‘It would explain what happened the other night.’ Maxie was coming down the stairs past the statue of Darwin with Brooke and Maeve. ‘But what about Samira?’
‘What if Paul never ran off?’ said Brooke. ‘What if he was still around …?’
She left the sentence hanging as they thought about what that would mean.
‘What was he like?’ Maxie asked when they reached the bottom of the stairs.
‘Just, like, normal really,’ said Brooke. ‘Never really stood out, until that day he went off on one. Never seen him like that before.’
‘I’ve seen plenty of kids crack up,’ said Maxie. ‘And I guess if his sister died …’
They stopped by the diplodocus. They’d finished the last of the interviews and Maxie was keen to catch what was left of the daylight outside. It could get really gloomy in the museum with no lights on.
‘What do we do now?’ Maeve asked.
‘I guess that’s down to Justin,’ said Brooke. ‘He’s in charge. Only we’ve never had anything like this before.’
‘I was gonna say we should search the place,’ said Maxie. ‘See where he might be hiding. But that would take ages, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yeah. It’s bare massive,’ said Brooke. ‘Took you long enough just to clear out the lower level. Up here … It goes on forever. I never even been in half the rooms. If he was hiding, and he knew we was looking for him, he could easily just move about, and change up his hiding places.’
‘It’s all whack,’ said Maxie.
‘True that.’
Maxie saw that Ella had come over to join them. She hadn’t noticed her arrive. She just appeared out of the shadows and stood there in silence, her eyes shining.
‘You all right, babe?’ Maxie asked. Ella shrugged. It was obvious she wanted to say something, but was holding back.
‘What’s up?’
‘You’re looking for a boy, aren’t you?’
So far nothing had been said to the kids. Justin didn’t want to make any kind of official announcement until he was sure of what was happening. He didn’t want to panic anyone, but they’d obviously been talking among themselves.
‘We don’t know yet,’ said Maxie.
‘You think a boy did something to Samira?’
‘As I say, Ella, we’re not sure.’
‘It wasn’t a boy.’ Ella shook her head.
‘What do you mean?’ Ella had Maxie’s attention now.
‘We’ve seen him,’ said Ella. ‘In the dark. At night. We’ve seen the monster.’
Maxie was going to say that there were no such things as monsters when she stopped herself. That might have been true before, but now? The disease had created a whole world of monsters.
‘It isn’t a boy,’ Ella went on. There was no stopping her now. ‘It’s the bogeyman. A spider man with long arms and legs, all stretched and black, like a spider. It’s the slenderman.’
Maxie laughed, trying to reassure Ella.
‘Well, which is it, babe? A spider? A bogeyman? The slenderman?’
‘All of them maybe.’ Ella didn’t sound too sure of herself any more.
‘Have you actually seen him? This monster? I mean, you yourself, with your own eyes?’
Ella looked at the floor and gave another little shrug with a tiny shake of the head.
‘I haven’t,’ she said very quietly. ‘But other people have.’
‘I bet they haven’t. I bet they all say it was someone else who saw the monster. It’s all just hype. You’re all just getting panicky and making stuff up.’
‘But there’s something …’
‘And whatever it is we’ll find it,’ said Maxie. ‘I don’t want you to get scared. Trust me, OK?’
‘I don’t like it here,’ said Ella. ‘I want to leave.’
‘You can’t leave,’ said Maxie. ‘There’s nowhere to go, OK? So you just hang in there. As I say – you trust me now.’
Ella didn’t respond straight away. She stood there for half a minute chewing her lip, then said, ‘OK,’ and abruptly turned, walked over to the stairs and sat down, resting her head in her hands.
‘She gonna be all right?’ Brooke asked.
‘I hope so. She’s done all right so far. Funny how some kids are cool and some just give up. She lost her brother. He was a good kid. Small Sam we called him, because at one time we had, like, three Sams I think, maybe four. Small Sam, Big Sam, Curly Sam, who had curly hair, and there was another. I forget what he was called.’
