Текст книги "The Fear"

Автор книги: Charlie Higson

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

40

They didn’t like it around here. Shadowman had led them across the wide Euston Road, and the effect had been like crossing a river from one country to another. The six-lane highway seemed to act like a boundary between the safe area to the south and the wild lands to the north. Maybe it only felt that way to Shadowman, who hadn’t been north of Euston Road in over a year, but he was sure the others sensed it too. It wasn’t helped by the sun going behind heavy black clouds just as they reached the far pavement. The day grew dark and chilly. In the cold gloom everywhere looked very different. The buildings here were grey and dirty and dead.

Tom and his girlfriend, Kate, picked up their pace and kept close to Jester and Shadowman. Alfie had been entertaining them by singing old disco songs. He’d gone through ‘YMCA’, ‘Thriller’ and ‘Staying Alive’. That was their favourite. They’d all joined in, their high voices rising to the heavens.

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, staying alive …’

None of them had Alfie’s energy, however, and he’d carried on singing long after the others had stopped.

But as they came past Euston station Alfie shut up as well. All they could hear now was the sound of their footsteps bouncing back off the walls of the buildings. It was so quiet. A quiet like London hadn’t known for hundreds of years. The whole buzz and hum and bustle, the engine throb of a city, had been silenced. There didn’t even seem to be any birds around. It unsettled the kids and made them nervous. They’d seen a couple of strangers earlier, solitary ones, badly diseased, slow and feeble. No threat at all. Laughable. One of them had even been shuffling along the pavement on his bottom, pulling with his heels and pushing with his knuckles.

Tom and Kate had perked up and wanted to attack them for the hell of it. To boost their confidence. But Shadowman had insisted they press on. Noise and the smell of blood would only attract other strangers. It was best to keep moving while the going was good. They had no idea what lay ahead, after all.

They hadn’t seen any other children yet. Not one. They hadn’t passed any obvious hiding-places, strongholds that they themselves might have picked to live in. The last time Shadowman had come up this way there had been lots of kids around, squatting in the houses. They must all have either been killed or had clubbed together into larger groups and moved into safer buildings, like David’s group at the palace. Shadowman was wondering how far they’d have to go before they found anyone else of their own age.

‘Have we got a limit?’ he asked Jester, trying to break the tension of these gloomy streets.

‘A limit to what?’

‘How far we go. How long we stay away. You haven’t really said. Do we go back tonight? Tomorrow? Next week?’

‘I vote we go back now,’ said Tom.

‘Wait, surely we’re going back before tonight,’ said Kate anxiously, holding on to Tom’s arm. ‘I’m not staying out in the dark somewhere strange. You never said we were going to be away overnight.’

‘That’s because there is no definite plan,’ said Jester. ‘There can’t be.’

‘That’s just great,’ said Kate.

‘No,’ said Jester. ‘What I mean is … we don’t know how far we’ll have to go to find any other kids. OK, to be fair, if we haven’t found anyone by this evening, then we head back before it gets dark. Does that sound all right? If we do find other kids, though, then it might make sense to stay with them until tomorrow.’

‘I vote we go back tonight, whatever,’ said Kate.

‘Say we do find some other kids?’ asked Alfie. ‘Then what happens?’

‘Then we see what’s what.’ Jester shook his head. ‘Jesus, I can’t see into the future. We might think it’s worth pressing on and looking for some more kids. Or we might just go back to the palace with whoever we can persuade to join us.’

‘Great plan, Jester,’ said Alfie sarcastically.

‘I vote Shadowman’s in charge,’ said Kate.

‘Will you shut up, Kate?’ Jester snapped. ‘We’re not taking votes.’

Kate mumbled something inaudible.

‘You’re not helping,’ said Jester. ‘Look, this is really only a scouting party, all right? To try and find what’s out there. There might be no one else, or there might be loads of kids. We might even find some who’ve got a better set-up than David, and decide we’re not going back at all.’

‘Sod that,’ said Tom. ‘All my stuff’s at the palace. All my mates.’

‘Yeah. Joke, Tom. OK? You really think there’s going to be a better set-up than we’ve got? I don’t think so.’

‘So where exactly do you want to look next?’ asked Shadowman.

Jester stopped walking and pulled a map out of his pocket.

‘We’ll head up as far as Camden, I reckon,’ he said, studying the map. ‘Check it out. It’s the sort of place kids might end up. Then I’ll decide where we go after that.’

‘If you ask me,’ said Tom, ‘this is one big waste of time. We’re not going to find anything. Nothing’s going to happen.’

The words were barely out of his mouth when a stranger lurched out of a side-road no more than three metres away. He was a middle-aged father with a broken arm, the bone sticking out through the skin, his face a mess of yellow boils. It was hard to tell who was the more surprised, the father or the kids.

