Текст книги "The Enemy"

Автор книги: Charlie Higson

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

18

Maxie was sitting with Arran under the blue-painted railway bridge by Camden Road station. She had moved him here to be out of the sun. He was shivering but she didn’t think it was from cold.

‘You’ve got to keep everyone together,’ he muttered.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Maxie.

‘I wish I didn’t have to.’

‘Didn’t have to what?’

‘Worry.’

‘You don’t, Arran. You’ve been cut. You’re sick.’

Arran grabbed Maxie’s arm. ‘That doesn’t make any difference,’ he said. ‘It’s like I was saying to Freak –’ He broke off, confused. ‘Was I saying it to him? Did I say it? I don’t remember…’

‘What? What were you saying?’

‘We shouldn’t have to deal with all this crap, Maxie. We’re just kids. I never realized before. Our mums and dads used to deal with crap so that we didn’t have to. They worried about things for us, and they did difficult things for us, so that we could just carry on being kids. We used to laugh at them and call them boring and pointless, but they protected us, they made the world safe for us so that we could play. I don’t want to be an adult, Maxie. I want to go back to being just a kid again. But I can’t. It’s not an option. I’ve got to be a father to these little kids, and you’ve got to be a mother. They need us. I wish they didn’t. I wish I wasn’t needed. Look around. I sit down for a rest and everything falls apart.’

Maxie stood up. Arran was right. The excitement of being outside was making everyone careless. There was still a party mood. Kids were perched on cars, chatting, or sitting on the kerb in the sun.

Maxie shouted to Blue. He strolled over, trying to look cool.

‘What’s up?’

‘We need to keep alert,’ she said. ‘We need to keep organized. We have to be ready at all times.’

Blue shrugged. ‘We’re ready.’

‘We’re not.’

Blue gave her a look. ‘The only one not at their post is you, girl.’

‘I’m making sure Arran’s all right.’

‘Ain’t you got someone else can do that?’

‘Yeah.’ Maxie went to find Maeve.

Ollie was at the back of the group, nervously looking back the way they had come. The other skirmishers, armed with javelins, slings and rocks, were squatting in the shade of a van talking about football. Ollie wished they were taking this more seriously.

‘It’s not right,’ he said, trying to get their attention.

‘Chill out,’ said one of the Morrisons crew. ‘There’s no one around.’

‘Yeah, but there should be people around,’ said Ollie, squinting up the road towards the top of the hill. ‘We haven’t come down this way for ages because it’s always been too mad. So where are all the grown-ups now?’

‘They’re hiding from us, man,’ said the other boy. ‘Anyone tries to attack they’ll be mullered.’

Ollie looked round at the scattered group.

‘Everyone’s relaxed too much,’ he said.

‘Except you,’ said the boy, and the others laughed.

‘Be quiet a minute!’ Ollie put a finger to his lips.

‘What?’

‘You hear anything?’

‘No… No, wait. Now I hear something.’

There was a swooshing sound, like waves rolling pebbles across a beach, and a murmur like the wind.

‘Something’s coming,’ said Ollie.

Josh was moving among the kids, trying to keep them alert. Most grumbled at him and when he got to the Morrisons team who were supposed to be guarding the right flank they looked half asleep. Josh struggled to remember the name of the tall, dozy-looking kid with the Afro who was meant to be in charge. Lewis. That was it. He was sitting slumped against a shop front, his eyes closed.

‘We should be ready in case anything happens,’ said Josh, worried that he was sounding like some anxious teacher on a school journey.

‘I’m conserving my energy,’ said Lewis and he yawned.

‘You should be watching the flank. In case any grownups come in from the side.’

‘I’m listening,’ said Lewis. ‘I’ve got bat ears.’

‘I don’t want to be a pain in the arse,’ said Josh. ‘You might think this is all a joke but –’

‘It’s cool,’ said Lewis.

‘What’s cool?’

‘You’re cool, I’m cool, everything’s cool.’

‘If we lose any kids…’

‘I won’t lose you no kids, bro. I’m cool. You got nothing to fear, Lewis is here.’

‘You think I’m scared?’ said Josh. ‘I ain’t scared. Nothing scares me, man.’

‘If you say so, bro.’

‘Yeah, well, just tell me if your bat ears pick anything up.’

Lewis slowly opened his eyes.

‘I’m hearing something now, man.’ He jumped to his feet surprisingly quickly and Josh could see that his whole body was tensed. What had he heard?

