Текст книги "The Enemy"

Автор книги: Charlie Higson

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

10

‘You really trying to tell us you live in Buckingham Palace?’ said Whitney, her deep brown eyes softening into a smile.

‘Yeah. It’s cool. It’s got a lake and a garden with a big wall round it with spikes on the top. It’s safe. We grow food in the garden, we drink water from the lake, we sleep in the Queen’s beds. Nobody can get in and there’s enough of us to keep the place secure. We got our own guards, now. We’re making a fresh start.’

‘So what are you doing here then?’ said Ollie.

‘We figured there must be other kids like us out there,’ said Patchwork. ‘Kids who survived. And the more of us we can get together, the better it’ll be. It’ll be safer. We can grow more food and work together to gradually rebuild the city. We can start to make London new again. Next to the Palace is St James’s Park, there’s enough space there to plant fields, if we’ve only got enough people. So I was sent, to find other kids, tell them about what we’re doing and bring them back.’

‘Yeah, well, we’ve got news for you,’ said Callum. ‘We ain’t going. Why would we ever leave this place? We don’t need your Buckingham Palace, thank you very much. We got Waitrose.’

‘Shut up, Callum,’ said Achilleus. ‘Let’s listen to the man.’

‘You’ve come all the way across town by yourself?’ said Ollie, not convinced.

Patchwork’s face clouded over.

‘There was five of us to start with,’ he said. ‘We thought all of London would be like where we come from – sorted. We didn’t realize how dangerous it was out here. How many Strangers there were.’

‘Why?’ said Ella. ‘What’s it like where you come from?’

‘I told you. It’s safe. Most of the Strangers have disappeared from the centre of town. We killed loads of them early on. Those that are left keep out of our way. They’re beaten. But it was mad getting here. We had to come through the badlands. They picked us off one by one. I lost Alfie just today. He was the last one. There’s only me left.’

He swallowed hard. It was obvious he was trying not to cry. Nobody spoke for a while. In the end Ollie broke the silence. He squatted down and spoke gently to Patchwork.

‘How many other kids have you found on the way?’ he said. ‘How many have you sent back?’

Patchwork sniffed. ‘None. You’re the first. The original plan was to carry on going round London recruiting all the kids that were left. But it’s too dangerous for that.’ He smiled and looked up at Ollie. ‘You lot, though, you could really make a difference. Together we could get back easy. You know how to look after yourselves. You’re good fighters. The best I’ve ever seen. I can take you there. I can take you to safety.’

‘Let me ask you a question,’ said Arran, his voice sounding hoarse and croaky. Everyone turned to him; it was the first thing he’d said since the meeting began.

‘What?’

‘Why should we go into the centre of town? Why shouldn’t we just leave London? Go to the countryside? Surely we’ve got a better chance of surviving out there. That’s where all the grown-ups were trying to get to when they started dying.’

‘Exactly,’ said Patchwork. ‘And I reckon that’s where they all went. The centre of London is empty, there’s none of them around, but the further out we got, the more of them we found. I reckon if you tried to get out of town you’d just come across more and more of them. It’s miles before you hit any proper countryside, but into town from here, how far is it? Five or six miles at the most. You could walk it in two hours if you didn’t have to fight any Strangers. Who knows what you’d find out there if you did manage to leave London? But in the centre, where I’ve come from, I can tell you what it’s like – it’s safe.’

‘How do we know you’re not lying?’ said Ollie.

‘What would I gain by that?’

‘Dunno. Don’t really know anything about you.’

‘Yeah,’ said Blue. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Some people call me Jester, some call me Magic-Man…’

‘Some call him twat,’ said Achilleus and there was a fresh round of laughter.

Jester nodded. ‘Yeah, some might call me that. I’ve been called worse. You can laugh at me if you want, or you can listen.’

‘We’d need proof before we left this place and went marching off across London,’ said Ollie.

‘I’ve got proof.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’ve got pictures.’

‘What sort of pictures?’

‘From an old Polaroid camera. Photographs.’

‘Show us.’

Jester took his satchel off his shoulder and opened it. He rummaged around, then produced a buff-coloured folder. From inside it he took out a handful of square, glossy photos. He passed them to Ollie who flicked through them, a smile slowly spreading across his face. He brought them over to Arran who had to lean forward into the light to see them properly.

