Текст книги "The Dead"

Автор книги: Charlie Higson

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

38

Matt and Archie had found their banner. An old Austrian military standard with a two-headed black eagle on a gold background. They were sitting round a table in the café adapting it. One of Jordan’s boys had directed them to a store cupboard full of paint and brushes and various tools. They’d found some sheeting as well and cut out pieces that they’d glued on to cover the bits they didn’t like. They would have preferred to sew the patches on but didn’t know how. The banner would look pretty scrappy but it would do for now. When they had more time and resources they’d make a new one.

Matt had done some sketches for the design they were painting on to the bits of sheet. It had taken him a while to get the picture right, but he’d finally drawn one he was happy with. The image was based on his vision. When you looked at it one way, it was a picture of two different boys, one behind the other. Looked at another way it appeared to be a boy and his shadow. The main figure, the boy at the front, was fair-haired and dressed in white. The second boy, his shadow, was dark-haired and wore dark clothing. He was less detailed and looked sort of half-formed. Matt wasn’t the greatest artist in the world, but there was something about his last drawing, a strange, haunting quality.

Transferring the image to the banner was like a school art project. Matt and Archie and their ten acolytes crowded round the banner, which was draped over the table, the edges dangling down. Matt had sketched in the outline with a big marker pen he’d found in a box in the museum shop and the others were filling in the shapes. They happily chatted away as they mixed the colours and daubed them on, utterly engrossed in their work.

‘Red for the eyes!’ said Phil, the youngest of the acolytes. ‘The Shadow Boy should have red eyes.’

‘It’s not a poster for a horror film,’ said Matt.

‘What colour then?’

‘Just leave them dark. And he’s not called the Shadow Boy. He’s the Goat. The shining one is the Lamb; the dark one is the Goat.’

‘Should he have horns?’

‘No. They’re not a real lamb and a real goat. Just paint him as I’ve drawn him.’

‘If we put on yellow rays it’ll look like the Lamb is glowing,’ said Harry, another of the acolytes.

‘All right. But do it carefully.’

‘What’s it going to say?’ Phil asked.

‘What do you mean, “say”?’

‘It has to have words on it.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Something in Latin,’ Harry suggested. ‘Like Death to the enemy.What would that be in Latin? Did anyone here do Latin?’

‘I did,’ said Archie. ‘I think Death to the enemy would be something like nex ut hostes hostium, or mors ut hostes hostium, something like that. I’m not really sure.’

‘We can’t put something on we’re not sure of,’ said Harry.

‘We should put the name of our Lord on it,’ said Matt. ‘The name of the Lamb.’

‘That’s an easy one,’ said Archie. ‘That’s Agnus, and Agnus Dei would be Lamb of God, or Lamb of the Lord.’

‘That sounds cool,’ said Phil. ‘Agnus Dei.’

Harry had the best handwriting. He’d done a calligraphy course at school and Matt had been getting him to write down his teachings in a big notebook they’d also scrounged from the shop. They were making their first testament. They’d argued for ages over what to call it. The Book of the Lamb sounded like a recipe book, and The Book of Matt didn’t sound right either. The Book of Matthew sounded too much like the Gospel of Matthew in the Bible, and Matt had gone to great lengths to explain that their new religion had nothing to do with Christianity and any of the old religions, even though he’d nicked most of it from the book of Revelations. In the end they’d decided to just call it The Book, and Harry had carefully drawn the words on the front cover in gothic script. After that he wrote down everything Matt came up with about his new religion. It turned out that Harry’s spelling wasn’t the best in the world, but his writing looked really cool so Matt let him keep his job.

Harry had tried suggesting that maybe their new religion could have its own special new kind of spelling but the others weren’t convinced.

Once they’d filled in the two main figures Harry started on the words. But after twenty minutes he was still working on the A so they left him to it, sitting there, hunched over the banner at the table, his tongue between his teeth, a look of intense concentration on his face.

