Shadowman looked. The thought of taking on that lot was terrible. He could imagine the stink they generated. The heat. All those rotting bodies oozing pus. He pictured himself standing with a pitifully small army of children as the sickos came on.
Too many to count, Jester had said. Too many to kill …
‘We can’t fight them,’ Jester whispered, shaking his head.
‘We can,’ Shadowman shouted, trying to drown out his own doubts and fears. ‘Scattered around London there are hundreds of kids. They just need to be united, persuaded to join together. If we did that we could win.’
‘Where do we start?’
‘Come on. Let’s go.’ Shadowman jerked his head at Jester and they made their way back down the stairs, through the cinema and out of the front.
There were two sentinels outside, who hadn’t been there before. Shadowman ignored them. Started walking north. The rotten stink of strangers seemed heavier in the air.
‘What about David?’ Jester asked after a couple of minutes. He’d obviously been thinking about what Shadowman had said.
‘What about him?’ said Shadowman.
‘He’s gonna want to be in charge.’
‘That jerk?’ Shadowman laughed. ‘He knows sod all about war. He lucked out getting into the palace before anyone else. Took control by lying and cheating and dumping on other kids. What would he know about taking on an army like that?’
‘That’s what I meant,’ said Jester. ‘He won’t go along with it. Won’t want anyone else telling him what to do.’
‘Then maybe I’ll sneak into Buckingham Palace and slit his chicken throat one night.’
‘You wouldn’t …’
‘Wouldn’t I? You’ll need to watch your back, Jester. Sleep lightly. This isn’t over.’
Jester stopped walking. ‘Leave it out, Shadow,’ he said. ‘I know you’re kidding.’
‘Do you?’ Shadowman raised his crossbow.
Jester sighed. Blew his breath out from between puffed cheeks. He’d had enough.
‘Let’s go back now, yeah?’ he pleaded.
‘Nope. We’ve one more thing to do today.’
‘I am done,’ said Jester wearily.
Shadowman spotted something over Jester’s shoulder and walked close to him, put his face right in the boy’s face.
‘This isn’t about you,’ he hissed.
‘No? I thought this was national kick Jester’s arse day. What is it about then?’
‘That.’ Shadowman pointed back down the road and Jester turned to look.
A group of strangers was walking towards them, their stink filling the street, thick and almost physical. Jester swallowed, looked like he wanted to puke.
‘We need to run,’ he said.
‘Uh-uh.’ Shadowman held him in place. ‘Look at them. They’re rubbish. They don’t want to eat. They’re catatonic. Zombies.’
‘Zombies …’
‘Harmless ones.’
The strangers seemed to be wandering aimlessly. Shadowman stood his ground. Testing them. Testing Jester. He wanted to rub his face in it. Make him understand – This was it. This was this.
The strangers, a mix of mothers, fathers and older teenagers, were filthy, black with grease and dirt. Most of them were bald. One or two had clumps of hair that was long and matted. All were diseased, bits missing, skin made inhuman by boils and growths and sores – eaten away by open, weeping wounds. How they were still alive at all was a mystery. Some sort of invisible puppet strings were keeping them upright as they came shuffling on.
‘OK,’ said Jester, and he was trembling, his face covered in sweat. ‘You’ve made your point. This is crazy. We need to fight or we need to run. Let’s run, yeah? Let’s go home.’
Shadowman held him still until the strangers were right upon them. They parted as they came close and then brushed past. Not interested.
‘We’re going,’ said Shadowman. ‘But we’re not going home.’
‘Where then?’ The relief on Jester’s face when the strangers had simply walked past was comical.
‘We’re going shopping,’ said Shadowman.
‘Shopping? Where?’
‘IKEA.’
11
Ollie was in the library at the museum, sitting on the floor reading a book, or at least trying to read a book. Actually he was doing no more than pretending to read a book. He was listening to what was going on at the big central table. The boy in charge here, Chris Marker, who was dressed a bit like a monk, was quizzing Small Sam.