They weren’t faked. You couldn’t fake a Polaroid. It wasn’t like the old days where you could use a computer to do anything you liked. There was no Photoshop any more, not without the electricity to power the computers. Photoshop was just one more thing that had seemed really important at the time, but which now was completely irrelevant. Useless.

These pictures were the real thing. They showed Buckingham Palace and a group of happy, healthy-looking kids – posing at the front in the parade ground, sitting round a big grand table inside eating lunch, working in the gardens, swimming in the lake, playing football. It looked like an impossible paradise. A glimpse into another world.

Arran felt a lump in his throat. His hands were shaking. He gave the photos back to Ollie who gave them in turn to Blue. Soon they were being passed from one excited kid to another, all grinning and shaking their heads and starting up a happy murmur of approval. The only one of them who scoffed was Callum. He looked at the pictures in disgust and sneered at the people in them.

Arran’s eyes were misting up. What he had been shown was unimaginable. It was hope. If what this guy was saying was true then maybe things would be different in the future. Maybe he and Maxie would have a chance. Earlier it had seemed that there was no way out, that they would all slowly die here in this miserable empty supermarket. Picked off one by one, killed by disease, by grown-ups or dogs, or each other.

Was there really a way out?

He barely listened as Ollie questioned Jester further, getting more details.

He was remembering what life had been like before. In his parents’ big house in Dartmouth Park. Playing on the Heath with his mates. Going into Camden to mooch around the market. Hanging out on the streets, chatting. Eating Sunday lunch with his mum and dad.

His mum and dad…

He couldn’t picture exactly what his dad had looked like. He had been a busy man and was hardly ever at home. But Mum…

He could never forget her face.

It was the face he had seen at the pool.

His mother.

No.

It wasn’t true. He’d imagined it. No way that – thing – could have been his mother. It was a trick of the light.

He realized there were tears streaming down his face. He was glad that nobody could see him. He had turned into a little kid again and just wanted his mum to wrap her arms around him. Speak softly to him. Sing him to sleep.

The thing at the pool, though, if it had been his mother, had tried to kill him.

‘Mwuh…’

He wiped his face, dried the tears. If his eyes looked red they would assume it was because of his wound.

‘We’re going,’ he said firmly and everyone looked at him. ‘I don’t care if Jester is making it up. I don’t care if there’s nothing there at the other end. We can’t stay here any longer. In the morning we pack up everything and we go.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Maeve. She wasn’t like the other kids. She wasn’t a Londoner. She’d been visiting friends in Camden when everything had kicked off and had been stuck here ever since. ‘Shouldn’t we discuss this a bit more?’

‘What’s to discuss?’ said Arran.

‘Well, I just think it’s crazy,’ said Maeve.

‘Maybe,’ said Arran. ‘But I’m not staying here.’

‘What you said before. About going to the countryside. Surely, if we’re going anywhere, that’s what we should do. The city’s crawling with grown-ups. The only food we can find is tins and dried packets and the half-rotten crap we find in abandoned houses. This is no kind of life.’

‘I told you,’ said Jester, sounding exasperated. ‘We’re growing food at the palace. It’s all sorted. You go anywhere else, you’re going into the unknown.’

‘I grew up in the country,’ said Maeve. ‘I know it. We need to get away from the city and go to where we can properly farm things, and keep animals. We need space and clean air. We need to get out of London.’

‘One day, maybe,’ said Arran. ‘But we have to take it one step at a time. If Jester’s right, and it’s safe in the centre, if we can make camp at the palace and get strong, then we can prepare. I don’t know – send out scouts, like Jester, only better armed – find the best route…’

‘Why wait?’ said Maeve. ‘If we head into the centre of London we’re going the wrong way. Can’t you see that?’

‘It’s what we’re doing,’ said Arran, who felt exhausted and had had enough talking for one night.

‘Maeve’s got a point, though,’ said Maxie. ‘If we link up with the Morrisons crew we’ll be strong. We’d have a good chance of getting out. It might be our only chance. To properly start a new life.’

‘We should vote on it,’ said Maeve.

‘OK, OK,’ said Arran, who just wanted to go to sleep. ‘But these are city kids, Maeve. All they know is London. Some of them have never even been out of the city.’

‘Well I have,’ said Maeve, ‘and take it from me, it’s not the centre of the world. Our only chance for a decent future is to get out. I’ve been arguing for this since we set up camp here. Now’s our chance to do it properly. If we head north up the A1 and then follow the M1, in two or three days we’d be clear of the city.’

