The Enemy (42 page)

“King David,” said Maxie.

“Me and my friends from the museum,” the girl went on, “we were searching for some friends of mine who I’d split off from last year. We’d heard they might be on the other side of town. We thought it was going to be easy. We got careless. It’s mostly safe around here now. There’s a few adults, but it’s not like it used to be. Or so we thought. We hadn’t been going more than an hour . . . and then . . . we came across those ones ... hunting ...”

The girl broke off. Stared at something a thousand miles away.

“It’s al right,” said Maxie.

“I just want to go home.”

“To the museum?” said Blue.

“Yeah. If you get me out of here, I’l take you with me.”

“If there’s kids everywhere,” said Blue, “nicely set up, why should we come with you?”

“Because . . . wel , just because . . . I can’t give you a reason other than a selfish one, other than I just want to get home.”

“That’s good enough reason for me,” said Maxie. “If you’d given us a load of bul I wouldn’t have trusted you.”

“We’l do it on one condition,” said Blue.

“Which is?”

“That you don’t never tel anyone anything about what I was talking to Maxie about just now.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Okay,” said Blue. “We’re on our way.”

“The only problem is,” said Maxie, “we do have to actual y get out of here first.”

O
n the other side of London, Sam was standing on the battlements of the Tower of London, staring out at the great swolen River Thames, a wide strip of silver in the moonlight. It had risen a few feet since the disaster, and the Tower once more had a water-fil ed moat around it, just as it had hundreds of years ago. Sam felt as if he were living inside a medieval story. When they’d arrived, he and the Kid had eaten some hot food and drunk some clean water and rested in soft beds. Sam stil couldn’t quite believe they were here. Living in a castle, safe at last from al the dangers of London.

The Kid was standing next to him. His chin resting on his arms on top of the wal .

“What are you thinking about?” said Sam.

“Cheese.”

“Cheese?”

“The Kid used to like cheese. Hasn’t eaten any for a wicked long time. Tasty cheese. Cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese . . . Did you spot it?

Down there?”

“What?”

“They got a genuine hundred percent cow. A living breathing lawn mooer.”

“I saw it, yeah,” said Sam. “And chickens and pigs and a goat.”

“Wel , if there’s a cow, there’s milk, ain’t there?” said the Kid. “And if there’s milk, there’s possible cheese.”

“Could be,” said Sam. He didn’t want to disappoint the Kid, but he was pretty sure you needed a bul if you wanted a cow to make milk, though he wasn’t quite sure exactly how it al worked. Who knows? Maybe they had a bul as wel .

“What you thinking about, over there yourself, Babybel?” the Kid asked. “If not cheese.”

“My sister, El a.”

“You think she’s al right?”

“I hope she’s stil alive somewhere,” said Sam. “I hope she made it to the palace and they’re looking after her like we’re being looked after here. I mean, if I can make it. Me. Smal Sam. Al the way across London al by myself—”

“Hey! Don’t I count?”

“You know what I mean,” said Sam. “If midges like us can do it, then surely El a, with al those other kids—Akkie and Freak and Josh and Arran and everyone—surely she can do it too.”

“I’m sure she’s hunky-dory,” said the Kid, and he put an arm around Sam.

“Is that a good thing?” said Sam.

“The best.”

“You’re quite weird, you know?” said Sam.

“I’m different,” said the Kid. “My gran always said I was half clever, half stupid, and half crazy.”

“That’s three halves,” said Sam.

“Yeah. I told you I was different.”

“When we’re strong enough,” said Sam, “wil you come with me?”

“Where? To Bucko Palace?”

“Yes. To find El a.”

“’Course I wil ,” said the Kid. “It’l be a new grand adventure of the old school. They’l write books about us. Long books. Nothing’s gonna split us up, smal fry. We’re a team. Like Batman and Robin Hood.” And he sang. “Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-Batman!”

B
lu-Tack Bil was sitting on his bed, playing with his lump of Blu Tack, molding it into shapes. One moment it was a horse, then it was a house, then it had become a tree, then a little man, then a bomb. He was playing a game and the Blu Tack became anything he wanted it to, any toy he could imagine.

Sometimes he would pul it apart and turn it into two figures, or more. He was never alone as long as he had his Blu Tack. It spoke to him in the voices of the characters in his story. He could sit like this for hours, lost in his own little world.

It was late, and al around him the other kids were settling down for the night. Even though the bal room they were using as a dormitory was huge, it smel ed of dirty clothes and sweaty feet and bad breath. Bil tried to shut out the smel s by concentrating on his game. But a short sharp bark distracted him, and he looked over to the next bed, where Alice and El a were playing with Godzil a. The puppy was tired; Bil could tel he wanted to sleep. He was irritable, so he snapped at them, but they didn’t know when to stop. When Godzil a got bigger they’d have to be careful. He’d bite their hands off.

