The End

  ‘That’s what we got to figure out,’ said Shadowman. ‘And that’s where you come in. You know about this type of stuff. About mechanics and engineering and how things work. Plan is we rig up as many vehicles as Saif can give us and turn them into car bombs. All you gotta do then is work out a way of driving them into the rear of St George’s army without getting killed and blow them all into another dimension.’

  ‘That’s all we’ve gotta do?’ said Ben, with heavy sarcasm. ‘Break into Wembley Stadium. Find out whether there’s actually any explosives in there. Work out how to get them out without killing ourselves. Rig up a fleet of vehicles as car bombs, and then drive them into the middle of St George’s army and blow them up without killing ourselves for a second time. This is assuming that Saif and his guys don’t want to become suicide bombers.’

  ‘They certainly don’t,’ said Shadowman.

  ‘So you thought you’d just jack us, drive us up there and we’d do your bidding?’ said Ben.

  ‘I’ve already got some ideas actually,’ said Bernie. ‘This could be cool. A challenge. And if we get it right, man, if we pimp those rides and turbocharge them to the max, it could change everything.’

  ‘OK. It looks like we’re on board,’ said Ben. ‘What Bernie says goes.’

  ‘You never had a choice,’ said Shadowman. And as he said it Ben got his first glimpse of the stadium. Still some way ahead, but towering over the low buildings of Wembley. The distinctive shape of the massive white steel arch unmistakable.

  ‘What if we get there and it’s empty?’ said Bernie.

  ‘Then we try Tottenham, QPR, Chelsea … We keep looking till we find what we want.’

  ‘What about Arsenal?’ said Bernie.

  ‘Stadium burned down,’ said Shadowman.

  ‘Cool,’ said Bernie. At school the sporty kids had teased and bullied the two of them. They’d become a team, drawing strength from each other, laughing about the macho kids. But when the older kids had found out that Ben and Bernie could fix their, mostly stolen, scooters and mopeds they’d gained some respect and the bullying had stopped.

  Now everyone had their place. And Ben and Bernie were going to try to help defeat the enemy in their own way. With skill and ingenuity and knowledge. Sure, in a war you needed foot soldiers, to fire the guns and drive the tanks and fly the planes. But they wouldn’t get far without people to design and build the guns and the tanks and the planes, to build the bridges for the tanks to drive over.

  Every army had its engineers and, without them, they were useless.

  Ben knew how to fix engines, had learnt to fix guns, but high explosives?

  That was something else.

  The trick was going to be not blowing themselves up before they got anywhere near the enemy.

  29

  TV Boy was worried. The Warehouse Queen was having a major weird-out, jerking and gibbering. She was thrashing her head around so wildly that the bony lumps that grew out of her skull in the shape of a crown were bashing against the cardboard cut-out of a throne that was fixed to the back of her wheelchair and threatening to smash it to pieces.

  Monstar looked worried. He was hugging himself, his long arms wrapped round his hugely muscled and misshapen body.

  ‘She’s getting worse and worse,’ he said and TV Boy had to agree. He shuffled closer, loose-jointed arms and legs going in all directions, knees up around his ears. When the Queen had these fits, she was often exhausted afterwards. Sometimes she was even physically sick.

  ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ he asked. The three of them were on the communal platform, high above the warehouse floor. They felt incomplete, out of sorts, not having the others here – Trinity and Fish-Face and Skinner. They’d lived all their lives together, had shared everything in their own little group, separated from the rest of the world. Pencil Neck had been the first to leave, slithering off to lose himself in the corners and crevices of the warehouse. But he’d never really been one of them. He was so far gone he was more animal than human. He was still out there somewhere, crawling through the heating pipes, and along the wiring ducts, catching insects and rodents.

  It was very different when the others left. It had felt like the end of something. TV Boy often thought about the Inmathger, the rainforest tribe whose first contact with other humans had been the moment the disease escaped their tiny part of the jungle and entered the wider world. They had wandered out of the rainforest into the sunlight, and one day soon the warehouse kids were going to have to come blinking out of their own jungle and mix with other people. They couldn’t stay an undiscovered tribe forever. Let’s face it, they’d already been discovered. Blue and Einstein and their gang had tipped up and turned their world upside down. TV Boy wondered when Skinner and the others would return. That had always been the plan. They were supposed to report back on what was out there. But judging by the messages the Queen was getting from the voices in her head, which only she could hear, it seemed that what was out there was a whole lot worse than they’d feared.

