The Enemy (6 page)

T
hat evening the kids held a meeting in the courtyard on the roof. They had made the area as civilized as they could manage, adding to what was already here with stuff they’d scrounged from nearby buildings. There were plants in raised beds and pots, garden furniture to sit on, some tables, and two big barbecues where they did most of their cooking.

They had a few solar-powered lamps, and candles in jars, and they had lit a fire in the barrel from inside a washing machine that Ben and Bernie had turned into a brazier.

Smal Sam’s sister, El a, was sobbing quietly in a corner. Maeve had an arm around her, but most of the others just ignored her. They had al lost someone. They didn’t want to be reminded.

Maxie tried hard. Tried not to glance over at the little girl. Tried not to think about how awful she must be feeling. And it wasn’t only El a. Freak was lurking in the shadows in another corner. He hadn’t said a word since they’d got back.

“As you al know, we lost two kids today,” said Arran. “It’s getting bad. I don’t know how much longer we can hold on here.”

Instantly there was a chorus of distressed voices.

“But where would we go. . . ?”

“We’re safe here. . . .”

“We can’t go out there. . . .”

“We’l be al right. You’l find food.”

“You’l kil al the grown-ups.”

“I won’t!” Arran shouted, his voice breaking. This shocked everyone into silence. They weren’t used to seeing Arran lose his temper.

“I can’t,” he went on. “There’s too many of them. I can’t kil them al . We can’t go on like this. We’re getting weaker every day.”

There was a long silence. The little kids looked terrified. They couldn’t handle this. None of them wanted to face up to the reality of their situation.

A fair-haired kid with a wide mouth they’d nicknamed Monkey Boy, because he loved to climb things, broke the silence.

“We’re doing al right, Arran. We’re not starving or nothing. You brought us back the dog today.”

“Yeah, right,” Arran said bitterly. “And how long can we go on like this? Eating dogs? Being taken by the grown-ups? One by one. Huh? How long?

We bumped into Blue and the Morrisons crew before. They agree. They reckon the grown-ups are getting worse. They’re wearing us down.”

Cal um stood up and stepped into the flickering light of the fire.

“Listen, Arran,” he said. “You’re scaring the little ones.

We know it was tough today. We know you got hurt and you lost Deke and al that. We know why you’re angry, but . . . wel , go easy, yeah?”

“Yeah, sorry,” said Arran, and he wiped sweat from his forehead.

Cal um stayed standing.

“Can I say something else?”

Arran nodded.

“We mustn’t ever leave here.”

“Didn’t you listen to anything I said?” asked Arran.

“This is our home now,” Cal um went on. “It was bad luck today. That’s al . We’l just have to be more careful, yeah? We’ve made this place safe.

We’re learning al the time. We’ve survived this far. Why shouldn’t we carry on? I been on the roof nearly al day, and I can tel you, I seen it out there. It’s not safe, yeah? Not safe at al . . . .”

Almost as if to il ustrate Cal um’s point, there was a crash and a yel from the street below, fol owed by a hideous scream.

Josh scuttled over the roof from the crow’s nest and shouted down to them.

“There’s something out there!”

A
rran could see the fear in the faces of the smaler kids.

Cal um was right. Al he had succeeded in doing was to frighten them. He should have been more careful about what he said in the meeting. Should have kept his temper. The kids looked up to him. They expected him to never show any doubt.

But he felt rotten and he couldn’t pretend anymore. He was scared too. He was scared twenty-four hours a day, and he was sick of having to spend al his time feeling tense and fearful, like a wild animal.

And now it had happened. The thing he had feared most. He was wounded. Already he could feel a twitching, scratchy heat clawing at his neck. He put his hand to the bandage. His head was swimming, like he had a bad cold.

It wasn’t the wound that had changed him, though. It was the grown-up back at the pool. The mother. He had looked into her eyes and he had recognized something.

He shook his head. He had imagined it. It couldn’t be.

Someone was shouting.

He shook his head again.

“Arran, what’s going on?” It was Cal um. He looked panicked. “Are they attacking us?”

He was surrounded by them, al these kids who depended on him. They needed him to tel them what to do. Even if he was wrong, he had to look like he was in control. His feelings didn’t matter right now.

“No,” he said, standing up. “They’ve never attacked before.”

“But you said they were changing. . . .”

“They can’t change that fast.”

He moved in through the sliding glass doors to the canteen, which was off to one side of the terrace. There was another thud from below. A scraping sound as if something was trying to get in. Would the grown-ups real y attack Waitrose?

The canteen was in the corner of the building, directly below the dome. Windows looked out onto balconies that ran the length of the two outer wal s.

From there you had a perfect view of Hol oway Road at the front and Tol ington Road at the side. Arran opened a door and went out onto the front balcony.

The sky was clouded, so no moon or stars shone down. And the streetlamps hadn’t worked in over a year. Arran could just make out figures moving below.

“Get some light!” he shouted.

“What is it?” said a voice from inside. “What’s happening out there?”

“Keep quiet.”

Monkey Boy brought him a dynamo flashlight. A bigger, more powerful version of the one he carried. It was already charged. He switched it on and moved the beam around until he saw something.

A father with a purple bloated face, his eyes weeping pus. He looked up at Arran and bared his broken teeth in a snarl.

“Grown-ups.”

“But you said—”

“It doesn’t matter what I said,” Arran snapped.

As Arran raked the beam across the ground, another figure appeared. It was a boy of about sixteen, dressed in a patchwork of colorful rags and mismatched cloth, with an old leather satchel over one shoulder.

“Let me in!”

“Don’t let him in! Don’t let him in!”

A group of grown-ups ran at the boy, and he disappeared from view. Arran desperately tried to catch him in the beam.

More kids were crowding on to the balcony, trying to see what was happening. Panicked. Shouting and screaming.