‘All right,’ said Arran. ‘You’ve made your point. All those in favour of going to the palace with Jester put up your hands.’

Ollie carefully counted the show of hands.

‘And anyone in favour of Maeve’s plan, put your hands up.’

Arran was surprised at the number of hands going up in support of Maeve. Once again Ollie counted. But it wasn’t enough. The vote had gone Arran’s way.

‘That’s it then,’ he said. ‘It’s decided.’ He hauled himself up out of his chair and walked over to Blue.

‘What do you reckon?’ he asked. ‘You coming with us, or do you need to take a vote as well?’

‘We don’t need no vote. We ain’t no democracy, man. I’m in charge. End of.’

‘And?’

Blue stood up and looked Arran in the eye.

‘We’re coming.’

They gripped each other’s hands. It felt good to be doing something for themselves. Then Blue turned to Jester and the light went out of his eyes.

‘If you are lying to us, though, “Magic-Man”, you are dead.’

11

Small Sam wasn’t dead. That thought was firmly lodged in the back of his mind. He wasn’t dead. When they’d put him in the sack he’d thought that that was it. All over. He’d fainted and when he’d woken up he was being jostled along on one of the grown-ups’ shoulders. The grown-up stank, but the sack smelt worse. Of grease and rotting meat and poo. Sam didn’t like it in the sack. He couldn’t see anything. He’d wet himself.

They’d brought him to this place and dumped him on the floor. He had no idea where it was. He was still in the sack. It had taken them about ten minutes to get here. They’d carried him upstairs. Lots of stairs. They must be somewhere high.

At first, whenever he moved, one of the grown-ups would kick him, and if he whimpered they’d kick him again. Then someone had sat on him for a while but once he’d stopped struggling they got off him. He’d lain very still after that, as still as if he’d been dead, and they finally left him alone.

So he was still alive. For now. He knew, though, that unless he was very lucky he probably wouldn’t make it through the night. He had no doubt at all that the grownups were planning to eat him. That’s what they did to the kids they captured. The only reason they hadn’t already eaten him was that they were too full.

While he’d been lying there in the sack, quiet as a mouse, still as a corpse, he’d heard them eating. They must have caught another kid before him. Luckily the kid was already dead. Sam didn’t think he could have standed to hear the kid talking, crying out for help, screaming…

The sound of them eating the kid was disgusting enough. It was a squishy, tearing noise, and now and then the snap of a bone breaking. And the grown-ups moaned with delight as they fed. Chewing loudly, slurping and belching. Sometimes there was a crunch, or one of them would spit. Once there had been some sort of fight.

Sam was glad that they had something else to eat, but felt awful that it was another kid.

And he was glad, so glad, that he couldn’t see anything. The smell of blood was bad enough. It made him want to throw up.

It was quiet now. He could almost imagine that he was alone.

He’d been so scared, more scared than he’d ever been before in his life, and although his life had so far been quite short there had been a lot of scary moments in it. Like when his mum and dad had left him. It had happened one night. His mum had come into the room he shared with his little sister, Ella. Mum had looked bad. Tired and sweaty and ill, with yellow skin and big black rings under her eyes. Grey lumps around her nose. Spots like a teenager. She had been shaking, her teeth chattering so loudly he could hear them, rattle, rattle, rattle. She’d woken him up and hugged him and he’d felt her tears on his neck. She’d told him that she and Dad were going away. She said there was nothing she could do to help him and his sister and if she stayed it would be dangerous for them.

He remembered how Jeannette, the single mum who lived in the flat upstairs, had killed her own children before jumping out of the window. They’d been friends of his. Jack and Kelsie. All around terrible things were happening, worse than Doctor Who, worse even than a film.

Mum had told him to look after Ella and he had tried. He had really tried. But he was only small. And now he’d left Ella all alone. She would be sad without him there. He hoped his mum and dad would understand. The thing was, though, he was too small to look after anyone really. He was only nine.

At least he hadn’t seen his mum and dad die. Sometimes, when he felt sad and lonely, he would picture them alive. Happy. He saw them on a sunny island, like when they’d gone to the Canary Islands. He told himself that they’d just gone away on a long holiday to somewhere where the disease hadn’t happened. They were on a beach in their bathing costumes and sunglasses, drinking cocktails with umbrellas in them. That always cheered him up, imagining they were safe somewhere and that they were maybe thinking about him and Ella. They were probably planning to come back and rescue them.