  Maybe the others would never return?

  The Queen bit the edge of her hand and Monstar went to her, tried to calm her down by holding her.

  ‘What’s she hearing?’ TV Boy asked and Monstar made a face.

  ‘The usual stuff,’ he said. ‘She tries to make sense of the voices. I worry about what it’s doing to her.’

  Monstar may have been a big, muscle-bound hulk, but he was soft inside. Perhaps, like the rest of him, his heart was unusually big as well. Out of all of them he was the one who cared most.

  And TV Boy knew that the thing he cared most about was the Queen. Monstar worshipped her. The big, soft, gooey marshmallow.

  Suddenly the Queen fell very still and her eyes opened wide. She stared into the distance, looking at something that only she could see. She raised a hand and pointed, horrified, then her hand flopped down and she relaxed, normal again. As normal as she ever could be.

  ‘It was him,’ she said at last.

  ‘Who?’ asked Monstar.

  ‘Mister Three. I heard him as if he was here with us. He’s the loudest of them all.’

  ‘I usually hear him,’ said Monstar. ‘But he’s too far away for me now.’

  TV Boy was sometimes jealous of the way the others could communicate like this, but he was quite glad not to have crazy Mister Three yelling away inside his head.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

  ‘They’ve split up,’ said the Queen. ‘Trinity has gone west with a boy called Ed; they’re looking for a girl – Ella. Skinner and Fish-Face are still in London, at the museum. I need to connect them. Mister Three’s going batshit. I can amplify all their signals and help them, but Three’s too loud. It hurts. Take me to the roof. I need to hear everything.’

  Monstar sighed and blew out his cheeks. He was ridiculously strong and could easily lift the Queen out of her chair, but carrying her up the steep steps to the roof was tough. Which was why she never usually went up there. Monstar would do whatever she asked, though. Gently, he lifted her out of the wheelchair they’d disguised as a movable throne and carried her towards the steps that led to the roof. TV Boy followed, his legs painfully twisting and buckling as he went.

  ‘What did they tell you this time?’ TV Boy asked once they were safely up on the roof. They could see a long way in all directions from here. In the past there had usually been grown-ups hanging around below, trying to get into the warehouse, but since Blue and his friends had left it had been quiet.

  ‘There are so many voices now.’ The Queen closed her eyes. ‘All shouting at once. It’s hard to tune them, to concentrate on just one.’

  TV Boy had heard the words, Monstar too, but the Queen hadn’t moved her lips; no sound had come out. Hers was the only voice TV Boy could ever hear like this. None of the rest of them knew how to get inside his head.

  ‘I’m trying to find Skinner and Fish-Face,’ she went on. ‘After Three, Fish-Face was always the loudest. But she
’s been quiet lately.’

  ‘Not quiet,’ said Monstar. ‘Drowned out.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said the Queen. ‘There’s so much noise. I thought it was white noise at first, but it’s not. It’s them. The grown-ups. All screaming at once. Three can cut through, when he wakes.’

  ‘He’s been waking more and more lately,’ Monstar explained. ‘Can you feel it, TV? It’s all changing out there. The grown-ups are being called away.’

  ‘Hopefully, when they’ve all gone, I’ll be able to hear the others better,’ said the Queen. ‘And if I can amplify the signal we can all link up properly. It’s tiring, though. It’s hard work. And the voices, I hate what they talk about. There’s one – getting stronger and stronger, from the east, from the city. Calling them in. Everything’s changing.’

  ‘What should we do?’ Monstar asked. ‘Do we stay here?’

  ‘We can’t go out there by ourselves,’ said the Queen. ‘We don’t know how to fight.’

  ‘We have our own weapons,’ said TV Boy. ‘Some skills.’

  ‘We’ve survived by staying here,’ said the Queen. ‘We have to wait for Skinner and the others to return. They can set us free.’

