‘Your agreement was with David,’ said Franny.
‘No matter,’ said John. ‘We can make a new agreement with you. I’m just gonna go open the doors first.’
‘No, you’re not,’ said Pod.
‘Could you even stop us?’
Franny saw that the squatters were all armed and a couple turned to threaten the palace kids. The squatters were outnumbered, but they were a vicious-looking bunch.
‘Get out of here,’ said Pod, red with anger.
John looked round the courtyard. Franny wondered if he was remembering his humiliation here, when Achilleus had beaten him in single combat.
Then he slapped Pod round the face, stunning him into silence.
‘We taking over,’ he said. ‘See? David had his chance and he blew it. This is our place now.’
The other squatters sniggered.
‘No,’ said Pod. ‘No, no, no. This isn’t right. We need to talk about this.’
‘Talk about this,’ said John, and he shoved his spear through Pod’s chest. Pod choked and grunted. He gave a low growl in his throat and slowly sank down until he was sitting on the ground, his jumper already soaked with blood. Franny ran to him and he held tight to her. He was shivering, his face white.
‘I’m really disappointed,’ he said, and then went limp in Franny’s arms.
‘Let the others in,’ said John. ‘We’re in charge here. Let’s raise our flag and celebrate.’
‘Yeah,’ said Carl, John’s second in command. ‘It’s party time!’
71
The sickos were slowly closing in from all sides. Like an overflow of thick brown sludge. Jester watched as a group of them reached down and took hold of Paul’s body and pulled it into the mob, as if they were one huge organism and their hands were feelers, sucking him into their gut. Jester didn’t want to picture what they would be doing to Paul. Other fallen bodies around them were being dragged away in the same manner.
David and Jester were now surrounded by a circle of the palace guard, wearing their red blazers, their guns facing out. It was like a scene from history – the Battle of Waterloo or Custer’s last stand. A tiny force holding out against an unimaginably large one. David’s boys had started by firing volleys, but now all they managed were ragged, weary shots as they reloaded, working their way through the few bullets they had left in their magazines. The air was filled with the smell of cordite and they were surrounded by a thin haze of smoke. With each bang, a sicko jerked back or fell, but the ones behind just kept on coming, trampling over the dead and wounded, coming closer and closer, ever closer.
There was no way to stop them.
Jester had a sword in his hand. He’d never been the greatest fighter in the world. He was better than David, though. He’d never seen David even try to fight. He didn’t even have a weapon. Jester was ready. He would fight hard, though he knew he was going to lose in the end. He could already picture those filthy hands grasping for him, those mouths slobbering at his face.
He looked to David. He was trying to be brave. Standing tall, a leader to the last … but his face was pale, the muscles rigid and frozen.
‘We nearly did it,’ he said.
‘Was it so important?’ said Jester. ‘Was it worth losing our lives, just to be at the top of the heap?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did we do anything right?’ said Jester.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.’
Jester turned to David. He was crying.
‘All I want now is my mum,’ he said. He looked about ten years old. ‘All I want is to be with her. I want her to hold me and say she loves me. I want her to tell me that everything’s all right. That’s how the world used to be. It was simple. And then we grew up. I just want my mum.’
David broke down completely, shaking with sobs. Jester put his arms round him and held on to him. Maybe he wouldn’t fight at all. Maybe he’d just let them roll over him and be done with it. The guns were silent, emptied of their bullets. They were being pulled out of the boys’ hands. Jester could hear the screams as the sickos came in. He felt the great crush of them around him – rotten, decaying, falling apart, clawing at the boys.
‘We’re just kids,’ said David. ‘How could we be expected to make the right decisions?’
Jester closed his eyes and held David tight.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered in his ear. ‘It’s over now.’
