The End

  He switched back on himself at the top of the stairs, heading for the front of the museum. Kids moved out of the way as he bundled past them, ignoring the glass cases with the displays of apes and early humans, going towards the minerals gallery where the kids slept and hung out.

  ‘Akkie!’ Maxie shouted, hurrying to catch up with him, terrified that he was going to go into the gallery and do something awful, but he carried straight on past it and up the stairs that led to the top floor.

  Right at the top was the cross-section of a giant sequoia four metres wide. As Achilleus neared it, he drew back his arm and let fly with his spear, as if the tree trunk was a giant dartboard. The spear flew straight and clean and hit the sequoia right in the centre, a perfect bull’s eye, the point going in several centimetres.

  ‘Done!’ shouted Achilleus. ‘As long as that spear stays there, I won’t fight. If anyone touches it I’ll kill them.’

  ‘Please, Akkie.’ Maxie was out of breath, choked up. Everything was falling apart. ‘Please. Without you …’

  ‘Exactly!’ Achilleus cut her off. ‘Without me. You’ll have to get used to it, Maxie, because from now on that’s how it is.’

  Maxie crushed all her feelings and turned them into anger. She moved in on Achilleus, put her face right in his.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ she said. ‘You can’t let your self-love ruin us all. Your petty hurt pride. If other kids find out you’re not fighting they might get scared, think it’s not worth it. They might all just pull out.’

  ‘I don’t care. It’s not my problem any more.’

  ‘Would you really risk losing the battle?’ said Maxie. ‘Watch us all die? Just for this?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Achilleus. ‘I would, as it goes. I don’t care for no one else. I never did.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Maxie snapped. ‘What were we just talking about the other day?’

  ‘Dunno. Don’t care.’

  ‘“Arran Lives”. How Freak used to spray it. What it meant.’

  ‘Means nothing. He’s dead.’

  ‘No. Back when we left the palace,’ said Maxie and she shook him. ‘You remember – after Freak had died.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Freak had sprayed “Arran Lives” up on that monument. Tagged it Freaky-Deaky.’

  ‘As I say, Max, what about it?’

  ‘When we all left, you took his spray-can and you wrote your own message – tagged it Akkie Deaky.’ Achilleus smiled at her, gave a little laugh. Maxie stared him down.

  ‘You said something to me then,’ she said.

  ‘I forget,’ said Achilleus with a sneer.

  ‘No, you don’t. You told me you’d finally figured out what Freak’s message meant.’

  ‘It was just some stupid graffiti,’ said Achilleus. ‘Didn’t mean nothing.’

  ‘You said that Freak was right. That we had to believe what Arran believed. That we had to work together, be together, strong – united. You said we had to do the right thing. That everything that happened we had to share, the good and the bad. That we were all in this together.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I was wrong,’ said Achilleus. ‘Because it turned out no one wants to share the good stuff with me, only the bad. I fight for you, I kill for you, I sort out all your problems and I end up like this …’ He pointed to his ugly, scarred and battered face, his mauled ear. ‘When do I get the good stuff?’

  ‘When this is over,’ said Maxie. ‘When we’ve won.’

  ‘And until then?’ said Achilleus. ‘I got to share my dog with Jordan? Well, Akkie don’t share his dog, OK? Akkie don’t share his dog with no one.’

  39

  They had come in from all directions. He’d heard them first, buzzing in his skull, chittering and squeaking, getting louder and louder as they got nearer, growing to a roar, until it got so loud he couldn’t hear it any more. Silence. His head clear and fresh. New thoughts swimming around inside it like goldfish in a clean bowl.

  It was as if he was eating them all, as if they were hamburgers, marching into his guts with big smiles on their faces, and he was cramming them into his gob like a porker at an all-you-can-eat buffet. ‘Feed me!’ he sang. He had grown huge, fatter and fatter, gorging on them. His army had swelled and he had swelled and his head had swelled. Now he felt like bursting, like something wanted to squeeze its way out of him, a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

  Let’s not get carried away.