‘Fat Sam?’ Brooke suggested and Maxie smiled.
‘I can’t remember,’ she said.
‘Me either,’ said Maeve. ‘You put them out of your mind when they get killed. Otherwise …’
‘So what happened to Small Sam?’ said Brooke.
‘He got taken just before we came away,’ Maxie explained. ‘One of the reasons we left. It was getting too dangerous there. It was a real shame about Sam. They’d been good together, him and Ella. He looked out for her, even though he was only young himself. Not even ten I don’t think. I was worried she might lose it when he was taken, but so far she’s done good.’
‘It’s like you and me,’ said Brooke.
‘How so?’
‘When I was lying there in the palace I was only pretending to be asleep a lot of the time. I was listening to what you were saying. You and Blue. I learnt quite a lot about you both.’
‘We kind of forgot you were there.’
‘Yeah. So the thing is … I know about Arran. You were kind of in love with him, I think, weren’t you?’
Maxie was embarrassed, felt her face flushing. She’d never really talked about any of this with anyone. Not even Maeve.
‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’
‘I lost some good friends along the way as well,’ said Brooke quietly, staring off into infinity. ‘And more when you rescued me.’
‘At Green Park?’ said Maxie. ‘Those other kids with you? The ones who’d been …’
‘Yeah. There was a sweet, crazy guy called DogNut and a girl called Courtney. My two bests. DogNut wanted to be more than that. I knew he wanted to, like, link up and that. Who knows? Maybe with enough time he’d have got what he wanted. He used to make me laugh. I try not to think about all that, though. Is bare harsh. What we had, what we lost, what might have been. You got to harden yourself. Make, like, a shell around you. But not everyone can do it. If they got nothing to hang on to some of them screw up. They’re not in the game no more.’
‘Like Paul?’ said Maxie.
‘Yeah, like Paul.’
Brooke spotted something and her mood changed. She smiled. A girl with a secret. ‘Listen, Maxie,’ she said. ‘I figured you might need some stuff.’
‘Stuff?’
‘Clothes and that. I seen that minuscule backpack you tipped up with. You can’t have been able to fit too much gear into it.’
‘I’m OK.’
‘You need more clothes, girl.’
Maxie looked at Brooke, who was wearing a floor-length grey dress that looked like something out of a history book. If more clothes meant dressing up like her she wasn’t interested. She’d never been that bothered about clothes. Never been confident enough to carry off anything too funky. Was happy in jeans and T-shirts. Loved the new leather jacket she’d picked up in Selfridges on the way down here.
‘You can’t be busting the same look twenty-four seven, girl,’ said Brooke. ‘You need to rest them garmz, let the stink out.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Maxie. ‘I can pick some more stuff up when we got more time.’
‘We got time now,’ said Brooke, and then Maxie spotted a group of kids approaching. Lewis was among them and at their head was a tall, elegant guy wearing brightly coloured robes that made him look like some kind of African prince. She tried to remember his name from the interviews that morning. Luckily Brooke reminded her.
‘Kwanele’s gonna take us shopping,’ she said. ‘I arranged it all earlier.’
‘I don’t want to go shopping,’ Maxie protested.
‘This ain’t any old shopping, girl. We gonna take you to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It’s nang!’
50
‘They look like insects from up here.’ Boney-M was standing on top of the wall, keeping very still so that he looked like some black stone gargoyle. Paul risked leaning out to look down, careful not to knock anything off like he’d done earlier. Watched a group of kids way below going towards the gates, Kwanele leading them in one of his stupid outfits.
‘I could swoop down and snatch one up in my beak,’ said Boney.
‘No, you couldn’t,’ Paul scoffed. ‘You can’t fly, your wings are broken, you’ve got no feathers. You’re just …’ He paused. What was he? A fossil? An exhibit? A living corpse? A joke.
When he turned to look at Boney he wasn’t there any more.
‘You’re just a bad dream,’ said Paul.