72
For a while there it had looked like they were going to win. Ollie had watched Achilleus’s group attacking from the right and Matt’s group going in from the left. He’d watched Jordan send Jackson out to reinforce Achilleus, pushing hard on the right and forcing the sickos back. And then there had been the explosions, cutting into the rear of St George’s army. This had encouraged Jordan enough to open the barricades on the left to let more troops out. These new reinforcements hadn’t made it to where Matt’s group was surrounded in the middle of the battlefield, though. They’d got bogged down in the sheer press of sickos and now both groups were marooned and the mob of sickos – stung from the right, blasted from the rear, held down in the centre – had gone into a sort of stampede and come pushing and crashing and charging right over the reinforcements and into the encampment. Jordan had ordered fires to be lit, burning some of the sickos on the left, but it wasn’t enough. They had got in and were now filling the camp. Even Jordan had been forced to come down off his platform to rally his troops. Stand tall at their centre.
Ollie needed to see what was happening. He climbed on to the roof of the LookOut and scanned the battlefield. Blu-Tack Bill was up here by himself, absorbed with the lump of Blu-tack he spent all his time moulding into different shapes, ignoring the battle.
Ollie could see that the sickos were crammed into the area inside the barricades. Most of the kids had formed up around Jordan, but there was a second group of fighters down by the water’s edge, trying to protect the Twisted Kids. Maxie and Blue were with them.
Some of the Twisted Kids were fighting back. Ollie could see Monstar picking sickos up and hurling them away, trying to protect the Warehouse Queen, who was concentrating on sending out her signal to disrupt the attackers. The signal was still working. Most of the sickos who got too close seemed to get possessed by demons, as if stung by a swarm of bees. They would go berserk, lashing out at anyone or anything around them. The organized attack of yesterday had long ago fallen apart. Sickos were just as likely to be fighting each other as the outnumbered kids who were so desperately clinging on here.
This wasn’t a clear, ordered battle that you could draw a plan of afterwards, with neat blocks of infantry and cavalry and artillery moving around on the battlefield in the direction of nice bold arrows. It was a chaotic, milling riot. Sickos wandering around, lashing out at whoever was nearest to them, occasionally getting hold of a kid and tearing them to bits. The whole camp was filled. The kids by the water couldn’t run. The lake was at their backs. The kids who had been ferrying the wounded across the water had taken their boats to the other side and were cowering over there.
Ollie saw Skinner, his mouth open in his silent shout. He seemed to be able to direct the noise at the sickos. But occasionally it would break through and Ollie would feel as if a power drill was spinning inside his brain. Luckily this only ever seemed to last for a few moments before Skinner refocused the signal on the sickos. The Twisted Kids were being steadily beaten down, though. They’d made a sort of force field around themselves, but some sickos were still breaking through and tearing at them. And then Skinner was hit by something. A sicko with an iron spike had got in close. Ollie saw Skinner flinch and felt his cry of pain. It filled every brain in the area, scraping at their nervous system. It was as if Ollie himself had been stabbed. He even had to look to make sure he wasn’t.
He jumped down off the platform, started pulling kids together, creating a small fighting unit. Jordan’s defence was stronger and better organized than the s
maller force of kids by the Serpentine. Jordan could spare the numbers.
‘Come on,’ said Ollie. ‘We’re going to help.’
He picked up a sword that someone had dropped and pushed his way through the scrum of sickos in front of him, hacking to left and right, dodging between bodies. He and his group were fast and determined. They managed to make it down to the lakeside unhurt and cut their way through the sickos surrounding the Twisted Kids. Maxie saw them arrive and came over.
‘Are you the cavalry?’ she said.
‘I wish,’ said Ollie. ‘You need to come over to the other side and join up with Jordan.’
‘Do you reckon we can make it?’
‘We just did.’
‘OK.’
