Текст книги "The Fear"

Автор книги: Charlie Higson

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

53

Shadowman was lying on his belly, looking out through the bottom of a floor-to-ceiling picture window. The rest of the glass was filthy with dust and grime, but he’d cleared a patch just big enough to give him a good view of the outside world without being spotted.

He was four floors up in a flat opposite the smouldering Arsenal stadium. It had been a mad scramble getting away, battling through the slow and confused strangers who lived in there. His gang of four had given chase, but he’d been too fast for them. They may have been cleverer and less diseased than most of their kind, but they were still clumsy and uncoordinated. The worst part had been when he’d gone through to the back of the stands and down the access stairs to try to find a street exit. He’d ended up running round and round the lower level until he’d stumbled across an open gate. The inside of the stadium was full of filth, human waste, dying strangers, rotting bodies, piles of unrecognizable rubbish. It was probably all this that was burning now.

Once he was out he’d decided he couldn’t get very far away. He was still light-headed from the concussion and didn’t want to risk moving around too much in the dark in an area he didn’t know. He would put himself in danger of stumbling across more grown-ups.

Once he was sure nobody was on his tail he’d chosen this place to hide out. It was an old industrial building that had been turned into modern flats. He was hoping that any strangers in the area would congregate with the others inside the stadium, but he was still very careful when he broke in. Normally this would have been just the sort of place where they build their nests. He still had a box of matches in his pocket and he’d gone straight down to the basement to thoroughly search it by their juddering light. Then he’d worked his way up to the top. Any doors that were firmly bolted he’d ignored. Strangers didn’t use locks. The whole of the top floor was a large studio apartment that must have been quite swanky in its day, with polished wooden floors and exposed brickwork on the walls that were hung with abstract art. The door had been hanging open, however, and the place had been ransacked. When the disease had first struck, when half the police force was off sick, and law and order had broken down, hordes of looters hit the streets. Their frenzy didn’t last long, though, as they themselves had quickly fallen ill. In a few short weeks it was over.

This apartment hadn’t escaped the vultures. Anything useful and usable and valuable had been carried off. There was broken glass everywhere, smashed furniture. He was pleased to see that there was no evidence of recent use by grown-ups, however. Like the rest of the building it was deserted, so it suited his purposes perfectly.

First he’d secured the door and wedged it shut. After that he’d tidied up a little and found some old bedding in a cupboard. Together with the cushions from a sofa he’d made a bed by the window and settled down. He figured that if he could stay close to the strangers it would give him an advantage. He would know where they were and what they were doing, and with any luck he could stay hidden from them. The air was full of smoke and the bitter stink of burning rubbish, which would mask any scent he might be giving off. He would learn their movements, study their behaviour, and when he was strong and rested he would set off back to civilization. He hoped that would be sooner rather than later. He mustn’t rush it, though. He felt pretty terrible. There was a big lump on his forehead where Jester had hit him that was round and hard and shiny, and his head thudded in time with his heartbeat.

He had dozed off and on through the night. Waking to squint out through his little spyhole and follow the progress of the fire. It had lit up the whole sky, illuminating the streets as well as any floodlamps. The stadium was set back far enough from the surrounding buildings for the fire not to spread, and it seemed to be reasonably well contained, so Shadowman found it comforting rather than frightening. Now and then strangers would spill out and mill around in the road, not sure what to do. Some of them fought each other in their frustration.

It was quiet now. The sun was riding high in the sky. He warmed himself in the little patch of light that was spreading across the floorboards. He didn’t think he would sleep any more. He was stiff and aching all over. His neck felt like it had seized up. He hoped Jester hadn’t done any permanent damage.

Jester. Just to think of him made his headache ten times worse. How could he have deserted him like that? Left him there to be eaten by strangers?

He’d always known that Jester was self-centred and hard-hearted – that was how he’d survived for so long, after all. But he’d never expected his friend to just dump him. If he ever met him again – and how likely was that? There was no saying that Jester had got away himself – Shadowman thought that he could easily kill him. He really thought he could do it. He pictured himself shoving his knife into his belly.

Only he’d lost his knife, hadn’t he. His knife and his precious pack. He was completely defenceless. He’d need to find a new weapon before he strayed very far from his den.

He coughed. Felt a harsh rasp in his throat. He was very thirsty. He had his precious canteen still fixed to his belt, but it wouldn’t last long. He had to think about finding more water. He could go a few days without food if necessary, but more than twenty-four hours without water and he’d be in serious trouble.

All in all, the message was clear.

He couldn’t stay lying here any longer.

