‘I suppose so.’
‘Good girl. You’ll see. It’s the right thing to do.’
29
Next morning they packed up what they could carry, stowed the rest in the hole and set off for Bracknell. As they walked through the woods, Ella asked Malik how long he thought it would take them.
‘Shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours, maybe three, as I can’t go too fast and we might need to stop now and then, but we’ll be there by lunchtime. It’s the start of a new life, Ella.’
‘If you say so.’ There she was, doing it again – Grumpy Glumdrops. Couldn’t snap out of it even though she knew this was the right thing to do.
It was a grey day to suit Ella’s grey mood and there was a thin, cutting wind that made her shiver. As they came out of the woods, the countryside looked flat. The wind was somehow hardly stirring the trees and bushes. They trudged on into a field overgrown with tall grass and weeds. She’d got to know the land around here quite well. Not so long ago she’d thought she might live here forever.
Already she’d forgotten what it was like at the museum. Holloway was a stronger memory, though not a good one. That was where Sam had been taken by the greasy mother in the pink tracksuit. Ella wished she could remember happier things about Sam, and not that awful day. She could remember the mother better than him. His face was blurry. Like in a dream where things shifted and disappeared when you tried to touch them.
Don’t think about the past and don’t think about the future, that’s what Malik told her and that’s how she was going to try to live.
She kept close to him, always scared when they were out in the open, even if it was daytime and the grown-ups would mostly be in their own holes. There were always the dogs, though, and other kids. She’d picked up on Malik’s fear of them, even though she knew it was stupid. She was obviously one of them. A child herself. They’d never mistake her for a grown-up. Not like Malik. Something had made his body grow and bulge and get bigger like a man’s. She was proud to be walking with him. He was strong and clever. He had all his tricks and traps and ways of beating the enemy.
‘Malik?’ she asked.
‘What?’
The grass was up to Ella’s chest and she tucked in behind him, walking in the path he’d trampled.
‘That explosion, back at the farm, when the grown-ups came through and you burned up all the ones who were attacking the barn.’
‘What of it?’
‘Was that petrol?’
‘Yeah.’ Malik nodded. ‘It was from the tank that the lads left behind. I rigged up some pipes and valves and stuff so that I could empty it into a trough that ran round the barn. It was for emergencies. A ring of fire. I’d hoped I’d never need to use it. Last resort sort of a thing.’
‘I wish they hadn’t attacked us. I wish we were still living there with the chickens.’
‘We can’t change the past, Ella, so no point going over it.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ she said. ‘Don’t think about the past and don’t think about the future.’
‘One foot in front of the other. Deal with problems as they come up.’
‘Burn the grown-ups with petrol.’
‘Yeah.’ Malik laughed. ‘Burn the grown-ups with petrol.’
They reached a road and Malik stuck to it for a while. Every now and then he would stop and listen and sniff the air, and once he told Ella to hurry and darted off to the side to hide in the long grass. All Ella could see from their little flattened patch was grass and grey sky. They stayed there and laid low for what felt like ages, and in the end nothing happened.
They set off again, and a few minutes later Malik went through the same routine. He wasn’t happy being on the open road and he was walking slower the further they went. His injured leg was obviously giving him trouble. He was limping badly. Ella could see that he was in pain and trying not to show it. So that he didn’t feel too bad, she started to say that she was tired and asked for frequent rest stops. Malik would gratefully sit down for a while and rub his leg.
And so they plodded on – stop-start, stop-start – Ella anxious to get there, but also anxious not to get there. Not sure what they were going to find. If they’d be welcome, or if the kids would treat Malik like all the others had done. Well, not if she could help it. She’d protect him. She’d fight anyone who was mean to him.
They’d been going for some time when Malik suggested they stop and drink some water. Ella wasn’t particularly thirsty, but she realized that Malik needed another excuse to rest so she didn’t say anything. They moved off the road into some nearby trees and flopped down, Malik sitting back against a knobbly silver-grey trunk. He got his bottle out and took a small sip before passing it to Ella. She drank and offered it back to him, but he ignored her. He was staring straight ahead, but not seeing, just concentrating on listening. Listening and sniffing. She could see his nostrils twitching, going wide then narrow. His mangled, battered face started to work itself into a frown. Then he hopped up on to his feet and squatted there, head tilted to one side.
‘What is it?’ Ella asked and he shushed her. He was listening hard now, his head moving around like radar, trying to work out which direction the sound was coming from. And then he suddenly grabbed her forearm and gripped it painfully tight.
‘Run!’
He dragged her to her feet and pulled her along. Ella was fighting for breath, more frightened because she had no idea what it was they were running from. They pelted through the trees, Malik sort of skipping to keep the weight off his bad leg. Small branches whipped at Ella and scratched her face.
‘What is it?’ she gasped. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Malik grunted and Ella risked looking back. She could see figures among the trees, moving fast.
‘It’s people,’ she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. Now Malik looked back and swore.
‘It’s grown-ups, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Malik. ‘And something else. Something I don’t understand.’