39

They had turned off the main road westwards towards the river and had started to weave their way through the tangle of side-streets, occasionally catching glimpses of the gasholders they were using as a landmark. These giant steel drums, painted pale green, towered above the surrounding buildings, but when the kids got in among the tightly packed houses their view of them was blocked.

There was no clear layout to the streets and the kids had to make detours round housing estates so their progress was slow. They felt really nervous now. There was much more evidence of the disaster on these side-streets, reminders of all that had happened. Fires, wreckage, dead bodies. They also spotted two different roving gangs of sickos and each time had to make another diversion to avoid them, ending up more lost and disorientated.

At last, though, by pure chance they came out on to a main road and there ahead of them was the blue-and-white Tesco logo on the front of a long, low, ugly building next to the inevitable car park. The gasholders were silhouetted against the sky behind them.

‘What did I tell you!’ DogNut cried triumphantly, and the kids cheered as they ran across the road.

Their excitement was short-lived, however.

The supermarket had been gutted.

The windows along the front were all smashed in, the shelves inside stripped clean. A few empty shopping trolleys stood forgotten and lonely among the debris of smashed tills and broken cabinets.

The kids wandered around glumly, glass crunching underfoot, hoping they might find something that had been missed.

There was nothing.

‘Well, that was a big waste of time,’ said Jack.

‘It was worth trying, though,’ said Bam.

‘Really? Was it?’

‘Come on, Jack, maybe let’s look on the bright side a little, yeah?’

‘The bright side of what?’

‘Well, at least there weren’t any sickos waiting for us in here.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ said Brooke, and they turned to see her staring along one of the aisles.

They hurried over to her.

A skinny mother, her naked arms sticking out like twigs from her sleeveless puffer jacket, was waddling towards Brooke. She was maybe twenty-five, with short, spiky hair and she walked stooped over on bent legs, unable to stand properly. She looked at the kids, her big blue eyes sad and confused, then opened her bloodstained mouth and tried to say something, but only a strangled gargle came out. She coughed and looked embarrassed as a wad of saliva dripped over her lower lip and hung from her chin.

She started to move towards them, half crawling, half crouching, feeling her way along with her spindly arms out to either side.

‘Kill it, Bam,’ said Jack.

‘Shoot it,’ DogNut added.

Bam shook his head. The mother looked so pathetic. ‘Don’t know if I can.’

Ed stepped forward, rifle raised, the tip of the bayonet pointing at the mother’s face. She looked up at him, her eyes unnaturally large, and shiny, as if she was about to cry. She reminded him of something. For a moment he couldn’t place it and then it came to him. One of those stupid big-eyed characters from a Japanese manga comic.

He gripped his rifle tighter. Told himself she wasn’t human any more. She was just a mindless thing now, eaten up by disease, probably dying.

‘Do it, Ed.’ Jack’s voice sounded hard. Ed knew he didn’t believe he could.

Could he?

The thought of sticking the bayonet into her, feeling it sink into her flesh, pushing it hard enough to kill her, into her brain …

Could he do it?

Brooke pushed past him and grunted as she swung her club at the back of the mother’s head. The stricken mother collapsed face down with a little whimper and lay still.

‘See?’ said Brooke. ‘Told you I wasn’t totally useless. Not like you bunch of wimps. What’s the matter with you all? She was just some stupid sicko. Why can’t you just –’

Brooke stopped, clapped her hands to her face and ran round the end of the row of cabinets to be noisily sick.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jack.

It was dark in the store. The strip lighting that ran in grey ranks along the low ceiling hung down dead and useless. When the kids trooped back outside, the suddenly bright sun caused them to blink and squint and shield their eyes so that it was a few seconds before they spotted a group of sickos tramping towards them across the car park.