Bil saw Ol ie go past. He was counting each kid, muttering the numbers out loud to himself. Blu-Tack watched him move along the row of beds, and when he got to Whitney, who was also counting, they had a quiet chat. Whitney nodded. They looked very serious. Blu-Tack could have saved Ol ie the bother. He could have told him how many kids were in the room without counting, just by looking. He had a good head for numbers and his memory was perfect. His brain didn’t work like other kids. He’d always known that. He could tel just by glancing around the room that everyone was there—forty-eight kids in al . Everyone except Maxie, Blue, Lewis, and Achil eus.

Bil looked down at his hands—he had shaped the number forty-eight without even thinking about it. He scrunched the stringy figures into a bal before anyone noticed, and kneaded it between his fingers.

Blu-Tack never said anything, but he never missed anything either. Something was going on. A group of big kids, the most important ones, had been having lots of whispered conversations al evening. Ol ie and Achil eus, Whitney and Lewis.

Something was going to happen tonight. Bil tried to stop feeling worried. Slowly the bal of Blu Tack in his hands changed shape and became a smiling face.

Bil looked at the face.

“Don’t be scared,” it said.

There were shouts from outside, the sound of running feet.

Bil tensed; his hand squashed the face into a flattened mess. That was the only visible sign that he was concerned. His expression gave nothing away. He had lived so long now on edge, waiting for something awful to happen, reacting to it when it did, that he was like a smal wild animal. Constantly alert. Al his senses tingling.

The footsteps passed by. Ol ie and Whitney exchanged glances. It al went quiet again.

The face had reappeared in the Blu Tack.

“It’s okay,” it said. “You’re safe now.”

T
he royals sat in their bedroom in the dark, staring into space. It smeled in here. They had long since forgotten how to use the bathroom. Every now and then they were herded downstairs to sit on their thrones, but otherwise nothing happened in their world.

A cockroach crawled across the leg of a young man who was sitting on the floor. The young man’s face was so bloated with swel ings that his eyes were two tiny holes, and his nose had disappeared. He picked the bug up and put it in his mouth.

They were always hungry.

There was a noise in the corridor outside. Something scraped the door. Al the heads in the room turned as one and looked in the direction of the noise.

There was a bang, the crunch of splintering wood. A second bang ...

The door opened.

The corridor was empty.

Stil chewing the cockroach, the young man got up and shambled to the door.

The others fol owed.

David’s two guards had been sitting outside the sick bay for five hours straight. They were bored stiff. David had promised them that somebody would come to relieve them after three hours. No one had come.

This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t as if anything was going to happen anyway. The heavy wooden door was locked. There were only three kids in there. Two girls, one of whom was injured, and a boy with a concussion. What were they supposed to do? Batter the door down and overwhelm the two of them?

Fat chance. They had guns, after al .

“They’ve forgotten about us,” said the tal er of the two. He had short brown curly hair and a bad case of acne.

“They always do,” said the other one, a fair-haired boy with a big nose. “Everyone thinks that just because we’re in David’s guard, our lives must be great. But this sucks.”

“We do get a bit more food than the others,” said Spotty.

“Oh whoop-di-doo,” said Big Nose. “If I could, I’d trade this in and do farming or something. This is just tedious.”

“We’re the elite.”

“So what?”

“When we take over London,” said Spotty, “we’l be in a real y strong position. It’l be like in the Middle Ages. When the king invaded another country he’d divide up al the lands and al the wealth to his favorite dukes and barons, the ones who’d helped him.”

“When we take over London?” Big Nose mocked. “You mean
if
we take over London, don’t you? Al we ever do is sit around the palace with these bloody guns, trying to look important. We weren’t even al owed to go on the raid to the squatter camp.”

There was a clatter on the stairs, and they tried to look alert as Pod appeared, red-faced and flustered.

“Everything okay here?” he asked.

“Yeah.” The boys shrugged.

“You haven’t seen anything? Heard anything?”

“Like what?” said Spotty.

“The royals have escaped,” said Pod, sounding ticked off and harassed.

“Say what?”

“They got out somehow, yeah? David’s gone absolutely bal istic. It’s crazy down there—everyone’s, like, running around, trying to catch them.”

“We should go and help,” said Spotty, standing up.

“No, you need to stay up here and guard the prisoners.”

“They’re not going anywhere.”

“Even so. If the prisoners got out too, David would go off the scale.”

“One of us could stay here, the other could come with you,” said Spotty.

Pod thought about this for a moment.

“Al right.” He looked at Spotty. “You come with me.”

“What about me?” said Big Nose.

“Stay put until further orders,” said Pod.

Big Nose watched sadly as the two of them hurried off down the narrow staircase.

Now, with no one to talk to, it would be even more tedious sitting here. Big Nose spat. Feeling a guilty pleasure as the gob of saliva sat there on the patterned carpet.

He swore loudly and colorful y, and for a moment it lifted the boredom.