Maxie and Blue started shouting commands, drawing their kids into a protective semicircle, holding the sickos back. Ollie went to the Twisted Kids. As well as Skinner, at least two more of them were down. Ollie could see a kid who looked like Legs being mauled under the feet of a knot of snapping sickos. A determined group of fathers was coming in at Monstar, seemingly aware that if they could get to the Warehouse Queen and silence her their lives would be easier. Ollie and his team were just able to push back their attack. He could see that Skinner was hurt, bleeding badly, but still alive. TV Boy was holding him in his lap. It was hard to see just how bad Skinner’s wound was as it had got round the side of his breastplate and was hidden by the armour.
‘You all right, Skinny?’ Ollie asked him and Skinner gave a small, tight nod. He was obviously more hurt than he wanted to let on.
‘We need to get you to safety,’ said Ollie. ‘We gotta move. Can you make it?’
Skinner nodded again. Monstar had heard their conversation and he started to organize the Twisted Kids.
Ollie became aware of a deep bass rumble, a roaring and whining, as if the combined mass of the sickos were growling in their throats. He wondered what fresh horror this might be.
‘All of you!’ he yelled. ‘We have to join up with Jordan’s group and form a defence around the LookOut. We need to get together, stay together and fight together. Follow me and Maxie and Blue. Protect your friends. Don’t think about it, just go.’
He moved forward, pleased to see that all the others came with him. They reformed into a wedge, weapons bristling on either side, pushing through the sickos. Maxie encouraging them, Blue yelling at them, more terrifying than the enemy, Ollie bringing up the rear, moving backwards, the way he preferred to fight. The Twisted Kids were being kept safe in the centre, the stronger ones carrying the less able, all the while sending out their mental disruption field.
Step after step. Cut after cut. Blow after blow.
Ollie became aware of that ominous rumble again and tried to shut it out of his mind. All he needed to do now was concentrate on the sickos in front of him. Try not to get killed. Join up with Jordan. Create a much stronger unit. Shut out the fear. Keep moving. Keep fighting. Stay alive. Even if it was for only one more precious minute …
73
John’s squatters were running wild in the palace, beating up Franny’s friends, pushing over statues, slashing paintings, smashing ornate plates, breaking windows and mirrors.
The palace kids could do nothing but try to keep out of the way, run and hide. Franny had gone out into the garden. She was horrified to find a group of boys pulling up plants, kicking the beds.
‘No,’ she screamed at them. ‘What are you doing? That’s our food, our only way of surviving. Do anything, but leave the food, leave our crops.’
The squatters had just turned and laughed at her. She’d fallen to her knees, seen that her dress was spattered with Pod’s blood.
She was filled with a cold fury. This was so senseless. She wasn’t going to let them destroy everything she’d spent a year building up. She strode round towards the shed where they kept the tools, pushing squatters out of the way. Some of her gardeners saw where she was going and came with her. They got into the shed and grabbed tools – axes, spades, tree saws …
Franny had a big garden fork. She came striding out. Back round the side of the buildings. Saw John standing by the doors, looking out over the garden, laughing and cheering his people on. She walked towards him, broke into a run. Faster and faster. At the last moment he turned, but it was too late. She rammed the fork into his chest, just as he had rammed his spear into Pod. He made no noise. Said nothing. He was killed instantly. He fell down, Franny’s fork still sticking out of him. Franny stood there, looking around, unable to believe what she had just done. Everyone had frozen. Her friends, the squatters, all staring at her …
What would happen now? There was no going back. What would they do to her?
And then she heard a sound. One she didn’t expect to hear. Nothing about this day made any sense. She didn’t believe any of it.
It was the sound of laughter.
The squatters were laughing.
74
Shadowman had watched from the tree as David’s small force was overwhelmed by sickos. Nothing left of them now. David gone. Jester gone. Shadowman didn’t know what to think. Jester had been his friend once.
And now he was dead. Like so many others.
Jester hadn’t run. He’d died bravely. Shadowman felt tears running down his face. He wiped them away.
For now, he had to shut down his emotions. There was work to be done. The sickos hadn’t been defeated.