They all froze.

Jester and the rest of them gripped their weapons tight.

The father tilted his head to one side, staring at them with wide, lidless eyes.

‘I vote we kill him,’ said Tom.

‘I vote we run,’ said Shadowman.

‘There’s only one of him,’ said Kate.

‘Yeah?’ said Shadowman. ‘Try looking the other way.’

Tom turned round. Coming up the street from the direction of Euston Road were about twenty strangers. Moving fast.

‘Holy shit,’ said Tom.

Kate grabbed him and pulled him along the road. The others were already running. Shadowman took the lead. Streaking ahead on his long legs. He was more used to life on the streets. More used to running. So that he’d started to move the instant he saw the mass of strangers. No thinking about it, no panic, just off and sprinting.

Glancing back, though, he realized that he’d have to let the rest of them catch up. They were no different to the strangers – in a group they were strong; if they got split up, they were easy meat.

‘Come on,’ he yelled. ‘Leg it!’

He slowed just enough for the others to draw level. All except Alfie, who was smaller and not so fast.

‘Wait for me,’ he shouted.

‘You have to go faster!’ Jester screamed back at him, as the gap widened between them.

‘I can’t. I’m going as fast as I can.’

‘Wait for him,’ said Shadowman. ‘We don’t leave anyone behind.’

‘Hurry up, Alfie!’ Jester sounded cross. Not angry at the strangers, but at Alfie. Would he have just run off and left him if Shadowman hadn’t said something? Shadowman wondered about Jester sometimes. Wondered if he ever really cared about anyone other than himself.

There wasn’t time to think about any of this, because the road ahead was blocked as well now. Another smaller but no less dangerous group of strangers was approaching from the north. The kids veered off to the east, smashing their way past two lone strangers, a mother and a father. Shadowman had borrowed a club from the palace for extra firepower, and he used it without hesitation to crush the skull of the mother, who crumpled on to the bonnet of a car, spraying it with a foul cocktail of bodily fluids. It was Alfie who took out the father, jabbing his spear into his guts. Unfortunately he didn’t have time to yank it out again, and had to carry on without it, leaving the father staggering about in the centre of the road trying to pull it free. At last he succeeded, but it was like pulling out a plug. The father hissed as a steaming grey mass of intestines flopped out of the wound. He collapsed to his knees and three of the pursuing strangers stopped to make the most of this free meal.

Nothing else barred their way and the kids were able to run on, bobbing and weaving through the side-streets until they were absolutely sure they’d left all the strangers behind. At last they risked stopping, and leant against a wall, panting and wheezing and clutching their sides.

‘Bloody hell,’ Tom gasped. ‘What was that? Why weren’t they all indoors? Why weren’t they sleeping? Don’t they know they’re only supposed to come out at night?’

‘Maybe nobody told them,’ said Shadowman.

‘Seriously, guys,’ said Kate, who was shaking and white-faced. ‘I really do vote we go back now. This is serious. I never expected there was gonna be armies of them.’

‘They weren’t an army,’ said Shadowman. ‘They don’t make armies. They don’t have the brains. And none of us got hurt.’

‘Yes, but bloody hell, Shadowman. Bloody hell. That was scary. I haven’t seen that many strangers in one place since this all began.’

‘Come on,’ Tom pleaded. ‘Can’t we just go home? There needs to be more of us. This is stupid.’

‘We’re not going home,’ said Jester.

‘Why? Why not?’ Kate shouted. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘Look.’

There were more strangers coming from the south, and once again the kids were running.

41

Justin unlocked a heavy door and took DogNut outside into the car park they’d seen from the library. DogNut had been aware of a chugging noise, like a motor running, and was intrigued to see what it was. The air was filled with petrol fumes and DogNut saw a petrol-fuelled generator standing next to the lorry.

He was surprised to see Paul fiddling with the generator. Justin seemed surprised as well.

‘Are you all right, Paul?’ he asked. ‘You really don’t need to come back to work just yet.’

‘I’m all right,’ said Paul, straightening up. ‘It helps to be doing something.’

His eyes were red from crying, though his pale cheeks were dry. He looked very jittery, as if he might burst into tears again at any moment.

‘We can find something easier for you –’

‘This is my job,’ said Paul angrily, cutting Justin off.

‘I know,’ said Justin.

‘Don’t you think I can do it?’

‘I didn’t say that. In fact, forget I said anything. Can you open the lorry for us?’

Paul said nothing, but sullenly fished a keyring from his trouser pocket. It was heavy with keys of all shapes and sizes. He selected one and slotted it into a padlock on the back of the lorry. He snapped the padlock open and slid the door up.

DogNut covered his mouth and gagged. The smell that came out of the lorry was disgusting. Sour and rotten.