  ‘What if they don’t return?’

  ‘Then we live out our days here. Skinner was brave to go. They all were. I’m not so brave. I’m not sure I can ever leave. I’m Queen here, but out there what’ll I be? A freak. Something to laugh at.’

  ‘You can stop them laughing,’ said TV Boy. ‘You can get in their heads and mess with their minds.’

  ‘I always thought that what I wanted was to be found, to be rescued by outsiders, but when they came I changed my mind.’

  ‘We might have to do it,’ said TV Boy. ‘We might have to help.’

  ‘I’m too scared,’ said the Queen.

  ‘We’re all scared,’ said TV Boy. ‘But maybe we’re like we are for a reason. Maybe it’s wrong to stay hidden here.’

  The Queen looked at him and then suddenly her eyes rolled up in her head and she zoned out again. TV Boy glanced at Monstar, who looked worried.

  And then TV Boy winced. The Queen had done it, amplified a signal, broadcast it … and it was Mister Three again. The effect of his voice in TV Boy’s head was as unpleasant as he’d feared. What he was shouting about was even worse.

  30

  Einstein’s lab was busy, kids in white coats working everywhere, peering in microscopes, doing complicated experiments that Jackson would never understand, mixing stuff in test tubes and beakers. Leaving slime and smears in little flat dishes. Did they even know what they were doing? Or were they just trying to look busy? Trying not to think about what was going on outside. Play-acting. That’s what it looked like to her. Doctors and nurses.

  And it was a nurse she needed right now. It had been a long day and the kids out in the park had got tired. One of her boys, Cameron, had been injured in a mock battle. He had a knack for getting hurt. A wooden club had smashed his hand. He was standing there now, his bad hand jammed in his armpit. It wasn’t too bad, swollen but hopefully no broken bones. He was making a terrible fuss about it, though. There were a few kids here in the labs who acted as doctors. They would check Cameron out and Jackson could leave him with them. She’d brought him here with Achilleus, who thought the whole thing was a big joke. Jackson just wanted to say goodbye and go flop somewhere. If Achilleus joined her that’d be a bonus. Maybe he’d cut her hair like his, with the razor patterns in it. He’d been promising to do it for days. But she was tired enough not to care too much. Some quiet time by herself would be nearly as good.

  She couldn’t see any of the medical staff, but she spotted Einstein. He was talking excitedly to a group of kids, waving his arms about. His tangle of dark hair madder than ever, his teeth yellower than ever, his manner snootier than ever.

  ‘Are Alexander and Cass around?’ she asked him, not worried about interrupting, even though he looked well hacked off at her.

  ‘Not now, Jackson. I’m busy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jackson. ‘Me too. I’m busy training to save your arse. And so was Cameron. He needs some help.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Cameron explained what had happened while Einstein checked out his hand.

  ‘What is it with you?’ he asked, looking at the white-faced boy. ‘First you let Paul nearly cut your head off and now you let some kid break your hand.’

  ‘Is it broken?’ Cameron asked.

  ‘Might be. Someone find Cass. She’s here somewhere.’

  ‘You gonna be able to fight?’ asked one of the kids with Einstein. She was a new arrival from the Tower. Jackson didn’t know her name.

  ‘Hope so,’ said Cameron, forcing a grin. ‘Don’t want to miss the battle.’

  Jackson kept quiet. Really? The battle was going to be horrible. She knew that. She’d been out on the streets, had seen massed bunches of sickos first hand. It wasn’t fun on any level.

  ‘How’s it going, prof?’ asked Achilleus. ‘You solved the mystery of life yet?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Einstein offered Achilleus a mad grin. ‘You’re fighting sickos – we’re fighting germs.’

  ‘Parasites actually.’ They all turned to see Skinner coming in with Fish-Face and the Green Man. Jackson was surprised at how quickly she’d grown to accept the Twisted Kids, how quickly she’d forgotten how peculiar they looked. Fish-Face with her distorted fish head, Skinner covered in great folds of skin.