Deep down, though, he knew that really they would never be coming back. They must have died just like all the other grown-ups. Because if they hadn’t died…

They’d be like the others.

These grown-ups, the ones who had captured him, weren’t people any more. They couldn’t speak, only grunt and hiss at each other. They were mad things. All they thought about was food.

Oh Mum, I wish you were here now…

He wasn’t really scared any more. At first it had been almost too much to bear. He had gone stiff with terror. But it was tiring being scared, and it had slowly worn off, so that now he felt numb. And he was bored.

How long had he been lying here? A tiny bit of light could get in through holes in the sack and he could see enough to know that it was dark now. Grown-ups were too stupid to light fires or use solar lamps or even torches. They had forgotten everything.

He hoped that they were asleep because then maybe he could try to get away. He wasn’t tied up or anything. All he had to do was slip the sack off and make a run for it.

Once he had gone on a school journey to a farm. He had seen sheep and cows and pigs and chickens and he had wondered why they didn’t try to escape. It looked easy. But the thing was, back then the animals were stupid and the humans were clever.

This was different. These grown-ups were stupid and he was clever. Yes, he was only small, but he was cleverer than they were.

He smiled.

He was going to escape.

He would wait a bit longer, though, until he was really sure it was safe.

He started to count, not too fast and not too slow. He reckoned that when he got to a thousand, if he hadn’t heard any movement, he would take the sack off and have a look.

One, two, three, four, five…

Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty…

Counting to a thousand was taking much longer than he had thought, it seemed to go on forever. He got fed up at 420 and stopped.

It had been ages since any of the grown-ups had made any noise. They must be asleep. Or maybe they had gone out hunting again and left him alone?

Slowly, ever so slowly, he started to wriggle out of the sack, trying to make tiny movements. Every few seconds he would stop and listen and once he was sure it was OK he would carry on.

Little by little the sack came off, until it cleared his head. Now he was lying on his side on a sticky, stinking carpet.

He looked around without moving his head. At first it was too dark to see anything properly. He could just make out that he was in a long room with windows all down one side. They were a pale stripe of bluish grey against the black.

He waited, unmoving, as his eyes got used to the light, and gradually bits and pieces of the room came into view.

He could see six grown-ups nearby. The mother and the others who had captured him as well as two others – a fat old father with a bald head and a younger one with a straggly beard. They were all fast asleep and snoring and snuffling.

The room was filthy, there were broken bones and bits of meat and skin on the floor. There were a few greasy chairs, a pile of old rags in the middle and in one corner was the grown-ups’ toilet. They had done their business on the carpet and there were flies buzzing around it.

He retched. He wanted to use a swear-word. He thought of the worst thing he knew and said it loudly in his head.

Bastards.

They didn’t know better than to poo on the floor.

The dirty bastards.

Back at Waitrose they had a system. They used buckets as toilets and every day they took it in turns to empty them into the drains outside.

Not this lot.

He hated them.

The nearest one, a father, let off a long slow fart and rolled over in its sleep. A shaft of moonlight fell across his face. Sam looked at him. He had never really seen a diseased grown-up close to before. He had only seen them lumbering past in the street from a safe distance.

This father was dirty and very ugly. His hair was all stuck together and didn’t really look like hair. His skin was orangey-yellow and hanging loose in flaps, covered in sores and blisters and boils. It had cracked open in places, showing a gooey blackness underneath. He yawned and Sam saw that there was a big hole in his cheek. Through it he could see broken rotten teeth.

Sam got into a crouch and backed away from him.

His heels dug into something soft. He hadn’t noticed a seventh grown-up curled against the wall. It shuddered in its sleep and shifted restlessly. Sam held his breath. It was a mother. She wrapped her arms around one of his legs, nuzzled against him and relaxed.

This one reminded him a bit of Jeannette. She was younger than the other mother, with a tangle of black hair. There was a silver butterfly pin stuck in it. Sam thought it might be a good weapon. He carefully slid it out and held tightly on to it. It was like a long needle, with the silly, jewelled insect perched at one end. If any of these filthy bastards came near him he would stick it in. Yes he would. Just you watch him. He would stick it in good.

