Текст книги "The Fear"

Автор книги: Charlie Higson

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

28

Somehow the girl had kept going for hours. Running round the pitch. Escaping their clumsy attacks. They’d brought her here soon after dusk and now it was almost dawn. The great oval of sky that showed in the open roof of the stadium was growing light to the east, turning from grey to pale yellow.

She’d had three friends with her when she’d arrived. Three other girls. They’d been snatched from the house they were sheltering in and carried back here.

Her friends hadn’t lasted long at all.

And once the grown-ups had eaten them their need to kill this girl had dimmed along with the hunger pains in their bellies. She was fast and she had fight in her, and one by one they had given up trying to catch her.

Now they were only playing with her.

She would wait until she thought they’d leave her alone and then run for an exit. They were always ready for her, however, and would lumber over to cut her off, slashing at her with their long dirty fingernails, snapping with yellow rotting teeth. Every time so far she’d managed to struggle free of them and return to the centre of the pitch and there she was now.

She was covered in blood from small cuts all over her body where her flesh had been torn. Her clothes were stained black with it and her long hair was matted around her face. Her mad, terrified eyes stared out from a red mask streaked with tears. She crouched in the middle of the football pitch, panting and gasping and trembling. Fear had taken all her humanity away and she was a pathetic animal thing, a mouse in a den of cats, liable to freeze with shock at any moment.

Most of the grown-ups, with food inside them, had wandered away to sleep, but some sat in the stands, watching her. A few remained on the pitch and one of them was watching her more intently than the others. He didn’t take his eyes off her. He had a great bald head on a short neck, a filthy vest with a cross of St George stretched across his belly and wire-framed glasses with no lenses in them. He had been poking his tongue into the eye socket of a severed head, trying to get at the warm brains inside. Now he threw it away into the long grass. Bored. Two skinny, starving mothers, too feeble to catch anything for themselves, had been watching him, dribbling down their fronts, and now they crawled towards the head and fought each other for it, snarling and hissing.

They could have his scraps – that’s all they were good for. He was top dog and they were snivelling filth. They looked up to him. They followed him. He could get them to do whatever he wanted. He was powerful, the most powerful of them all, and they understood it.

He kicked one of the mothers in the side of the head and she fell sideways, her neck broken.

The father belched and a thin stream of brown bile bubbled from his mouth. The girl had entertained him for a while and it had triggered memories, of coming here long ago. He thought perhaps he had lived here back then, before his brain had been cooked and tangled and twisted out of shape by the disease, before his flesh had been ruined by blisters and boils and sores.

He had come here with his boy, his Liam, he remembered that much, and he had sat and watched his team. Now the grass was up to his knees, weeds were sprouting. It had changed, this place, but it was the closest thing to a home that he had. They were creatures of habit, these sick grown-ups, slinking back to the places they knew so well.

More and more of them had been coming to the stadium. Tramping in from every direction. Drawn to it, just as they’d been drawn to it before – on Saturdays and Sundays, on weekday nights when the floodlights had blazed overhead and the grass had glowed bright green.

If he really concentrated, strained and struggled and forced his mind to be still, he could remember how it had been back then, with every seat filled and all of the fans shouting and screaming and hurling abuse as the players kicked the ball.

Kick, kick, kick …

Back then they had followed their team. Their Arsenal. And now they followed him. He had the badge of power on his chest. The red cross on the white. He was St George. Their leader, their saviour. He would kill the dragons.

All they had wanted before was to win, to beat every other team, be champions of the world. He would make it happen now. All he had to do was beat the enemy. Beat them down until they were bloody. Kick, kick, kick … Kick them down and butcher them and eat them.

That was what he was. Yes. It all came back to him now. He was a butcher. He could see himself in his shop. Meat is life. He could smell it in the air. The vans would arrive and they would bring in the boys and girls, and he would hang them from spikes and slit them from their belly to their throat, watch the blood draining away, pull out the guts, the heart and liver and lungs. He closed his eyes so he could see it more clearly. Licked his dry and cracking lips.

There they were in his gleaming white shop. The children hanging neatly, staring at nothing, opened up and cleaned, drained of blood so that they were white.

Chop, chop, chop, the butchering would carry on. Choice cuts. Shin, neck, breast, ribs, rump … He hummed to himself, rocking backwards and forwards, lost in the delight of it all, the sights and sounds and smells. The words kept on coming back to him – loin, leg, shoulder, cheek – he rolled them around his mouth.

He would lay the sweet red meat out on his counter and the mums would come in, or sometimes the dads, and he would wrap the little packets of flesh and sell them.

He smiled as he hummed.