Ella screamed as a father came crashing out of some bushes next to her and she cringed, waiting for him to attack her, but he ran past. He wasn’t interested in her. She realized now that the grown-ups weren’t running towards her, they were running away from something. Two more of them went past. Now Ella was really scared. Malik was hobbling and hopping and they were getting into a tangle of trees growing closely together, slowing them down. Another grown-up barged past and, distracted, Ella tripped and fell, pulling Malik down with her. She put her arms round her head to protect herself and looked up. There was no way forward and the grown-ups were having to get out of the woods into the open. She wasn’t used to seeing grown-ups during the day and she wasn’t used to seeing them run like this.
‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘What’s going on? What’s going on?’
They heard weird yelps and a noise like thunder coming through the woods. A squealing sound. The howls of animals.
‘Dogs,’ said Malik.
‘Are they that scared of dogs?’
‘And something else.’
‘You said. What is it? What something else?’
‘I don’t know. And I don’t want to stay and find out.’
A mother came stumbling and careering along, fell face first next to them and hit the ground with a screech. When she pushed herself up on her arms, her face was a mess of dirt and pus and blood, teeth missing, her nose flattened. Malik kicked her out of the way and dragged Ella to her feet.
There was only one way to go. They had to run with the pack and follow the grown-ups out into the open. Malik set off as fast as he could go, Ella leaping over roots and stones to keep up with him. And they were out of the woods, into another field, long grass holding them back. Tracks through it where the mothers and fathers had gone. And Ella saw that there were more grown-ups coming out of the trees on the far side of the field, joining the others in a swirling, confused mass in the centr
e, too spooked to go any further, and Malik and Ella were sucked in among them. And the noise of thunder grew and the squeals and howls, and Ella put her hands to her ears and screamed.
Then a line of horses broke from behind a long hedge, came galloping towards them.
They were being ridden by children. Armed with spears and clubs and carrying nets. They were shouting and blowing horns, dogs running at their side.
Ella raised a hand and tried to shout to them, her voice lost in the chaos of noise and bumbling bodies. She raised both hands, called out and was knocked to the ground by a fat mother. The breath went out of her and she felt light-headed and dizzy. As she tried to stand, another mother fell on her. It felt like she was at the centre of a shoal of fish being attacked by sharks. The grown-ups were being herded into a tighter and tighter ball. And more and more bodies were trampling on Ella, falling on her, crushing her. She couldn’t breathe – she couldn’t speak – she couldn’t see Malik.
Where was he?
What had happened to him?
There were bright flashes in her eyes, right inside her brain. Her vision was flickering and blurry. The stink of the grown-ups, the hot, close heat of them, was like a foul gas in her nose and mouth. She was losing touch with reality. Thought she saw two fathers scooped up in a net.
Two golden twins on horses.
Malik rising up … a sword swinging down.
Malik falling.
Her fault. It was all her fault.
And she was dying here.
Someone had to help her.
She opened her mouth wide and it was like she’d opened a door and her soul was sucked out of her.
She felt a terrible emptiness.
And slipped away.
19 DAYS EARLIER
30
‘Don’t put that in there, Macca, you moron. Stick it on the roof. It won’t fit inside.’
Ed was in a foul mood. He was getting ready to set off in search of Ella and he still didn’t know who was coming with him from the museum. If anyone. He had his mates from the Tower, Kyle and Macca and Will. They’d come this far together and weren’t going to split up now. So it wasn’t going to be some mad solo expedition. And they weren’t going to be on foot this time.
They had a car. A people carrier. A lovely big fat blue Chrysler Voyager, large enough to seat seven comfortably, eight or nine if they were willing to squash up.
Getting a car had been the idea of one of the museum kids. Boy named Boggle. Apparently nobody could pronounce his name or spell it properly and they reckoned it looked like a jumbled-up bunch of random letters, like in the word game Boggle.
Ed used to play it with his family. A long time ago. But Boggle himself had never seen it, let alone played it. Ed had asked Boggle if it bothered him, but Boggle told him he’d been called a lot worse.
He also told Ed that Ella and her friends had left in a car. Which was news to Ed. Boggle had made him swear not to tell anyone else.
‘We found it months ago,’ Boggle explained. ‘Me and my best mate, Robbie. A big Range Rover. We’d been looking after it. He named it Raymonda. No one else knew about it, you see. Still don’t. Robbie was worried that Justin would take it for himself if he found out.’
At first Ed had been deflated. That meant Robbie and Maeve and Ella and Monkey-Boy could be miles away by now. They could be halfway to Wales. But then Boggle explained that there hadn’t been that much petrol in it. Only enough to get out of town, about twenty-five miles. Their plan had been to take the car as far as it would go, straight west on the motorway, and then look for some other kids.
‘So if you get yourself a car,’ said Boggle, ‘with enough petrol, you can go twenty miles, maybe thirty. You can look on the dial to see how far that is, or, you know, like, get a map and draw a circle or whatever, and search around there.’
Of course Boggle didn’t have another car himself. That would have been too easy.
‘So where do I get myself another set of wheels?’ Ed asked.
‘Ryan’s hunters. They find things. They’ll maybe barter with you. If you got something to barter with.’
