The End

  ‘Might not be quite that easy,’ said Will. ‘There’s other kids want to be in charge. David King at the palace. You remember him? Kid who rocked up at the Imperial War Museum with a load of kids in red blazers all that time back? Wanted all our guns.’

  ‘Yeah. I remember him. Smart but slippery. He’s in charge there, is he?’

  ‘Not happy about you coming in and taking control.’

  ‘I don’t give a monkey’s about no David King,’ said Jordan. ‘If he don’t want to do what he’s told he can sit in his palace with his thumb up his arse. There’s no general better than Jordan Hordern. We’ll take anyone from the cathedral as wants to come as well, anyone who can fight. Hell, they can even bring their musicians if they want. Like a proper army marching with a band. This is what we been waiting for. Training for. This is what I been planning for. We gonna end this once and for all time.’

  Jordan could see the coming battle as an illustration in a book – a grand painting, soldiers locked in combat, Romans against barbarians, Henry the Fifth cutting down the French knights at Agincourt, Wellington’s red against Napoleon’s blue. One day someone would paint a picture of him, leading his army into battle, destroying the sickos … Only thing was – he’d probably never be able to see it.

  22

  ‘Why should we believe them?’ David slapped his hands on the stone balustrade that ran along the balcony at the front of the palace. ‘Why should we do what they say? Why should we even listen to them?’

  ‘But Jester saw the grown-ups.’ Nicola looked at David. He had a big angry spot on the back of his neck. ‘And Jester’s one of yours.’

  ‘Yes,’ said David. ‘And I don’t always trust him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve never really been sure about him, to tell you the truth. He’d take over here given the chance. That’s the problem with people who are second in command – they want to be first in command. Stalin regularly killed all his generals.’

  ‘Really?’ said Nicola. ‘I never knew that.’

  David turned to face her. He was blushing slightly, a little overexcited, showing off as usual.

  ‘Jester’s always been sneaky,’ he said. ‘But something happened to him out there. That creepy kid, Shadowman, got to him. They’ve made some sort of a plan together. I just know it. I can’t trust anyone.’

  ‘What about me?’ said Nicola. ‘Can you trust me?’

  ‘I think so, yes,’ said David. ‘You’re a girl. Girls aren’t so devious.’

  Nicola had to suppress a laugh. David was such a mix. On one hand he was really clever and on the other he was unbelievably stupid. He had school smarts, not street smarts.

  She stared directly at him, seeing if he dared make eye contact. He didn’t. He may have been scarily clever and ruthless, he may have taken over here, running his little empire and getting rid of all the oppoes, but there was one thing he was scared of. There was one thing he didn’t know how to deal with.

  Girls. And this girl in particular, thought Nicola. He thinks he’s the one in charge, but right now I’m the one with all the power.

  She joined David at the balustrade, looking out over the parade ground towards the golden statue of Queen Victoria and, beyond that, St James’s Park. She knew that out there were the squatters, the unruly rabble of unstable dropouts who’d made an uneasy alliance with David. How long it would last in the face of real trouble she had no idea. She’d always felt uncomfortable being part of this three-way coalition. She’d visited the squatter camp one time with David, soon after they’d made their treaty. She’d felt very nervous. The kids who lived there were half wild, dirty, disorganized, living on the edge. Some of them were drunk, fighting among themselves. Some had found a giant Union flag and their leader, John, had gone on about how great England was and how they were going to make it right. Make England the most powerful country in the world again.

  ‘This was all meant to be,’ he’d ranted. ‘God has wiped out everyone else so we can start again and build it right this time. Build a new England.’

  How they intended to do that when they couldn’t even organize their grubby little camp was beyond her.

  So this was her team. David with his dreams of becoming king and John with his dreams of … what? A new world ruled by drunken thugs. Nicola knew she’d made a mistake joining with David. She should have made an alliance with the museum kids. Now that they had Maxie and Blue and the Holloway gang with them they were the group best placed to sort things out. And David was never going to admit that. He hated them.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t we believe Jester and Shadowman?’

