Текст книги "The Dead"

Автор книги: Charlie Higson

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

42

From the shadows of a burnt-out house at the side of the road a figure watched the three boys with red, sore eyes. He’d been following them all morning, waiting for his moment. He’d lost them a while back, but the noise of the lorry had alerted him and now here they were again.

Close enough to taste.

Not yet. Not yet. Wait some more. Watch some more. The time would come.

Shut up! Stop talking! Those voices in his head. Why wouldn’t they just shut up? There was too many of them in there, all talking at once, too many to fit, crammed in, bursting his head. It was going to split open.

His head was going to split open. Split open. His head. Like a peach.

Not yet! Not yet!

Shut up!

He shook his head violently, a dog with a rat in its jaws. Spraying sweat everywhere.

He was shivering. Shivering and sweating at the same time. His nose was running, pouring snot down into his mouth. He hardly noticed. He noticed the itch, though, like stinging nettles under the skin. He would scratch his skin off if he could. Skin. Skin a rabbit. Dress it.

Why would you dress a rabbit? What was a rabbit? He couldn’t remember. Why was it so hard to remember anything? An animal? Yes.

He rubbed his neck. It was ringed with boils, like a horrible shiny yellow scarf.

Never mind that.

The boys were there. The ones he wanted. The boys who had done …

What had they done? He didn’t remember. He only knew he hated them. He wanted to smash them and crush them like insects. He wanted to tear the flesh from their bones. He would eat them. He would eat them, but first he would make …

Soap …

Soup?

He would make soup of them.

Soup? What was soup?

Something.

Rabbit soup.

His mind kept spinning away from him. But there was an important thing to pin down, fix there. Superglue. Yeah … The very important thing. The big thing. The thing that they had done wrong to him. To his boy.

His boy. That was it. His boy. His boy who was … little …? Little boy? He had a name, but the big boys had taken his name, they’d taken his son, they’d taken his son from him. His boy. Lee-am

His Liam.

Yes. He grinned. And as his skin tightened it pulled at the sores around his mouth, making them bleed. They’d tried to take Liam from him. But they couldn’t – he was too clever for them. Clever clogs. That was him. Cleverer than them. Yes. He had kept Liam. They didn’t know that, did they? Kept him with him. Kept him safe. Always.

But he would get the boys. He would do them. He would skin them. He would dress them. He would do it. He knew how to do it. He was a …

What was the word?

Pooch?

Butch?

Teacher?

Not a teacher – he hated teachers – a pusher.

No.

Come on, clever clogs, think!

A butcher.

That was it.

Mr Clogs the Butcher. And he had the thing to prove it. The tool thing hanging at his belt. He’d had it with him all the time. Clever, see?

A clever. That was it. No, not a clever. A cleaner. A leaf cutter. A leaver. The thing the butcher used. A cleaver. A clever cleaver.

Boys … Meet the cleaver.

A meat cleaver. He was a butcher. He had his cleaver and he would do butcher to them.

He smiled wider, the blood smeared round his mouth like a clown’s painted smile. The boys were walking away. But he could follow, because the meaty, juicy stink of them hung in the air like something he could see and touch.

He picked up his bundle, hugged it to his chest and followed.

43

‘Frédérique’s not too happy about you going, you know.’

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ said Jack. ‘I can’t be responsible for everyone.’ His shoulders were hunched, his head drooping. ‘I can’t look after her. I don’t know how.’

Ed wasn’t going to give up. ‘She really likes you,’ he said, slinging his rifle on to his back. ‘Don’t you like her?’

‘Yeah, I think so. No, I do. I like her a lot,’ said Jack.

Ed leant over and picked a long hair off Jack’s coat.

‘What’s this I find?’ he said, holding it between finger and thumb so that it twisted in the air. ‘Evidence!’

‘You’re going to start singing in a minute, aren’t you?’ said Jack.

‘Singing what?’

‘Jack and Fred sitting in a tree, kay-I-ess-ess-I-en-gee.’

‘Well?’ Ed raised his eyebrows.

‘It’s not like that,’ said Jack, the white half of his face reddening. ‘She’s just latched on to me.’

‘And you don’t like her?’

