether you like it or not. We’ve shared our secrets. I do wish you could be happy, though, man, like me. I sleep well at night. Never used to. Now – bang – the sun goes down and I’m in the land of nod till dawn. No interruptions.

  ‘If all this hadn’t happened what would I be doing now? I’d probably be banged up or maybe I’d have finally done one, topped myself. I’d be in trouble one way or another, though, that much I know. That much I do know for sure, brother.’

  ‘And this isn’t trouble?’ Ed asked. ‘What we’ve got now? A world of sickness and pain? Adults eating children? Children killing adults?’

  ‘This? No way. This is fun!’

  They were making good progress along the South Bank, despite the destruction that lay all around them. The fire had ripped through the buildings, opening them up and tearing them down. Out of control, it had burned hot enough to crack concrete, to split brick and stone and bring everything tumbling down. In the worst-hit areas there were just the blackened skeletons of houses and offices, piles of rubble now thick with weeds and punctured by saplings, forcing their way up towards the sky as nature clawed back the city for itself.

  Every now and then, though, they’d come to a street or a run of buildings that seemed hardly touched, little islands of order among the chaos. The big wheel of the London Eye was still standing, though it was smeared with black and spotted brown with rust. The main structure of the Southbank Centre – what had once been theatres, concert halls, restaurants and galleries – was still there, a great dirty grey bulk, though the insides were gutted.

  They saw a few sickos, but hurried past them, eager to get on before it got dark. And night would come early today as the sky was growing thick with storm clouds.

  They came to Southwark Bridge and had to skirt round a big pile of fallen masonry. Will came over to Ed.

  ‘Do you notice it?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Up there.’ Will pointed out a sicko to Ed, one of the frozen ones, on top of the rubble. Ed had seen it, but it hadn’t really registered. His brain had ceased to process them as a threat.

  ‘What about it?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s been one at every bridge,’ said Will.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Will was smart, always looking, always thinking, spotting things others missed. Macca had better eyesight, but he never stopped to think about anything. Not like Will.

  ‘I’ve not seen them anywhere else, just at the bridges,’ he went on. ‘What are they doing, d’you think?’

  ‘Ryan Aherne called them pointers. Like dogs.’

  ‘Dogs hear frequencies that humans can’t,’ said Will.

  ‘Yeah.’ Ed thought about this for a moment. ‘Ryan told me he couldn’t bring his dogs this way,’ he said. ‘Something freaks them out. You think they can hear something we can’t?’

  ‘It’s the same with girls too,’ said Will.

  ‘Is that right?’ said Kyle.

  ‘Yeah. Their hearing’s better.’

  Ed remembered the strange noise that Adele and Hayden claimed they could hear coming out of the pointer that morning.

  ‘Do you think the pointers are signalling or something?’ he asked.

  ‘Could be,’ said Will. ‘Something’s attracting sickos from all over London. Could be the same thing that’s scaring the dogs. A noise. Like a radio signal. Something that only sickos and dogs can hear.’

  ‘And girls,’ Kyle added.

  ‘Only up close,’ said Will. ‘They’re not getting the whole signal. I reckon it’s like a network. And these pointers, they’re like mobile-phone masts, boosting the signal, guiding the sickos in over the bridges.’

  ‘Sickos don’t roll like that,’ said Kyle. ‘They’re too dumb.’

  ‘Things are different in the zone,’ said Ed. ‘And we’ve seen something new today. Things are shifting. The sickos are getting organized.’

  51

  It was carnage. Saif’s war party didn’t stand a chance. They were being engulfed by a greasy black tide of flailing, writhing flesh. From his look-out Shadowman couldn’t hear anything, but he could see it all clearly enough through his binoculars. Once again he was watching a disaster play itself out in front of him, powerless to do anything to help.

  When he’d first heard the cars in the distance, he’d gone out into the street and listened hard, not wanting to believe it. He’d clung on to the hope that he was wrong. He’d imagined it. It was something else. Not cars but distant thunder. This was too soon. Saif wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready.

  There was no doubt about it, though. What he was hearing was car engines. A sound that, until yesterday, he hadn’t heard for over a year. How far away, though? They could have been miles away and the sound would have carried. They were the only thing making any noise in these silent, empty streets.

  So Saif had stuck to his plan. Had put together a hastily organized revenge party, a posse, a lynch mob. Thinking they could charge in and sweep St George’s army off the streets.

  He hoped that Saif had put more soldiers into the attack than he’d first suggested. No way were twenty-five going to be enough, even with cars and weapons. How many troops did Saif have at IKEA anyway? Shadowman had found it hard to get an accurate picture of the numbers as the place was so big, and the kids were spread out inside or had been working in the vegetable plots in the car park. He’d never seen them all together. Maybe twenty-five was all Saif had.

