The Fallen (53 page)

No. Winter had nothing going for it.

She closed her eyes, felt the sun on her face. Her forehead ached beneath the bandage. She knew that sunlight was supposed to help you to heal, but she wasn’t ready to show her scar to the world just yet. It was a mess under there, black and yellow and scabby, her skin all pulled and twisted out of shape.

How had it happened that she’d gone from being the golden girl to this? Miss Predator-face …

How had any of it happened?
So fast. The world had turned and it had flipped into chaos.

She hated it when the darkness crept into her mind like this. She knew she should try to concentrate on the positive. And some good things had happened lately. She’d found Maxie and Blue and the others. They were good news. That wouldn’t have happened without DogNut. The kids that had died recently had at least been replaced by new ones.

Good fighters.

Though not good enough to save the kids that had been attacked in the church …

Stop it.

She heard voices. Arguing. Down by the fence where the little gatehouse was. Where there were always at least two kids on duty.

Sounded like somebody was trying to get in.

Brooke opened her eyes. Squinted over, trying to see what was going on. No good. The gatehouse was in the way. She got up and stretched. Rubbed her aching behind. The stone steps were pretty cold, despite the sun on them. She walked on stiff legs down towards the gates.

There were four boys standing on the other side of the fence. Older ones. They weren’t from around here. She didn’t recognize them. Or did she …?

The boy in the middle …

As she got closer, Brooke felt her throat tighten.

It couldn’t be
. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be
him
. She must be imagining it. She walked closer still. The boy turned to look at her. There was no flash of recognition from him.

But there was no doubt now because, as he’d turned, he’d shown the other side of his face. The ruined side.

‘Ed …?’

He frowned at her now.

‘Ed? Is it really you?’

He was still frowning, not recognizing her. Had she really changed that much? He was
still
Ed. Taller, bigger, older, thinner … but Ed all right.

‘It’s me,’ she said, trying not to let her voice go pathetic. ‘Brooke …’

His face opened up into a smile.

‘Jesus, Brooke … what happened to you?’

‘Shit happened to me.’

He looked her up and down. It was true she’d changed a lot, let the bleach grow out of her hair, cut it short, got rid of her tacky clothes and taken this old dress from the V&A … and the bandage.

Of course. The bandage. No wonder he hadn’t recognized her.

‘Open the gates,’ she said to the two sentries. ‘They’re OK.’

The boys unlocked the gates and let Ed and his three friends in.

‘This is Kyle, Will and Macca,’ Ed said, and Brooke hugged him, crushing him against her chest.

‘Bloody hell, Ed,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Me neither.’ Ed gently touched her back. ‘You weren’t who we were expecting to find here at all.’

Brooke pulled away from him and put her fingers to his scar, traced the line of it. It was both worse and better than she remembered it. Worse because in her imagination she had made it smaller and made him more handsome, and better because now it really didn’t matter to her.

She could see him looking at her bandage. She had a million questions, and she was sure he did too, but for the moment neither of them could say anything. Ed’s three friends were introducing themselves to the sentries and
they
were at least talking.

Brooke took Ed’s hand and led him away from them. She kissed him lightly on the lips. He was awkward, stiff and embarrassed.

‘I’ve missed you so much, Ed,’ she said. Ed shrugged. Didn’t know where to look.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘It’s been a long time.’

Brooke wondered what she could do to get him to relax. When they’d been split up during the big fire things hadn’t been too good between them.

Because of his scar.

How disgusted she’d been by it.

Well, a lot had happened since then.

Without saying anything she unwound the bandage from her head. It was like she was undressing in front of him. As she removed it, she saw a look come into his eyes, the same look she must have given him when he was first wounded.

‘That looks recent,’ he said, and she nodded. ‘The pain goes away eventually,’ he added. ‘Most of the time.’

Brooke began to cry. Started fumbling to put the bandage back on. Ed helped her. He seemed happier to be doing something. It was a distraction. She’d come on too strongly. Should have taken her time. He must be freaked out by all this.

