‘I don’t get it,’ said Brooke, ignoring them. ‘How do they do that? How do they communicate? Telepathy?’
‘Amelia reckons it’s probably, like, an ultrasound thing,’ said Lewis. ‘Insect noises we can’t hear. That’s what the sentinels are for, to amplify the signal and pass it along. Come join the fun.’
‘But what are they massing for?’ Brooke asked.
‘They getting together for the big pop,’ said Lewis. ‘The next infestation. Happens every fifteen years when their spores are ripe. They planning to get inside anyone who wasn’t around the first time. Namely us.’
‘Nice,’ said Brooke. ‘They’re gonna shoot their germs into the air and try to infect us all?’
‘Something like that.’
‘So, if it’s going to happen every fifteen years or whatever, that means this goes on forever. Each new generation getting infected. If we ever had kids, they’d have to go through what we’re going through now … God. I was hoping that learning about this stuff would make it less scary. It’s the opposite …’
‘I ain’t having no kids,’ said Kyle. ‘No way, man.’
‘Oh, I am so disappointed,’ said Brooke. ‘I wanted you to be my baby-father.’
‘You’re funny,’ said Kyle, and he actually laughed, a genuine laugh. ‘I like you.’
‘That’s really made my week,’ said Brooke. She was silent for a minute. Then she said, ‘Seriously, though – we’ve got to stop them. Otherwise, us kids – we’re never going to survive this, are we?’
46
Ed was aware of the day slipping away. Of losing time. Everything he’d learnt about the disease had terrified him. He should be back in London, not chasing around out here. Brooke was right – they had to stop St George’s army. He had a good mind to simply drive out of here and head towards town. Tell Sam he’d tried and failed.
He decided this would be his last shot. If the kids here were no help then it was time to steer east instead of west.
The sun moved steadily across the sky. Kyle and Ebenezer couldn’t stand the tedium and got out of the car. They found an old tennis ball in the long grass near the fence and spent ages chucking it to each other, gradually moving further apart. Lewis really did nod off this time and Ed moved into the back of the car to sit with Brooke.
This was the first proper chance they’d had to be alone together since Ed had arrived at the museum, and it was a good opportunity to catch up. If nothing else it would kill some time. They both talked about what they’d been through in the last year, good times and bad. Brooke really had changed a lot. Grown up. Got some sense into her head. She’d always been smart – street-smart – but she’d never been exactly wise. Here in the car, alone, with nobody to score points off, she got through to Ed.
Ed tried to keep the conversation light and to steer clear of any of the really heavy stuff that had gone down. He didn’t want her to know how he’d changed as well. It seemed to him that what she’d gained he’d lost. She’d become more human and he’d become less. He’d become harder and more cynical. To the outside world he was good old Ed, sensible and nice. To himself …
He sometimes felt almost as if he’d died somewhere along the way, and only came alive when he had his mortuary sword in his hand. Was that why he was pursuing this mad quest? To show he still had a heart?
Eventually they got around to what had happened to DogNut and Courtney, and Brooke told Ed the details of the awful battle by Green Park tube station for the first time. Ed felt an acid burning in his guts, wished he could have been there to smash those sickos to pieces.
Brooke was crying, remembering DogNut and Courtney. Ed put his arm round her, but stayed dry-eyed. He didn’t think he’d cried since Jack had died.
That was a bad day. The worst.
Losing Jack and Bam, his best friends.
He still remembered the sicko who’d done it. Would never forget him. Greg the butcher, who’d been driving the bus that had rescued them in Rowhurst and driven them to London. The bus where he’d first met Brooke. Greg had claimed he couldn’t get sick, and had then killed his own boy before …
Bastard.
Ed would give anything to see Greg again. To cut him into bits. He knew he never would. That had all been a year back, far away. Chances were Greg had died a long time ago …
A massive thump on the side of the car snapped Ed back into the here and now. He looked round to see a dirty splotch on the window and Kyle and Ebenezer both laughing. One of them must have thrown the ball at the car.
Children.