‘I’d like her more if she could stop crying for five minutes. There’s something making her miserable and I can’t get through to her. I can’t get her to tell me what it is.’

‘She’s just freaked out by everything,’ said Bam. ‘We all are, and we all deal with it in different ways.’

‘How do you deal with it?’ Ed asked.

‘You know me,’ said Bam. ‘I do things. Get physical. Same way I’ve always done. Rugger’s a good cure for real life.’ He paused and turned to Jack with a leer. ‘So, do you fancy her?’

‘I haven’t really thought about it.’

‘Yeah?’ It was obvious Bam didn’t believe him. ‘You reckon? Nice bit of French totty.’

‘All right,’ said Jack. ‘Maybe a bit.’

‘Ooh la la! Just a bit?’

‘Look. She’s all right. I like her. OK? She’s nice-looking. A bit thin perhaps …’

‘Thin?’ Bam snorted. ‘She’s skinny as six o’clock.’

‘But she’s OK,’ said Jack. ‘You know what I mean? Maybe if things had been different I might have done something about it, I don’t know. I can never, like, tell with girls, whether they just like me as a, you know, just as a person, or whether they fancy me. I’m always scared of mucking up.’

‘Well, I reckon you’re in there anyway, mate,’ said Bam.

‘So what about you and Brooke, then?’ Jack asked Ed, trying to move the spotlight on to someone else.

‘What about me and Brooke?’

‘When are you gonna make a move on her?’

Ed sniggered. Remembering. ‘You know what I just did back there?’

‘What?’

‘I kissed her.’

‘You never? What, in front of everyone?’

‘It wasn’t, like, a proper snog or anything,’ said Ed. ‘It was more like a sort of movie kiss. I was sort of acting. You know, like a soldier going on a dangerous mission kissing his girl goodbye. Maybe she’ll wait for him, maybe she won’t kind of thing.’

‘Oh, she’ll wait for you. You’re well in there, mate,’ said Bam.

‘Yeah,’ said Jack. ‘She only goes for good-looking blokes, and I’m spoken for. There’s no one else around she’d look twice at.’

‘Oi!’ said Bam. ‘What about me?’

‘What about you?’ said Jack. ‘You’re hideous, Bam. You’re a kind of troll.’

‘I am not. I had a girlfriend back home if you really want to know.’

‘A real one or an imaginary one?’ said Jack.

‘She was a picture in a magazine, I reckon,’ said Ed, joining in the game.

‘She’s a real girl, thank you,’ said Bam. ‘With arms and legs and everything.’

‘Everything?’

‘Far as I know. We hadn’t got much past the kissing stage. And now …’ Bam sighed and gave a little grunt. ‘God knows if I’ll ever see her again.’

‘What was her name?’ Jack asked innocently. ‘John? Barry? Roger?’

‘Cass, if you must know.’

‘I thought you only liked rugger, Bam?’

‘I’m a man of the world, Ed. There’s more to me than you will ever know.’

‘There’s certainly more to you than I will ever want to know,’ said Jack. ‘Already that’s way too much information. The thought of you and poor Cass getting all loved up on a sofa somewhere …’

‘Leave it out, Jack,’ said Bam. ‘Why are you two picking on me, anyway?’

‘We’re only having a laugh, Bam,’ said Ed. He put an arm across Bam’s shoulders and they walked a few steps linked together.

‘So you’re going to make a move on Brooke, then, are you, Bam?’ said Jack.

‘Brooke? No way! She’s not my type at all. She’s scary as all hell. You’re welcome to her, Ed.’

‘She’s all right once you get past her front,’ said Ed. ‘But in the past she wouldn’t have looked twice at me. I’m not her type, really. I’d have thought she’d be more interested in someone like DogNut. And you can see he fancies her. He’s always sniffing around.’

‘Oh, come off it, Ed!’ Jack scoffed. ‘I thought you understood girls. You can tell she’s not the slightest bit interested in him. He’s like an over-affectionate dog, sticking his nose up your arse all the time.’

The three of them laughed as they marched along. For one small moment they could forget about survival and pretend that nothing had changed.

They’d ended up back near the gas towers and they stopped so that Jack could work out which way they should be going.