He slid back from the window. There didn’t seem to be any strangers about, but it was best to be careful and never let his guard down.

He did a few exercises to loosen up his muscles. Tried rolling his head on his stiff neck. Groaned. Massaged his temples. Then he took the A to Z out of his pocket, glad that he’d stuffed it there the last time he’d looked at it, rather than into his pack, and looked up the Arsenal stadium.

There it was, just off Holloway Road. When he felt up to it, the walk back to the palace, if he was left alone, could be done in two or three hours, probably.

If he was left alone.

Who knew what waited for him outside the doors to the building?

A haze of smoke hung in the air, even here inside the apartment, and it made him cough again. He had to find water before he could think of doing anything else.

Shadowman had explored enough of the city to know that a building like this would be likely to have water storage tanks in the roof. These could be a useful source of drinking water, so long as it hadn’t gone stagnant. He searched for a hatch of some kind and eventually found one in the ceiling at the top of the stairwell. He stood up on a chair and pushed it open. An access ladder slid out. He pulled it down then climbed up into the roof space. He sat for a while to get his breath back. He found even the smallest movements tiring. Then he lit a homemade torch that he had constructed out of a chair leg wrapped in strips of torn-up sheet. There was just room enough to stand here, and the roof space was enormous. He soon spotted a couple of large water tanks, protected by plastic covers. He eased the cover off one of them and waved his torch over it. It was three quarters full and there was no smell. The water looked clean – no animals had crept in and drowned, or used it for a toilet. He drank the last of the water in his bottle then refilled it from the tank. It would be better boiled, but his guts had got used to eating and drinking all sorts of things that they would have rejected before the disaster.

Feeling more confident he set off back towards the hatchway, and that was when he saw them.

Three wooden boxes behind an old chimney breast. He opened them to discover they contained a secret emergency stash that someone had hidden up here.

They were filled with cans and packets of dry food, another box with a pair of binoculars, a tool-kit and an emergency medical kit, including water purification tablets, and, next to them, a large holdall packed with weapons. Three knives, a machete, two baseball bats, even a crossbow with twenty steel bolts.

He shouted in triumph and punched the air, shouting, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes …’ over and over again, tears running down his face.

This was salvation.

Forget Jester.

Forget that loser. The Shadowman was back on track.

He could hardly believe it. It was as if some God with a warped sense of humour had decided he’d had enough for a while, and it was time to give him a bit of good luck.

He was reminded of playing computer games. Just when you were out of ammo there’d be a bonus to collect. Something to keep you going through to the end of the level.

He snuffed out his torch and sat down among the boxes, overcome with emotion. He hadn’t realized just how strung out he was. He’d been running on nothing more than adrenalin and fear for a day. He’d been that close to breaking.

Nearly an hour later, well armed and well fed, back to something approaching an even keel, he climbed down the ladder and returned to his spyhole to check whether the coast was clear.

He’d made the decision to move on. Finding the stash had been a sign. He’d been given the tools to get back to civilization.

It was still quiet outside. He laced his boots up tightly, stuck a knife in his belt, loaded the crossbow and left the apartment, carefully closing the door behind him and wedging it shut again. If there were any problems, he could come back here.

He started down the stairs, treading softly, staying alert and focused.

He made it down without incident and peered out into the street.

It was deserted. All he had to do was start walking …

He paused. For a moment gripped by doubt. His confidence had been jolted yesterday. For months he’d been on top of things, and then … In a few short hours it had all fallen apart. He’d realized just how vulnerable he was.

He took some deep breaths. Told himself that he could do it. Told himself he was going to get back to safety. They’d been fools, him and Jester. Wandering off for a picnic in a minefield. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy getting back to central London. These outlying areas were wilder than he’d ever imagined. David and the other kids like him in the large settlements might have been pompous pricks, self-important little Hitlers, but at least they’d cleaned up the streets and made them relatively safe. This was war around here.

Come on … Just do it …

He was about to step out of the doorway when some sixth sense told him to wait. Maybe his ears had picked up a tiny sound, maybe his keen eyes had spotted a movement, maybe there was a new smell of rot in the air, but whatever it was he was suddenly tingling all over and his muscles locked in place.

Don’t move. Wait. Be careful.

He shrank back behind the security desk in the reception area, and looked out into the street.

They were starting to appear. Strangers. Pouring out of the stadium, like the crowd after a match. At their head was St George in his grubby vest, then came his associates, the gang of four – Bluetooth, the One-Armed Bandit, Man U and Mr Ordinary, the man with no name.

Behind them …

An army.