He loved the night, after he had eaten, when his head cleared and his memories returned. His special lads were nearby, finishing off one of the other girls. Cracking the bones so they could suck out the sweet marrow inside. They were the clever ones, like him. They stuck close by. His dogs. His boys. They brought him what he needed. Fresh meat. Living children. And every day he grew stronger.

Watching the girl being chased around the pitch had been fun for a while, almost like watching a game of football, but now he wanted to finish it. The girl and her fidgety scurrying movements irritated him. The young ones made him angry. He wanted to kill them all. He wanted to snap their necks just like he’d snapped the neck of the skinny mother.

Bored.

He yawned and stretched, his joints clicking. Then he belched again and spat a mouthful of bile on to the mother who sat in the grass chewing an ear. He lumbered across the pitch.

Bored.

Still the girl had not given up. She made a fresh break for it, sprinting towards the east stand. She pounded along, hoping against hope that this time, unlike the countless times she’d tried it before, this time would be different, she would make it to the edge and get away from this hideous place.

At the last moment a fat mother wearing a T-shirt with the Playboy bunny logo on it waddled over to cut her off and as the girl tried to duck past her she swung one of her heavy fat arms, bowling the girl to the ground. She crawled on, her breath hissing in and out of her tight throat. A father, long hair hanging down over his face, stamped on her. She squealed and rolled to the side, then struggled to her feet and limped back to the centre of the pitch.

St George was waiting for her. In the half-light it looked as if he was smiling, but the girl couldn’t be sure. Grown-ups didn’t really have emotions any more; they were just killing machines. There was something different about this one, though, something cleverer, more human …

She dropped to her knees in front of him.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please help me …’

For a moment the light of intelligence came into his face. He cocked his head to one side, like a dog listening, and a frown flickered about his eyes. He nodded his head, opened his mouth to speak. His jaws moved up and down, his tongue waggled in his mouth, but only a gurgling sound came out.

Was it possible he understood her? That she had stirred some memory of a time when adults looked after children?

‘Please,’ she said again. ‘I don’t want to die.’

He opened his arms wide, and now he definitely was smiling. The girl got up and staggered into him, pressed her head against his chest and drenched his vest with her tears. He wrapped his arms round her. One hand stroked her bloody hair. He too was crying as he breathed in her scent. That warm sweet scent they all shared, the smell of life.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank –’

The words were choked off as his grip tightened. Her chest was crushed so she could no longer work her lungs. She felt her ribs snapping.

Oh well, she thought, as the blackness swallowed her. At least it was all over now …

St George mumbled something into her hair, remembering holding his boy. Protecting him with his strong arms. Recalling the old days, the good days, when it had been the two of them against the world.

29

They were gathering under the dinosaur skeleton in the main hall. Some of them were excited, chattering away, unable to stand still; others were quiet and drawn into themselves; a couple looked downright sick. DogNut paced up and down, his head bobbing on his long neck, beatboxing softly, waiting for Robbie, the boy who had opened the gate for them last night. Robbie was in charge of security at the museum and would be useful to have along on DogNut’s expedition.

After breakfast DogNut and Paul had gone around talking to the more adventurous kids, collecting a posse. ‘Who wants to come and kill the monster?’ Afterwards Paul had taken DogNut up on to the roof and shown him the beacon fire. Despite the fancy name it wasn’t much more than a pile of junk in an old brazier that when lit sent up a tall column of smoke. If any of the hunter gangs were nearby, they’d see it and come to the museum, as they knew it meant a reward of some sort if they were able to help out. Paul had explained that Robbie was the only one authorized by the council to give the order to light it. But Robbie had left early, well before DogNut had woken up, to escort a work party of kids to a nearby courtyard to harvest crops.

Ignoring Paul’s protests DogNut had taken out the cigarette lighter he always carried with him and set light to the brazier, explaining that they couldn’t wait all day for Robbie to get back. Paul had tutted and fretted and moaned as the junk caught light and the smoke crawled up into the clear sky. A couple of runners had been sent out to fetch Robbie, but DogNut figured once he saw the beacon smoke he’d come back quick enough. DogNut was actually glad Robbie hadn’t been there to start with. It helped his plan.

Apart from the usual nightmare, he’d slept well. Long and deep. And now felt reasonably refreshed. Ready to face the Collector again. He told himself that if he took enough fighters it would be easy. First thing in the morning, confused by the bright sun, the big sicko would be a pushover. A lot of the kids in the museum wanted to help Paul get revenge for the death of his sister, but DogNut only wanted to take the best of them. Too many and they’d just get in the way of each other and make it dangerous. Most of these kids barely left the museum, unless it was to go and work in nearby vegetable patches, and weren’t street tough. It had been like picking a team for a school football match. DogNut had turned away those kids that didn’t look up to it.