‘That gas sure does smell rotten,’ said Ed, wrinkling his nose. ‘Stupid thing is, there’s probably enough gas in those holders to last us the rest of our lives, if we only had some way to get it out.’

Bam wasn’t listening. He was looking up at the sky and shading his eyes from the sun. The thick black cloud they’d seen earlier had grown larger.

‘I don’t think the smell’s all from the gasholders,’ he said. ‘That smoke’s definitely getting worse. Either we’re getting nearer to it or it’s getting nearer to us.’

‘Bit of both, I reckon,’ said Ed. ‘Must be some way off still, though.’

He sniffed the air. ‘You reckon that’s the smoke we can smell?’

‘Yeah,’ said Jack. ‘Like a coal fire mixed with a sort of cooking smell.’

‘And something rotten, like food that’s gone off, unless that’s the gas,’ Bam added. ‘Not nice at all. What if the fire spreads right up to the museum?’

‘It won’t,’ said Jack. ‘It’s been too wet lately.’

‘If it’s hot enough, it’ll burn anything,’ Ed pointed out. ‘No matter how wet.’

‘Come on, guys,’ said Jack, moving off. ‘Let’s get on. There’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ed, and he coughed. He definitely tasted smoke in the air.

44

‘Who’s this Angus Day, then?’

The younger kids from the Brains Trust had come through into the museum café to get away from Matt and the rest of his gang who were out in the atrium having a religious discussion, and Harry was proudly showing off his fancy lettering.

‘Agnus Day,’ he sneered, mocking their stupidity. ‘It says Agnus Day.’

‘Well, who’s Agnes Day?’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘And why have you made a flag for her? Is she your girlfriend?’

‘It’s Latin, dumbo,’ Harry explained, with as much scorn in his voice as he could. ‘It means “Lamb of the Lord”.’

‘That definitely says Angus Day, actually,’ said Wiki. ‘You’ve written Angus not Agnus. And Dei is spelt D-E-I, not D-A-Y.’

‘You’re joking,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve not got it wrong, have I? Matt’ll kill me. We spent ages working on this.’

‘You’re not even close,’ said Wiki.

‘Bollocks, I knew I should have got Matt to write it down for me.’

‘Write what down?’ said Matt, walking in with Archie Bishop and the other acolytes.

‘The name of your new god,’ said Wiki.

‘Why? What’s he done?’ Matt read the banner. ‘You idiot, Harry. What is that? You’ve ruined it. We’ll have to start all over again now.’

‘Bit of a boring name for a new god, Matt,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘Angus can’t really compete with Thor or Zeus or Buddha.’

‘Yeah,’ said Wiki, joining in the fun. ‘Jehovah, Hades, Baal, Osiris, they sound really exciting, but Angus Day sounds more like a newsreader.’

‘Maybe it’s on purpose,’ said Archie seriously, and everyone turned to look at him, including Matt, who was red-faced with anger and embarrassment.

‘I didn’t do it on purpose!’ Harry protested. ‘I was doing my best. I really was. I thought I’d got it right.’

‘Exactly,’ said Archie. ‘So maybe the Lamb was working through you. It’s like the pages, and Matt’s visions – we don’t choose any of it. Everything has been shown to us by the Lamb. Isn’t that right, Matt?’

‘Er, yeah, that’s right,’ said Matt, backing Archie up but not really sure where this was going.

‘So the Lamb must have been working through Harry,’ Archie went on. ‘Showing him something that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. He made Harry put the wrong words on there. Except they’re not wrong, they’re right, you see? They’re what he was supposed to paint on there all along.’

‘Angus Day?’ said Jibber-jabber, not sounding convinced. ‘Why would he want you to write Angus Day?’

‘We don’t know why, not yet, but we’ll find out,’ said Archie. ‘It’ll be shown to us.’

Matt stood there, struggling to find something good in this. He could see what Archie was doing. He was trying to make the best of it and stop the others from laughing at them. But Matt really wished that Harry hadn’t got it so wrong. Not both bloody words.

Angus Day! If Matt wasn’t so furious, he would have been laughing too.

One of Jordan’s boys came in. He glanced expressionlessly at the banner then looked round at the kids.