‘I’m trying to get your story down,’ he was saying, a hint of exasperation in his voice. ‘It’s important we collect everybody’s story. We have to keep a record for the future. But I’m finding it hard to believe a single word of what you’re telling me. You mustn’t make stories up.’
‘It’s the God’s own truth,’ said Sam’s peculiar friend, The Kid. ‘The God’s own, boy’s own, frogspawn truth. Straight from the horse’s arse and smelling of roses. This boy couldn’t lie if you paid him. He is a truth machine.’
Ollie grinned to himself. He liked The Kid, even though he talked in his own weird way. In fact, that was probably why he liked him. The Kid looked at the world differently to everyone else. Maybe that’s why he was still alive.
Ollie was only here because he was looking after Lettis. He’d saved her life and she’d latched on to him, wouldn’t let him out of her sight. Wherever he went, she had to go. And wherever she went he had to go. She liked coming here. To the library. She’d been helping Chris Marker write down the stories before, but now, although she wrote obsessively in her own leather-bound journal, she never let anyone else see it.
She’d been nearly mute since the attack, when a bunch of grown-ups had cornered her in a church, and had a permanently haunted, broken look in her eyes. Ollie wasn’t sure she’d ever really recover. She was sitting next to Small Sam at the table, staring at him with her big, black-rimmed eyes. Next to her was The Kid, and next to him was another girl, who was called Charlotte or by her nickname, Yo-Yo. She carried a violin around with her in a case all the time. She’d played it one night, in the main hall before bedtime. She wasn’t bad, not exactly a child prodigy, but good enough to make everyone stop what they were doing and applaud her. You never heard much music these days unless someone played a real instrument. Without electricity, all the world’s digital music had disappeared.
That night, in the main hall, Ollie had sat out of the way in the shadows and wept when he’d heard the violin, the notes echoing up and away into the vast open space of the hall. He’d wept for everything they’d lost, and he’d wept for how clever mankind had once been, composing beautiful music, creating beautiful instruments, teaching children to play, creating machines to preserve it …
‘Let’s go back over what you’ve told me.’ Chris Marker was looking down at the big book he’d been writing in. ‘You were captured while you were playing in the car park behind the Waitrose supermarket.’
‘Yes. Some grown-ups got over the wall.’
‘And they took you to the Arsenal football stadium, where you managed to escape by starting a fire that burned the whole place down.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Sam. ‘It just happened.’
‘OK. Then, trying to find your friends, you went down into the underground tunnels at Camden Town tube station, where you were taken in by two people who weren’t diseased but turned out to be cannibals.’
‘That’s where I come in,’ said The Kid. ‘To the rescue remedy! Look up! Look down! Is it a plane? Is it a James Bond? Is it Superman? No, it’s the mighty Kid! Bravo! He’ll save Sam from the clutches of the evil child-eaters!’
‘They were horrible,’ said Sam. ‘They pretended to be friends. They only stayed healthy by eating children and keeping out of the light.’
‘I got him out of there,’ said The Kid. ‘Make sure you write that bit. I ain’t never been in no reading book before, skipper. I was the hero, Robert De Niro, Wil
liam Shakespearo! Walking on the beaches, looking at the peaches.’
Chris Marker gave The Kid a look that said, ‘You’re not really helping.’
‘And so you both went to the Tower of London,’ he said. ‘I wish I’d been able to talk to Ed before he left, and get his side of the story.’
‘It’s the greatest story ever told,’ said The Kid. ‘It’s got thrills and spills and kill bills. And it’s got me in it. That’s the good bit. You are writing it, aren’t you?’
‘Ed would’ve told you the same story,’ said Sam. ‘I’m not making it up. He found us and took us in at the Tower of London.’
‘OK,’ said Chris, looking at his book again. ‘And you say you left the Tower to go and look for your sister, but some kids at St Paul’s took you in because they thought you were a god.’
Sam giggled. ‘I know it sounds stupid.’
‘You had to be there,’ said The Kid.
