The Fear (32 page)

He leant against a wall, clutching his ruined hand, and threw up.

This was bad. Really bad. He’d lost his fingers. He was bleeding. This was so bad …

He had to keep moving, though.

He stumbled along in the road, sobbing wildly. He had to find a hiding-place. He had to choose a house. Get inside. Off the street. Tend to his wound. He swerved into a smaller side-road. Ran past darkened houses. Trying not to think about his hand. His fingers.

Oh God.

He ran up to a front door, booted it and it swung open easily.

See. He could do it.

He walked forward in the dark. He wished he had a torch, but Jester had taken the only one. They hadn’t expected to be out after dark. They should have been back at the palace hours ago. He wondered what they’d all be doing right now. Back home. Settling down to eat? Or clearing up? He had no idea what time it was. Would they be thinking about him?

Just wait till he got back and told them what Jester had done …

He stopped, and stood there, panting, blood dripping on the floor, his lungs and heart working too fast. Pain taking over.

He hated being alone.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He spun round.

‘Jester?’

He saw a figure silhouetted against the door. Too large to be a kid. Then another hand touched him. And another. Something brushed his thighs. He smelt sour breath and the sickly sweet overripe smell of strangers. He lashed out wildly with his good hand, but it was no use. He had no weapon. He was surrounded. He’d broken into a strangers’ den.

He felt breath on his face, hot and rancid. He retched and swayed, his brain melting. There was a rush of movement, teeth on his neck, fingernails raking his face. He felt a terrible pressure in his head. The teeth at his throat were suffocating him.

Oh God …

Mercifully he passed out before the teeth tore through his skin, and his pure, clean, undiseased blood exploded from the constricted arteries.

Jester hadn’t planned to climb out of the window. He really hadn’t. He hadn’t planned to leave Alfie behind. But, when he’d pulled the window up and looked down, a plan had leapt into his mind as if it had been waiting there for him all along. It presented itself, clear and cold and perfect. Alfie was holding the strangers at the door, distracting them, and it would give him time to get well away.

He’d dropped the bits and pieces he’d been collecting to barricade the door and simply climbed out. Before he really knew what he was doing he was sprinting along the alleyway as fast as he could.

Surely it was right that one of them should survive rather than both getting killed. He was a kid and hadn’t the old song always said that children were the future? They
had
to live. They had to beat the grown-ups. They had to win, whatever it took. Make it through these dark times into the light of a better future.

Better one living than two dead.

It was down to each individual to look after himself.

And anyway. Maybe Alfie would be all right. He was a tough kid. Not stupid. Maybe he’d get away just like Jester had. It was up to him. Jester wasn’t responsible for anyone other than himself. If it was anyone’s fault, it was David’s. He hadn’t given Jester enough muscle. Tom and Kate? Well, they’d scarpered, hadn’t they? Blame them.

Blame anyone other than me.

And don’t go whining to God about it. It was pretty clear that there was no God up there, no kindly old gent looking down, keeping score in a notebook. You did good, you did bad, it didn’t make any difference, did it? This one’s going to heaven, this one’s going to hell, this one’s going to Disneyland.

No. God wouldn’t have let any of this shit happen. If you were going to believe in anything, then believe in the devil. He was much more real than God. Up there causing mischief. Laughing at the chaos he’d created.

Jester stopped running. His lungs were stinging and his legs felt rubbery. There were the beginnings of a stitch in his side.

Where was he?

No bloody idea.

Not true, Jester. You do know where you are.

In hell.

As usual.

He’d got away from the strangers, though, and that was all that mattered. With luck, any others in the area would have been attracted by all the noise and disturbance back there and he’d have the streets to himself for a while.

But were there any other
kids
around?

There had to be. It didn’t make any sense otherwise. Why would strangers stay in the area if there was no food? Kids and strangers were locked in a deadly relationship. Children were the only source of fresh food, but they were also the grown-ups’ greatest predators. That’s why, in the end, the strangers would lose. Human beings wouldn’t have survived for long if sheep had fought back, would they? Or cows …

Jester smiled at this thought while he stood getting his breath back.