‘Your mates are back,’ he said. ‘Nice flag. Who’s Angus Day?’

45

The smell had got worse – deeper, thicker, more intense. It was a strange mixture of familiar comforting smells, like bonfires and barbecues and wood-burning stoves, all jumbled up with unpleasant smells that shouldn’t go together with them – rotting food, chemistry lessons, dust and blocked toilets.

‘How come we can smell rotting food and cooking food at the same time?’ said Bam, wrinkling his nose as he walked.

‘Maybe it’s not rotting food,’ said Ed. ‘Maybe it’s chemicals of some sort.’

‘Great,’ said Bam. ‘We’re probably being poisoned as we speak.’

‘It’s the gas from the holders,’ said Jack. ‘Must be.’

Ed stopped in the road. ‘Should we turn back?’

‘You can cut out if you want,’ said Jack, who carried on walking. ‘But I’m not giving up now.’

‘Wait, guys, look at that.’

Bam was staring at a big redbrick building that rose up six storeys high.

‘That’s the main stand of the Oval cricket ground,’ said Ed. ‘I was there last summer.’

‘I know what it is,’ said Bam. ‘I don’t mean the Oval, I mean that …’

Ed and Jack peered at the building, trying to work out what Bam was going on about.

And then they saw it.

Clustered round the gates to the ground were police cars, military vehicles, crowd control barriers, an outside broadcast van with a TV transmitter on the roof.

People moving about.

‘Oh my God,’ said Ed, his insides lurching. ‘Is that for real?’

‘Well, it’s not a mirage, is it?’ said Jack. ‘It’s not like we’re in the desert or anything. So I’d say, yes, it must be real.’

Ed tried not to get his hopes up. Maybe, though, just maybe, they’d been wrong. Things hadn’t fallen completely apart. His heart was racing, thoughts chasing each other round his tired mind.

‘Civilization,’ said Bam. ‘If the police and the army are there, then, I mean, then we’re saved. There are people still alive, proper people, adults not affected by the disease. You know what this means, don’t you? There might be a cure after all.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

‘Well, let’s go and find out,’ said Bam.

‘Be careful,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve seen films where the survivors try to get help and the army thinks they’re infected and they shoot them.’

‘Let’s risk it,’ said Bam.

They moved out of the road on to the pavement where they hurried along, keeping close to the buildings even though Ed pointed out that there was a greater risk of being ambushed by any sickos who might be hiding in the area.

‘Come off it,’ said Bam. ‘There won’t be any sickos within a million miles of here, not with that lot waiting for them over there.’

‘Guys?’ said Jack, slowing down.

‘What?’

‘Why are we assuming that the police and the army and whoever are going to be alive?’

‘Oh crap,’ said Ed, skidding to a halt and ducking behind a parked car. ‘Good point.’

‘But I can see people moving about,’ said Bam.

‘What sort of people?’ Ed asked.

‘A couple of soldiers, a policeman.’

‘Are they diseased soldiers, or are they fit and healthy soldiers?’

‘It’s too far away to tell with my lousy eyesight.’

‘Then we should be very, very bloody careful until we can be sure either way,’ said Jack.

Now they darted from car to car, trying to keep out of sight as they steadily worked their way closer.

‘When I get back to the museum, I’m going to get a pair of binocs,’ said Bam.

‘I’m going to get a tank,’ said Ed. ‘Life would be a lot easier in a tank.’

At last they were near enough to see clearly what was going on. They hid behind a big black 4×4 and peered ahead.

‘Bollocks,’ Jack hissed.

There were two soldiers and a policeman walking around, but apart from that nothing was moving. It looked like a scene from a DVD on pause. Some big disaster movie. The security forces lined up ready for action … but staying absolutely still.

There were more soldiers sitting in Jeeps, and policemen in vans, a small crowd pressed up against some barriers, and not one of them stirred.

‘They’re all dead,’ said Bam, deflated. ‘Apart from those three, they’re all dead.’

Now they became aware of more bodies, scattered everywhere. On the ground, in the vehicles, by the entrance gates to the Oval. It looked as if there had been a battle of some sort. Most of the dead bodies weren’t in uniform. They were mothers and fathers, teenagers, many with bullet wounds.