That’s what it looked like. An army of strangers, not exactly marching in step, more a shambling mob, but moving with a purpose nevertheless. The fire must have got so bad they’d been forced from their hiding-place into the open, the bright sun.

So many of them. It took ages for them all to pass. Shadowman held back. Waiting for his moment.

Finally the last few stragglers shuffled past and he got ready to head off in the opposite direction.

Except …

What were they doing? Where were they going? He remembered his revelation of last night, about how dangerous the strangers would be if they properly united. If they could join others like themselves, band together into larger and larger gangs, be a real army.

Until last night such a thought would never have entered his mind. Now, though, he was seeing something horribly new and dangerous. He had to follow them. He told himself that he was only making sure that he knew where they were, so that he could avoid them, but he knew it was something more than that.

Know your enemy.

And they were the enemy. A real threat. This organized rabble. This terrifying …

What?

What could he call them?

He’d always liked to name things. If you put a label on something, it was yours – you owned it. That was why he was so frustrated at not to be able to think of a proper name for the fourth stranger in St George’s little gang of lieutenants.

He’d spent his life following, observing, naming … Now he could put his skills to good use. He sneaked out into the road and set off after them. The secret survival hoard had been a sign. But it was a sign that he had misread. He’d been given what he needed, not to go back to the palace, but to survive on the streets here and keep an eye on the strangers.

There was only one thing. If he was going to spy on this army of the sick, he’d need to give them a name.

It would come to him.

54

DogNut, Courtney, Marco, Felix and Finn were in the library where Chris Marker and his assistants had set up camp. Chris was sitting at one end of a long table with a huge leather-bound volume open in front of him, writing carefully by hand on the blank creamy-white pages. Assistants sat on either side of him, all writing away in similar ledgers. There was a peaceful air of quiet study. The assistants were listening intently to DogNut, looking up now and then, before tilting their noses back to their work.

They’d been here all day, Dog Nut’s team, taking it in turns to tell their stories, and now it was his turn. He was the last to go and not enjoying it. He’d been telling them everything he could remember about what had happened since his mum and dad died and he’d had to face up to the new reality of a disease-ruined world. He had told how he’d left his council block and joined Jordan Hordern’s crew. How they’d fought their way into the Imperial War Museum, and how they’d lived there until they’d been forced to leave by the fire.

As he talked, the sun slowly went down and one of Chris’s assistants lit a row of candles that had been placed down the middle of the table. They gave a comforting, mellow glow. Courtney felt like she was in some medieval film, or the sort of programme you used to get on the BBC about monks and things.

DogNut paused, scratched his stubbly head. Not sure how to carry on. His voice was hoarse. He was tired of talking. The day had seemed to go on forever. He couldn’t believe that he had delayed going back to the Tower for this. He’d been so keen to get here and now the thought of spending just one more night was torture. He looked out of the window. Getting darker all the time.

Whatever happened he was leaving first thing in the morning.

‘Go on,’ said Chris, pen hovering over the page.

‘Look, I ain’t any good at this,’ said DogNut. ‘I don’t know what’s important. I don’t really know how to tell stories, only jokes.’

‘You’re doing fine,’ said Chris Marker. ‘Don’t stop now. Let me worry about how to make it into a story.’

‘How you gonna do that, though? It’s just, like, stuff that happened.’

‘There are stories everywhere; you just have to untangle them.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yeah. So go on then.’

DogNut went on. He told the story of how he and his friends had found Ed fighting for his life at Lambeth Bridge. How they’d got split up from everyone else and ended up drifting down the river on the tour boat. He told about their arrival at the Tower, and then it had been left to him to tell all that happened in the last year. How Jordan Hordern had organized them into military units. How they’d made the Tower secure and protected it. How they grew food. The fights they’d had. The things they’d found. The friends they’d lost.

Courtney and the others chipped in now and then, adding their own memories, filling in the gaps for him and correcting some of his mistakes. He wasn’t very good at telling it clearly. He kept stopping and starting and going off on side stories and forgetting what he was talking about, but Chris Marker remained patient, occasionally asking him to clarify something or repeat it so that he was sure he understood correctly.

And then finally DogNut came to the story of their journey here. Of the boat trip back up the river, of meeting Nicola and her kids at the Houses of Parliament, of Bozo and the hunters. He laughed about their short stay at the palace and outwitting David. He didn’t laugh when he came to the part about the Collector. He mumbled and muttered and became very vague when he told about leaving Olivia behind. Courtney saw he was having difficulties and took over, quickly filling in the last part – arriving at the museum and going back with Paul and Robbie and the others to kill the Collector.