Dirty bastards.

Bastards, bastards, bastards…

It felt good to swear. Even if it was only in his mind.

He tried to pull his leg free, but the mother had too strong a grip on it. If he tugged too hard she might wake up.

He studied her. She looked quite nice, quite pretty. Then she turned her head and he saw the other side of her face: it was a nest of boils. Great round lumps covered the whole of her cheek, her neck, her ear, even her eyelids. The skin was stretched tight and it looked like the lumps might burst at any moment.

Sam had a terrible urge to pop one with the butterfly pin. Instead he leant over and used the tip of it to tickle her skin. Soon she started to twitch and then let go of his leg to scratch the spot. With a sigh of relief he managed to step clear.

He would have to be much more careful. The more he took in of his surroundings, the more he realized that there were grown-ups everywhere. The floor was covered in them. If he put one foot wrong he would tread on one. He remembered when his dad had taken him to the zoo in Regent’s Park. In the reptile house, trying to spot lizards or snakes in their glass cages. When you first looked you couldn’t see any, but if you were patient, you spotted them. Lying in clumps, on top of each other, under rocks, half-buried, lazy and bloated.

He had to get out of here.

He moved cautiously to the window. To try to get some idea of where he was.

To begin with he could make no sense of what he saw. It was a huge alien space. Not inside but not outside. It reminded him of something.

Yes. The amphitheatre in a gladiator film.

Of course.

It was the Arsenal football stadium. He was in a hospitality box, looking across the rows and rows of red seats towards the pitch. There were grown-ups out there, some sleeping in the seats, some lying on the floor, some wandering aimlessly about.

Maybe they’d come back here because it was familiar, it meant something to them. There was certainly not going to be any more football played here for a long time. Far below, the grass on the pitch had grown high. A father was standing there, very still, like a statue. Grass up to his knees. He was fat and, like a lot of grown-ups, looked completely bald. He wore a white vest with a red cross of St George on it. Sam had the unnerving feeling that he was looking straight at him.

Sam felt sad. Dad had brought him here once. He remembered how full of life and sound and colour it had been. He’d been scared at first, all those people shouting and singing and swearing and jumping up and down. But he’d got into it and had ended up shouting along with them, even though he wasn’t really a football fan.

Now look at it…

There were sliding glass doors here that opened on to the terraces, but even if they weren’t locked the noise of trying to open them would most likely wake the sleeping grownups. Besides, there were more grown-ups out there. If they spotted him it would be impossible to get away from them in such a wide-open space. No. There had to be another way out, a back way. There must be some stairs down behind the stands.

He crept across the carpet. The room was very big; it opened up at the back into a sort of dining area with broken tables and chairs in it. There were still more grown-ups sleeping here and Sam had to look away as he glimpsed a small half-eaten body, with the head still attached, lying under one of the tables.

Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.

He tried to pretend that he was in a film. He’d always had a good imagination; he could lose himself in a game for hours and hours. The film was The Lord of the Rings and he was a hobbit in an orc castle. His dad had been reading him the book at night before he got sick, but it had been a bit old for him, he preferred the films.

He wasn’t just any old hobbit. He was Sam. Samwise Gamgee, the bravest of them all, and the butterfly pin in his hand was an elf sword.

That’s right, keep thinking about something else.

It was darker back here away from the windows and the smell was even worse. He remembered the time he lost his lunch-box. He thought he’d left it at school. It turned up weeks later under a seat in the car. When Sam opened it, it was full of stale air and rotting food and horrible green fungus that sent up a cloud of spores when it was disturbed. He actually had been sick then, the smell had been so bad.

This was worse. His eyes were stinging.

Dirty bastards…

He edged his way forward, scanning the floor for any sleeping bodies, feeling gently with his toes, holding his nose with his fingers and breathing through his mouth. This place must be full of germs. Was it bad to breathe them in?

He spotted what looked like a door, on the far side of the room, past a bar. He headed for it, speeding up slightly. Halfway there a figure loomed up in front of him and his heart caught in his ribs.

One of the grown-ups had woken.

Sam dropped to the floor and flattened himself against the sticky carpet, pressing his face down so that he would be hard to spot. Sometimes it was good to be only small.

The grown-up shuffled past a few centimetres from where Sam was lying. As soon as he had gone Sam scuttled over to the bar and crouched down behind it.

