The Fallen (31 page)

‘We wrote it there to try and warn off anybody who might want to come and get hold of what we had here,’ said Seamus. ‘It worked for a long time. Until the monsters came.’

‘But grown-ups can’t read any more,’ said Ollie. ‘Normal grown-ups. The only people who could read it would be kids. Why warn off kids?’

‘Do you know everything that’s going on in the world? Huh? Do you, Mister Clever-sticks? Do you know every threat? Every twist in the tale? You never knew there were any like us, did you? No. Now get the bloody keys and open up. We’re hungry and thirsty and knackered and we want to smash those stinking monsters to pieces for what they done to us.’

‘Why can’t we check them out before we go hammering in there?’ Blue asked and the man responded with a harsh bark of laughter.

‘Would you try and chat to a shark if you fell in his tank?’

‘No, but …’

‘You can’t talk to them, sunshine. You can’t argue with them or reason with them. They’re stone-cold killers. They don’t ask questions first. They’re clever. An animal kind of cleverness. If you hesitate for just one moment they’ll be on you and you’ll either be dead or in one of their cages. You got to go in quick before they even know you’re there. You understand?’

‘The quote on the door?’ Ollie asked. ‘Where’s it from?’

‘No more questions.’

‘Where’s it from?’

‘Yeah,’ said Achilleus, ‘where’d you get the old six-six-six bollocks from?’

Once more Blue heard Ollie curse.

‘The holy sodding bible,’ said Seamus. ‘Where d’you think? Any more questions?’

Blue had had enough. Enough talk. Enough brain strain trying to work out if these goons could be trusted. All he wanted was to get away from here and back to Maxie. And the quickest way he could see of doing that was going straight through the cage. Straight through the four fathers if necessary. The kids outnumbered them, so unless they had some traps in there, or some friends hidden, they could be taken down. Harder than normal grown-ups, true, but Blue’s squad knew what they were about. One wrong move and he would bang Seamus out.

He’d make sure he was first through the door as well, in case of any surprises. That was his job. His responsibility. Get Achilleus to back him up. God, he missed having Big Mick here; he was a useful hulk to have at your side in a bundle. Blue felt naked and unprotected without him.

He walked over and scooped the keys off the hook. Walked back to the cage with them jangling at his side. Had a quiet word with Achilleus, who nodded that he was cool with Blue’s plan.

It took Blue a couple of goes to find the right key for the lock, and the others watched him in tense silence as he fiddled with them. There was a loud
clunk
as the lock turned.

He swung the door open, caught Achilleus’ eye and stepped into the cage.

54

Blue looked at one of the other three fathers, who was still sitting on the floor, tapping his butcher’s knife on the concrete.

‘Easy.’ Blue jerked his chin in greeting. The father just stared back at him with a cold expression on his face and then stood up. Blue tensed, ready for the worst, but the cage was filling with kids, who fell in around him, and the father did nothing more than just stand there giving him the dead-eye.

‘See,’ said Seamus. ‘We don’t bite. Now get the gate unlocked.’

The roll-down gate was about ten metres wide, made of jointed strips of metal. There was a chain system by the side of it connected to clutches and gears to move it up and down. The only lock Blue could find was by a crank handle. He selected the one key that looked big enough to fit and slotted it in. It freed the handle, which he began to turn. There was a loud rattling, ratcheting sound as the various gears turned and the chains moved. Slowly the door began to rise.

‘Wait!’ Seamus shouted. He was licking his lips, his eye glittering, turning his spear shaft in his hands, like a dog straining on a lead. Blue stopped winding and waited.

‘You got to be ready,’ Seamus said, his voice thick with fear and aggression. ‘If you even open that thing a little way they can get under. We have to be ready. Anything that moves – stab it.’

‘Do you want me to open it or not?’ Blue asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, in a minute,’ said Seamus and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. ‘When I say so try to get the door up quickly and as soon as the gap’s wide enough we all go through in a rush. But ready, yeah? Ready to kill? I know you lot can kill or you wouldn’t have survived as long as you have.’

Yeah
, thought Blue,
we can kill, but the reason we’ve lived so long is we’re careful.
This was all tipping out of his control. It was in situations like this that people got hurt.

He grabbed Einstein.

‘Take over here,’ he said. ‘When I say, turn it as hard and as fast as you can. Don’t stop till we’re all through.’

‘OK. OK.’ Einstein was still excited, shaking and jittery.

Blue marched to the centre of the door. A dull orange light showed under it where it had opened a crack. He could hear something echoing and distant. It sounded almost like music. He gripped his own spear tight. Realized he was scared. Out of his depth.

Monsters, Seamus had said. Could they be worse than a bunch of diseased adults? If only he knew what to expect. He hated Einstein for bringing him here. Hated Seamus for putting him in this situation. Hated himself for not knowing what to do.

‘How many of them are there?’

‘Not sure,’ said Seamus. ‘Ten at least.’

‘Ten? Is that all?’

‘You don’t know them, Rambo. Don’t know how
dangerous they are. They’re not human, remember, they’re freaks, they’re deadly. We go in hard and fast and kill anything that moves. Don’t give them a chance.’

Blue looked at one of the other fathers. He didn’t speak, but bared his teeth in a doglike grin. Licked his lips.

‘Wind her up!’ Blue shouted, and he took up a defensive stance, ready for anything that might come under the door. What if it was a snake thing? Like Jackson had seen. How fast did they move?