‘Jesus, who’s died?’ he said.

‘About four-fifths of the population of the world,’ said Justin.

‘Very funny.’

There was a metre or so of clear space inside the lorry before it was blocked by hanging black drapes.

‘Climb aboard,’ said Justin, and the three of them clambered up. It was hot inside and the smell was worse, but Justin and Paul seemed not to notice it. DogNut was fighting not to puke up everywhere.

‘How are they today?’ Justin asked Paul.

‘Quiet,’ was all Paul said, and he yawned and rubbed his neck through his roll-neck jumper. He looked very tired.

Justin grabbed a torch that was hanging from a hook and switched it on as Paul rolled the door back down.

‘We need to keep the light out,’ he said.

Once the door was closed, Paul stepped over to the drapes and pulled them aside like a magician revealing a trick.

A row of bars had been fixed across the lorry and behind them sat three half-naked sickos, two fathers and a mother, chained to the side of the lorry.

Seriously freaking nuts.

Justin’s torch played across the three adults, picking out features.

They didn’t look too badly diseased. DogNut had seen a lot worse. These three showed some signs of the blistering to the skin that was the most obvious symptom, as if something evil was bubbling up from deep inside their bodies, but there were no signs of rot or decay or the livid fungal blooms that adults showed in the more advanced stages of the illness. There were other signs. The whites of their eyes were yellow and their skin tone in general was greyish. They looked half starved as well: desperately thin, their bones showing, their bellies swollen. They were dressed in the tattered remains of clothing that had become blackened filthy rags. They were losing their hair, the mother almost completely bald.

The three of them stared at DogNut, mouths hanging open, showing their purple gums and brown, rotten teeth. One father, the older of the two, started to drool, a long rope of saliva hanging down off his dry and cracked lower lip.

Justin sniggered. ‘He wants to eat you.’

The father’s tongue started to slowly squeeze out of his mouth. Muddy-coloured, swollen and blistered, it looked horribly like a turd.

‘Oh, gross!’ said DogNut.

‘He’s getting worse,’ said Paul.

DogNut noticed that the other father was muzzled like a vicious dog, with leather straps tight round his face.

‘He’s a biter,’ Justin explained when he caught DogNut looking. ‘We have to be very careful, obviously.’

‘Obviously. You wouldn’t want your pet sicko to do you an injury.’

‘They’re not pets,’ said Justin. ‘We don’t keep them for fun.’

Fun? thought DogNut. How could anyone possibly think this was fun?

He kept his hand clamped over his nose and mouth. The stench in here was appalling. There were piles of excrement on the floor and more of it was smeared up the walls. There were a couple of overflowing buckets at the back. The smell of their waste fought with the smell of the grown-ups themselves. They gave off the distinctive sour odour of decay and what the kids thought of as the sickness smell, a sort of mix of cheap sweets, school toilets and old ladies’ perfume that stuck in your throat.

‘We keep them out here in the car park,’ said Justin, ‘so that if they did escape, which I seriously doubt they ever could, they wouldn’t be able to get at any of our kids. It makes everyone feel safer, knowing we don’t keep them in the building.’

‘Why do you keep them in the dark like this?’

‘It keeps them fresh.’

‘Fresh? Why? What are you planning? To eat them then? Yeah, I’ll have the mother. Deep fried. She might crisp up a bit.’

‘Of course we’re not planning to eat them.’

‘Then what the hell are you planning to do with them?’ said DogNut. ‘Teach them to dance? I mean why have you got three bloody sickos chained up out here? I don’t get it.’

‘Well –’

‘Oh, Justin,’ DogNut butted in. ‘I gotta get out of here. I can’t stand this smell any longer.’

‘Sure, OK. Sorry. I guess we’re used to it.’

He and Paul replaced the drapes, opened the door and climbed down off the lorry before Paul pulled the door back down and locked it.

DogNut stood bent over, drawing in great gulps of clean air, trying to clear the cloying stink from his nostrils. He was fighting not to be sick. Rocking back and forth, swearing, as slowly his head stopped spinning. Finally he sat down on a little camping stool that Paul obviously used.

‘Right,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘What are they for then?’

‘We need them for our experiments,’ said Justin.

‘Experiments?’

‘We’re trying to find out about the disease. Those three in there are guinea pigs. They’ve lived much longer than any of the others we’ve caught.’

‘You’re telling me you carry out experiments on them?’

‘We take their blood, tissue samples …’

‘Tissue samples? You mean you cut bits off them?’

‘That makes it sound worse than it is. We take skin samples, saliva, anything that oozes out of them, really, excrement …’

‘You collect their shit?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘You guys sure know how to party, don’t you?’

Justin grabbed hold of DogNut’s forearm, squeezing it tight.

‘If we’re going to find out how the disease works, we have to know everything about it.’