Ed was going to say something boring and fatherly about being careful not to break the windows when he realized that Kyle had been trying to get his attention. He looked over to where the big hench was pointing.
A group of kids was coming in through the gates. This must be Josa returning from the hunt. There were about twenty of them and they were dragging along what appeared to be a group of four or five sickos. The sickos’ hands were tied behind their backs and there were chains round their necks.
Ed got out of the car, feeling stiff and cranky. He looked up at the sky. The sun was far over in the west. It was late in the day. The moon was showing in the sky. Blood-red, like the circle on the Japanese flag. He kicked a wheel in frustration. He hated being dicked about like this.
‘Stay with the car,’ he said to Kyle and Ebenezer. Kyle was too much of a liability. He was in a worse mood than Ed and was likely to shoot his mouth off and try to wind someone up. Ed didn’t need a fight now. Instead he asked Brooke to come with him, and Lewis must have woken up because there he was, standing next to them, even though Ed hadn’t noticed him get out of the car. His eyelids were still drooping as if he was fighting to stay awake and he was scratching his head and yawning.
‘Whassup?’ he said. ‘They gone and caught theirselves some grown-ups?’
‘Let’s go and find out.’ Ed started walking.
The three of them crossed the car park towards the new arrivals, who spotted them coming and formed into a defensive line. Ed smiled. Did they really think they were under attack?
This was one paranoid bunch of kids, and it had made them mean and suspicious and not to be trusted. Ed paused, hung back, not wanting to appear threatening in any way. Lewis shuffled on a few paces and then stopped as well. He hoiked up his trousers, which had been hanging off his arse, showing his underpants. They immediately slipped down again.
Kenton came out of the school building and approached the new arrivals. Ed saw him talk to a small, wiry girl with her hair tied back in a viciously tight knot. This must be Josa. She had a sicko on a lead and was carrying a spear. She looked stroppy and sharp. Someone you wouldn’t want to pick a fight with. Ed thought it might be safe to approach now that Kenton must have explained what was going on, and he carried on walking.
Josa watched them come every step of the way, checking them out, sizing them up.
‘All right?’ she said as they got close, her voice husky and rasping, and she grinned at Ed, showing him that all her front teeth were missing. She had a pointed face, a pointed nose and small, clever eyes that didn’t miss a thing.
‘Yeah.’ Ed smiled back at her. Polite. Aware that his face wasn’t the most welcoming sight. ‘I’m all right. You must be Josa.’
‘I must be, yeah.’ She looked from him to Brooke. ‘You two been scrapping, have you?’
‘Yeah.’ Ed knew that she was referring to the scars they both carried. Decided to let it lie. ‘But not with each other.’
Josa looked pretty beaten about herself. It wasn’t just her missing teeth. She had a scar on her top lip, as well as a twisted, mangled ear.
There was a gang of big blokes around her, like a personal bodyguard. Ed clocked that they were all well armed.
‘Kenton here tells me you want our help,’ said Josa.
‘Kind of.’
‘We’re looking for some people,’ said Brooke. Josa switched her attention, holding Brooke’s stare,
daring her to look away. Ed knew Brooke well enough to know that she wouldn’t be faced down and in the end it was Josa who broke the stare, turning her face to fix on Lewis. She managed to do it in such a way that it looked like her choice.
Lewis didn’t try to eyeball her. He lolled there, staring at his shoes, yawning and looking dozy. Ed had no idea how much of it was an act. Josa gave him barely a second before dismissing him and returning to Ed.
‘Some girl called Ella, yeah?’ she said. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yeah,’ Ed replied. ‘D’you know her?’
‘Well, she ain’t here. I can tell you that much. But I’m gonna go talk to some people, quiz my top dogs, see if we can’t come up with something for you, yeah? We got, like, scouts out all the time. Ain’t nothing we don’t know about what’s going on out there.’
‘Can we join the meeting?’