He looked along the line. There was Seamus and his three friends, then Achilleus with Jackson, Ollie staying back in the second rank with his missile crew, Ebenezer looking like he was praying. Emily was over with Einstein. Good. They were out of the way there.

God, but the door was taking an eternity to go up. It was agonizingly slow, and
loud
. Any monsters on the other side would know they were coming for sure. Blue kept his eyes on the widening gap, looking for any signs of movement – shifting shadows, dark, skittering things … A drop of sweat dropped from his chin and hit the floor with a soft
pat
.

Then he mouthed the word ‘Maxie’ and Seamus was ducking under the door, yelling at the others to follow.

Blue had no choice now. He too shouted, a meaningless yell of battle fury, and rolled in after Seamus, aware of bodies coming with him.

The place was too big to take in in one go. A huge warehouse filled with white cardboard boxes, skylights in the roof letting in some light. Lamps and candles dotted about, giving off the orange glow. Far off that sound, a beat, definitely music.

But no movement.

No sign of any monsters. No sign of anything living. Nothing to fear.

No.
There
. Behind some boxes. A white face. Watching. Black eyes. And then it was gone. Too quick to see if it was human. And then another. Higher up. Peering down at them. Perhaps a reptile, with wide-set eyes, fishlike. But twisted. Unbalanced.

What were they?

He was looking around frantically now. Trying to spot if there were any more of them. Ten, Seamus had said, but he hadn’t been sure.

‘There’s one!’ It was Seamus who had shouted. He was striding down towards a corner where two aisles met. The kids went with him, but holding back, letting him take the lead.

When they reached the corner they saw what he’d been following. It was scurrying away from them, but none of them could have said what it was. Human. Animal. Insect …

It moved surprisingly fast for such a weirdly shaped creature. Pulling itself along by its arms, which were long and spiderlike, the elbows pushed forward, the backs of its hands flat on the floor, palms upwards, long, thin fingers waving in the air, so that it was ‘walking’ on the bones at the back of its wrists. Its body was fat and bloated, its belly scraping along the concrete with a dry rustling sound, and there were two tiny shrivelled legs dragging along behind. The vertebrae that ran down its back stuck out like the plates along the back of a dinosaur. It was hairless, and on the sides of its neck were two big bulges, like inflated air sacs.

‘Got the bastard!’ Seamus yelled, raising his spear.

Now Blue saw that the thing was wearing some sort of clothing around its waist, a skirt or a kilt, made of leather. He felt as if he was in a strange dream, trying, and failing, to make sense of what he was seeing.

Then several things happened at once. When it heard Seamus’s shout the creature stopped and turned, just as Blue caught sight, on the edge of his vision, of another one, hiding in the shadows. A female. Impossibly thin with a head like a ball, very big eyes and a tiny mouth. Her head was so large and her body so stretched and skinny she looked like a matchstick drawing, a child’s picture of a person.

Seamus twisted, one arm forward, the other pulled back ready to throw his spear.

Blue saw the first creature’s frightened face.

It was the face of a fourteen-year-old boy.

Ollie leapt forward.

‘No!’ he shouted.

He grabbed hold of Seamus’s spear. Seamus was so surprised he let go of it, and whipped round, off balance, snarling in fury, to see who had ruined his attack, and then, before Blue could stop him, or even take on-board what was happening, Ollie rammed the point of the spear into Seamus’s good eye.

55

Maxie was standing stock-still, mouth hanging open. The massive room was stuffed with huge statues, bits of buildings, tombs, gigantic columns reaching many metres up towards the roof … It was like being inside the ogre’s castle in
Jack and the Beanstalk
or something. Everything was way too big, crammed together like it had been looted from the treasure houses and palaces of kings.

‘What are they?’ she said.

‘They’re all, like, plaster casts of amazing things from around the world,’ said Brooke. ‘These columns are from Rome. They’re, like, thousands of years old, I think.’

They were in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was right next door to the Natural History Museum across a side road. In the centre of the museum was a large courtyard that the local kids were using as an area to grow food. Some of them had been busy working away as Maxie and the others had come in off the street. But Brooke had hurried past them and on through to here, her favourite part of the museum, the cast court.

‘Isn’t it cool?’ she said, flinging her arms wide and spinning on the spot like a little girl. ‘This is all just here, and we can come and muck about whenever we want. This is all ours now!’

‘Boring,’ said Lewis. ‘Is just old shit.’

‘No,’ said Maxie. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She didn’t say anything more, didn’t want the others to tease her, but what she thought was that people were extraordinary creatures. To build a place like this, and fill it with these amazing objects. To
make
those objects. The work that had gone into it. She fought back tears. Was this the end of civilization? Would humankind ever be able to make anything as awesome as this again? How many centuries would it take before they could relearn these skills? For now they’d have to live in the ruins of the old world, build mud huts when everything else crumbled and fell down, use burning wood to heat themselves, dress in the cast-offs of the dead, stare in wonder at stuff like this.

In a way the whole world had become a museum.

Too much to take in.

‘Come on,’ said Lewis. ‘This is stale. I thought we was going shopping.’

‘Yeah,’ said Brooke, ‘better push on before it gets dark.’

And the spell was broken.

‘I’m telling you I don’t need any new clothes,’ Maxie protested for what felt like the hundredth time. ‘I’m fine. I picked up this leather jacket just the other day. It’s all I need.’