The rage of the battle had sucked the sickos out of the entertainments area and back into the open ground around Jordan’s encampment. Shadowman climbed down out of his tree and moved in closer, crossing the patch where he’d seen Jester die. Nothing was left of David and his kids except for scraps of red blazer and shredded pieces of unidentifiable flesh and bone. Shadowman worked his way across and climbed a speaker tower that gave him a good view of the wider battlefield.
Could one person really make a difference? Ben and Bernie. There were only two of them, but they’d taken out half of St George’s troops. What could Shadowman do to match that?
He had a bolt already fitted in his crossbow and wanted to make sure he used it well. He couldn’t get to St George, who was protected right at the heart of his army. But there was clearly more than one mind at work here, directing the sicko army.
While the order of the attack had been disrupted, there were still parts of the army that functioned better than others. From down below it had looked like chaos, but from high up here Shadowman could make out an underlying shape to the battle. A purpose.
He had seen over and over how St George used his more intelligent lieutenants to organize his troops. Man U and Bluetooth, the One-Armed Bandit and Spike. He was pretty sure they were all dead now, but someone was still down there, getting inside the sickos’ minds.
What could Shadowman do, though? From here the army was just a solid mass. He remembered how he’d once shot a bolt blindly into a group of St George’s sickos who’d been killing some children. Where had that been? Somewhere up near Hampstead Heath? Later on he’d discovered that, against all the odds, he’d hit a sicko in the chest. And that had been Spike.
What were the chances of hitting anyone important from up here?
He got out his binoculars and scanned the battlefield.
And then he saw the tall woman. With the long, straight hair. The one who had organized the attack on Yo-Yo. There she was, her head towering above the crouched and slouching sickos around her. She was leading a large group of them, round the back of the main army and down the side. Shadowman could see that her plan was to attack the rear of the kids who were engaged in a hard-fought stand on this side of the battlefield.
Shadowman swung his binoculars round, trained them on the kids. He could just make out Ryan, Achilleus and Jackson, battling hard among the swarming sickos.
He aimed his crossbow carefully at the Tall Woman. Loosed off a shot. Missed. Was she too far away?
Calmly he fitted another bolt. Aimed again and missed again. He had hit Sp
ike when he hadn’t been aiming for him, but that had been pure luck. Up here like this, from this distance …
He thought of all the kids he’d known who’d died in the last year. Too many to count. And then there were all the kids he hadn’t known, the nameless kids he’d watched die at the hands of sickos.
He thought of the boy in Waitrose – his head carried out on a stick by St George. He thought of all the kids across north London, pulled out of their hiding places, torn apart and eaten. He thought of Yo-Yo, disappearing through the window. Thought about how he hadn’t been able to save her …
The third bolt hit home firmly between the Tall Woman’s shoulder blades and she fell down. Instantly her group broke up, all sense of purpose gone. Like a pulled thread from a woven pattern, the sicko army lost its shape.
Could one person make a difference?
Shadowman climbed down from the scaffold tower and started to work his way round towards where Achilleus was fighting for his life.
It was time to join the battle.
75
Ollie was so wiped out he wondered if he was going nuts. Losing it big time. Hearing things that couldn’t be there. Things from the past. From television and films. The old world. Gunshots, car horns, engines, horses …
He was packed into a tight corner, his sword rising and falling, rising and falling … One by one the children around him were going down. He’d lost track of Maxie and Blue and the Twisted Kids. His focus had narrowed down to the small area in front of him, killing any sickos that came into it, his arm ready to drop off, his lungs on fire, his guts in a tight, painful knot.
And then he felt something, a subtle release of pressure, as if a taut wire holding the sickos together had snapped. They fell back and Ollie could take a deep breath. He heard distant cheers and shouts of encouragement. What was happening? One way to find out. He smashed his way over to the ladder, managed to haul himself up to the roof of the LookOut. Jordan was back up there, Blu-Tack Bill whispering in his ear.