‘Can’t we just wait for them all to die off, and forget all about the bloody disease?’

‘How old are you, DogNut?’ asked Justin.

‘Fifteen, why?’

‘That’s good.’

‘Why?’

‘What happened when the disease hit?’

‘Everybody over the age of fourteen got sick, the rest of us …’

‘We were fine, right?’ Justin was getting excited, his voice rising in pitch. ‘But what happened when you got older?’ he went on. ‘When you turned fifteen?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Exactly. You didn’t get ill straight away.’

‘Far as I can tell, you don’t get ill full stop.’

‘As far as you can tell?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But what about in the future?’ Justin asked. ‘Can you guarantee that won’t change? Do you know for sure you’ll never get ill?’

‘I got no idea, man. I try not to think about that sort of thing.’

‘Exactly. You’ve got no idea. And do you know whether you can catch it off a grown-up?’

‘No. If you get too close to them, they usually kill you, so who knows?’

‘Who knows? That’s right. That’s exactly one hundred per cent right. Who knows? And what if you get bitten? Could it be passed on to you that way?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Right again. You don’t know. Loads of kids have been bitten and most of them have died of some infection. Not from whatever new disease it is that killed most of the grown-ups off. There are plenty of old diseases banging about inside sickos, like cholera and typhus and, I don’t know, dry rot, and if you get bitten you’re just as likely to die of blood poisoning as anything else. But can they pass on the prime infection with a bite?’

‘Stop asking me questions, Justin.’

‘It’s what scientists do. Ask questions.’

‘Well, they don’t ask me.’

‘Listen, DogNut,’ said Justin, ‘so far nobody’s lived long enough after being bitten for us to tell what might happen. What we need to do is test the blood of someone, a child, obviously, who’s been attacked.’

‘I expect you’ve got volunteers queuing round the block,’ DogNut scoffed. ‘Me! Me! Me! Bite me!’

‘DogNut. You have to take this seriously,’ said Justin. ‘If we can find the causes of the illness, how it works, then maybe we can find a cure.’

‘A cure?’

‘Yes!’ said Justin, grinning like a madman now. ‘Imagine if we could turn all those sickos out there back into real mothers and fathers. All you can think about is fighting them, killing them, wiping them out. We’re thinking about curing them.’

‘What do you want to cure them for?’ said DogNut incredulously. ‘Let them die, I say. Then the world will belong to us.’

‘What kind of world, though?’ said Justin. ‘And how will we survive in it?’

‘We ain’t doing too bad.’

‘DogNut’s right!’ said Paul. He’d been lurking by the generator and DogNut had forgotten all about him. ‘We should kill them all.’

‘How can you say that, Paul?’ asked Justin. ‘After all the work you’ve done with us on those three in there?’

‘How can I say it?’ Paul was wide-eyed and getting hysterical. ‘Because they killed my sister. And if you’re on their side then you killed my sister too.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Paul.’

‘Oh, I’m ridiculous, am I? You think it’s funny my sister died?’

‘No, I don’t. Why would I think that? It’s awful. I am really sorry for you. But this is why we need to find a cure so things like that won’t happen again.’

‘It won’t happen again if we kill them all.’

‘Listen, Paul, you really should go and rest. Lie down somewhere.’

‘You don’t want me here, do you?’

‘Quite frankly, no. Not if you’re a danger to the patients.’

‘A danger to them!’ Paul screamed. ‘You’ve got it all round the wrong way, Justin. You’re on their side. You all are.’

‘Please, Paul, go and chill. I’ll find someone else to look after the lorry.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m going!’ Paul snapped, and he stormed off, swearing at a couple of little kids who were feeding some chickens inside a big pen.

DogNut watched him go. Not sure what to think. Paul’s aggressive attitude was making it hard to feel any sympathy for him.

‘He’ll be all right,’ said Justin.

‘He did have a point, mate,’ said DogNut. ‘It’s seriously screwy keeping those sickos in there.’

‘He’s been looking after them for ages,’ said Justin. ‘He was always good with them. Like a zookeeper. I always thought, in a funny way, he was quite attached to them.’

‘It ain’t right, Justin.’

‘What if you got sick, DogNut?’ Justin snapped, finally losing his temper. ‘What if you found you had the disease? You’d want a cure then, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t laugh at what we’re doing here.’

‘True that. But just how d’you think you’re going to go about finding a cure? You? Huh? A fifteen-year-old kid?’

‘Come with me and I’ll show you,’ said Justin.

‘No way,’ said DogNut. ‘You ain’t showing me any more pet sickos.’

‘We don’t have any more. At the moment it’s just these three,’ said Justin. ‘No. I want to show you the labs.’

‘The labs. Of course. Every mad scientist needs a laboratory …’