  Stay focused.

  Yes.

  How he loved all these old words coming back to him …

  Focus. Focus. Focus.

  Concentrate. That was another one. Hard to do, though. Their voices were all around him, their mindless, droning drivel threatening to fill his head up again if he let it. Right now it was as if he had a fence round his head and they were outside, barking and howling and yelping, like foxes trying to get at his sheep. Yammering and yowling. Yowp, yowp, yowp. Buzz-buzz-buzz … The buzzing of the bees in the lemonade trees. Just a babble. In Babylon.

  Except for one voice – pure and cold and sharp. That one could cut through the fence like a knife. Could cut through his skull and poke around inside it, scraping with its needle point. A woman – wouldn’t you know it? – nag, nag, nag. He’d felt her as she came into town. She was a leader too, and she had a powerful brain like his. He sometimes wondered if he should kill her. Feed her to the others. But she read his thoughts. Typical woman. They always know what you’re thinking. She was standing there now, right in front of him, her long, straight hair hanging down around her face. Not a pretty sight. She stared at him and she stared into him …

  What you looking at?

  And they sort of talked. Thoughts pinged backwards and forwards between them. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, killing thoughts. She knew what he wanted. She knew he hated her for challenging him, but she held him with her strong will. Probing him.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ he said. Was it out loud? He couldn’t tell. ‘This is my army.’

  ‘We are one,’ she replied. ‘One head, one heart, one soul, one mind.’

  Like a soppy love song. Typical woman.

  ‘And you know what we have to do. We have to kill the child – all the children if we must – to stay safe. But him first. He’s the most dangerous.’

  ‘You do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll take my chaps and set the world on fire.’

  ‘We have to kill the child.’

  ‘I’ll give you help. You can take some of my generals. Take some of my army.’

  This was weird. Having a conversation. Like the old days. Chatting up a bird. Ha. Not this one. You wouldn’t want nothing to do with this one. She was bad news.

  ‘There are others,’ she said. ‘Can’t you hear them?’

  A nightmare. A woman who really could read your thoughts.

  ‘Others?’

  ‘Listen … Open your mind …’

  He opened the gate in the fence, just a tiny amount. Suddenly a clamour of voices tried to get in.

  Shut up!

  Loud as he could. That would rattle their brains. And they quietened down. Yeah, he hadn’t lost it.

  Who’s out there? Who can hear me?

  And there they were. Feeble at first, not strong like the woman, but there all right. Other voices. Talking to him.

  Where are you from?

  From all over. All around. Names and places, north, south, east and west, telling him how they’d come marching in, two by two, four by four, a hundred by a hundred, a thousand upon a thousand …

  We are many, but we are one. And soon we are going to fly. Fill the skies with our glory.

  He heard them all. He understood for a moment what they were. One being. And then another voice. Different. He recognized it. It had been there before. A solo voice in the dark, crying out. And now it was loud and clear and he was confused. Nothing made sense any more. Too many voices. He should never have opened the fence up.

  Who are you?

  What do you w
ant? What are you doing in my head? Get out. You’re not one of us. You are drowning out the babble of my Babylonians. My good soldiers. Ready to blow in like a mighty wind. But here you are and you’ve cut the signal. You hurt my head. You are doing me in, sunshine. What do you want?

  ‘I want to talk.’

  He shook his head, as if the voice was an earwig that could be flung loose. It was frustrating. Just when he was starting to clear his head of the clutter, to see clearly, to get plugged into the horde, to understand his history and mystery and hysteria … No, no, no … The words were getting muddled. And all because of this new voice. Breaking in like a dirty squatter, finding space where it was quiet and empty.

  Who are you? he asked it again.

  ‘Who are you?’ it replied.

  Me? I am the boss, the butcher man. I am St George.

  And St George looked at the woman, who looked back at him, head tilted to one side. Could she hear it too?

  That voice. Not one of his. Not one of hers. He recognized it all right. He’d heard it before. Now he couldn’t shut it up and he couldn’t make it go away. It had somehow latched on to him.