‘I was there,’ said Yo-Yo. ‘It’s all true. Mad Matt was in charge. He’s made up this, like, crazy religion.’
Chris put down his pen, rubbed his face.
‘You know what, Chris?’ said Ollie, getting up and walking over to the table. ‘This whole world’s gone crazy. Sam’s story doesn’t sound any more nuts than what the rest of us have been through. It’s just we’ve sort of got used to it. We’ve accepted that this is how things are now.’
‘Maybe.’
‘And now they’re saying that Sam might have the cure for the disease in him,’ said Yo-Yo.
Ollie looked at Chris with raised eyebrows and Chris started to laugh. It was an alarming noise, like a donkey sucking in air to breathe. It was a rusty, sticky, awkward laugh. The laugh of someone who hardly ever used it. Chris was usually so serious, quiet and introverted; now he looked like any other boy. Just laughing.
‘This whole thing’s a massive wind-up, isn’t it?’ he said once he’d taken control of himself.
‘Fish-Face and the others said it,’ said Yo-Yo.
‘Fish-Face!’ Chris blurted and that set him off laughing again.
Yo-Yo looked upset, as if she thought Chris was laughing at her.
‘She did!’ she pressed on angrily. ‘She said her father, the Green Man, had seen it in him when he first met him. He’s scared of Sam.’
‘Sam has it in him,’ said The Kid. ‘Was born with it. Like some people are born with immunity to the plague, or the yellow fever, or the red death or the purple rose. He has the cure, the magic medicine; he’s got the immunity in his blood … He’s bloody fantastic.’
Chris looked at Ollie, suddenly serious, a kind of desperate hope in his eyes.
‘Do they know how to make an antidote out of it?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ollie and he shrugged. ‘If the Green Man and Einstein and everyone else can work together maybe they can do it. We just have to hope nothing happens to Sam in the meantime. And the way his life has gone …’
Chris stared at Sam. He was sitting there, looking terribly young and breakable. Did everything rest on this little kid?
‘I hope this is a true story,’ said Ollie.
‘It is,’ said The Kid. ‘With a happy ending and everything. The End. Kiss goodnight. Out goes the light, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Ollie. ‘We’re gonna turn this thing around. You make sure that’s a book about winners, not losers, Chris. About heroes who save the world!’
‘It’s not up to me,’ said Chris. ‘I just write stuff down.’
12
‘Either you tell me what we’re doing or I’m going back by myself,’ said Jester.
Having survived his close encounter of the scary kind with the strangers outside the cinema, now that they were on emptier streets with only the odd stray sentinel to remind them of the threat, Jester was growing brave. Brave and whingey. Moan, moan, bloody moan. Shadowman was tempted to shoot him in the leg with a crossbow bolt and really give him something to moan about. What made it worse for Shadowman was that his own leg was aching, his ankle sore as hell and throbbing with every step. He was worried that he was overdoing it and would be crippled again when their little expedition was over. He had to press on, though. He wasn’t coming up this way again in a hurry if he could help it. He had to get everything sorted now.
‘You’re not going anywhere without me,’ he said.
‘No?’
‘No. My city, my rules, Magic-Man.’
‘At least tell me where we’re going.’
‘I told you. We’re going to IKEA.’
‘Well, that’s just fine. I really need some tea lights, a bookcase called Twat and a lamp you can’t fit any normal bulbs into.’
‘Just shut your mouth for a bit, yeah?’
‘Look, you’ve made your point, Shadow. You’ve given me a big scare. Well, I’m sorry I didn’t dump a load in my pants, but I hope you feel we’re quits now.’
‘Quits? Are you joking me? Quits? How can we ever be quits? You left me to die. All I’ve done is show you the enemy. If I didn’t need you to spread the word I’d happily kill you, brother.’
‘That would be so unreasonable,’ said Jester. ‘You are so totally overreacting.’
‘Overreacting, my arse.’
‘Yeah, overreacting, your arse.’
Shadowman strode up to Jester and threw him to the ground. Aimed his crossbow at the middle of his smug face.
