The Fallen (7 page)

‘Don’t be stupid. I’ve always known it, snot-for-brains. I know everything about you. We’re the same, you and me. We’re predators.’

‘What do you want?’

The creature tilted its head, studying Paul. It laughed, the sound splashing inside Paul’s head.

‘Surely the question is
What do
you
want?
, my darling.’

‘I don’t know what I want. Leave me alone.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You want to clean this museum, Paul. Get rid of the filthy kids. Now that you have a proper knife it’ll be easier. Isn’t that why you took it? Isn’t it, you pussy maggot?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You have to do it, Paul.’

‘Yes.’

The bony thing was right in front of him now, the size of a dog. It reminded Paul of photographs he’d seen after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, of rescued pelicans covered in black slime.

‘I’m trying,’ he said. ‘I let the sickos out.’

‘You have to try harder, you useless little tit. How many of the bloody kids do you think will be alive in the morning? Will the sickos get them all, or will they fight back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘
I don’t know …
You don’t know anything, do you? When it’s light you need to go and take a look, finish off any of the brats who are wounded.’

‘Yes. Yes, I will.’

‘You can’t go to the palace until your work here is done. You understand me? You have to make sure that all the kids are gone. Then the museum will go back to what it was meant to be – a place for dead things, like me … seventy million of them. And when you have finished there will be more. More dead things. You can lay the kids out on display. The dead kids. Your collection.’

‘Yes …’

Paul swallowed. The bony thing, Boney-M, was almost upon him. He could smell it. It stank of death and decay. He fought off the urge to be sick. Closed his eyes as the obscene thing came right up to his face, probing with its tongue. He could feel its breath, on his mouth, his neck. Hear the creaking of its leathery joints. He flailed out with his free hand to push it away, but he felt only empty air.

His eyes snapped open.

It was gone.

He scurried over to where he had first seen it below the window, trying to find it. But there was nothing there except the half-decayed body of a dead pigeon.

He could hear Boney-M’s voice in his head, though. Laughing …

9

‘The ones in here are for laying eggs and the ones in the pen over there are for breeding. We always need more chickens.’

True to his word, Wiki was showing the new arrivals around. Ella, Monkey-Boy and Blu-Tack Bill were squatting down next to one of the chicken runs that had been built in a big central courtyard. The courtyard had once been used as a car park by museum staff. There were still a couple of cars parked there, and over on the far side was a big Tesco delivery lorry with flat tyres.

Godzilla was overexcited, crouching down, jumping up, bounding around in circles, barking like mad at the chickens and the children.

‘They’re all outside at the moment,’ Wiki explained, ‘because it’s feeding time. They know when I come they’ll get fed.’

‘How many are there in there?’ Ella asked, and before Wiki could reply Bill held up some stringy bits of Blu-tack he’d formed into numbers.

47.

Wiki looked at him. Confused.

‘How did you know that?’

Bill said nothing, stared at his shoes and balled the Blu-tack up.

‘He’s a fast counter,’ said Monkey-Boy.

‘I can never count them,’ said Wiki. ‘They move around too much. Maybe you could be our official chicken counter, Bill!’

Bill carried on staring at his shoes. He didn’t like the chickens. They were dirty and scruffy and disorganized. Feathers everywhere. And it hurt his brain the way they wouldn’t keep still. Plastic dinosaurs you could put in a line and they wouldn’t move. He’d had a box of them in his room at home. They were clean and smooth and every one of them was a different colour.

‘Did you know that chickens are dinosaurs?’ said Wiki.

Bill frowned. That couldn’t be right.

‘You’re joking,’ said Ella.

‘No,’ said Wiki. ‘It’s true. They reckon the dinosaurs didn’t exactly die out, they evolved into birds. So, in a way, a chicken is a dinosaur.’

Bill frantically shaped his Blu-tack into a nice neat circle. He didn’t want to think that those great prehistoric monsters had ended up as chickens. That wasn’t fair.

Another kid came over to join them. He’d been talking to some older boys who were clustered round the lorry.

‘What you doing?’ he asked.

‘Just showing them the chickens,’ said Wiki, and he introduced everyone.

‘This is Arthur,’ he explained to them, ‘but everyone just calls him Jibber-jabber. He’s kind of like the opposite to you, Bill. You haven’t said a word, but Jibber never stops gibbering.’

‘That’s not true actually,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘I stop to eat.’

‘Not always.’

‘And anyway what’s wrong with talking?’ Jibber-jabber went on. ‘It’s what separates man from the animals, we’re not like these chickens, they just cluck, yeah? Which is why we can take their eggs, you see that movie,
Chicken Run
, where the chickens gang up together and escape from the farm? I don’t know, I think they were going to be made into this, like, super pie, or something, and they get together and make an escape plan like prisoners of war, and they all fly out of there, well, you see, that would never happen in real life, because chickens can’t talk to each other, they just cluck, like I said, and without being able to talk you can’t get organized, see this place, this museum? It would never have been built by chickens, the only way it could ever get done was by people talking to each other, I don’t know exactly, but, you know, like, the architect and the builders and the labourers, the people who made the bricks and the scaffolders, that’s why we’ll beat the adults in the end, because they’ve lost the power to communicate with each other.’

‘Will we?’ said Ella. ‘Beat them, I mean. Will we really?’

‘Of course we will,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘They’re just dumb animals, like big stupid chickens.’ And he strutted around, impersonating a chicken, which made Ella laugh.