  Leave me alone …

  Hadn’t made much sense before. Like a foreigner. A bloody immigrant. London was like that now. You never heard an English voice … St George and England. He was that man. In a pub, with a big grin on his face, clutching a pint of beer in his hand. England for the English.

  Or was that before?

  Concentrate. Focus. The voice was still there. Asking questions. Strong enough to blank out all the other sounds. Stronger even than the woman’s voice, which he couldn’t hear any more. Well, that was a relief at least. In fact, it had silenced all of them. It was like watching TV with the sound turned down.

  But somehow, without the din, without the racket of his racketeers, he felt strangely lonely and abandoned. Cold. These were his people. His tribe. His children. His army. His solar system revolving round the great star. Himself. St George. The biggest star of all. That voice. It was bigger even than him.

  It hadn’t made much sense before. A weak and squeaking thing it had been. A squirrel in a mighty oak tree, a flea on an elephant’s back. Squeak, squeak, squeak. He’d tried to talk to it, only he hadn’t been able to understand it. Whoever it was, they hadn’t known how to use what they had. They’d just made an irritating buzzing noise, like a fly in a milk bottle. And who could ever talk to a fly? I mean, a fly didn’t even speak, did it? All that buzzing – that wasn’t its voice. That was its wings. Was that all this was? Wings flapping? Fooling him into thinking it was clever, that it had a voice.

  If so they had to stop.

  They had to SHUT UP!

  SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!

  He’d said goodbye to all the fleas and flies and the beetles and the bugs and the lemonade trees, back in the big green.

  When was that again?

  Remind me.

  Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of years ago.

  In which case … How could he remember it?

  He turned away from the woman. Walked until he was deep among his people. He had to make sense of all this. Those weren’t his memories. So why did he share them? Somebody was playing tricks on him, screwing with his mind, twisting his melons, man.

  Somebody deserved a good slapping.

  That was the best way to solve problems. Always had been. To do something. To hit someone. To break their neck. But how could you break the neck of someone who was just a fly buzzing in the bottle of your brain?

  A bluebottle. He loved it when the words came back to him. So many thoughts and words now – even if they weren’t all his own. Thoughts of the universe. The stars in the sky. The big green jungle and the fleas and the flies and the Inmathger …

  Bloody foreigners.

  No, no, no … Not his thoughts. That perfect place, all green and fresh. The Garden of Eden. That was it. That’s what it was. And the voice?

  Telling him what to do.

  Was he hearing the voice of God?

  Had God given him the sight and the wisdom?

  Hello. Are you God?

  ‘Yes.’

  What do you want?

  ‘I’ve been trying to get through to you. I didn’t know how.’

  I’m listening. You’ve cracked it. What do you want me to do?

  ‘It’s hard – concentrating.’

  Don’t I know it. Don’t force it, son. Just relax and let it go. Don’t think about it. Let it flow …

  ‘It hurts …’

  Hard work being God, I’ll bet.

  ‘I have to filter out so much other noise.’

  They’re noisy, aren’t they? Your people. Always wanting something. I know what it’s like. But I’m glad I’m not the only one. I’m glad there’s something out there bigger than me. Makes me not feel so alone. Seems like I’ve been trying all my life to make sense of the voices in my head. And now I understand. It was you all along, trying to speak to me. Your chosen one. And here you are. And I’m bathed in your light.

  ‘Yes.’

  I knew all along really. I could tell you’re not like the other ones. My ones. They can’t make proper thoughts. They’re all just dirty animals. I’m a man. I’m your man. I’m God’s chosen man. I’m St George.

  ‘Hello, St George.’

  Something I’ve always wanted to know, God. Do you have another name?

  ‘What?’

  You know, I mean, something more than just ‘God’.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  Will you tell me?

  ‘I will. It’ll be our secret. If you do what I want you to do.’

  I am yours. So what’s your name? And what is it you want from me?