‘How about I make it proper quits?’ he said. ‘How about I club you round the head so you can’t stand up? And then drag you back there and leave you with the stranger army as a plaything? Would that make you happy? Would that be a reasonable response?’
‘I didn’t do anything on purpose,’ said Jester. ‘I was thinking of the good of the majority … and anyway.’ He looked properly angry now. ‘And anyway you survived. You’re all right. So can we just get this over with and go back to civilization?’
‘Can I trust you, Jester?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can I trust you to back me up? To tell David what we’ve seen. Get him to unite with the other camps around London?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. It’s just if you ever let me down again, if you turn this around somehow, if you don’t do the right thing, I will definitely kill you. OK?’
‘I believe it. So will you tell me why we’re going to IKEA?’
‘There’s someone I need to talk to. Only problem is, he’s a bigger jerk than you.’
13
The two museums were side by side. The Natural History Museum was crammed with the wonders of the natural world. The Science Museum was crammed with the wonders of the man-made world. And Ben and Bernie were in no doubt about which one they found the most interesting.
The Science Museum was like Disneyland for them. They’d come through the ‘Energy Hall’, ‘Exploring Space’, and were now in ‘The Making of the Modern World’, bug-eyed at the technology on show. Cars and engines and planes, clocks and computers, spaceships, steam trains and motorbikes. Jackson had shown them the way through from next door and was escorting them, just in case. Nobody from the Natural History Museum had come in here for ages.
‘Is this where this stuff belongs now?’ she asked them. ‘In a museum? Will we ever be able to get back to where we were? Make all this stuff and get it to work again?’
‘We can do it,’ said Bernie. She was dressed all in black. They both were, with goth black hair hanging over their faces. Some kids called them the emos, but Jackson didn’t think that many emos were into science and engineering. As far as she was concerned, they weren’t emos or goths. They weren’t punks or pinheads, nerds, geeks … they weren’t anything. They were just themselves. Two kids who got off on technology and how things worked. And what was wrong with that? Kids like Ben and Bernie were going to be just as important as fighters like Achilleus and herself if they were ever going to put the world back together again. So she was staying close. Looking after them.
Making sure they didn’t wind up as some sicko’s breakfast.
She smiled as they ran from one exhibit to another, like two kids in a sweet shop, their faces beaming.
‘So you can make this stuff work, then?’ she asked.
‘Some of it,’ said Ben. ‘The rest we can figure out. There are books here, papers, files, manuals.’
Jackson couldn’t help making a face. She’d always hated reading manuals. Not that she ever did read them. They filled her with horror. But she was glad that there were some people who liked them. Positively enjoyed studying them.
‘There’s everything we need here to rebuild,’ said Bernie.
‘As long as we don’t get wiped out,’ said Jackson.
‘That’s where you come in,’ said Bernie. ‘You fight off the enemy while we try to get the engine started. We’ve all got jobs to do. We’ll look after the technology – you can look after the ass-kicking.’
Jackson laughed. ‘Is that all I’m good for?’
‘We need all the skills there are,’ said Ben. ‘That’s how it works. No use us all being engineers, and no use us all being warriors either. But one’s no use without the other.’
Jackson wasn’t listening. Her radar had come on. Months of being at the ready, of tracking and killing sickos, had sharpened her senses, conditioned her. She was a dog with its ears up now and realized that Bernie was looking at her funnily.
‘You all right?’ she asked. ‘What’s up?’
Jackson sniffed, closed her eyes to concentrate better.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not all right. They’re in here. They’ve got in.’
Bernie swore. Jackson opened her eyes and quickly scanned the area.
‘Do you want me to take you back?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Ben bluntly. ‘We don’t. It has to be safe in here. We have to be able to come in when we want. We’ve got work to do. We need to figure out how to use these machines. If there are grown-ups in here we’re going to help you get rid of them.’
‘Are we?’ said Bernie. ‘Really? Don’t you think you might have checked with me first?’