‘At least we know now what that smell was,’ said Bam, covering his face with his scarf. ‘It was two different things. The smell of the fire was masking the smell of dead bodies.’

‘What d’you think was going on here?’ said Ed.

‘No idea,’ said Jack.

‘It looks like they were guarding something,’ Ed suggested.

‘The Oval?’ said Jack. ‘Why would the army want to guard a cricket ground? What were they – scared the public was going to break in and carry off the stumps?’

‘You got a better suggestion?’

‘Maybe there’s something else inside,’ said Bam. ‘Maybe the government was stockpiling supplies, or weapons, or the crown jewels, or something?’

‘We should take a look,’ said Jack.

‘What?’ Ed spluttered. ‘No way. We get well away from here. This is nothing to do with us.’

‘There’s only three of them moving about,’ said Jack. ‘We could take them easy.’

‘But why bother?’

‘Whatever’s in there,’ said Jack, ‘it was obviously valuable enough for people to try and break in.’

‘Sick people probably,’ said Ed. ‘Sick idiots who don’t know anything.’

Jack sat in the road, his back against the car. ‘It’s definitely worth taking a look,’ he said as the others squatted down next to him. ‘What if it’s like Bam says? A huge emergency food supply? We’d be set up for life. It’d make that lorry look like chicken feed.’

Ed had his hand clamped over his mouth and nose, trying to keep the stench out.

‘Jack,’ he said. ‘I thought all you wanted was to get home.’

‘I know … I do … I really do. But we should still look. If we can get rid of those three mugs, we can find some more guns. There have to be guns there. Proper modern working guns. And then we’ll be invincible.’

Ed ground his teeth in frustration. ‘Why don’t we just go to yours?’ he said. ‘Do whatever it is you need to do, then get back to the museum before dark? We could come back here in the morning with some of the guys, DogNut and the others, a proper fighting unit.’

‘You’re such a coward, Ed,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll be all right. Just think what might be inside there waiting for us. The place is huge. I mean it’s the size of, well, the size of a cricket pitch, for God’s sake. There might be food. There might be weapons. There might even be medicine. All three!’

‘Come on, Ed,’ said Bam. ‘We’re here now. Let’s just find out what’s in there, or we won’t be able to think about anything else.’

‘All right, all right.’ Ed realized he was beaten. ‘We’ll look inside. But let’s see if there’s any guns first, like Jack said.’

They stood up and gave each other a high five, though Ed’s slap was pretty half-hearted. Then they carried on towards the Oval, staying low and using cars for cover.

Finally they sneaked across the road to the line of security vehicles.

They checked whether there were any more sickos moving about. As far as they could see, though, there were just the two soldiers and the policeman.

One of the soldiers had a small machine gun hanging over his shoulder on a strap, but now they were closer they realized he was pretty far gone, slow and clumsy, his face eaten away by disease. The other soldier was equally wrecked. In the boys’ experience the sicker the adults were the less likely they were to remember how to use any tools or weapons, and usually attacked with just their bare hands. The policeman was a complete mess, with one ear dangling down by his chin and his features replaced with a cluster of glistening blisters.

‘I’ll take the soldiers,’ Bam whispered, checking his shotgun. ‘You two go for the policeman.’

‘I can’t do it,’ said Ed. ‘I can’t just kill them.’

‘Come on,’ said Bam. ‘Look at them. We’ll be doing them a favour, putting them out of their misery.’

‘No.’ Ed squatted down behind a police van, covering his face with his hands.

‘You do it. I can’t.’

Jack tutted and drew his sword from its scabbard.

‘Wait here.’

‘All right.’

Ed couldn’t watch. He crouched there, hands over his face. He heard his friends’ footsteps. There was a moment’s silence then there came two loud blasts, followed by the sounds of a scuffle and a body hitting the ground.

‘You can come out now,’ Jack called to Ed in a slightly sing-song way, as if talking to a toddler. ‘It’s all safe.’

Ed stood up, still not wanting to look. He walked round the van and over to where Bam and Jack were waiting for him. He was aware of the dark shapes of bodies on the ground.