‘Nah. I don’t think so. This is my yard. Don’t want you snooping around, checking us out. We don’t know where you been. You might just be spies for the Golden Twins down Windsor, or the gaylords down Maidenhead. You’re a funny-looking bunch, so in my mind you belong down Ascot with the weirdos.’
‘We’re from London,’ said Brooke.
‘We in’t had anyone come out of London in a way long time.’
‘We’re not spies.’ Ed held out his hands in an empty gesture.
‘Don’t matter whether you is or whether you in’t. You in’t coming inside, you get me?’
‘What’re you doing with them sickos?’ Brooke asked.
The grown-ups were a sorry bunch, bruised and battered and bleeding, with burst boils on their faces. The chains around their necks were fixed to long wooden poles so that the kids could keep them at a safe distance and all the fight had gone out of them.
‘We’re rounding them up,’ said Josa. ‘For the races. And now you’re gonna pretend you don’t know what the races are cos you claim to be from the smoke.’
‘We are from London,’ Ed insisted. ‘And we genuinely don’t have a clue what the races might be.’
‘Well, you’re missing out then, ain’t you?’ said Josa and she cackled. ‘Now scarper off back to your wagon before I get the hump with you and change my mind about being nice. We gonna go in and sort ourselves out then we’ll let you know. OK?’
‘OK.’ Ed didn’t have any choice. He watched them go round the other side of the school building and followed them far enough to see that there were three big pens built out in the open ground, where about twenty more sickos were locked up. They were sitting on the floor mostly, looking defeated. Ed wanted to go nearer, but some of Josa’s boys swaggered over menacingly.
Ed headed back to the car, already working on a plan B.
If Josa was going to mess with him she had made a big mistake.
47
Brooke had a few choice things to say about the local kids on the way back to the car. Lewis didn’t seem to be bothered. He’d removed himself from what was going on, shifted to another level. Whether that was a higher level or a lower one, Ed had no way of knowing.
Kyle and Ebenezer were mad as hell, shooting off about being treated like this, swearing and calling the locals all the filthy names they could think of.
Which was quite a lot.
‘We should go in there and bust a few heads,’ Kyle protested.
‘There’s too many of them, Kyle,’ Ed pointed out. ‘And they don’t look like wimps. It’d be stupid. We can outsmart them if we need to. And maybe they’ll give us something useful.’
‘We’re gonna lose a whole day at this rate,’ said Kyle. ‘It’s gonna be dark soon, and I doubt they’re gonna let us stay here.’
‘You think I don’t know all that?’ Ed shouted. He’d finally lost his temper. ‘You think I want to hang around here while they play their stupid games?’
‘We should never have come in here,’ said Ebenezer.
‘Thanks for stating the obvious, Ebenezer. But there’s no easy way out.’
‘Ed’s right,’ said Lewis. ‘I been checking out the gate. There’s always two guys up on the platform in the watchtower and another couple guarding the road.’
‘Turn the car round anyway.’ Ed forced himself to calm down. It didn’t help getting angry. ‘Face it towards the gates, just in case. Then let’s see what we can come up with.’
They sat in the car and discussed their options. Kyle’s suggestions all involved extreme violence, but Ed wanted to get out of this without hurting anyone, if possible, despite having recurring fantasies of cutting Josa’s head off with his mortuary sword. Lewis had some better ideas. He was more a fan of stealth, which fitted with Ed’s way of thinking.
It was growing dark and they were still talking when Kenton banged on the roof of the car.
‘You wanna talk?’ he shouted. ‘We’ll talk.’
Ed was first out of the car. His legs felt stiff and his back hurt. He tried to ease his muscles and loosen his joints. Lewis was next out. He shambled away from the car and took a piss in the long grass. As he did so, Kyle shifted into the driver’s seat and Ebenezer slipped out of the door on the far side without anyone paying him much attention.
Last out was Brooke. She slid her door back and sat on the step, watching.
‘So what have you got for us then?’ Ed asked. No harm in being optimistic.
‘This and that. Patience, dude. Josa’s on her way.’
‘Great. I can hardly wait.’
Kenton took the measure of Ed. Probably had him down as just some useless posh kid who’d lost one too many fights and got himself carved up in the process.