Once DogNut was done Chris put down his pen and looked up, rubbing his eyes, which looked feeble and watery in the candlelight.

‘Thank you,’ he said, closing the book.

‘Not sure what use any of that’s gonna be,’ said DogNut. ‘The only thing I know for sure, talking about it, is I want to be back there at the Tower right now.’

‘You never know what’s going to be important in the future,’ said Chris. ‘There are loads of stories in London. There are kids out there now going through the same things as you, and they’re all parts of one big story. The story of our survival, of fights and victories, and defeats and death, friends being killed, enemies being slain.’

‘Slain?’ said DogNut. ‘Nobody says “slain”. You even sounding like a book.’

‘Why not?’ said Chris, and he tapped the leather cover of his ledger with his fingertips. ‘We’re all in a book – this book. We’re all in the story. Tonight we’re writing down your part in it, DogNut.’

‘Yeah, great,’ said DogNut. ‘To be honest I didn’t understand any of what you just said.’

‘Everything you’ve done since you left the Tower,’ said Chris patiently, ‘all the people you’ve met, it will all have an effect, and who knows where it will all end? It’s like dropping a stone in a pond, ripples go out in all directions.’

DogNut snorted through his nose. He was beginning to think Chris Marker was half mad. He’d never really known him before. This was the most he’d ever heard him say. Somehow this weird kid had come alive here, in this world of books.

‘There you go again, Chrissy-Boy,’ he said. ‘Hitting me with your deep stuff. You ain’t making it no clearer, bruv. Let me tell you.’

‘I suppose what I’m saying, DogNut, is that you’re part of history. We don’t know yet how important a part, but you’re in there all the same.’

‘Is anyone really gonna be interested in reading about me, though?’

‘I’m interested,’ said Chris, ‘and others will be too. We’re the new generation. We’re the survivors. We’re making a whole new world here. In the future, kids are going to want to know what happened. How it was. I think your journey, crossing London, could be really important, because you’ve taken the first steps to uniting all the kids around London, drawing us all together. It’s like someone coming from the other side of the world, like Marco Polo travelling to China, or Columbus arriving in America. You’ll all be important figures to future generations. You’ll all be heroes.’

‘Future generations?’ DogNut scoffed. ‘If we’re lucky.’

‘We’re going to make it, DogNut,’ said Chris.

‘Who says these future generations are gonna want to remember, though?’ said DogNut. ‘I’d of thought they’d want to forget all about this.’

‘No. History is important … You know what Winston Churchill said?’ asked Chris.

‘We’ll fight them on the beaches, or something.’

‘Yeah, he said that, but he also said that history is written by the victors.’

‘What’s that mean then?’

‘It means that if you win a war you can write the books and say you were the good guys and the losers were the bad guys.’

‘Yeah, OK, I’m on it. So what?’

‘I think it works the other way round as well,’ said Chris. ‘If you write the history, you’ll become the victor.’

‘You lost me again.’

‘If we make our own history, if we tell stories that bring us together, we’ll be stronger. It’ll give us something to believe in. The sickos can’t do that – they’re no better than animals – but we can. Every battle we win we have to tell the story over and over, so that we can win more battles. People love stories. They’ve told stories since even before they could write. Myths and legends, stories of heroes and villains, gods and monsters. Real things happened, the story got told and then the stories became legends. That’s what we’ve got to do – tell our own heroic stories.’

‘I don’t feel like much of a hero,’ said DogNut, and Courtney laughed. ‘Plodding across London, letting poor little Olivia die.’

‘It depends how you tell the story,’ said Chris, and he smiled at DogNut. ‘You’re Jack the giant-killer, and the Collector was an ogre in his castle, the Cyclops in his cave, the Minotaur in his labyrinth. Olivia was the virgin who was sent off to be sacrificed, and you’re the guys who tried to save her, who slew the monster once and for all so that nobody else would be eaten by him.’

‘Yeah, maybe when you put it like that it don’t sound so bad …’

‘That’s the power of storytelling. That’s why we have to control the stories – to control history. What was the Collector’s version? It was the story of a poor lonely man, the last of his kind, just trying to survive, and being ambushed in his den by vicious killers. That would make it very different. If we told it that way, we’d feel sorry for him, and then it’d make it harder to kill other sickos in the future. That’s why we have to tell the stories, so that we’re the heroes and the sickos are the monsters. We tell it our way.’

‘What are you saying, book-boy?’ DogNut was shaking his head slowly. ‘I keep thinking I got it and then you hit me with more words and it goes out my head.’

‘I’m saying you’re going to be a hero, DogNut, whether you like it or not.’