  ‘Because they’re just like all the rest,’ said David. ‘They don’t like me, and they don’t like the idea of me being in charge.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Nicola, who thought he might actually be right.

  ‘They’re scared of me, you see,’ said David. ‘And people hate what they fear. The truth is – they’re all plotting to get rid of me, to take over for themselves; they always have done. They’re jealous of what I’ve got. But before now they haven’t been strong enough to do anything about it. Those museum nerds aren’t fighters, led by chief nerd Justin. They’ve got together and made up all this stuff about an army of strangers just so that they can try to get rid of me. They’ve been plotting it. It’s so obvious. Plotting to call in those bastards from the Tower of London. I mean, it’s stupid. Why would we let a bunch of complete strangers come strolling in here and tell us what to do? This is our part of London.’

  ‘Have you ever considered,’ said Nicola calmly, ‘that this might be nothing to do with you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That they’re not plotting against you? That they couldn’t really care less about you?’

  ‘Look!’ David waved his arms towards the park. ‘Look at that! There are no grown-ups! There are no strangers. There are no oppoes or whatever it is you call them. No sickos. There is no threat. They’ve got rid of the enemy and now they want to get rid of me. It’s so obvious it’s laughable.’

  ‘It’s not obvious to me,’ said Nicola. ‘And, to tell you the truth, if anything’s laughable it’s you.’

  ‘You can’t say that to me.’

  ‘Why not? We’re equals, aren’t we? We have an alliance. A coalition.’

  ‘Yes, we have a coalition, but I am the senior member. That’s always been understood. I have the bigger army. I have guns. I have the royal family.’

  ‘So what am I to you then?’

  ‘I told you,’ said David, and he flushed deeper, his face going the red of his boys’ blazers. He looked away. Forget eye contact, he couldn’t even look in her general direction. ‘Make a proper alliance with me,’ he mumbled. ‘Be my girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh, you’re so romantic, David,’ said Nicola sarcastically. ‘Are you proposing marriage?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘I just want to …’

  ‘Just want to what?’ Nicola moved closer to him.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. Spell it out for me.’

  ‘I want to do all the things that boys and girls do together.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Nicola. ‘Play cards? Go for a bike ride? Sing close-part harmonies …?’

  ‘Would you let me kiss you?’ David asked and Nicola almost felt sorry for him. He was so utterly clueless. She wondered if he’d ever kissed a girl.

  Not that sorry, though. He couldn’t bully her into it. And the thought of kissing him was … Well, it didn’t exactly turn her stomach. She just couldn’t picture it. Couldn’t imagine any scenario where it would feel right. Not even if she was dying and needed mouth-to-mouth. She’d been stringing him along because it made him easier to handle. It made him nicer to her. More open. But she wondered now whether she shouldn’t just let him down easy and tell him the deal was off. No kissing. No girlfriend stuff. No alliance. She could do without the extra food
he’d been regularly sending over to the Houses of Parliament. What else did she get out of their arrangement, other than keeping him and the squatters off her back, and stopping them from trying to take over her little corner of the world?

  Nicola had gone through a craze of playing Risk with a group of friends before the disease had struck. They’d play for hours in her bedroom. The trick to winning was to make alliances – ‘Don’t attack me in Australia and I won’t attack you in South America …’ And she always knew the alliances were nothing to do with helping the other person; they were simply a way of getting what you wanted. Once you’d done that, it was time to ditch the alliance and screw the person you’d made it with. Well, maybe it was time to do that now? Only thing was – she bet David used to play as well. He was just the sort. Probably won every time. So was he getting ready to dump on her if she looked like getting the upper hand?

  Best to wait. Make sure Jordan’s army arrived from the east first. When everything was all in place, she could break the alliance, take Australia and leave David alone and floundering. In the meantime best to keep him happy.

  ‘Not now, David,’ she said, and gave him the sort of smile she thought he’d like. ‘Not here.’