  As he’d listened, the engine noise hadn’t grown any louder. They weren’t coming closer. Saif was probably searching the streets for The Fear. Shadowman could wait for the cars to find their way here or he could follow St George. One way or the other, he had to try one last time to warn Saif of the danger he was in.

  In the end he’d decided to stick with The Fear. Saif had to find them eventually and he might never make it to the tyre centre at all.

  Shadowman set off at a steady jog. He knew the way to find the strangers quickly.

  Follow the sentinels.

  He passed one. Another. A third one took him to the main road. And then he spotted Stumpy. He’d taken up a new spot at the junction where two roads met. Arms out, flies crawling all over him.

  Shadowman had run on. It hadn’t taken him long to catch up with the stragglers, still being herded along by Bluetooth and his little gang. They’d got separated from the main group, going too slow to keep up. St George was in a hurry today. Shadowman hadn’t wanted to get into a fight so he’d skirted round them and it had taken him a few minutes to get his bearings. Again it was the sentinels who’d helped him. He found another row of them strung out along a diff
erent side-street, feeding into the main road. Shadowman sped up and finally got a glimpse of The Fear. A solid mass, completely blocking the way ahead.

  From street level it was hard to get any real sense of their numbers and Shadowman looked around for some kind of vantage point from where he could get a better idea of what they were up to and keep a look-out for Saif.

  And then he’d spotted it: a tall crane standing over a long-deserted building site. That would be perfect. As long as there weren’t any strangers nearby.

  He gave the main group a wide berth – easier said than done as there were outliers all the way round and a network of sentinels. It had taken him twenty minutes of hard running, but he’d eventually made it to the building site without getting into any trouble.

  There was a solid wooden fence all the way round, plastered with sunny, computer-generated pictures of the flats, shops and offices that had been planned for the site, plus the inevitable graffiti.

  It was easy enough to climb over the fence and jump down into the muddy patch of ground on the other side. It had started to rain, and there were already soupy puddles forming.

  Shadowman scooted over to the crane and looked up. It was a good thirty metres high, but there was a ladder at the back, built into the steel girder structure.

  Hand over hand he’d climbed, thanking God that he’d never been scared of heights, because otherwise it would have been well scary up there. In no time at all the ground seemed a very long way away, and when he’d got to the top it felt like he was thirty miles high rather than thirty metres. He was God, up in the clouds. The rain fell down past him in long silver rods.

  He easily broke into the crane’s cab and was grateful to be out of the rain. He slipped off his backpack, pulled out his binoculars and quickly took stock of the situation.

  There were views right out across London from up here. To the north he could see the blue box of IKEA, to the left of it the high arching span of Wembley Stadium. Closer to hand he could see the tyre centre and the train tracks running behind it. Over to the north-east was the dark green expanse of Hampstead Heath. Then, turning south, he could see the labyrinth of roads and buildings that crowded their way right into the centre of town. From here it looked so close. He could walk to Buckingham Palace in a couple of hours, maybe less.

  Then he’d looked down and smiled.

  He’d managed to get ahead of St George without realizing it and saw that they were advancing towards the building site along a main road that ran roughly north to south. They would go right past him. He couldn’t have chosen a better spot if he’d tried. Except that it struck him now that he was not in any position to warn Saif.

  Sod it.

  Saif wouldn’t listen to him anyway.

  Shadowman had done his best. He’d tried. Maybe Saif would see The Fear and realize his mistake. Back off. Shadowman looked at them; they filled the road like a vast herd of cattle. Even a jerk like Saif must see that you couldn’t take that lot on with only twenty-five kids.

  Watching The Fear from up there in the sky was like studying some complex organism under a microscope. When you concentrated, you could see a rigid order. There, at the front, was the central core of grown-ups, moving steadily along, huddled together in a dense knot, St George at the heart of it. In a looser bunch around them were other strangers and there, spreading out like tendrils along the side-streets behind, and to the sides, were the sentinels. The whole thing was like a great dark star or a comet going past, trailing lines of dust. He could see that the sentinels were constantly shifting now that The Fear were on the move. Those at the ends of the tendrils would break away and walk along to the next sentinel in line, take their position and bump them on, with a constant ripple effect. They were a zombie relay team. None of them were left behind.

  Just as an octopus uses its sensitive tentacles to find out about its surroundings, St George was doing the same. It made him ten times deadlier.

  And then Shadowman had noticed that there were still newcomers arriving, being drawn in down the long arms and making their way doggedly towards the central mass, so that The Fear were constantly growing. St George was sucking in every stranger in London.

  The dark star had a satellite. There was Bluetooth’s group, dropping further and further behind the others. There were maybe thirty of them, including Bluetooth and his sidekicks, and they shambled in the middle of the road. St George’s group were packed tighter, so it was still hard to judge how many of them there might be. Could be as many as 200 of them, Shadowman thought, and growing all the time.

