89
Blue was looking up a long, straight, narrow stairway, walls painted with shiny reflective paint, pipes and electric cables running along the sides. It went up and up and up and disappeared into a white-out of bright light at the top. Blue figured there must be some big windows up there.
The rotten stink was much stronger now. It hung in the still air and he swallowed hard, trying to get the taste of it out of his mouth. He wiped his forehead. Hadn’t realized he was sweating so much, even though it wasn’t that hot. They’d discovered an untidy jumble of tiny offices and storage areas immediately behind the door through from the gallery, all built into the great square tower that sat at the corner of the building. They were long ago deserted, filled with dust. It was the smell that had led Blue and Maxie and the rest of their search party to the stairs.
They would have to go up.
Blue was armed with a short club and had a knife in his belt for backup. Maxie had her katana, but it wouldn’t be much use on the stairs, which were only wide enough for them to go up one at a time. It would be too dangerous to try to use it if they were attacked; she’d be more of a risk to her friends than to Paul. She held it down and to the side. Blue could feel her pressing him from behind to get moving.
He hesitated.
‘After you,’ said Maxie, trying to lighten the heavy mood. ‘In your own time.’
‘DBAP,’ said Blue.
‘DBAP?’
‘Don’t be a pain.’
‘TOTKO,’ said Maxie and Blue waited for an explanation.
‘Takes one to know one,’ she said. ‘Now get moving, fat ass.’
Still Blue hesitated. ‘If he comes at us – down these stairs,’ he said, ‘we ain’t in a good position. We’ll be crushed in and he’ll be on top of us.’
‘Who says he’s up there?’ Maxie asked.
‘Well, there’s something up there,’ said Blue, ‘and it stinks real bad.’
‘Then we better go and check it out.’
‘As far as you know he’s only got a knife?’ said Blue.
‘Yes,’ said Maxie impatiently. ‘But you heard what Fish-Face said – he’s gone.’
‘I didn’t hear nothing,’ said Blue. ‘She never even moved her lips. And anyway, do you believe them?’
‘Blue,’ said Maxie. ‘Just go.’
‘I’m going. I’m going. Don’t hassle me. You want to go first?’
‘I’m only a girl, you’re a big, strong man.’
‘Sexist,’ said Blue and he felt her pinch his behind.
‘Sex-y,’ she said. Blue turned and Maxie made a face that said ‘What? What?’ Behind her the rest of the pack waited, even less keen than Blue to explore this unknown part of the museum.
Blue tutted, shook his head, turned round and started up the stairs. They led right up inside the tower, and made a turn to the left at the top, disappearing into the white-out. Blue plodded on. Knew he had to act cool in front of the others and not show his fear in case it spread. It was amazing how quickly his boredom had switched back to nervousness. His eyes adjusted to the light as he climbed, so that details emerged from the brightness. Undisturbed dust on the stairs. A dead rat, dried up and leathery. Some broken glass. Nothing to show that Paul might have been up here, though. No footprints.
Yeah, he was a real Sherlock Holmes.
Where the stairs turned at the top they opened out into a large, square space with bare brick walls, exposed pipework and piles of discarded junk. A second, iron, staircase led on up to the next level. This part of the museum was nowhere near as grand as the public areas. It reminded Blue of the loft in his mum’s flat. Where she’d piled everything out of the way.
His heart was pounding, but whether that was from climbing the long flight of stairs or from his nerves he didn’t know. He paused to get his breath and let the rest of the group catch up. It was stupid, after all he’d been through, the horrors he’d had to face, to be this scared of a boy. But from what everyone had told him he needed to be scared. The guy had flipped out. Was running around cutting people up. Blue didn’t want to finish this looking like Achilleus, his face rearranged, or Brooke … He hated to think what she was like under that bandage.
Stop it, man. Stop trying to freak yourself out.
Christ, there were six of them! Six against one. That had to be good odds.
Maxie came and stood next to him. She’d stopped making jokes. Her eyes moved constantly, looking for any clues, her sword still down at her side, hand gripping it tightly. She grunted and put her other hand to her mouth. The smell was overpowering here. Something had definitely died.