‘Up, up, up!’ Lewis yelled at his team and in a moment they were all ready.

Arran was aware of shouting. Coming from the rear of the group. He’d been lost in his thoughts, trying to regain his strength so that they could get moving again.

‘What’s going on?’ he said.

‘Dunno,’ said Maeve, who was sitting with him, unable to do much more than offer sympathy.

‘Help me up.’

‘Arran…’

‘Help me up, Maeve!’ Arran snapped and Maeve hauled him to his feet.

‘Where’s my club?’

Maeve fetched Arran’s pickaxe handle and gave it to him.

Lazy. He’d been lazy. He was supposed to be in charge, a leader. He pushed his way through the milling kids to the rear of the group where the commotion was. He saw Ollie. Ollie would know what was going on. He was sensible.

‘We heard something,’ Ollie explained.

Before Arran could say anything someone shouted.

‘Look!’

People were coming over the brow of the hill. A solid line of grown-ups, their shuffling feet scraping on the tarmac, a low moan rising from the herd.

Sounds like the seaside, Arran thought and closed his eyes for a moment. He was back in Portugal with his mum and dad. Lying on his back, sunbathing.

‘Have you got your cream on?’

‘Yes, Mum…’

She leant over him. Smiled. Arran liked it when she was happy. Then her smile grew wide so that her mouth was a gaping hole surrounded by jagged teeth. She lunged at him…

‘I’ve got my cream on!’ Arran shouted.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ Arran wiped sweat from his face.

‘Jesus,’ said Ollie. ‘There’s loads of them.’

‘Get into place!’ Arran yelled, just as Blue ran up with Jester and the rest of the fighters.

Arran was pleased to see how fast the kids got themselves together and back into battle formation.

The front line of grown-ups stopped about a hundred metres away and the two groups stood looking at each other.

‘What are they doing?’ said Blue.

‘God knows.’

Jester whistled. ‘They’re like a bloody army,’ he said. ‘Can you take them, d’you think?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Blue. ‘I’ve never seen so many in one place before. They ain’t usually this organized.’

A smaller group of grown-ups pushed to the front and stepped clear of the pack. Almost as if they were in charge. At the vanguard of this new group was a huge fat father whose neck didn’t seem able to support the great cannonball of a head that lolled over his chest. Random tufts of hair sprouted from his otherwise bald scalp. He was wearing shorts and an England vest with a cross of St George on it. A pair of wire-framed glasses with no lenses in them perched on his squashed and rotting nose. He rolled his head back and stared at Arran. It looked like he was laughing.

‘They must have been following us,’ said Arran, his head clearing as his system was pumped full of adrenalin. ‘We need to avoid a fight if we can.’

‘How we gonna do that?’ said Blue. ‘Look at ’em. They’re not going to go away.’

‘We’ll back off,’ said Arran. ‘See what happens. Maybe get to somewhere safer. Somewhere we can defend. Where’s Ollie?’

‘Here.’

‘Stay with us. We’ll need your fire-power.’

He and Blue shouted orders and the kids began to retreat from the grown-ups. Arran and the best fighters stayed at the back, facing the enemy. The road in the other direction was still clear. Maxie and Lewis kept with their teams on the flanks. The little kids had formed into a tight, frightened bunch in the middle. They were huddled so closely together that it was difficult to keep them moving. They kept bumping into each other and anxiously looking back. Maeve and Whitney goaded them, shoving them along, encouraging them, telling them not to worry, but there was a mounting sense of panic.

Staying indoors all the time, the little kids had been sheltered from the worst of the fighting. They weren’t used to this. Some of the older kids, too. They weren’t all fighters.

The grown-ups kept pace with them, advancing down the hill. Creeping closer. The father in the St George vest still at their head.

‘Stay together,’ Arran shouted.

Then three emaciated grown-ups blundered out from a side-street, so starved they might as well have been skeletons. They made a dash towards the little kids to try to separate them from the group, but were swiftly knocked down by Lewis and the Morrisons fighters on that flank. Maxie watched them go into action and was impressed by their skill. Blue had been right: frizzy-haired Lewis might have looked dozy, but he moved fast when he had to, and dealt with the grown-ups ruthlessly and efficiently.

The sudden attack, though, had spooked the little kids. A bunch of them broke away and started to run.

‘Stop them!’ Maxie yelled, but there was nothing Maeve, Whitney and the others could do. In a moment the little kids were darting in all directions and even some of the older kids were starting to run. A bunch barged right past Maxie who screamed at them to get back, but it was no good.