Marco and Felix were coming. They reckoned they had unfinished business with the Collector and wanted to stick by DogNut. Finn was reluctantly staying behind. He knew he wasn’t much use until his arm healed. Courtney had been in a panic, swaying one way and then the other, not sure if she could face going back to that awful place, but not wanting to look like a wimp in front of DogNut. Even now, standing here with her spear at the ready, she still didn’t know if she was going to go with the war party when they set off.

She watched as DogNut strode into the middle of the floor and took charge.

‘OK!’ he shouted. ‘Is everyone ready?’

There were mumbles from the kids and they shuffled into some kind of formation. Paul went and stood by DogNut, trying to look hard and failing. He obviously liked to dress all in black, with his roll-neck jumper, black denim jacket and matching jeans. They matched his hair, and with his long thin arms and legs he looked like some kind of insect.

‘If Robbie don’t get back soon, we’ll go without him,’ said DogNut.

Paul sighed, blowing out his breath to ease his tension. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t wait for him, whatever?’ he asked. ‘He’s got some of our best fighters with him.’ He was very pale, made worse by his black outfit. His resolve of the night before, his determination to go and kill the Collector, was slipping away. He looked to Courtney like he’d been up half the night. Probably crying. Trying to accept that his sister was dead. The reality of being out on the streets and confronting a sicko, maybe killing him, was beginning to sink in.

‘Don’t worry,’ said DogNut. ‘We’ll hang on a bit longer. The Collector is one dangerous grown-up. When we go in there, we want to make sure of it. Kill the bastard. You can stick his head on a pole if you like. But remember there ain’t just him to worry about. There were bare sickos around last night. They’ll mostly have crawled away to their sleeping holes, but they still out there and we don’t want to forget it. I ain’t waiting all day, though. Sun’s out nice and bright now, and they don’t like that. Early morning he’ll be asleep, and his defences will be down. We want to get in there fast and get back here fast.’

‘OK.’

DogNut mock-punched Paul. ‘You’ll be OK, blood. Don’t fret.’

Courtney wandered off to the side and sat down on a bench, too nervous to speak to anyone. She stared at some kind of giant fossilized tortoise and prayed that DogNut would change his mind and give up on the idea of killing the sicko. She looked round as Brooke came down the wide stairs at the back of the hall past the statue of Charles Darwin. She looked so different with her short brown hair and old-fashioned dress. She had changed more than Courtney had expected in a year. She could be five years older, ten even. She headed for DogNut, who started talking at her, rattling off the words and dancing from one foot to the other. Brooke didn’t look too happy. Kept turning away and fiddling with her hair.

Courtney held back for a while then decided she’d better go and see what Brooke had to say.

‘You can’t just come in here and stir things up, Donut,’ Brooke was saying as Courtney came over.

‘I ain’t stirring,’ DogNut protested. ‘But we got to move fast if we want to kill the sicko. He might move on. And I mean, you know, maybe Olivia’s still alive.’

Courtney and DogNut both knew that wasn’t a possibility. This was all part of DogNut’s game plan. Brooke wasn’t to know that, however. She changed her tone.

‘Yeah … maybe. OK, I see your point. Thing is, you only just got here. I was gonna show you things this morning, introduce you to some more people.’

‘Laters,’ said DogNut. ‘When we back. OK? Plenty of time.’

‘What if you don’t come back?’

‘I’ll be back!’ said DogNut, impersonating the Terminator. ‘Look. We getting an army together here.’

‘What if you get some of my lot killed?’

‘I’ll look after them good. Don’t you worry. I ain’t stepping on nobody’s toes. I’m doing this for Paul.’

‘Are you?’

‘Course I am. So you gonna come with us?’

‘Well …’ Brooke thought about it. Didn’t look too keen on the idea and before she could make a decision Courtney butted in.

‘It’s pretty dangerous out there if you ain’t used to it,’ she said. ‘Nobody will think bad of you if you don’t come. You never knew Olivia, like I did.’

‘You going?’ Brooke asked.

Courtney shrugged, still not sure.

‘See, I’m not one of the fighters,’ said Brooke. ‘I got more important things to do here.’

‘I’m a fighter,’ said Courtney, standing taller and swinging her spear. God, she hoped that DogNut was taking this in. If she was going to put her neck on the line again, she wanted to make sure that DogNut was impressed.

‘You coming for sure then?’ DogNut asked.

‘Yeah, why not? I ain’t afraid.’