  ‘We could go inside,’ he said, pathetically eager, like a little boy. Which after all – let’s face it – was exactly what he was. Most of the time you forgot that. But now Nicola could see him clearly. An insecure fifteen-year-old.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ she said. ‘You can’t just tell me what to do and march me inside like some kind of hooker or something. You need to build up to it.’

  ‘What, like, give you flowers?’ said David sarcastically. ‘I can’t wait, Nicola. I have built up to it. I think about you all the time.’

  ‘Well, it’s different for girls,’ Nicola lied. ‘We can’t just go from nothing to sixty in three seconds. You need to …’

  ‘Need to what?’

  ‘You need to woo me.’ Nicola almost laughed at the silly, old-fashioned word that she couldn’t remember ever having used before.

  ‘How?’ David asked.

  ‘Oh God, David. If I have to tell you!’

  ‘Well, I mean …’ David was struggling. ‘The world’s changed. We can’t exactly go on a date, can we? Go to see a film, or out to dinner or something.’

  ‘A school disco,’ said Nicola. ‘Did you ever go to one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That figures.’

  ‘So what would count as a date these days?’ said David. ‘Digging up potatoes? Killing sickos? There isn’t time, Nicola. Not any more. Not for all that nonsense. Life is short and pretty intense. We do just have to go from nought to sixty in three seconds.’

  Nicola thought about that. He was right really, wasn’t he? She just didn’t like his car, though, never would. And she didn’t like the way he drove.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. Lying again.

  ‘Oh … OK.’ David looked so completely broken. So young and helpless.

  ‘Maybe next time, yeah?’

  ‘OK. Do you promise?’

  ‘I don’t promise anything. But David, if you want me to go along with you, you’re going to have to listen to what everyone else is saying. You have to join the alliance. Otherwise it’s not going to work.’

  ‘OK,’ said David. ‘I will. I’ll properly think about it.’

  Great. So who was the bigger liar? Him or her?

  ‘David?’

  Nicola turned to see Pod. How long had he been lurking back there in the room that led out to the balcony? Had he been watching the sad little show?

  ‘What is it?’ said David.

  ‘There’s something you need to come and see. And you, Nicola …’

  23

  Matt had a slight limp. Will had never noticed it before. Not sure he’d ever seen him walking around that much and, if he had, Matt had always been surrounded by his acolytes. A group of boys who kept close to him, like flies round a cow’s arse. But, marching alone like this, Will was able to get a good look at him. Matt was painfully thin, his bones showing. He was just muscle and gristle, no fat, like a walking skeleton. His skin was so pale it was almost transparent, his hair cropped short. Like all his followers, he was dressed head to foot in green, with some kind of green dyed religious robes flapping about his scrawny frame. He must have found them at the cathedral.

  He was loving it. Marching with his musicians and his banners. A holy man going on a crusade. When Will had announced the news about Sam, and the idea of using his blood to make an antidote, it had quickly got to Matt. He’d gone into overdrive, rocking up at the Tower, ranting and yelling and rolling his eyes up in his head.

  ‘We will wash our robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb! He is the firstborn from the dead. He will free us from our sins by his blood. He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him …’

  So here he was now, limping along, head held high, at the front of his crusaders. At the head of the procession were the musicians, trumpets blaring, drums banging. Will wasn’t sure they were exactly playing a tune, but it still sounded pretty awesome. Next came Matt’s acolytes, holding up several huge banners. One of them Matt had had made over a year ago, back at the Imperial War Museum, and which had caused much laughter. It said ‘Angus Day’ in big letters, and underneath were the crudely painted figures of two boys, one shining and bright, the other dark – the Lamb and the Goat. The other banners were newer. Will hadn’t seen them before. ‘Blood of the Lamb’, ‘God’s Hand’ and one with a much better painting on it than the Lamb and the Goat. It showed a battle between children and monsters, with the words ‘Death to Nephilim’ across the bottom and ‘Army of God’ across the top.