‘So they’re dinosaurs?’ said Monkey-Boy. ‘That’s pretty scary, like in
Jurassic Park
.’

‘They’re not chickens and they’re not dinosaurs,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘They’re just sick, sickos, crazies, zomboids …’

‘See what I mean?’ Wiki interrupted before Jibber-jabber went off on another one. ‘He never stops.’

‘Well, you like to talk as well, Wiki,’ Jibber-jabber protested.

‘I talk sense,’ said Wiki.

‘Why do they call you Wiki?’ asked Monkey-Boy.

‘Cos he’s like Wikipedia,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘Ask him anything and he knows the answer, or thinks he does, it’s quite annoying sometimes.’

‘The difference between you and me,’ said Wiki, ‘is that I only speak when I’m sure I know something. You do all your thinking out loud.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘So anyway,’ said Wiki, turning to Ella, ‘what are you lot good at? I know about him, old Blu-Tack Bill, he’s good at counting.’

‘Counting?’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘Oh yeah, I can see how that’s going to be a
really
useful skill! I hope the rest of you can offer a little more.’ He looked at Ella. ‘What about you? What are you good at?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ella. ‘Nothing really.’

‘That can’t be true,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘You’ve lived more than a year since it all went opera-shaped, so you must have some skills, otherwise you’d be like most other kids, pushing up the daisies, knocking on heaven’s door, sicko food …’

‘No. I’m not really good at anything,’ said Ella and she started to cry. She walked away from the group and stood at the end of the chicken run with her back to them.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Wiki.

‘Her little brother got killed the other day,’ said Monkey-Boy. ‘Some grown-ups took him away in a sack.’

‘Harsh,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘Didn’t mean to upset her.’

‘I was going to say
staying alive
,’ said Monkey-Boy.

‘What do you mean?’ Wiki asked.

‘I was going to say that we were good at staying alive,’ Monkey-Boy explained. ‘But in the last few days quite a lot of us have got killed.’

‘Some of our lot died last night as well,’ said Wiki. ‘Me and Jibber nearly did too; we were stuck in the library and some sickos got in. Best not to think about it really, so thanks, Jibber-jabber, for going on about being killed and eaten.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jibber-jabber, sounding more angry than sorry. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘You see?’ said Wiki. ‘You talk and talk, but you don’t think.’

Bill was concentrating on his Blu-tack. His mind was spinning, full of mixed-up dinosaurs and chickens and grown-ups. He hated it when people were sad, or angry, like Ella and Jibber-jabber. That’s why he liked fossils. They were only ever one thing, one way. Stone.

He had moulded himself a chicken. A bald chicken. Smooth. It helped a little, made the chickens in the pen less frightening. He squashed it before any of the others saw it, though. He didn’t want them saying how good it was and could they have a go at making something.

It wasn’t a toy.

Sometimes he wanted to be completely alone, so he walked away from the others and got into one of the parked cars. Sat there, comforted by the dashboard, the gear lever, the steering wheel … Wished his own body was like a car and he could sit at the controls in his head.

He closed his eyes.

Everything was all right.

Wasn’t it?

10

Justin and Jackson were looking in the back of the supermarket lorry with Boggle.

‘No sicko could have unlocked it,’ said Boggle, examining the padlock, which hadn’t been forced. It was quite obvious that someone had used a key. ‘It’s definitely sabotage. No doubt about it, man. Someone’s gone round letting all the sickos out, and letting them all in, if you take my meaning.’

‘You know what I think?’ said Justin.

‘What?’

‘I think David’s behind it.’

‘David?’ Boggle looked amazed. ‘How? He’s all the way over at Buckingham Palace.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Justin. ‘But it’s the sort of thing he’d do. Ever since that kid DogNut turned up the other day things have been weird.’

‘You know he got killed?’ said Jackson.

‘What?’ Now it was Justin’s turn to look amazed.

‘Brooke told me,’ Jackson went on. ‘After we were ambushed at Green Park I got back safely with Robbie and Ethan, but I had to leave DogNut, Courtney and Brooke behind. Brooke was the only one made it. She’s been at Buckingham Palace apparently. She was quite
badly hurt. It’s where she met the others. These Holloway kids.’

‘At the palace?’

‘Yeah.’

Justin gave Boggle a ‘told you so’ look and fell silent.

‘So what do we do about it then?’ said Boggle once it was clear that Justin wasn’t going to say anything else. ‘If we
do
have a saboteur?’

‘What
can
we do?’ said Justin. ‘Keep an eye on everyone. Listen to what they’re saying, see if anyone’s acting any different.’

‘Why would anyone do it, though?’ said Jackson, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Why would anyone want to hurt the rest of us? It’s crazy, you calmly talking about a
saboteur
. It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Crazy is right,’ said Boggle.

‘Who’s missing exactly?’ said Justin.

‘You mean missing or dead?’ said Jackson.

‘I mean both,’ said Justin.

‘Five,’ said Jackson. ‘Two missing, three dead. Would have probably been a lot more if Brooke hadn’t shown up with the new kids. I can’t believe that somebody here just, basically, killed five of us.’

‘Who’s dead?’ said Justin, trying to ignore Jackson.

‘That we know of for sure?’ said Jackson, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘So far we’ve found the bodies of Jason Hickley, Emma Hudson and James Stornay.’

‘We’re going to take them up to Hyde Park and burn them,’ said Boggle. ‘If we bury ’em they’ll just be dug up.’