‘What do you think?’ Blue asked. ‘Could it be him?’
‘What?’ said Maxie, talking in a whisper, although if anyone was up there they’d have heard them all stomping up the stairs like a herd of elephants.
‘Paul,’ he said. ‘Do you think that smell could be him? Maybe he died. Maybe that’s what Fish-Face meant when she said he’d gone away.’
‘Let’s hope,’ said Maxie. ‘I’m not looking forward to having to deal with him.’
‘You’ve seen him in action, Maxie. How bad is he?’
‘Bad …’
Maxie stopped. They’d all heard it. Something moving. It wasn’t loud, just a distant rattle and a thump, but the effect was as if someone had suddenly thrown a switch and passed an electric current through the group.
One of the museum kids swore and they all looked at each other for reassurance.
Blue took a deep breath.
‘Come on.’
He led them up the other stairs and they found themselves in a maze of dusty rooms that had been built into the tower. They didn’t fit perfectly so that some of the big, fancy windows had been cut in half by new walls and floors. Blue kept catching glimpses of London – rooftops, chimneys, the world outside. It reminded him of just how shut in they were. After the wide-open spaces of the galleries downstairs it felt claustrophobic up here; the low ceilings seemed to be pressing down on them and everywhere was clutter: shelves loaded with carefully labelled fossils, cabinets and drawers stuffed with rocks and crystals, boxes filled with junk. You could hardly move.
And there were a thousand places to hide.
Maxie was sticking so close to Blue that they were cramping each other. It irritated him and he was biting his tongue, anxious not to snap at her. He looked at the floor. Now there were footprints in the dust. Someone had been here recently. But there was a horrible stillness, and the air felt hot.
The smell was making him want to puke. His eyes were watering and he was breathing through his mouth in quick pants, like a dog.
They heard something moving again, deeper in the tangle of rooms. Maxie tightened in even closer to Blue and he felt trapped, wanted to shout out and smash the place up. He almost said something to her and just stopped himself in time. Moved quickly away from her. Looked out through a window that faced the museum roof. It stretched away, bigger than a football pitch, like the plateau on the top of a mountain range. A world above the world. There were all sorts of walkways and ladders out there. Easy for Paul to get around and into other bits of the building.
Blue’s feet crunched on something and he glanced down to see the skeleton of a pigeon with some scraps of skin still attached.
Maxie’s voice broke the stillness.
‘Holy crap … Look.’
He turned round. She was pointing with her eyes to a pile of stuff on the floor. It looked like a nest of sorts. A bed. Made of feathers and old clothes and various other scrappy bits and pieces.
‘We’ve found him,’ Maxie whispered. ‘This is where he’s been hiding.’
‘Is he here now?’
‘I don’t …’
Maxie suddenly jumped back as there was a blur of movement and something came at her with a whirring, rattling noise. She yelped and Blue froze in shock.
And then he saw that it was only a pigeon. It must have got in somewhere and was flapping i
n panic. It came at Maxie again and she instinctively swiped at it with her sword. There was a squawk and a shower of feathers and the pigeon spiralled into the wall.
Blue giggled with relief.
‘Good shot,’ he said and then went over to where the wounded pigeon was flopping about on the floor, one wing severed. He hit it with his club and it stopped moving.
‘If that’s the worst we got to deal with we’re gonna be cool,’ he said.
‘It’s not,’ said Maxie, who had moved through to the next room.
There was a dark, glistening bundle lying against the wall. It looked like …
A person.
Blue clamped his hand over his mouth. One of the other kids was on his knees, throwing up.
‘Samira.’ Maxie was shaking. ‘Oh God. This is too much. I want to get out of here. I can’t stand this, Blue, I can’t stand it. Where is he? We have to find him.’
Blue forced himself to look. The body was rotting and bits had been cut off it. The belly was ripped open and seething with maggots. He swore. Felt as if he might faint. It was like one of those old films where the walls start closing in on you. He hurried away, opened a window and gulped in fresh air.