Kenton had no worries. He had his shotgun with him. It annoyed Ed the way he played with it, swinging it around in one hand like a toy, showing it off, but trying to look like it was no big deal. The message was pretty clear. He had a gun and Ed didn’t. No contest.
Ed and Lewis were unarmed, though there were weapons within reach on the roof. They didn’t want to risk provoking the locals.
Josa arrived with her team around her. Her boy band. She looked full of herself, enjoying the situation, being in power. She strutted across the car park, laughing and joking with her boys.
‘It’s been a long day.’ Ed kept his voice polite. ‘We want to get going.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Josa. ‘We’ve had a chat. I’ve asked my guys what they know.’
‘And?’
Josa opened her hands in an empty gesture, an amused glint in her eye.
‘They don’t know nothing. Sorry and that, yeah? We ain’t seen no one from your gang up this way. Or out in the field. Ain’t heard nothing from any of the other camps.’
‘It took you all this time to find that out?’
‘I had to wash and get something to eat and put my little boy to bed and catch up on all the goss. The world don’t revolve around you, mister funny face.’
‘No,’ said Ed. ‘It appears to revolve around you.’
‘Mm. But listen, we ain’t gonna let you leave with nothing.’
‘That’s good of you.’
‘Your best bet is to go to Windsor. They got the biggest camp, the most kids. If I was coming out of London, and wanted to hook up with anyone around here, I’d head there. They got the castle. They stush.’
‘Our friends wanted to move to the country, to get away from towns.’
‘There’s Sandhurst then. Is a smaller place. Or Bracknell. The smallest camp of all, though, the most country-style, is Ascot. But they in’t nobody lives out in the open, talking to the trees and flowers, playing FarmVille. Too dangerous. You get me? All the kids is in towns.’
‘But Ascot’s the smallest camp?’ Ed asked.
‘Yeah. They all nuts in Ascot, though. Seriously, I was you, I’d try Windsor first.’
‘It’s just over the way,’ said Kenton. ‘Other side of the motorway. Go down through Eton and you’re there. Three, four miles at most. If you’re quick you can make it in, like, an hour or so. Course, we’re sorry i
t’s got so late and that, and dark with it. Should make it more exciting for you, though, yeah? More of an adventure.’
‘Yeah,’ said Josa. ‘We might even put some bets on how long it takes you and which of you don’t make it.’
‘What do you mean, a couple of hours?’ Ed asked, although he was pretty sure of the answer. He’d been wondering about Josa’s plans. Had discussed it with the others. Why she might want to keep them here. Whether she’d been balancing up the risks of a fight. Why there were a few other cars in the car park and they hadn’t all been carted over to reinforce the fence. Wondering what might count as treasure around here.
‘Why would it take us a couple of hours to drive four miles?’ He was doing all the talking, letting them forget about Lewis, who had hung about on the edge of the car park for a while, fiddling with his Afro, staring at the sky, and generally looking like a dope, before wandering over to stand with some of the Slough kids. He was chatting to them, as if he had no interest in the main conversation. Even Ed kept forgetting about him, and hoped he could be trusted to do his bit if it came to it.
So Ed was by himself. Out in the open. Exposed. The centre of attention.
Kenton was waggling his shotgun, some of his team holding back like before, watching, with their crossbows. It was all locked down. Josa was confident. Unafraid. There was no threat.
‘We could drive there in ten minutes,’ Ed went on.
‘That’s the other thing we wanted to talk to you about,’ said Josa. ‘That sweet motor of yours.’
So there it was. No big surprise. These kids wanted working vehicles. The other cars in the car park must have petrol in their tanks. That’s why they kept them. A big car like the people carrier – that was a useful piece of kit.
Which is why he was prepared.
‘Yeah?’ he said, acting innocent. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Well, see.’ Josa exchanged a look with some of her boys, who smiled back at her, enjoying this. ‘We like the look of your motor. And we was wondering if you, like, wanted to, like, borrow it to us.’