‘What are you doing here anyway, Ed?’ she asked. ‘Who were you looking for? Who were you expecting to find?’

She knew the answer. It was going to be DogNut. But she didn’t know how she was going to tell him the bad news.

‘We’ve got some other kids with us,’ Ed explained. ‘But they’ve stayed back where it’s safe until we’ve checked everything out.’

‘What kids?’

‘We were helping them, well, helping one of them, to find his sister.’

‘And you think she might be here? What’s her name?’

‘Ella.’

Brooke put a hand to her mouth, shook her head slowly.

‘Not Sam,’ she said. ‘Please say it’s not Sam.’

‘Yeah, it’s Sam. Why? Do you know Ella? Is she here then?’

‘She
was
here. If you’d only come a day earlier. She left this morning.’

Ed looked confused, trying to take this all in.

‘What do you mean, she left?’ he asked.

One of Ed’s friends came over, the one he’d introduced as Kyle, a big lump of a kid with a bony head and big ears.

‘Come on, boss,’ he said. ‘You can get loved up later. Let’s get inside, yeah?’

‘In a minute,’ Ed snapped, and Kyle raised his eyebrows, surprised at Ed’s anger. ‘Can’t you see I’m talking here?’

‘Yeah, sorry, boss.’ Kyle backed away and returned to the gatehouse.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Ed, his voice shaking. ‘Where’s she gone?’

Brooke told him. How Maeve had taken Ella and the others and headed for the countryside. Ed became more and more agitated the more he heard, looking off down the road as if he might see them.

‘I need to go after them,’ he said, gabbling, his mind racing. ‘Sam’s not going to take this. If you knew what he’s been through. We need to get supplies. And I’ll need to go back and tell Sam. Jesus, how long ago was this? What sort of start did they get? If we hurry …’

‘Ed … Ed …’ Brooke put her hand on his arm. ‘Slow down. You can’t just go charging off. You’ll never catch them. They’ve been gone ages. You’ll need to properly plan …’

Ed sagged, deflated, like someone had just punched him in the gut. For a moment he looked like a little boy, a very tired and miserable little boy. Broken. Then he shook it off. Sighed. Straightened up. Forced all emotion out of his twisted face.

‘Story of my life,’ he said flatly. ‘I should have known this was never going to end.’

Brooke hugged him. Wanted to make it right for him.
And in that instant it struck her quite forcefully that she loved him.

But she had to tell him the worst.

‘I’ve got more bad news, Ed,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

She felt him tense.

‘DogNut,’ she said.

‘DogNut?’ Ed’s voice was flat. ‘He was here?’

‘I thought that’s who you were looking for, to be honest.’

‘He found you then?’

‘Yeah.’ Brooke wondered how to tell him. In the end she knew there was only one way. ‘He’s dead,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, Ed.’

Ed’s body began to shake. He sagged and buried his face in her shoulder.

‘Him and Courtney,’ said Brooke, stroking his back. ‘They were trying to get back to the Tower. I was going with them. We were ambushed. It was during the day. We never expected it. They killed DogNut and Courtney. They did this to my face. Ella and Sam’s friends rescued me. It’s a long, long story, Ed, but I guess I’m going to have to tell you all of it.’

‘Not now,’ said Ed. ‘I’ve had enough for now.’

They stood there like that, arms round each other, Ed’s friends looking on awkwardly, and the darkness of their world seemed to settle all around them.

Finally Ed spoke.

‘What am I going to tell Sam …?’

94

Maeve, Robbie, Ella and Monkey-Boy were in high spirits. They could not believe their luck. The car was running smoothly and they hadn’t seen a single grown-up all morning.