He could sense that the grown-up had heard something, though. It made a strangled sound and began to move about in the dark.

Sam was still clutching the butterfly pin. It wasn’t enough. He needed to find something else he could use as a weapon. With his other hand he felt around on the shelves behind the bar. There must be something. A corkscrew maybe, or even a knife. His hands closed over a hard plastic object. He ran his fingers over it, trying to work out what it was.

A cigarette lighter.

Better than nothing. It might help him to see where he was going if he ever got out of here. He slipped it into his pocket and carried on searching.

He found nothing else and eventually the grown-up stopped moving about. Sam left it as long as he could – he was so close to getting out he couldn’t stand waiting here any longer.

He peered round the end of the bar. Nothing. No movement. Only those dark shapes on the floor. He tiptoed to the door, passing through a wet patch. He didn’t like to think what it might be, but it made his feet suck and squelch.

It sounded horribly loud to him, but he couldn’t stop.

Keep moving, Sam. Just get out of there.

He was at the door. It was open.

Thank God.

He’d made it.

So long, you dirty bastards.

He went through. It was pitch-black out here, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He told himself that it was all right. Nothing would jump out at him, because nothing could see him.

It didn’t help.

He was petrified. If he hadn’t weed himself earlier he would have done it now. His heart was beating so hard he could feel his whole body shaking, and in the dead silence the blood surging in his ears was deafening. He’d always been scared of the dark. His mum had told him not to worry.

‘If you can’t see the monsters, they can’t see you.’

Back then there had been no monsters. Not real ones. Only imaginary.

Now…

He held his breath and inched forwards, his hands stretched out in front of him, feeling the floor with his feet.

He came to a step.

Stairs.

Good. They would take him down, away from this awful place.

One step… Two steps…

It would be a long climb but maybe there would be windows soon.

Step followed step followed step. He started to move quicker as he grew more confident. Finding a rhythm.

He came to a wall and was confused for a moment until he realized that the stairs turned a corner. He reached out his hands, groping in the darkness.

They touched something warm and soft.

What was it?

It moved.

No…

He turned round. He had to get away. There was only one thing it could be – a grown-up.

He started to cry. He couldn’t run, not in the dark. He fell to his hands and knees and crawled like a dog. His eyes screwed shut. The grown-up was coming after him, he could hear its feet scraping, its breath rasping.

Sam felt strong hands grip his ankle. He kicked out. Got away. Sped up.

But where could he go? Upstairs there were only more grown-ups.

If he moved to the side and kept still maybe this one would go past him. He tried it. But the grown-up was already there, on the step next to him.

Sam shouted in panic and scurried up the steps as fast as he could. He was back at the door to the directors’ box. There was movement on the other side. The grown-ups were waking up.

It was all over. He should never have shouted.

He blundered into the room, the weak light seeming suddenly bright after the inky blackness of the stairwell.

There was a wet slurp behind him. He turned. The grown-up was filling the whole doorway. He was huge, a tall father, well over six feet. He was wearing a long, soiled overcoat and had a huge black beard and no teeth. He opened his mouth in a silent howl and grabbed Sam, clutching him to his chest.

Another father blundered across the room and tried to snatch Sam back. The giant swatted him away.

More grown-ups came on now, with hunched backs and bent legs too feeble to hold their weight.

The giant must be an intruder, come to steal food. The group in the directors’ box didn’t like it. They swarmed around him, their strength in numbers, as he pushed them away and lashed out at them. Sam was being crushed against his hot damp chest. The mother who had first snatched him got hold of an arm and tugged. Sam felt like he was going to be torn in half.

‘Get off me! Get off!’ he shouted but the sound of his voice only seemed to send the grown-ups into a frenzy. Sam was surrounded by a stinking, fetid mass of bodies, hands clawing at him, faces looming close. But nothing could make the giant let go.

Sam’s hand holding the butterfly pin was clamped in the fold of the giant’s arm. Then he remembered the lighter. With his free hand he groped in his pocket until he found it. He prayed that it would work.

He pressed the button. Nothing. He pressed again. Still nothing.

Again… Click-click-click…

A spark.

Come on. Come on.

There were spots dancing in front of Sam’s eyes. His ears were singing. He couldn’t breathe. Any moment now he was going to pass out.

Again he pressed and this time a small orange flame sprang into life.

He raised his hand and put the flame to the giant’s beard.