‘Come on,’ said Lewis and he and his team ran after the fleeing kids. ‘We’ll get ’em.’

As the orderly group broke up it seemed to give encouragement to the grown-ups. The fat father in the St George vest raised his arms above his head, bellowed, and at last they attacked, coming as fast as they were able down the hill.

‘Hold the line,’ Arran shouted, and the fighters got into position, spears bristling.

Nothing was going to stop the grown-ups, they waddled and limped and scurried onwards. The kids watched them getting closer. A hideous row of smashed and diseased faces.

Arran stood fast, Achilleus on one side, Blue on the other, more fighters spread out across the road. Behind them in a shorter line were Ollie and the skirmishers. Silent. Waiting.

19

Closer and closer the grown-ups came until at last Arran gave the order.

‘Fire!’

A hail of pellets, stones and javelins flew at the grownups, and as they went down Arran moved the fighters forward. The first wave of attackers was almost immediately smashed to the ground and this hampered the rest from getting forward.

Arran spotted St George, clambering over a body. He took a swing at him but the fat father ducked just in time.

‘Maxie!’ Arran shouted. ‘We need support!’

Even as he said it, Arran looked round to see Maxie arriving with her flanking squad. Their eyes met. They must have both been thinking the same thing at the same time. They were linked. For a moment it was as if nobody else existed. Arran was so proud of her. She was brave and strong and clever. She smiled at him and he smiled back. He knew at last. He knew that she felt the same way about him as he did about her. He just knew. He couldn’t say how. And she understood. He felt a great force of happiness well up inside him. He was ten feet tall. Knowing that somebody cared about him made all the difference. It gave him fresh strength. He could cope with anything now.

He turned and slammed his club into the face of a father who had managed to get past the fallen bodies.

With Whitney and Maeve’s help Lewis’s team had managed to take control of the little kids. They had herded them off to the side where a paved pathway ran above the Regent’s Canal. It looked easy to defend. There were tall flats on one side and railings on the other. Past the railings was a four-metre drop to the canal towpath. The older kids had to push and shove and yell at the younger ones to stop them from running again. Whitney stayed at the centre, gathering them in, towering above the smaller kids, pulling them to her, calming them.

While the main group of grown-ups had been waiting, a splinter group had come round the side, trying to get at the smaller, weaker kids. A gang of them blundered across the road towards the pathway and a father charged, breaking through the bigger kids at the end and taking hold of a screaming girl. His face was so swollen with boils he looked like some ghastly sea creature, a puffer fish.

‘No, you don’t!’ Whitney bellowed and she punched him so hard that his boils exploded and half his face fell away as he let go of the girl and flipped over backwards.

Maeve, Ben and Whitney picked up the stunned father and dropped him over the railings where he landed with a smack on the pavement below. Meanwhile Lewis shoved his way through the crowded kids and back out into the road, yelling at the other grown-ups.

‘Stay back.’

The grown-ups froze.

Lewis would keep them away for as long as he could. He prayed that the main fighting force was holding out, or the chances of any of them getting to the palace alive were very, very slim.

Maxie was next to Arran now, fighting almost back to back. The kids kept in a tight pack and it was hard for the mostly unarmed grown-ups to get at them. Some were breaking through, though. Arran saw two of his fighters go down, swamped by numbers. Then one of the Morrisons crew screamed as three big mothers grabbed hold of him and dragged him off. The grown-ups were chipping away at them. At this rate it wouldn’t be long before they were overwhelmed.

Arran looked round. Jester was nowhere to be seen. And where the hell was Blue? When the fighting kicked off he’d disappeared.

Had he run or had he been taken out?

Arran hated grown-ups.

His neck was throbbing and it reminded him of what they had done to him. Anger bubbled up inside, almost like a physical thing, something hot and writhing, waking up and struggling to get out. His blood sang in his ears and boiled in his veins. He wasn’t going to let any more kids die.

He gripped his club tightly in his hands, swatted a mother out of his way and stepped forward.

‘We’ve got to break them,’ he shouted. ‘Take the fight to them!’

‘I’m with you, boss,’ said Josh, ‘they don’t scare me!’

One by one the other fighters joined him, hacking through the massed ranks of the grown-ups.

Ollie was still behind the fighters. Loosing off a shot whenever he got the chance. He had lost track of the other skirmishers, who had either picked up fallen weapons and joined the fighters or dropped back to the rear. The only one of them still with him was the Morrisons kid who had laughed at him earlier for worrying too much. Ollie couldn’t even remember his name. The two of them were firing off shot after shot, but the other kid was running low on ammo.