“Arran, what do we do?”

“Who is he?”

“Are they attacking us?”

“Can you see anything?”

Arran couldn’t think straight. They had fal en into a trap earlier. He wasn’t going to let it happen again. He had to make the right decision. But his head was throbbing and the noise in his ears ...

“Shut up!” he roared. “Al of you be quiet!”

There was silence.

Arran gave the flashlight to Maeve, who had pushed through the jostling kids to be at his side.

“Keep this aimed at the road,” he said.

“What are you ...?”

But Arran was already going.

He found Cal um inside the canteen.

“Get on the roof,” he said, giving orders on the move. “I need some decent light out there, throw down some burning torches. And stay up where you can see what’s happening. I need you to be my eyes!”

They could just hear a thin pitiful scream from outside.

The ragged boy.

“Please. Help me!”

“Let him in,” Maxie yel ed, running over to Arran. “He’s a kid.”

“No, no, it’s not safe!” shouted Cal um. “We don’t let anyone in. This is our place.”

“He’l be kil ed—he’s just a kid.”

A wave of sickness hit Arran. He held his head in his hands, closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He kept seeing that other face—the mother from the pool. He rubbed his temples.

“Arran . . . ?” It was Cal um, tugging at his elbow.

Arran exploded.

“I thought I told you to get up on the roof!”

“Yes, but—”

“Get up there now! I’m going out. If it gets bad, use a bomb.”

“A bomb? They’re for emergencies.”

“And what does this look like to you?”

“Okay, okay.”

Cal um turned and ran off.

“Ol ie?” Arran cal ed out. “Where’s Ol ie?”

“Here.”

“Clear the balcony and get out there with your sling— take anyone else who’s a halfway decent shot. I need covering fire.”

“Okay.”

“Achil eus?”

“Here.”

“Get a war party together—our five best fighters—and get some weapons. Maxie, I need a back-up team. Anyone else who can fight. Bernie and Ben on the doors.”

“No way, Arran,” said Ben. “You can’t open them. You don’t know how many grown-ups are on the street. If they get inside . . .”

“If I say we open them, we open them. There’s a kid out there.”

“You can’t let him in. We don’t know who he is. What if we lose more of our own?”

“Every kid in London is one of our own, Ben. Okay? Now stop questioning me.”

“Sorry.”

Arran strode across the canteen, now crowded with little kids. They moved around in a frightened pack, like a flock of chicks. As Arran and the other fighters moved through them, they hurried to get out of the way, shrieking.

“For God’s sake, somebody get this lot to the storage room!” Arran shouted. The storage room was the safest place in the supermarket, and it was where most of the kids slept.

Arran took a side staircase that came out near the main entrance.

Bernie and Ben were waiting to wind up the steel shutters.

Arran nodded to them and went over to the weapons rack. Achil eus was already there with five others, including Josh, their eyes glinting in the half-light.

There was a bang from the front of the shop. A cracking sound. Arran grabbed his club and went over to the windows. He pul ed aside a steel shelving unit that had been jammed up against them for safety. At first it was too dark to see anything through the filth and grime. He leaned forward, pressing his face against the cool glass. Suddenly he jumped back as a body flung itself at the window with a loud thud.

It was a grown-up. A father. Arran watched as he smeared his ruined face along the glass, like some grotesque child’s prank. It left a long snail’s trail of pus and snot and saliva as it continued to the side and downward before flopping to the ground. It looked dead.

The windows were made of reinforced glass, but if someone real y wanted to they could probably break their way through.

Achil eus had fol owed Arran over.

“You real y going out there, man?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Arran looked at Achil eus, but said nothing.

When he got back to the entrance, the shutters were nearly up and Maxie was speaking to Cal um on the roof through the speaking tube. Arran pushed her aside and barked into the mouthpiece.

“Have you thrown down the torches yet, Cal um?”

“Just lighting them now.”

“Can you see anything at al ?”

“Hard to make out what’s going on. There’s a whole bunch of grown-ups. Some are attacking the shop, the rest seem to be attacking a kid. He keeps getting away from them. He’s running around like a nutcase. Don’t know how much longer he can hold on.”

“How many grown-ups?”

“Can’t tel . They don’t seem very organized.”

“Is the kid armed?”

“Don’t think so. Wait, they’ve got him. He’s surrounded.”

Arran swore and ducked under the shutter into the mal .

What they cal ed the mal was little more than a covered walkway that ran down the side of the shop from the street at the front to the parking lot at the rear. Arran looked quickly in both directions. Apart from a couple of dead palm trees in pots, it was empty.

“Clear!” he yel ed, and Achil eus brought the others out behind him.

“Bernie and Ben! We need the street doors open.”

The emos came out. They weren’t fighters, they were engineers. They both looked terrified.

“Can’t you open the barricade?” said Bernie, her eyes darting about anxiously.

“No,” said Arran. “We need al the fighters ready for action. Now hurry.”

“But there’s grown-ups out there.”

“We’l kil them if we have to,” said Arran.

“Yeah, you wimps,” scoffed Josh. “They don’t scare me. I can’t wait to get out there. It’s gonna be a massacre.”

“It’s too risky,” said Bernie.

“Whoever that kid is, he’s in trouble,” said Arran.

“What if he’s one of them?” said Ben. “What if it’s a trap?”

“Then we’l kil him as wel .”

There was movement from the shop as Maxie brought her back-up squad out. They had longer defensive pikes designed to keep attackers at bay.

“You stay back here,” said Arran. “Defend the mal . If anyone gets past us, you’l need to stop them from getting inside.”

“You sure about this?”

Arran tried not to sound too angry.

“Yes,” he lied.

Then Freak appeared, looking pale-faced and wild-eyed. He was holding a short spear.