  She wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to the Green Man, though. It wasn’t just that he was an adult. There was something so creepy about him. Pervy. Not at all helped by the fact that he never wore any clothes. Just went around wrapped in a blanket with a ridiculous green bowler hat stuck on his fuzzy green head. He’d always looked bad, with his covering of green mould and his long hair and fingernails, but he looked worse than ever now. He was sweating and it left nasty green rivulets down the mould that grew on his skin. He was shaking and feverish, his eyes darting about. Jackson had heard that Einstein was experimenting on him, trying out cures and antidotes or whatever.

  ‘It’s parasites,’ Skinner repeated.

  ‘We’re fairly sure there’s a parasitical element to it,’ said Einstein in his annoyingly superior way. ‘But …’

  ‘Listen to him,’ said the Green Man, glaring at Einstein with his yellow eyes, clicking his fingernails together in a way that made your flesh crawl.

  ‘My lab, my rules, Gollum,’ said Einstein. ‘You can’t just come in here and …’

  ‘And tell you the truth?’ said the Green Man.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘We’ve received a message,’ said Skinner. ‘At least Fish-Face has. She can pick stuff up. Trinity’s out there and thoughts are bouncing back to her.’

  ‘OK,’ said Einstein, gearing up to be even more annoying than ever. ‘Let’s examine your last statement. Your fish-faced friend here is receiving spooky telepathic messages from miles away sent by a Siamese triplet.’

  ‘Listen …’ Skinner sounded upset.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet. Let me count the ways that this sucks. One – you lot are a bunch of weirdo, freaky mutants and I’m not sure I trust you for one moment. Two – I can’t believe a word any of you say. You could all be nuts for all I know. It certainly appears that way. Three – I know you like to pretend you can communicate telepathically, but I’m going to take some convincing that all the laws of nature can be overturned like this. Four …’

  ‘Shut up for one second,’ shouted Fish-Face, and everyone was shocked. She was usually so quiet and shy, and now here she was, red-hot and glaring at Einstein. More shark than goldfish.

  ‘There is a law in science,’ she went on. ‘Everything that can happen does happen.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Einstein. ‘But telepathy falls under the heading of “things that can’t happen”.’

  ‘It’s not telepathy,’ said Fish-Face. ‘Any more than using the telephone is telepathy. Any mo
re than TV and radio are magic. We hear on a different level, in a different way. We pick up signals you can’t detect.’

  ‘Listen to us,’ said Skinner. ‘You might learn something.’

  ‘Look …’

  ‘Do as they say, you stupid jerk,’ Achilleus snapped. ‘I want to hear this.’

  Einstein glared at Achilleus, but kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Go on, Fish-Face,’ said Achilleus, and she blushed, looking at the floor, embarrassed, her confidence gone again.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t understand everything, but my friends have found out more about the disease. We used to talk about spirits and being possessed, but they’re sure now that the disease is caused by tiny parasites that hide by disguising themselves as human cells. And when they get to your brain and start to replace your brain cells their thoughts begin to seep into your thoughts. When they grow larger, they start to communicate with each other. There’s a sort of hive-mind thing going on, where the parasites have a shared brain, like an ant colony, all working together, like one single being. They share thoughts and memories.’

  ‘That’s unlikely,’ said Einstein. ‘In fact, it’s insane.’

  ‘It’s not like any other disease anyone’s ever seen before,’ said Skinner. ‘We told you before that there were spirits in the rainforest. They were parasites, which began infecting insects hundreds of thousands of years ago, and they slowly worked their way up the food chain, adapting to each new host.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Einstein scoffed. ‘And I think you tried to tell us they originally came from outer space?’

  ‘Isn’t it possible?’ said Skinner. ‘That tiny micro-organisms could survive in space, on a meteor, land here …’

  ‘Theoretically,’ said Einstein with so much edge it sounded like he was saying ‘bollocks’.

  ‘Well, whatever you believe about their origins,’ said Skinner, ‘can’t you just accept that parasites have got into the adults and are controlling them?’

  ‘Well …’ Einstein was looking not so sure of himself. Jackson could see that he was starting to think about this. ‘I know there are parasites that can make ants climb to the top of tall plants where their brains explode, sending out spores. And parasites that get into snails, into their eyestalks, and make them sort of glow so that birds spot them and eat them and take the parasites into their own guts.’