It had taken them ages to get on to the M4. First they’d had to skirt all round the museum so that nobody saw or heard the car. Then, from what Blue had told them, they knew they couldn’t actually join the motorway until after the roundabout where the bridge had collapsed. So Robbie had picked a route that kept close by. The only problem was that so many of the streets were blocked. There were buildings tumbled over by fire; there were fallen lamp posts and wrecked vehicles. Twice they’d got lost and ended up back where they started, but eventually they’d found their way on to the motorway out near Brentford.

Robbie wasn’t the best driver in the world. The car was an automatic so he didn’t have to worry about gears, but he still kept getting muddled between the brake and the accelerator, and they would jerk and lurch about in the road. The last thing he wanted was to crash their precious car so he went painfully slowly, and once they’d hit the motorway he hardly sped up at all. He was like an old man
out for a Sunday drive. They crawled along, Robbie hunched over the steering wheel and squinting through the grubby windscreen. They’d cleaned it as best they could, but the washer was empty.

Ella kept leaning forward to check their speed and she’d never seen the dial show anything faster than ten miles an hour. It wasn’t a difficult calculation. They’d started with enough petrol for fifty miles. That’s what the display had said once they’d got going. Fifty miles at ten miles an hour would take them five hours, and that was without all the mucking about getting on to the motorway.

‘We’ll use less petrol if we go slow,’ Robbie had explained when Ella questioned him about it.

Ella had been very nervous at first, as they’d nosed round the backstreets, trying a road, giving up, turning back, almost getting stuck. She’d been worried that at any moment they’d be attacked by grown-ups, but as the day had gone on and they hadn’t seen any, not one, she’d relaxed. The others relaxed too. She’d watched Maeve and Robbie. How Maeve had started out with her shoulders up by her ears and her head tight on her neck, and slowly she’d loosened up. Like she was melting.

Robbie too. He’d hissed and groaned at first, his bad leg hurting him. Now, though, he seemed comfortable. And every so often he would touch Maeve’s leg and she would smile at him.

He had a thing for Maeve. It was so obvious it was funny. Ella noticed these things. She hoped they weren’t going to get all gooey and cut her and Monkey-Boy out. She didn’t like it when people got girlfriends or boyfriends. They changed.

Seeing the two of them relax made her feel a whole lot
better, though. Maybe they were going to make it. Maybe they really
were
going to escape.

Ella looked out of the window as trees and buildings slipped past. It was over a year since she’d been in a car. She’d forgotten what it was like. She remembered long drives with her mum and dad and Sam, listening to a story CD. Harry Potter or Alex Rider … Jacqueline Wilson if she could get her way.

As they moved further along the motorway, it seemed that the whole world was empty. They passed the signs to Heathrow Airport and Maeve said how amazed she was that Blue and the others had walked this far.

Yeah
, thought Ella,
they were probably walking faster than Robbie was driving
.

And then they passed under the M25 and Maeve cheered.

‘What’s the M25?’ Monkey-Boy asked, seeing that it was important to Maeve.

‘It’s a motorway that goes all the way round London,’ Maeve explained. ‘A huge ring road. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the boundary, where London stops and the rest of the world begins.’

Despite what Maeve said it wasn’t proper countryside yet. There were still buildings here and there, but you could go further and further now without seeing any, and there were fields and woods and lakes.

‘Are we there already?’ said Monkey-Boy, staring out of the window on his side. ‘Is this the countryside?’

‘Kind of,’ said Maeve, and she turned round to ruffle his hair.

‘I’m getting car sick.’

‘Yeah?’ Maeve laughed. ‘Well, if that’s all we’ve got to worry about we’re going to be OK.’

‘We’re gonna have to stop soon,’ said Robbie. ‘The petrol’s saying we’re nearly empty. Maybe we should find somewhere to camp down while it’s still light.’

‘It’ll be hours before it gets dark,’ said Maeve.

‘Yeah. But we’ll have run out of fuel long before then. I don’t fancy sleeping in the car. We need to find somewhere safe while we can still drive and then figure out what we do next.’