He told himself that it didn’t make any difference. That these were just three more bodies to add to the piles of corpses that were already here. He forced his eyes round. He had to accept the way things were now. Somehow he had to become as hardened as Jack and Bam.

Jack was wiping his sword clean on the dead policeman’s jacket. Bam was pulling the machine gun off the soldier.

‘You want this?’ he said, offering it to Jack. ‘I’m sticking with my shottie.’

‘I sure do.’

‘Do you know how to use that?’ Ed asked as Jack started turning the gun in his hands.

‘No – but I can find out.’

Parked on the other side of the outer wall that surrounded the grounds were four open-backed lorries. The sort builders used to remove rubble from building sites. They were piled high with corpses. Next to them was a fleet of ambulances, their back doors hanging open, paramedics lying by the wheels.

Whenever he’d watched the news he’d never imagined that one day he’d be part of a story. But now the news had come to town in a big way and there was no one left to record it. The corpses by the TV cameras were blind and deaf. There were no zombified news reporters standing there giving the viewers the statistics.

‘The whole population of London has been wiped out …’

Ed went over to a military Jeep, where two squaddies with blackened faces and hands sat in the front seats as if waiting to drive off. They were wearing white facemasks, presumably to stop them breathing in anything noxious. Above the masks their eyes were clouded. Flies crawled all over them.

They both had side arms in holsters.

Ed carefully unbuckled the belt from the soldier in the passenger seat and strapped it round his waist. The pistol hung heavy and solid at his side. The driver had a pair of binoculars round his neck. Ed fished them off and chucked them over to Bam who thanked him with a big cheesy grin.

Ed did a quick check of the bodies of the other soldiers and policemen. They were all wearing facemasks.

He walked through the open gates and over to the line of ambulances where he jumped up into the back of one. There was a green-clothed paramedic lying on the floor, his face lumpy with yellow spots. His facemask hadn’t prevented him from getting sick, but Ed figured that if he could find one it would at least keep some of the smell out.

With any luck there would be other useful stuff in here as well.

He took off his backpack and went through the ambulance, grabbing anything that looked like it might come in handy and stuffing it in the bag. Painkillers, antiseptic, bandages, antibiotics, scalpels, syringes, rubber gloves, it was all good stuff. And there, finally, in a taped-up cardboard box, a supply of spare masks. He dumped a handful in the top of the bag, but kept three out.

He hopped down off the ambulance. Jack and Bam were walking over discussing how the machine gun worked. Neither of them really had a clue.

‘You ready?’ said Jack when he saw Ed.

‘Here.’ Ed handed out the masks. ‘Put these on. They’ll protect you from the smell at least.’

All the doors in the main stand were securely locked so the boys circled the building looking for another way in. Finally they came to a more modern part where the big glass doors stood open. There were more dead soldiers here, splayed out on the polished floor of a large entrance area. The boys peered cautiously into the gloom.

‘You first,’ said Bam, mock politely.

‘After you,’ said Jack. ‘I insist.’

Ed pushed past them, shaking his head, determined to prove that he wasn’t a coward. The other two followed, laughing and jostling each other. The air inside felt trapped and stale. The boys tried not to gag. Their masks helped a little but there was still a stench of rotting meat mixed with a mouldy, mildewy smell. There was also a humming noise, as if there might be some machinery working somewhere nearby.

They stepped over the bodies of two soldiers, who looked like they were holding each other in their arms, and went up some stairs.

Ed was beginning to feel horribly faint and wobbly. He wanted to check the stadium out and then get the hell away from here as quickly as possible. He knew that dead bodies carried all sorts of diseases, like cholera and dysentery. Whenever there had been a natural disaster – and there seemed to have been loads before the big one, the sickness – earthquakes or hurricanes or terrible flooding, the news bulletins always went on about it – the risk of disease from unburied bodies. Well, there must have been thirty or forty of them outside, not counting the ones in the trucks. The thought of all those germs …

This was a place of death.

They climbed the stairs, trying the doors on every level, until they reached the top and at last found a way out into the stands. Bam was first through. He took a couple of steps and stopped.

Ed heard him say two words.

‘Holy cow …’