He’d been talking to thin air. He had a sudden stab of sadness. He wanted to be down there, with his friends, talking to real people. Not up here talking to himself. But he couldn’t ever go back, could he? Not after what he’d done. He could never undo it. Never travel back in time and take a different route. He’d ruined everything.
He realized his cheeks were wet. He pictured Samira’s mutilated body, lying in the corner, starting to rot.
No going back.
51
This is the journal of Lettis Slingsbury. Date unknown. Place unknown. Almost unknown. It’s a church somewhere near Heathrow Airport. Which is to the west of London.
In the morning, after we all woke up, I wanted to go with the fighters to the medical place, because that’s what this story is all about, but they wouldn’t let me. I did think it was unfair and I didn’t think that Chris Marker would be very happy about how things were when I got back, but in the end he is just a librarian, just a writer, and Justin is in charge of us and Einstein is a scientist who does amazing things and will cure the disease and Blue is a fighter, he is in charge of the search party, so I cannot argue with them, and Chris is not at the top of the table, if you take my meaning, which means that the others are more important than him. And I am even less important than Chris.
I have never been important. I dreamt that one day I might be, that I might do great things and maybe be a great writer or a journalist or help people somehow. I don’t think that will happen now. I don’t know what will happen, but I don’t think it will be good. I’m sorry, I’m doing it again. I am not supposed to write about myself. Chris told me that. This book should be like a newspaper like we used to have, with just news in it. Though I think they sometimes used to put in bits by famous people talking about themselves. They were called columns. As I say, I am not famous so nobody will want to read about me and what I have to say. I will never have a column.
This is what happened next. The search party left the church to go to the medical place to get the things we need. I had to do what I was told and stay here at the church. I thought I would spend my time writing something, but nothing had happened and so there was nothing really to write that wasn’t just thoughts and feelings and I was cross and a bit depressed about being left behind and couldn’t face any writing. My heart wasn’t in it. Caspar is hurt very badly and is quite unwell. He is sort of moaning and shivering a lot. It is distracting. And then there is the body of Gabby, a corpse, wrapped in a sheet, lying there for all to see. It isn’t nice and it was upsetting everyone. I was upset too. Stuck here in the church we were all left alone with our worst thoughts. There was nothing to do but think and think and think and worry and worry and worry.
I couldn’t concentrate enough to even pick up a pen, which sounds pathetic, I know, but that is the truth as it happened. I mainly couldn’t stop thinking about the night when the sickos got into the museum. We had all been in the library. Me and Chris Marker and some other children. It was our World Book Night. It wasn’t really World Book Night, but we were trying to do things like in the old days before the illness. As we are all book lovers, we wanted to stay up all night in the library to share our thoughts and read bits out and we all dressed up as our favourite characters from books. I dressed up as Clarice Bean. At first it was fun, but then a boy called James came in and was laughing at us and spoiling things and calling us nerds and geeks and bookworms and then it got even worse as some sickos got in. Nobody knows how they got in, but they did. They were all over the museum. There was an awful fight. James was killed. He was not the only victim of the invasion, though. Many children were killed that night and it is still in my nightmares.
So I had to try and not think about it. I was in this church now, not back in the library, so I joined in with the other children who had got talking about things. There was Jasmine. She is quite religious. Much more religious than me. I used to go to church, but I didn’t really believe in any of it. Jasmine is always praying. She was very upset about the corpse lying there, the sheets all brown and red from blood and things. Flies buzzing round it and crawling everywhere. I didn’t like to think of them laying their eggs and the body having maggots in it.
Jasmine said eventually, after some thought, that we should bury the body. It would give us something to do and we were in a church with a graveyard so it was only right. After all, I mean to say, we all knew that we could take the body with us, but where would we take it? It would rot and start to smell and all the time it was reminding us of the horrible thing that had happened on the way here. And reminding us that poor Gabby was dead. There she was inside that sheet. Wrapped up like an old parcel. It was making me sick. People were getting hysterical. We didn’t think we would be there that long, but the search party wasn’t back yet even though Blue had sort of promised that they wouldn’t be away for long, and the hours were passing by, like the steady ticking hands of a clock ticking round. Jasmine was getting more and more stressed about it, saying, ‘We must bury her, we must bury her.’ It was making us all quite edgy.