There were about twenty of them, in various stages of decay. The worst were at the back, the slowest, most diseased. They were limping, hunched up, their skin almost totally covered in boils and sores, or else hanging off them in sheets. Their faces were unrecognizable as human, shapeless, raw, bloody and swollen. Noses missing, ears missing, eyes missing, their cheeks either puffed out and swollen, or rotted away, exposing their teeth. Those at the front were the healthier ones, younger, faster and fitter, but still visibly sick, their flesh discoloured and bloated, their bodies ravaged by the poison that was erupting from within.

At the front, as if he was leading them, was a tall, black-haired father with crazed yellow eyes. He was wearing a long dark coat that flapped in the wind.

‘Omigod, it’s Pez!’ Brooke gasped.

‘What?’ Jack had no idea what she was talking about.

‘The one in charge, he looks like one of those Pez sweet-dispenser things. He was there before, at the bus. He must have followed us.’

Despite everything Jack laughed. She was right. The father’s head was tilting back, leaving his unattached lower jaw dangling and his tongue lolling out over his lower lip. Jack had a strong urge to stand and fight, to stop running and hiding, to hack this human Pez down with his sword. He didn’t want to put the others in any danger, though.

‘Let’s get away from here!’ he shouted, and they ran.

They skirted round the supermarket and into an industrial area behind it. They could smell the gas from the towers here; its pungent odour got everywhere. After a couple of minutes of furious, breathless, lung-busting running the kids darted into a sort of yard with garages and lock-ups round the edges and an alley at the back.

‘Stop!’ said Bam, looking around. ‘We should be safe here. I’ll check to see they haven’t followed us, but if we stay put for a while they’ll surely give up searching and bugger off.’

DogNut and Bam went over to the entrance to the yard and looked out.

‘No sign of them,’ said DogNut after a while. ‘I reckon we lost them.’

‘This is crazy,’ Courtney gasped. The big girl was fighting for breath and she looked pale and scared. Her eyes kept flicking around, not settling on anything. ‘We don’t know what we’re doing. It’s too dangerous out here. I think we should go back.’

‘I agree,’ said Aleisha. ‘We ain’t gonna find nothing.’

Then Jack’s voice caused them all to turn round. ‘There’s a lorry in that alleyway.’

‘What?’ Ed frowned at him.

‘I said there’s a lorry in that alleyway.’

‘So what?’

‘So I think it’s a Tesco delivery truck. We should check it out.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Ed put his hands up, palms towards Jack. ‘Call me a coward if you want, but I don’t think that’s a great idea.’

‘Why?’ said Jack. ‘What’s going to happen?’

‘It was like this when we were ambushed at The Fez.’

‘There’s no one around, Ed.’

‘That’s what it was like then. They came from nowhere. They were waiting for us. That lorry could be a trap.’

Jack laughed. ‘What bloody sickos are going to be able to drive a lorry up an alley and hide it?’

‘So why’s it there, then?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ said Jack. ‘I’m just saying we should have a look.’

‘You weren’t there in Rowhurst,’ Ed pleaded. ‘You don’t know what it was like …’

But Jack was already walking over to the alleyway.

Ed called after him, ‘Jack!’

The others could do nothing but follow. The alley was just wide enough to fit the width of the lorry that was about ten metres down. It sat there in the darkness, a solid, menacing shape, blocking the way like some great beast in a lair ready to dash out and catch its prey. Before he was halfway there Jack wished he hadn’t been so hasty. Ed was right – it would be too easy to get trapped in the narrow space. Then he heard his friends behind him and it gave him the confidence to carry on.

The lorry had a streamlined hood on the top of the square blunt cab that clearly said Tesco and there was a manufacturer’s logo in the middle of the black radiator grille – ‘MAN’. Jack smiled to himself. It was like a sign. It’d be funny if there actually was a man sitting there inside the cab like a neatly labelled exhibit, but it was too dark to see.

The lorry was jammed in, making it impossible to open the doors. The radiator grille, however, was made up of three bars, like the rungs of a ladder. Well, that was an invitation if ever Jack’d seen one. He reached for the wipers to get a grip and hoiked himself up.