‘My gyal!’ said DogNut, and he put his arm round her and gave her a squeeze.

Before any of them could say anything else there were voices and movement from the main doors and a group of boys stepped in out of the light. They hurried across the atrium to the knot of waiting kids. Robbie was at their head, leather jacket tightly zipped, looking none too happy.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, his gelled hair bristling.

‘What’s it look like?’ said DogNut. ‘We going on a sicko hunt.’

‘Who says?’

DogNut turned to Paul. ‘You tell him, blood,’ he said. ‘This is your party.’

Paul took Robbie aside and explained what was happening. As they talked, Robbie kept throwing looks over to DogNut. Like Brooke, he wasn’t happy that an outsider had come in and was shaking things up. Finally he came back and stood slightly too close to DogNut. His attempt to appear menacing didn’t quite come off as his broken nose only came up to DogNut’s chin.

‘You ain’t in charge here, Doggo,’ he said.

‘That’s right.’ DogNut shrugged and held Robbie’s gaze. ‘The nerds are.’

Robbie paused for a moment, weighing DogNut’s pointed words.

‘They look after all the boring crap,’ he said at last. ‘But anything to do with security goes through me.’

‘Yeah, I know that.’ DogNut offered Robbie a friendly smile. ‘But you wasn’t here so I had to start putting something together. Time is tick-tick-ticking away, soldier. You gonna come then?’

‘Course I’m gonna come.’

‘Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go.’

30

As the kids marched out of the museum gates into the street, they bumped into Ryan and his hunters coming from the west along the Cromwell Road with their dogs. Compared to the kids in the museum Ryan’s gang looked even more wild and fierce than they’d done before. Dressed in their furs and leathery masks, heavily armed and battle scarred, they were a complete contrast to the elegantly dressed museum kids, who carried clubs and knives mostly. Although one or two, like Robbie, had lightweight swords hanging at their belts in fancy ornamental scabbards.

Ryan greeted him, and then spotted DogNut. He loped over to him, his heavy boots scraping on the tarmac, and gave him a high five.

‘You found your mates then?’

‘Yeah. Is all cool. Thanks for that – we feel well dumb not talking to you properly yesterday.’

‘Yeah. You are well dumb, Dog. So what was the smoke for? What’s going down?’

Robbie put himself between DogNut and Ryan. ‘I’m in charge here, Ryan – you know that. You talk to me. DogNut’s just a guest.’

Ryan shrugged. ‘Don’t make no odds to me who I talk to. So what’s up then?’

‘We’re going to get rid of a sicko that killed the sister of one of our boys at the museum.’

‘Just one sicko?’ Ryan looked amused. ‘You sure there’s enough of you?’

‘Apparently he’s big and hard to kill.’

‘Apparently?’ Ryan looked even more amused. ‘You mean you ain’t never even seen him.’

‘We’ve seen him,’ said DogNut. ‘Olivia was one of our party.’

‘The little girl who was with you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She never made it, no?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Harsh.’ Ryan spat on the ground. ‘So, you really need all these soldiers to take on one sicko? There must be twenty of you.’

DogNut shrugged. ‘I don’t know how well this lot fight.’

‘We can fight all right when we have to,’ said Robbie indignantly.

‘So you need our help, or not?’ asked Ryan.

‘I can’t offer to pay you,’ said DogNut, and he nodded at Robbie. ‘That’s his territory.’

‘I guess we could give you some food, or clothing, or something,’ said Robbie. ‘But not much. Quite frankly I reckon we could kill this sicko by ourselves. As you say, how bad can one grown-up be? Just cos DogNut and his gang had a hard time.’

Before DogNut could react to Robbie’s taunt, Ryan interrupted. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘We’ll do you this one as a freebie. I’m curious to see what this giant sicko can do.’

‘Cheers,’ said Robbie.

‘No problem. Just remember you owe us two, now.’

‘Sure.’

‘Show me the way then.’

Ryan looked at Robbie, and Robbie looked at DogNut.

‘Follow me,’ said DogNut, and he led them eastwards towards Harrods.

Courtney really didn’t want to be doing this. She could have slept all day. But she forced herself forward, plodding along with heavy feet. She wished she hadn’t been such an idiot and had stayed behind with Brooke. Why did boys always have to complicate things? She loved Brooke, she really did, she just didn’t want her to end up with DogNut. DogNut was hers. Courtney had to convince him that he’d be better off with a tough street fighter like herself and not a …

Well, whatever Brooke had become.

A house nerd.

Not that Courtney felt like much of a tough street fighter at the moment. Her guts had turned to water and all she really wanted to do was bend double and throw up. The thought of the Collector in his disgusting den terrified her more than she ever could have imagined.