Arran and the others had moved forward, but Ollie could see that they’d got bogged down. The grown-ups would soon have them surrounded. There wasn’t much more Ollie could do to help. He was doing his best, but it was like throwing pebbles into a raging river.

He wondered if this was the end. If they were all going to die here.

And then there was a roar and a BMW thundered round the corner from Royal College Street. It ploughed into the grown-ups, knocking them flying.

Ollie saw Blue at the wheel, grinning madly. He must have hot-wired the car. There was suddenly a rush of grown-ups blundering down the road, trying to get out of the way.

‘Let them go,’ he yelled, but the Morrisons kid was wound up for a fight. He grabbed a spear off the ground and waded into the stampede, stabbing at them. A short, stocky father with one eye was obviously also still up for a fight, though. He hit the kid hard with a lump of concrete. Ollie watched him fall and get trampled by the retreating grown-ups. He put a steel shot into his sling and kept an eye on the father. He picked his moment and the shot hit the father in the back of the neck. He too fell, and he too was trampled.

Lewis had been joined by the remnants of the skirmisher team and Jester. Jester had immediately ducked down the pathway to join the smaller kids. Lewis figured that was how he’d stayed alive when all his mates had died on the way up from the palace.

Lewis didn’t blame him. Not all kids could fight. Sometimes hiding was a better option. The skirmishers were armed with an odd assortment of weapons, but it was enough to keep the grown-ups away. Lewis just had to hold out long enough for the front-rank fighters to come back and help.

If they lost the main battle, though, then all Lewis and the little ones could do was run.

A flood of grown-ups came down the road from the front. On the run. Maybe the tide had turned. Lewis pulled the rest of his fighters back into the pathway. It was more important to stay alive now than to kill the enemy.

He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.

He hadn’t lost a single kid.

Blue kept in low gear, his foot hard on the accelerator, carving up the grown-ups but careful to keep well clear of any kids.

He saw the girl, Maxie, working hard with her spear. She looked like some kind of warrior queen. He steered the car towards her, clearing the attackers out of the way. And there was Arran. That boy was tough. He was badly wounded but nothing could stop him. Blue smiled. He wished he had teamed up with the Waitrose kids before.

Arran knew how Freak had felt last night, when the madness had taken hold of him. Anger burned like rocket fuel inside him. He was drunk with it. He waded in among the panicked grown-ups, swinging his club in vicious, punishing arcs. He was no longer tired or sick. His body felt nothing. It was as if he had left it behind and was watching it from somewhere else, like a film, or a computer game. Yes. A first-person shooter. He kept pressing the X button and watching the club swing. It smashed into a skull. It shattered an arm. It snapped a spine.

He could see a long, blurry trail behind it as it moved through the air. And when a head exploded there was no blood, just multicoloured blobs of light.

They’ve turned off blood mode, he thought. They’ve made it suitable for under-fifteens. But this game was too easy. The enemy’s AI was set too low. They were too slow, too stupid, too easy to kill.

Smack!

Look at them go down.

Slam!

He laughed. The kids were going to win this battle today.

Crack!

Sure enough, the grown-ups were falling back, trying to get away. He caught sight of the big father with the swollen head. He had a group of fathers around him and seemed to be surveying the carnage. He shook his head, which rolled backwards and forwards over the gold necklace at his chest, then he turned and retreated.

Yes. Run, you cowards.

Arran couldn’t let them escape, though. Not after what they’d done. He ran after them.

Someone was shouting behind him.

‘Leave it, Arran, they’re finished.’

‘Let them go!’

‘No!’ He was a lion among wildebeest. A hunter. A killer. He ran with them, he would track down every last one of them and smash them into oblivion.

The grown-ups fell to left and right as he powered on. He funnelled them into a tree-lined side-street, past a car wash. They scrambled clumsily, frightened and careless. And they fell. Silver bolts shot from his eyes and they fell. He yelled with joy. He didn’t even need a club. He threw it away. It was only slowing him down.

He had left the other kids behind. It was just him and the grown-ups. He saw them tumble, the silver bolts sprouting from their ugly broken bodies.

And then it was like he had been punched hard in the chest. He wasn’t running any more. He looked down. There was a silver bolt sticking out of him. No, that couldn’t be. He couldn’t have shot himself. He tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. What was going on? He had fallen. He was sitting down, his legs straight out in front of him. Dead grown-ups lay all around him.