There was a man sitting there, in the driver’s seat, and Jack didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

He was dead, his skin bloated and puffy, covered with a layer of white mould that gave it a soft, fluffy look. His eyes were sunk into his swollen face like two little black holes. He reminded Jack of something.

A snowman.

It was quite uncanny. The resemblance was made even stronger by the fact that the driver had a vivid red nose, lumpy and crusted with blisters like a carrot that had been left too long in the bottom of the fridge.

Hell, he was even wearing a little hat and a scarf.

Now Jack started laughing and had to let go and jump back down.

‘What is it?’ said Bam, the first to join him by the lorry.

‘Look in there,’ said Jack, snorting with laughter. ‘There’s a bloody snowman!’

Bam climbed up and a moment later he was standing next to Jack, doubled over and barking.

‘You are sick,’ he managed to gasp between laughs.

‘Is that, like, a dead body in there?’ said Courtney, too squeamish to look.

‘Sure is,’ said Bam. ‘As dead as they come.’

‘Well, let’s get out of here then. That’s creepy.’

‘We need the lorry, Courtney,’ said Jack.

‘What for?’

‘What do you think? Can’t you read?’

‘Yeah, I can read.’

‘And what does that say?’

‘Tesco.’

‘Exactly. It’s a Tesco delivery lorry. It could be full of food.’

Courtney stared at the cab and wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘I can’t see him driving it very far.’

‘I’m gonna check out the back,’ said Jack, and, using the bumper, the grille and the wing mirrors he scrambled up on to the roof of the cab. Behind the cab was what looked like a long blue container. He climbed over the sloping hood and hopped up on to it. It was made of thin metal that banged and clanged beneath his feet as he made his way to the rear.

His heart was pounding, as much with hope as with fear. If the container was intact, it might be filled with food. A very valuable load. Why else would the snowman have driven in here if not to escape looters, or hijackers? He’d probably been on his way to Tesco and had come down here to hide, and then tried to sit it out. He could have starved to death, or he could have been taken by the disease. It was impossible to tell.

Well. He might have escaped the marauding sickos, but in the end he hadn’t been able to escape death.

Jack got to the end and dropped on to his belly. He peered over the edge, hardly daring to look. The back of the lorry appeared to be untouched. Unopened.

He grinned from ear to ear.

He heard a clatter behind him and twisted round to see Ed and Bam climbing up on to the container.

‘Well?’ Bam called out to him. ‘Don’t keep us in suspense.’

Jack sat up, too excited to speak. He gave them a double thumbs up.

‘You think there might be food in here?’ Bam asked, smiling too.

Jack nodded his head as Ed ran over to take a look.

‘We need to check inside,’ he said. ‘It could be empty, or all rotted.’

‘Now who’s the pessimist?’ said Jack.

‘I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up and then find it’s a lorry-load of shampoo or something.’

‘We have to get into the cab,’ said Bam.

‘What for?’ Ed frowned at him.

‘Think about it. The snowman – he drove in here and you can’t open the doors of the cab, right?’

‘Right.’

‘That means he must still have the keys with him. We can use them to open the back, and if it is food we could just ditch the snowman and drive the whole bloody rig back to the museum and unload it back there.’

‘You know how to drive a lorry?’

‘Nope. But since things all went pear-shaped I’ve learnt a lot of new skills. I’d be happy to add lorry driver to my list.’

They returned to the front of the lorry and climbed down. The other kids were waiting for them in the alley.

‘OK. We need to get the keys out of there,’ said Bam. ‘Any volunteers?’

Unsurprisingly there were none.

‘Didn’t think so.’

‘I’ll help,’ said Ed.

‘Help who?’ said Bam.

‘Help you,’ said Ed. ‘It was your idea.’

‘Oh, cheers.’

‘There’s a little sort of skylight thing in the roof of the cab,’ said Jack. ‘You know, like a sunroof? If you could get it open you could get in that way.’