Why was DogNut so keen to go back there?

Only one way to find out.

She sped up and pushed her way to the head of the column. DogNut was out in front, walking by himself, and she fell into step beside him.

‘What about Brooke, eh?’ she said, trying to sound like it didn’t really mean much to her. ‘She ain’t half changed.’

‘Yeah, I guess we all changed.’

‘She even looks different, don’t you think?’ Courtney went on. ‘I reckon she looked prettier as a blonde.’

‘Maybe. Most girls do.’

‘You think I should go blonde?’

‘You?’ DogNut looked appalled. ‘No way, gyal. You couldn’t go blonde anyways. With your hair you’d end up, like, orange, or something.’

‘Don’t you like my hair then?’

‘Never thought about it much. Is just hair.’

‘DogNut?’ Courtney decided to come right out and say it. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘To help Paul.’

‘Really? It’s not because you feel guilty about Olivia?’

‘Yeah. That as well, I guess.’

‘But I know that ain’t all. You’re being devious. You got something else on your mind. I just know it.’

‘Gyaldem, eh?’ said DogNut, and he sucked his teeth. ‘Can’t get nothing past them, man.’

‘I can never tell when you’re being serious.’

‘Me either.’

‘But you are up to something, Doggs.’

DogNut leant closer to Courtney and spoke quietly, making sure that nobody else could hear them.

‘I want to be someone, Courtney.’

‘You are someone.’

‘No I ain’t. I want to be important. I want to be remembered. Back at the Tower I won’t never be nothing except one of Jordan Hordern’s captains. But I reckon the museum is ripe for the picking. I mean, how come Justin and the nerds are in charge? Who let that happen? Why ain’t Robbie running things? Ain’t he got no dignity, no self-respect?’

‘I dunno.’

DogNut glanced over at Robbie, checking he wasn’t near enough to hear what they were saying.

‘I’ll tell you why, Courtney, because he is a weak-ass dope. He don’t want to be in charge. He’s scared.’

‘What you saying then, Doggs? You gonna try to take over?’

‘Wouldn’t take much. I just need to show them all how tough I am, how I make decisions and get shit done. I wanna be top dog for a change, Courtney.’

‘What for?’

‘Power, girl. Power and respect.’

‘What for, though?’

‘Come on. I’d get all the best stuff for myself. All the best food. The best clothes. The biggest bed. All the buffest girls. And then Brooke will fall in love with me and we’ll live happily ever after.’

Courtney didn’t know what to say to this and she retreated into her own thoughts. She wasn’t always sure that she even liked DogNut, but there was nothing she could do about the way she felt about him. Maybe what he was saying made some kind of sense . Maybe she was attracted to him because he was tough, a soldier. Big man in road.

The column of kids halted, snapping Courtney out of her thoughts. She barged to the front to see what the holdup was and instantly wished she hadn’t.

Ryan and his hunters were battering a young father to death in the middle of the road, their dogs snarling and barking. The sicko was blind, his eyelids swollen and crusted with sores. Too feeble to make it back to wherever he lived, he’d been caught out in the daylight.

The hunters were laughing, and when they’d finished one of them knelt down to slice off the dead father’s ears. The boy inspected his work. He lifted up an ear that was little more than a gristly flap of skin and waved it in the face of one of his friends before lobbing it away. The other one he gave to Ryan, who hooked it onto the garland of severed ears that hung from his belt.

Ryan grinned at DogNut and gave a little waggle of his hips to make the ears dance.

‘How much further, Dog?’ he asked.

‘Nearly there,’ DogNut replied. ‘Is quite close to Harrods.’

‘You really reckon this giant sicko of yours is dangerous?’ Ryan asked, spitting on the dead specimen at his feet. ‘They don’t scare us none.’

‘Trust me,’ said DogNut, nodding his head and walking on. ‘He’s dangerous.’

Ryan fell in step with him.

‘Maybe we should just set his crib on fire?’ he said with a wicked leer. ‘Fry him up.’

Paul heard what they were saying and came over.

‘You’re not burning anything,’ he said. ‘Olivia might be in there. She might still be alive. I have to find her. That’s what this is all about.’

‘Yeah,’ said DogNut. ‘Agreed. I don’t like fire. Our last safe place was burned down when south London went up in flames. Don’t want to risk starting something we can’t control. The sicko’s den is stuffed to the roof with all crap that’ll burn. Any fire in there, the place is gonna go off like a bomb.’

‘So, what’s your plan then?’ Ryan asked, and DogNut started to tell him.