There had to be some kids around somewhere.

But where?

He heard movement from the buildings on one side of the road. People moving about. Kids or grown-ups? You had to be careful. He sighed and moved off, plodding along the road until he was at a safe distance. After a couple of hundred metres he looked back. It was strangers. A small group of them had come out of the building and were coming after him.

He started up again, his trainers slapping down on the hard surface of the road, his patchwork coat flying out behind him, his satchel banging against his back.

He kept glancing behind him. The strangers were struggling to keep up, but he needed to put a lot of distance between him and them before he could risk holing up somewhere for the night. He careered round a bend and yelped as he almost ran straight into a stranger waddling along the other way. They knocked each other over, and Jester swore as his backside hit the deck.

He’d blundered right into the middle of a gang of about ten diseased grown-ups. He scurried backwards away from them. He’d dropped Shadowman’s club in the collision and would need to get to it quickly. He scrambled messily to his feet, shoved a mother out of the way and managed to get hold of the club just as a big father made a grab for him. He lashed out and whacked the father, who went down. At the same moment another mother knocked into him and the club was pulled out of his grasp. He punched the mother, then a father, and thrashed his way out of the knot of bodies.

And then he was running again.

He was on a wide, open road with big shops on either side and a fenced-off island down the middle. And as he ran he noticed something else. At first he thought it must be a mirage, created by his panicking brain, offering up a false hope of safety. But he looked again.

Candlelight. Flickering in a sort of courtyard. He turned and aimed his steps towards it, vaulting over the railings in the centre of the road.

He careered into the courtyard. Candlelight could mean only one thing. Kids. There wasn’t any other explanation, was there? Unless it was a fire. But even that would help. He could use fire against the strangers.

The light was coming from inside a Morrisons supermarket. The windows were secured and barricaded, and behind the barricades was the candlelight. Civilization. He banged on the windows and shouted to be let in.

At first there was no response then a voice called down to him from the roof.

‘Get away from here. We don’t let no one in.’

‘You have to!’ Jester pleaded. ‘I’m being chased by strangers. There’s hundreds of them out here, grown-ups.’

‘That’s why we ain’t opening the doors, mate. Piss off. We don’t want you here.’

‘You can’t lock me out!’

‘Can’t we?’

‘Let me in, please …’

‘We’ll kill you if we have to.’

‘You can’t …’

Then Jester felt a sting in the side of his head and rubbed his scalp. Something had hit him – already a lump was coming up. Then another sting as something hit his shoulder. They were throwing stuff at him from the roof. Stones and bits of wood. He backed away.

‘Bastards!’ he screamed, and they swore at him.

Before they could throw anything else he retreated back out into the street, rubbing his head. More strangers had appeared. He glanced quickly in both directions, looking for any signs of light. If there was one gang of kids living around here, there might be more. He might find someone with a warmer welcome.

There!
Could it be? Yes? More lights, shining out from another supermarket further along the road. He recognized the sign – Waitrose. It was where his parents had shopped before the disaster.

He ran towards it, bowling three strangers over along the way, desperate now. If he got the same response here, he was dead. The road was filling with strangers who were pouring in from all directions. And they were thickest around Waitrose.

He forced himself to move faster, his feet hammering on the tarmac, and he slammed against the front windows of the shop, roaring for help at the top of his voice, feeling like his lungs were going to burst. His shout for help turned into a scream as a mother lunged at him, teeth bared in a snarl. He battered her away and banged again on the windows.

Then he was aware of a fresh light and he looked up. Someone was shining a torch down at him.

‘Let me in!’

He heard voices, but couldn’t tell what they were saying. Filled with a mad fury he slammed an approaching father against the glass, and then kicked another in the guts. Jabbing left and right with his elbows he backed away from the windows, all the while yelling for help. He broke free of the huddle around him and was on the move again, darting madly to avoid a larger group of grown-ups who were trying to close in on him. The torch beam zigzagged across the road, like a spotlight in a prison-escape movie.