  ‘My name is Paul … And I want you to kill every one of the children …’

  40

  Jester could see that John wasn’t impressed. Basically David should have known that by now – John wasn’t impressed by anything. He was a professionally unimpressed person. You could turn into a purple bat with three eyes and a Nerf gun shooting jelly beans out of its arse and John wouldn’t be impressed. A shrug. Meh. He was slumped in a chair, staring at Paul with his eyes half closed and his mouth half open. Occasionally he’d let out a little smirking snort of laughter and turn to Carl in the next chair. The two of them would exchange snarky looks and shake their heads.

  David was getting sweaty and turning red. Most of the time he behaved like a middle-aged man, but when things got away from him, when he got out of his depth, he’d blush and lose it and turn into a little kid.

  ‘You know,’ said John, scratching an armpit. ‘One of the things I used to miss about the way things were, was TV. I used to really miss TV. Watching stuff. Not needing to think. But now I don’t miss it no more. Is like magic. You’ve come up with something much better. This is the coolest show I ever seen. What d’you call it? Mug who talks to himself? Muppet with a brain spasm?’

  Carl sniggered.

  ‘The Mong Show.’

  The focus of their humour was Paul, the messed-up kid from the museum who’d arrived, claiming he could communicate with grown-ups. The Doctor Dolittle of the modern world … ‘I can talk to the strangers.’ Or sickos as he called them. Claimed he had some kind of telepathic link. David, as usual, had got carried away, jumped the gun, called people in too early. Like a little kid who gets a magic set for Christmas and wants to show off his new trick before he’s properly practised it. ‘Look, look, look, the coin will disappear, no wait, oh sorry, I dropped it …’

  Paul was standing there in the middle of the stateroom overlooking the gardens at Buckingham Palace, where the gardeners were hard at work tending to the crops. It was never-ending work.

  Paul was concentrating hard, muttering, his lips barely moving.

  And that was it.

  David really hadn’t thought this one through. There was nothing to see. Even if Paul could somehow talk to strangers, how could he prove it? David, as ever, wasn’t going to g
ive up, though.

  ‘You don’t get it, John,’ he snapped at the squatter chief. ‘He’s communicating with them. He has a telepathic link.’

  ‘Yeah? And so how do I know he hasn’t just got a telepathic link to my cheesy foot, or a chicken, or a chicken nugget? This is ridiculous, man.’

  ‘It is beyond stupid,’ said Carl, dressed, as usual, like a wild kind of pirate – with big boots, a bandanna round his head and baggy trousers cut off just below the knees. John himself was a rare sight. Like he’d been put together from broken bits and pieces. Ugly and bony, with missing teeth and a nasty, pinched face and small eyes set too close together. He wore an odd selection of clothes – dirty sportswear mostly.

  Paul suddenly raised his voice, opened his eyes wide, spoke loud and clear.

  ‘My name is Paul …’

  And then his lips carried on moving, but Jester couldn’t hear any of the words.

  John and Carl screamed with laughter, slapping their knees.

  ‘I didn’t think it could get any better,’ said John. ‘But that is the best. We come all this way to find out this amazing piece of information. His name is Paul! Oh great one, chief Jedi, your majesty Pope Paul, what else can you tell us? Please enlighten us. What’s your birthday? Can you tell us that?’

  But David wasn’t giving up.

  ‘Have you made contact?’ he said and Paul nodded, staring into the distance, past the palace walls. David looked excited, but John and Carl were just laughing harder.

  ‘Give us another revelation, oh wise one,’ said Carl. ‘We are waiting for your words, master.’

  ‘He says his name’s St George,’ said Paul, who was shivering and shaking now, drops of sweat forming on his forehead. Jester had to admit that a tiny shiver passed through his own body as well, and he felt the hairs stand up along his arms.

  St George.

  That was Shadowman’s name for the leader of the strangers’ army. But then he too laughed – at himself. It didn’t mean anything. Paul could easily have heard about St George. Hell, Jester might even have talked to Paul about the guy.