‘Bastard,’ he said. Behind him he could hear the others moving about and Maxie shouting orders at them. Searching. He didn’t care. He was going to leave them to it. The sky was darkening, and he heard a distant rumble of thunder. A storm was coming. He wanted to tear the roof off the tower and let the rain come in and wash out all the filth.
He stayed there for ages. Staring out across the grey tiles of the roof. Wishing that none of this had ever happened.
Finally Maxie put a hand on his arm. She was amazing. Stronger than him. She’d been disgusted and terrified, had wanted to run away, but she hadn’t folded.
‘Come on,’ she said gently. ‘He’s not here. There’s no one here. Only Samira.’
‘He might be. He might be …’
‘No.’ She locked eyes with him. Telling him it was over.
Blue shook his head. ‘I’m going to look properly.’
‘We’ve looked.’
Blue brushed Maxie’s arm off and stalked through the rooms, kicking boxes out of his way, screaming and yelling.
‘Come on! Where are you, you bastard? Where are you?’
And then, as he completed his circuit and ended up back at the stairs, he saw someone … Their shadow on the wall. Creeping slowly.
He had him …
He tensed and got ready to swing his club. Felt acid flood his guts. His skull was tight, throbbing so hard he could hardly see straight. The shadow moved closer. And, at the last moment, it was as if something clicked in Blue’s brain. Nothing conscious, but deep down. And he held back for an instant, his club hanging above his head.
It was Fish-Face. She looked at him shyly, her face turned to the side, and for the first time she spoke.
‘He’s gone,’ she said, her voice sounding unexpectedly normal. ‘He was here. He’s left the museum. I’d know if he was still around.’
‘That leaves two questions,’ said Blue. ‘One – if he’s gone, where’s he gone? And two – just how the hell d’you know?’
90
Rain was starting to fall on London. It spattered on to moss-covered roofs. It blew in through broken windows and splashed on the walls. It flattened the grass in overgrown gardens and flowed down the streets past blocked drains, creating rivers of rubbish. North, south, east and west, the huge cloud dropped its load.
To the south it fell on the blackened ruins of south London, destroyed in a huge fire. And it fell on Ed and Kyle, who were crossing Lambeth Bridge, heading back to St Paul’s to look for Sam. To the east it fell on St Paul’s and the City of London, where The Kid was trapped in a dark cellar with the Green Man, trying to stay alive, and where Sam was going crazy in the cathedral – desperate to know what had happened to his friend, desperate to get away from Mad Matt and his followers, desperate to find his sister Ella …
To the north it fell on the houses and streets of Kilburn where Shadowman was watching a group of kids he hardly knew get massacred as they blindly drove their cars into the centre of St George’s army.
Paul was dimly aware of all this. Even though he could make no sense of it. It was as if his head had become a radio set and was receiving transmissions from all around the city. Voices murmuring, shouting, calling to him. Boney-M in there among them, screeching. And Paul realized that the bird thing had never been real. It had been created by his own brain, trying to make sense of the voices in his head.
They were all around him now, a flock of boneys, circling him like vultures … singing to him … some voices much stronger than others … Like the deep, deep song of the whales in the museum, travelling miles under the heavy water. A big voice in the north, roaring in battle. Another one in the east, cleverer, whispering, filled with the sound of the forest, the jungle, the big green. Clever, but still crazy. One calling to another and another, strung out around the city. Paul wanted to shut them out, but he could do nothing.
He was moving very slowly, from hiding place to hiding place, crawling through the rain-washed streets, half blind from pain, his head banging so hard it must surely split wide apart. It felt like there was a writhing mass of worms eating at his brain; he would claw them out if he had the strength.
It was growing dark and the sickos would be emerging soon. They may be singing to him, but he didn’t want to risk answering. They were so hungry. So, so hungry …
And then he saw one. A mother. Standing right in the middle of the road, arms outstretched, face turned up to the sky so that rainwater ran into her mouth. Her long blonde hair hung down her back, glistening with water. She looked quite young, almost beautiful in the half-light. With the rain streaming over her you couldn’t see her damaged skin.