Reece said that Blue had ordered us not to go outside, and I said that I had promised Ollie, but nobody was listening to me and Daryl Painter said he had been up on to the top of the steeple (the church tower) to have a look and there was nothing out there, it was just trees and grass and birds singing, things of that nature.
‘The body will smell more and more,’ said Jasmine, ‘and it will attract sickos from all around. They will come and try and get in. We should bury the body while it is quiet.’
Then Reece made a practical point. ‘How are we going to dig a grave?’ he asked. Jasmine didn’t know how we were going to do that. I think she really just mainly wants to get the corpse out of the church so that she doesn’t have to look at it all day long. Then Demi said something. She had been exploring the church a bit and had found a little room with a sort of office in it, and some keys on hooks. And she went and fetched one of the keys and it had a paper label fixed on by a bit of old string and the label said ‘tool shed’.
So she said there must be a tool shed and they might have spades in there, and other gardening things for looking after the grounds of the church. Daryl, who had been up on the steeple, said he had seen some sheds and things all among the trees and bushes behind the church and Reece said we should go and have a look.
I said it was a very bad idea and that we were not to open the door for anything. Jasmine said I was being stupid and babyish, so I didn’t say anything else. I kept my thoughts to myself. So the next question on everyone’s lips was who should go outside and do it.
As you can imagine, nobody put their hand up. Nobody wanted to volunteer to be the first to go outside.
‘But it’s perfectly safe,’ said Jasmine. ‘The others went off all right, didn’t they? I watched them go, there were no sickos around. If there were they would have followed them or attacked them.’
‘I still don’t want to go out there alone,’ said Reece. And there was an argument.
The argument is still going. I can hear them as I am w
riting this. I got bored of it, and didn’t want any more of it. Nobody would listen to me. So as an excuse I said I had to write the journal, which wasn’t really an excuse and is certainly not a lie. I do need to write the journal. And finally I had something to write about. The argument obviously and whether we will open the doors and go outside.
I don’t want to go outside. I wish nobody would have to go. What I really want is for the others to come back. They must be back soon. Hopefully the argument will go on and on for a long time and before anyone decides anything there will be a big knock on the church doors and there will be Blue and Ollie and the others and we will all cheer and be safe again.
They will know what to do about the body as well.
That’s what I want. But, as I say, I am only small and unimportant, so who cares what I want?
52
Blue wouldn’t have been able to say just exactly what he was expecting on the other side of the door. But it wasn’t this. This was way outside his comfort zone. A weird day had just got a whole lot weirder.
The door opened into a large room. He’d seen from the plans that the warehouse was divided into two, with this smaller area at the rear, connected to the rest of the warehouse by a big roll-down door. There was a sort of steel cage built around the door, with wire-mesh walls and roof.
To get to the door they’d have to go through the cage.
And inside the cage were four fathers.
They didn’t look like the usual skanky sickbags you saw on the streets. They were thin and pale, with greyish skin, their dark eyes sunk in their cheeks, but showed no obvious signs of the disease. On top of that they were reasonably well dressed, in clean clothes, and they were armed. Two of them had spears and the other two had butcher’s knives and what looked like truncheons. They were like no grown-ups Blue had seen in over a year.
They were still human.
They were sitting on the floor of the cage, staring at the kids as they filed in through the door from the utility room. The cage was bolted to the floor, but Blue could see where it had been battered and bashed. The mesh was bowed out in one section. The grown-ups had obviously been trying to get out. Now they just sat there. Blue felt slightly awkward, embarrassed, not sure what to do or say. He’d got out of the habit of talking to grown-ups. Hell, they couldn’t talk.