Nothing moved.

He couldn’t breathe. His lungs were full of liquid.

He looked up. The sky was flickering.

From far away he heard a shout.

‘A-r-r-a-a-a-a-an!’

20

Small Sam was cycling like a demon. There were grownups everywhere. The roads were crawling with them. Where had they all come from? There was something going on. Every time he tried to get back towards Camden he’d come up against a group of them and had to turn round and cycle furiously the other way. He had gone in such a roundabout route and taken so many side-roads and turnings that he wasn’t exactly sure where he was now. He was coming down a main road of grimy low buildings that looked like it hadn’t been up to much even before the disaster. And then he saw something he recognized. Pizza Express. This must be Kentish Town then. He remembered his mum and dad talking about which Pizza Express to go to. ‘Let’s go to the one in Kentish Town.’ It was big and had a very high ceiling. There used to be a strange wire statue of a man standing in one corner. He’d found it a bit scary when he was younger.

How silly to be scared of a statue.

As far as he knew, Kentish Town was next to Camden. So maybe he hadn’t got as lost as he’d thought. All he needed to do was keep going downhill.

There was a cloud of black smoke filling the road ahead. A shop was on fire. He held his breath and zoomed through, screwing his face up. Luckily the road was clear on the other side. Grown-ups didn’t like fire. They would keep away.

And there was the back of Sainsbury’s; a funny-looking metal building on the canal, like something out of Star Wars. This was it. He’d made it. This was Camden. But with so many grown-ups out on the streets he wondered where his friends might be. And Ella. He hoped she wasn’t too scared without him.

He remembered the feeling he’d had when he’d first seen the mob of grown-ups marching down Camden Road, like an army. He knew what his fear was now. That the grownups were massing to attack his friends. Maybe the kids had also had to take another route to be safe?

He pedalled harder and soon came to where several roads met near the tube station. He stopped at a traffic island in the middle. In the past there would have been cars and lorries and buses rushing past in all directions, and the pavements would have been filled with kids going to the market. Now it wasn’t like being in a city at all. The buildings might just as well have been rocks and cliffs. The abandoned, stationary cars were boulders. The road a dried-up riverbed.

There was even a sound, a rushing, swirling noise like water. He’d heard it before today. It wasn’t water. It was the sound of massed grown-ups. Breathing, sighing, hissing, their feet scuffing on the tarmac. But where was it coming from?

He looked around.

There. In the direction of Holloway, up the road that led past the front of Sainsbury’s. A great mob of grown-ups was moving towards him. Even from this distance he could smell them.

He would have to get shifted.

Which way to go, though? Which route would the other kids have taken?

There were so many choices here. And now there were more grown-ups coming along the other roads. Maybe they were trying to see what was going on? The only clear route was the one heading back the way he had come, towards Kentish Town and the fire, which he could see now was spreading. The whole of the sky in that direction was hazy with a purple-grey smudge.

Come on. Which way was the centre of London? The road signs were too confusing. They pointed to places whose names he didn’t know.

The most obvious route was down the high street. It was the widest road. There were a few grown-ups wandering about in it but if he went fast enough he could get round them. He shunted the bike forwards, put his full weight on one pedal, then the other, and soon his feet were a blur as the pedals spun round and the chain rattled over the cogs. He passed a knot of grown-ups who made a feeble lunge at him, but as he glanced back at them his front wheel hit a hole in the road. The whole bike jarred. He lost control and flew over the handlebars, landing in a painful heap on the tarmac. For a few seconds he was too stunned to move. His trousers were ripped and his elbows and knees were bleeding. Then he sensed someone coming near and shook himself awake. He looked up just as a skinny young mother with no hair and dribble streaming down her chin made a grab for him. He rolled away from her groping hands and kicked out. He got her in the knee and she went down face first.

Sam was up. He looked at his bike. The front wheel was bent out of shape and the tyre was burst. All that work. Wasted. He would have to walk now. He might never be able to catch up with the others.

Actually, he would have to run. There were more grown-ups closing in on him.

He stumbled forward and felt his legs wobble. He was dizzy from the fall, and limping. He forced himself to move, though, watching his dirty trainers as they slapped down on the road in front of him. He needed somewhere to hide. He passed some steps going down to a public toilet. No. He didn’t want to get trapped. He remembered the tube station. Maybe if he could get in there, in the dark, he’d be all right. Just so long as he got safely off the streets. He broke into a run and dodged past some railings. Two fathers came lolloping up behind him and smashed into the ironwork.