Ed and Bam climbed back up and using Ed’s bayonet and DogNut’s club they managed to batter and bend and lever the sunroof up until it came away, leaving a rectangular hole in the top of the cab. Instantly a foul stench of putrefaction wafted out, accompanied by a squadron of flies. The boys dropped back, groaning and gagging, their eyes watering.

‘I will never get used to that smell,’ said Bam. ‘That is rank. I really don’t think I can go in there, Ed.’

Ed took a deep breath. ‘I’ll do it.’

He eased himself through the narrow hole, feeling for the passenger seat with his feet. Then dropped down.

It was even worse inside the cramped cab. There were flies everywhere and the air was foul. Ed kept one hand clamped over his mouth and nose and tried not to look at the snowman, who was clutching the wheel with rotten hands. He got a brief glimpse of his face. There were maggots around his nostrils and lips. Ed leant over him and fumbled around the steering column and dashboard, feeling for the keys. He had to press his body against the corpse. It felt soft and cold.

He tried to shut his mind down and just think about the keys, but it was hard. He could see the other kids outside staring up at him, and somehow that made it worse, seeing their looks of horror and disgust. He felt like a contestant on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! inside a glass box doing a bush-tucker trial.

Your challenge, Ed, is to go in there with a dead man and several buckets of maggots and find the keys. Your reward will be meals for the whole camp for the next six months.

‘I can’t find anything,’ he called up to Bam.

‘Try his pockets.’

Oh, Jesus.

Ed steeled himself and patted the snowman’s pockets, still trying not to look. First the jacket and then the trousers.

‘There’s something in there,’ he said.

‘Keys?’ Bam sounded excited.

‘Could be.’

‘Get them out.’

‘I am not sticking my hand in there. It’s all … wet.’

‘You’re gonna have to, Ed.’

Ed held his breath again and slowly, slowly slipped his fingers inside the pocket.

‘God … It’s disgusting. Oh, God.’

‘Are the keys there?’

‘There’s something … Yes! Gottit!’

He jerked out his hand and proudly waved a chunky set of keys on a fob up at Bam. Then he looked at his fingers. They were covered in slimy green and yellow paste.

‘Yaaaaah!’ He dropped the keys as if they were red hot and frantically flicked his fingers, then he wiped them on the passenger seat.

Bam was laughing.

‘Good work, Ed! You’re a star!’

Ed found a rag among the rubbish inside the cab and cleaned the keys, then he tossed them up to Bam, stood on the seatback, grabbed the rim of the sunroof and hauled himself out.

The kids below cheered as Bam helped Ed to his feet, and then the two of them raced along the top of the lorry and climbed down the far end.

There was a sort of big steel shutter in the back that rolled up into the roof of the container. Ed tried the most likely-looking key and slotted it into the lock at the bottom. Right first time. There was a satisfying clunk as the shutter popped open.

‘Yes!’ Ed cried, and the two of them slid the door up.

The lorry was filled almost to the door with rows of tall wire cages on wheels, held in place by red webbing straps. There must have been nearly fifty of them in all, and they were piled high with produce.

Canned fruit and vegetables, beans, cereal, toilet paper, fruit juice and soya milk, chocolate, peanut butter, jam, yoghurt, crisps and nuts. It was like someone had taken a small supermarket and packed everything from it into the back of this one lorry.

Ed and Bam grabbed each other by the forearms and yelled incoherently as they danced around in a circle.

‘This’ll last us weeks,’ said Bam when they’d calmed down a little. ‘And look! You’re in luck. There is shampoo! We’ll show that Jordan bloody Hordern. He’ll be on his knees begging us for some of this lot.’

‘We’ve still got to get it back to the museum, though,’ said Ed.

‘We’ve got the keys. We’ve got the muscle. We’re on a roll. Let’s rock! The good times are here to stay. I feel good about today, Ed. No, I don’t feel good. I feel bloody great!’