It all came back to Ed, getting rescued by Ryan Aherne and his gang near the Houses of Parliament the other day. Ed remembered thinking that he was glad that Ryan’s hunters were on his side. They were an ugly bunch, street-hard, heavily armed and with a pack of mean fighting dogs. Some of them wore masks – ski masks, leather gimp masks – and Ryan wore one made from a human face he’d carved off a dead sicko.
The hunters worked the local streets and traded between the various camps. Ed had to wait a couple of days for them to come past and Ryan seemed pleased to see him again.
‘Thought you was gonna die in the badlands, dude.’
Ed explained what he needed – a reliable car with at least twenty miles of gas in the tank, preferably twice that, so he could get there and back.
‘If I could get you a motor,’ said Ryan, ‘what can you offer me for it?’
‘Can you get me one?’
‘I can get anything,’ said Ryan. ‘But there’s a price, soldier. I mean, what you got? Apart from that face that got stomped on?’
One step forward. Two steps back. Ed knew he couldn’t rely on Justin to give him anything. And then he had an idea.
‘How about alcohol?’ he said. ‘What if I got you as much booze as you can carry?’
‘Then, my friend, we have a deal.’
And so it was that this morning Ryan had arrived with the Chrysler. The weather was fine and the hunters were still there, lounging around on the steps that led up to the front of the museum, sampling some of the drink that Ed had got for them. They were all dressed in leathers and furs and looked like a heavy metal band posing for their latest album cover.
Ed was loading supplies into the boot when Ryan came over.
‘You heading out already?’ he said, raising a can of beer in a salute.
Ed was glad that Ryan had taken his mask off – it gave him the creeps – although Ryan’s real face wasn’t exactly a pretty sight. It was covered in acne and battered from a thousand fights.
‘I have to find someone,’ Ed explained.
‘No rest, eh, dude?’ said Ryan with a lopsided grin. ‘Not for us soldiers. No Sleep ’til Hammersmith.’
‘Hammersmith?’
‘Is an album. Motörhead. No, brother, you and me, we don’t get to sit down and sip cups of tea, do our knitting. We’re workers. We’re soldiers. We’re hunters. No rest for the wicked, yeah? We never sleep. Not till we’re in our graves.’
‘You die if you want, Ryan.’ Ed smiled at him, knowing his own face would be pulled into a Halloween mask. ‘I intend to live till I’m a hundred.’
‘Good luck with that, my man. You want a drink?’
‘Nope.’
‘Is good stuff. So tell me, where’d you get it all? Who’s your supply?’
‘That’s confidential.’
‘Thought it might be.’
‘Where you want these, boss?’ Kyle had come over, carrying a box of fifty crossbow bolts.
‘Sling them on the roof.’ The bolts were part of the deal. Ryan had got them for Ed and Ed was going to use them to pay for the drink. That’s how the world worked now. Barter.
The drink had come from a boy called Dylan, although no one but Ed knew his real name – to everyone else he was Shadowman. Ed had saved Shadowman at Piccadilly Circus a few nights ago, and Shadowman owed him. He had a hideout in an abandoned drinking club not far away. And there was more alcohol stashed away in its cellars than he could ever drink.
So they’d done a deal. Ed had taken a load of beer and vodka and cider and promised to come back with crossbow bolts. They’d have to drop them off for Shadowman on the way.
It had only taken Ryan a few days to find a car. Ed had got more and more frustrated waiting around for him, but knew that when it did arrive the car would save them a lot of time and hassle. Now that it was here he just wanted to be off an
d get this whole thing over and done with. Everyone was telling him it was crazy, stupid, pointless, dangerous …
Everyone except Sam.
Ryan had parked the car outside the museum gates and Ed, Kyle, Macca and Will had spent the last hour or so getting it ready. Packing supplies into the back and strapping their weapons and any larger items to the roof rack. They’d put in as much food as Justin would allow them, plus spare clothes, water, sleeping bags and a decent first-aid kit. They were just about ready to leave now. Ed was delaying setting off, though. Hoping against hope that someone else would volunteer to come with them.
He looked up towards the main doors of the museum. A small crowd of curious museum kids had gathered there to watch. Ed couldn’t really blame them for not helping. This wasn’t anything to do with them, and anyway he’d heard that Justin had told them all not to go. He needed his fighters here.
But the Holloway kids: Ella was one of them. Sam was one of them. Hell, none of Ed’s crew even knew what Ella looked like.
He was just about to turn away when he saw movement. A small delegation was coming down to speak to him.
Was it going to be good news or bad news?
A step forward or a step back?
31
Ed recognized the red-haired boy, Ollie, but the other three he hadn’t got to know yet. There was a round-faced black kid; a dozy-looking guy with an Afro, who was wearing what looked like bits of samurai armour and carrying a katana; and a younger, pale-faced girl, who had a haunted look about her. When they arrived, she stared at Ed with scared, black-rimmed eyes, her lips pressed tight together. He noticed she was carrying a big leather-bound book under her arm and was keeping close to Ollie, who put a protective arm across her shoulders.
‘What’s up?’ Ed asked, trying not to sound aggressive. ‘You come to wave me off or join up?’
‘I would come with you,’ said Ollie. ‘But I’ve promised to look after Lettis.’