What were they doing up there? Were they going to help him or not?

‘Please! Help me!’ he wailed, his voice thin and weedy like a baby’s. He tore himself out of the grip of a very determined father and ran back towards the shop. He couldn’t get there, though. The strangers were going berserk. Half were attacking him, half seemed to be trying to break into the shop. The father was on him again and Jester managed to hurl him at a group of grown-ups who slammed into the glass. Shouting, screaming, punching and kicking, Jester fought his way back into the open and started running. He was forced to keep switching direction or risk being penned in by the milling grown-ups, and was soon going round in circles. Exhaustion was taking hold. His body was running on its last reserves. He had used all his energy getting to the shop and shouting for help. He couldn’t believe that the kids inside were just going to watch him die out here.

And then the faces of the strangers around him were suddenly lit red and orange, like spectators at a firework display. A flaming torch was sailing through the night sky, bright against the clouds. It landed with an explosion of sparks, scattering the strangers. Jester heard kids shouting a war cry.

He clamped his hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying.

It looked like he was going to be rescued.

Maybe there was a God after all.

Shadowman was in some kind of tunnel. At one end was darkness, the other opened out into what he thought might be a large enclosed space. The four strangers from the building site hadn’t killed him. They’d brought him here and dumped him in the tunnel. He wasn’t sure exactly where here was, though, because it was too dark to see anything properly and he’d blacked out before they’d arrived. Now he was sitting propped up with his back against the wall trying to get his bearings. He wasn’t alone. There were several other kids with him. All dead except for one girl, and she was barely alive. Occasionally she groaned and moved slightly, but when Shadowman had tried to speak to her she hadn’t replied.

There were noises from the depths of the tunnel and Shadowman was aware of more than one adult wandering around, coming and going in the darkness. The ones who had brought him here were keeping close. Standing watch over him. He wasn’t sure if it was to stop him from escaping or to stop the others from grabbing him. Just what they were keeping him alive for he had no idea. He was trying not to think ahead, trying not to imagine all the things that might be done to him. For now he was alive and feeling gradually more normal. His head was clearing and he didn’t feel so sick and woozy. He was able to stay awake for much longer periods, though he still felt very tired. Even without the blow to his head he supposed he’d feel tired, though. It was the middle of the night, after all. What time was it? No idea. His watch was in his pack and his pack was gone.

His four strangers lurked silently in the gloom. Waiting for something. He had made up nicknames for them. It made them somehow less threatening. The one with the earpiece he had named Bluetooth. The one in the football shirt was Man U. The half-naked father with the missing limb was the One-Armed Bandit. The fourth member of their group was a rather ordinary-looking father. If you could describe someone as ordinary when their skin was blistered and peeling off, and their hair was falling out. It was just that compared to the other three he had no obvious distinguishing features.

The thing about strangers, grown-ups, mothers and fathers – call them whatever you liked – was they all looked the same after a while. Diseased.

These four seemed quite patient. They squatted down, leaning against the far wall, now and then standing up and going over to peer out of the end of the tunnel. And whenever another stranger came close they all jumped up and went into aggressive mode. Guarding their territory, their trophies.

Otherwise they seemed happy to wait.

Shadowman was happy to wait too, because with every passing second he grew stronger. When the time came to fight and hopefully run, he was determined to be ready.

There was a hiss and snarl from the tunnel mouth and he turned to see what had made the sound – his eyes straining to make out the shapes in the dim light. There seemed to be a father standing there, a black shape against the paler grey of the outside world. He was squat with a massive head and appeared to be wearing baggy shorts. He made a noise that sounded like he was clearing his throat and the four strangers seemed to understand what he wanted. Two of them, Bluetooth and the Bandit, took hold of one of the dead kids by the ankles and dragged him outside. Man U and Mr Ordinary then took hold of the girl who was still alive and pulled her out by her feet in the same way. She moaned and whimpered but didn’t struggle. Then Bluetooth and the Bandit were back and taking hold of Shadowman. He decided not to fight, either. He needed to know where he was and what was going on before he could make any kind of escape plan.