  Finally, in the far distance, he’d spotted the cars. Five of them, criss-crossing the streets, going too fast to be methodical, too fast to be careful. Which was why they hadn’t caught up yet. He’d watched them stop to attack a sentinel. Then after a while they’d appeared to get the idea and had advanced down one of the tendrils directly towards Bluetooth’s group. Shadowman had trained his binoculars on them and watched as they’d raced nearer.

  Two pick-up trucks, two big 4x4s like the Lexus, and there was Saif, standing up in the back of a yellow, open-topped sports car of some sort. He had a spear in his hand and a grin on his face, a barbarian chieftain in his chariot, a harpoonist on the high seas.

  They’d smashed into Bluetooth’s group, except Bluetooth and his gang had quickly dispersed, leaving the sick and old unguarded. Saif made short work of them. The cars ran them down, the kids in the back of the pick-ups firing crossbows, jabbing with spears and swinging clubs. Saif himself had speared two sick old fathers as his car passed them.

  Then the motorcade stopped and the kids jumped out, laid into the surviving strangers with a wild, out-of-control frenzy.

  It took them less than five minutes to kill all the strangers and Shadowman had watched as they’d danced in the street, hugging and high-fiving. He could see them shouting in triumph, could imagine what they were saying – that Shadowman had been a twat, a coward, a noob. That these zombies were just like all the rest.

  Only they hadn’t killed a single one of Bluetooth’s party, hadn’t even noticed them slipping away. All they’d done was kill the weakest and feeblest of The Fear. Saved St George the trouble of doing it himself.

  This wasn’t good. It would give Saif a new and totally unfounded confidence. Shadowman’s only hope was that Saif would think that he’d killed all the strangers and return to IKEA.

  It soon became clear, however, that that wasn’t going to happen. Saif’s gang mounted up and set off south again, following the line of sentinels, cutting down a couple as they passed.

  Shadowman had been distracted. He’d taken his attention off the main group and, as he swung his binoculars round, there was no sign of them. Impossible. How could two hundred adults simply disappear? But it was true. The incoming lines of sentinels all now met at a large roundabout where only about twenty strangers remained. Standing waiting in the centre, among some shrubs and low trees.

  What the hell had happened to the rest of them?

  ‘Dammit, where are you, George?’ he said, scouring the streets near the roundabout, but apart from the network of sentinels which clearly spread out from this point, and the handful in the centre, there was absolutely no sign of The Fear.

  And now Saif’s cars were hammering down the main road.

  Shadowman realized that St George had picked his spot well. There were crash barriers circling the roundabout and as the cars arrived, they found that they couldn’t run the strangers down. One of the 4x4s tried and got stuck on a barrier. The other cars uselessly circled the roundabout taking potshots at the strangers sheltering among the trees, like Apaches round a wagon train in an old cowboy film. The kids from the crashed car got out and called to their mates, and the other cars parked alongside.

  ‘No, you morons,’ said Shadowman, grinding his teeth. ‘Can’t you see it’s a trap? Stay in your cars. Drive away. Leave them.’

  The rest of the kids got out. Shadowman could see that they were laughing,
jeering at the strangers in the centre of the roundabout, who were cowering away from them. Saif took a crossbow from another boy and fired it, still laughing, still thinking it was all a big game.

  And then Shadowman swallowed hard.

  ‘Oh shit.’

  A great dark mass was suddenly rushing in from all sides, from every road that led to the roundabout, totally swamping Saif’s gang.

  It was as unstoppable as a tsunami.

  St George’s army was going in for the kill.

  Soon all was confusion. Shadowman couldn’t tell what was going on; the strangers completely covered the roundabout and the area around it. The kids had disappeared under a seething mass of bodies.

  He could picture it down there, the heat of the grown-up bodies, the raw sewer stench of them, the bowel-emptying fear as the kids realized what was happening. Realized they were hemmed in, with no room to manoeuvre or swing their weapons. The agony as hands reached for them, teeth latched on to them …

  ‘Get in the cars,’ Shadowman urged them. ‘It’s your only hope. Get in the bloody cars and get out of there.’

  And then he saw one car moving, a silver 4x4 with blacked-out windows crawling hideously slowly through the forest of bodies. The sheer press of flesh was making it difficult to get up any speed. Shadowman could see strangers battering it with captured weapons.

  ‘Come on, there must be more of you,’ said Shadowman, desperately raking his binoculars over the battleground. ‘Come on.’

  And then one of the pick-ups was moving. Again like a car driving slowly through floodwater.

  ‘Go, go, go … Get out of there! You can do it! Go on!’

  The 4x4 was at the edge of the mob. The pick-up suddenly accelerated and got in behind it. They were going to do it. They were going to get away.

  The 4x4 broke free, went tearing up the road. Impossible to know who was in it or how many.

  But what about the pick-up truck? He saw a boy and a girl in the back of it, screaming. The girl was pulled over the edge and sank into the filthy press of bodies. The boy was clinging on. He looked OK.