There was a flash of lightning, and her face glowed for a moment a ghostly white, as if she was an angel come down from heaven, and he heard her speaking to him. Not with words, but images and feelings. Buried deep down beneath the madness, down below her pain, were memories of better times, and a sort of crazy joy. She was burning up with it. As he listened to her, a thought came into Paul’s mind, soft and gentle at first, not screeched like Boney-M, but growing, like a musical sound, a whole orchestra, building up in a wave …
‘He’s coming.’
It was Paul who said it, the words bursting from his mouth. And he felt again that great dark presence in the north, something powerful and overwhelming.
‘God …’
There was a crash of thunder and it was like a door had been opened in Paul’s mind and a million thoughts from a million different people flooded in, a punch so hard and hot and bright he fell to his knees and screamed.
A scream of joy and pain and terror …
He had no idea how long he stayed like that, face down in the road, arms reaching out to the sides, but after a long while he felt strong enough to get up, his whole body trembling. The mother was still there; she hadn’t moved a muscle by the look of it. Her voice was soft and gentle again, like his own mother’s had been. He remembered watching cookery programmes with her, talking about the recipes, laughing at the mad ones, the crazy chefs. Olivia at the table doing her homework. And helping his mum to make a cake. Flour everywhere. Mum patient, even when he dropped eggshell in the bowl. A birthday cake for Olivia. Paul had thought he might grow up to be a chef. Like Jamie Oliver.
‘Mum …’
He went over to the mother, put his arms round her. She felt warm.
‘Mum,’ he said again. ‘Look after me.’
91
‘As far as I can work it out, it’s like they can communicate with each other without talking. They don’t even have to be in the same room. You know, a bit like using a mobile phone.’ Blue paused, made a face. Laughed at himself. ‘Not that I ever really understood how they worked. Like TV and Wi-Fi and that, messages through the air, waves and rays and particles and
all stuff we did at school. I never really got my head round it. Probably because I wasn’t listening.’
‘But you do still have to actually talk into a phone,’ said Einstein. ‘It’s not magic. Quite honestly it sounds ridiculous, what you’re saying.’
‘Yeah, don’t it?’ said Blue. ‘I ain’t no scientist. I don’t know how they do it. It’s not like talking, but they can send and receive messages somehow. It’s something to do with the disease.’
‘No,’ said Einstein. ‘It’s impossible. Human beings can’t suddenly develop telepathy.’
‘Well, this lot have, so get used to it, science-boy. They developed it in the womb.’
‘It’s just not possible.’
‘Well, maybe they’re not human then.’
‘They’re disabled,’ said Einstein. ‘But they’re still human.’
‘I wouldn’t call them disabled,’ said Blue. ‘They can do a whole mess of stuff that we can’t. They’re different. Not like any disabled kids I knew. It’s the disease.’
The lab lit up and soon after there was a crash of thunder. The rain was noisy against the glass roof. Blue and Maxie were sitting with Einstein. It had still been light outside when they’d come over to the orange zone, but the storm had quickly brought on the dark. Einstein had had to find some candles as the generator had been turned off for the night. They were the last three here and soon they’d have to go back through to the main building and shut this area down.
Einstein got up and started pacing about. He was behaving like someone who’d been given some bad news that they didn’t want to accept.
‘Disease doesn’t give us special powers,’ he insisted. ‘It’s not like Spider-Man. Disease takes things away.’
‘What about kids with autism?’ said Maxie. ‘You know, like the ones who can do amazing things – I don’t know, maths and that. I saw this documentary about a kid who could just look at a building and then draw it exactly from memory.’
‘That’s just because some of the noise is taken out; some parts of their brains are wired, like, wrong, so other parts develop,’ said Einstein. ‘But doing hard sums is not a superpower, unless I missed that comic. Autistic kids may be different to us, but they’re still human. Disease destroys us. Simple as that.’