A car had driven into the side of the tube station, creating a gaping hole in the big steel shutters. A skeleton sat at the wheel. You never normally saw skeletons anywhere.

Sam ducked in and clambered over the ticket gates. He fumbled in his pocket for the torch he’d picked up at Waitrose. Pumped the handle and flicked the switch. He scribbled the blue-white beam over the walls. There was only one thing for it; he would have to go down towards the platforms. A shriek outside spurred him on and in a few seconds he was rushing down the unmoving escalator two steps at a time, his torch beam zigzagging wildly, showing flashes of torn posters for holidays and televisions and shops and other useless things.

It was a mess at the bottom. Fallen bricks, tangles of wires, pools of yellow water… a dead body crawling with maggots. There had been a fire here recently and he could smell smoke.

The grown-ups were still following him. They were on the escalator. Their noisy progress echoing off the tiled walls. Grunts and heavy breathing and clumsy feet. Sam looked quickly to right and left and chose right.

He ran on through the passenger tunnels until he reached a platform. He quickly shone his beam along the rusting tracks. There was water and rubbish lying between the rails. He jumped down, pressed himself against the wall below the platform and switched off his torch.

It was utterly dark. A darkness like he had never known before the disaster. There was no source of light anywhere. No winking safety bulbs. No glow of electrics. The world had ceased to exist. Sam suddenly became aware of his other senses. First the cuts and scrapes on his bruised body, then the sleepers and a metal bolt digging into his side. Next came the smell of dust and oil and damp and decay pressing into his nose. Then his hearing. Nearby some dripping water, and a small animal moving about, a mouse or rat. Further away, but moving closer, the grown-ups. He could sense that they were unsure in the dark. Their footsteps uneven. There was a cough, a sneeze, chattering teeth. Long fingernails scraping on the tiles as they felt their way along.

He prayed that they would give up and return to the light. He was too small to bother with. They couldn’t hope to find him.

Go away. Go away. Go away.

They arrived at the platform and one came close. Sam could hear it sniffing and smell its foul stink, like a blocked toilet. There was a rustle of clothing as it knelt down, and then it began to run its fingers along the edge of the platform. The dry skin sounded like paper.

Go away… Please go away.

Another one. He heard it flop on to the rails and begin to work its way towards him.

How quickly would they give up?

Could he risk trying to make a run for it or was it safer to stay here?

If he ran he’d have to put the torch on and that would tell the grown-ups where he was.

Then the one above him slithered over the wall, almost landing on him. He heard its feet slop into a puddle.

There were two of them down here on the tracks now, moving about. It would only be a matter of time before others followed. They knew he was here. They would feel about in the darkness for him. Eventually they would find him.

Sam’s heart was racing, his whole body shaking. They would sense it. He was biting his shirt to stop from crying out in fear. It was no good. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He pointed his torch towards where he thought the nearest one of them was and snapped the beam on for half a second.

It caught the grown-up full in the face; it gasped and put its hands up to cover its eyes, but not before Sam had got a good look at it. A father, his nose split almost in two, showing a nasty black hole in the gap. His lower jaw hanging loose. Sam quickly skimmed the beam both ways along the tracks, just long enough to get his bearings. Then he rolled over and dropped down into the gutter that ran along between the rails. There were about eight centimetres of water in the gutter. Sam hobbled along, somewhere between a crouch and a crawl. Moving as fast as he dared in the dark towards one of the railway tunnels. His hands on the rails on either side. Behind him the grown-ups followed, grunting and panting. He had spotted at least six of them when his torch had been lit.

He gave another quick squirt of light. Just in time. Another second and he would have run into the end of the gutter. He clambered up and into the tunnel. It would be harder going now. He had to make his way over the sleepers without slipping. It was the same for the grown-ups, but they would be able to follow him by the noise he was making.

He stumbled on, every few seconds lighting the way ahead. The tunnel split into two and he made a quick decision, taking the left-hand branch. A little further along he came to a stopped train. It fitted too tightly in the tunnel for him to squeeze past so he would have to go underneath.

He dropped on to his belly and crawled under the front of the train, wriggling like a worm. It was hard work and difficult to move without making a noise. Were the grownups still following? He shone the torch back. There were three of them there, peering under the carriage, their eyes bulging red and swollen, their tongues lolling. One of them flopped down and started to slither his way forward.