  Then came Matt himself, keeping clear of everyone else, even his right-hand man, Archie Bishop. Archie was off to one side, taking in the view along the Thames from the bridge. Behind Matt were the rest of his troops, trying to march in step and failing. Will was among them. He’d moved forward to be near the front, to see what was going on. Jordan had been happy to let Matt and his green party lead them into town. He was heading up the second body of kids, the ones from the Tower, heavily armed and armoured.

  Will would have liked to have spent more time at the Tower. He’d only been at home for two nights, just long enough for Jordan to get everything ready. He would have loved to properly catch up with his friends. They all had so many questions. He felt like a real hero – someone who’d been out there, gone past the no-go zone, brought back news from the wider world. He was Columbus, and Drake, and all the other great explorers rolled into one. And now he was leading his friends into this new world.

  They’d come along the South Bank, making a detour to the Imperial War Museum on the way. Jordan had always wanted to go back there, ever since they’d been forced out by the massive fire that had destroyed half of south London. Jordan had wanted to know if the flames had left any part of the buildings and its collections of weapons undamaged. There was a strongroom underground, with a reinforced door and walls, where the museum’s pile of functioning weapons and ammunition had been stored. The fire had ripped the place apart, and the roof had partially collapsed. There were fallen planes and blackened tanks in the remains of the main exhibition hall. Weeds and small shrubs were already growing in the ruins, but the kids had managed to find a way downstairs, hauling rubble and bits of ruined exhibits out of the way. Scorched display dummies in their uniforms lay all over the place, like corpses. They’d broken into the strongroom and, while their haul hadn’t been all that Jordan had been hoping for, they did still manage to find some new gear – swords and spears, bayonets, even a few old guns with working ammunition.

  Once they’d stocked up they’d headed north towards Westminster Bridge, and were now crossing towards the Houses of Parliament. Will felt proud. You had to admit they were an impressive sight, like a real army. At school he’d read about the Children’s Crusade in the thirteenth century, w
hen children from all over Europe had joined together to march to the Holy Land and free it from the Saracens. At least that’s how they’d seen it at the time. Will hoped this army would fare better. Most of the kids from the Children’s Crusade – those that hadn’t died from disease or starvation – had ended up boarding boats owned by slavers and being sold into slavery.

  There was a good crowd of local children waiting for them on the north bank. Ryan and his hunters had gone on ahead to whip up some excitement. Jordan wanted to make an entrance. A show of strength. He’d told Ryan to spread the word – at midday, when the sun was at its highest, Jordan would bring his troops across the bridge. And he didn’t just want cheering locals. He wanted all their leaders there as well. He wanted a proper welcoming party. He wanted to make a point.

  Will pushed ahead, past Matt and Archie, past the flapping banners, up into the front rank of musicians. He felt slightly out of place not being dressed in green, and hoped he wasn’t spoiling the look of the army, but he wanted to be sure that the right people were ready and waiting. He knew how important it was. If the locals didn’t all accept Jordan being commander-in-chief it would lead to days of arguing. And it might piss Jordan off. Which wouldn’t be a good idea.

  Will spotted Justin in the crowd of waiting kids, with Jackson, Blue and Maxie from the museum. They were standing close to Nicola and a big group from the Houses of Parliament. No surprise as this was right on their doorstep. On the opposite side of the road were David, Jester and Pod, with a group of David’s boys in red blazers forming a personal guard. And there were Ryan and his hunters, with their dogs, whooping and cheering.

  So that was pretty much all of them. Jordan had planned this well. The locals were wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

  When the front of the column reached the end of the bridge, Matt shouted a command as arranged and his musicians gave a sort of ragged fanfare that signalled to all the army to stop where they were. They halted and there was a sudden and unexpected deep silence. Will smiled. This was working so well. The front ranks parted, lining up on either side of the bridge, and they all turned to face the centre as Jordan came forward, walking slowly and steadily between them, his own guard flanking him. It was designed to be a long walk. To let the power of the moment really sink in and crank up the tension. If Jordan organized the battle this well, how could they lose?