The Fallen (8 page)

‘So who’s missing then?’

‘Paul Channing and Stacey Norman.’

‘Five in one night,’ said Justin, clenching and
unclenching his fists over and over again. ‘That’s really not good.’

‘None of this is good,’ said Jackson. ‘But it’s not your fault, Justin.’

‘It could have been a whole lot worse,’ said Boggle.

‘I know.’ Justin was still clenching his fists. ‘But it was bad timing, with Robbie out of action.’

‘Bad timing or good timing?’ said Jackson. ‘Those new kids turning up made all the difference.’

‘Don’t you think perhaps it was a bit
too
lucky?’ said Justin.

‘What was?’

‘Those kids arriving last night, just after the sickos got through. Saving us. Being heroes. They’ve come straight here from the palace and we’ve welcomed them in …’

‘Come off it, Justin,’ said Boggle. ‘Now you’re being paranoid. Just because they were at the palace …’

‘Am I?’ Justin interrupted. ‘We can’t trust them. We have to be very careful. First DogNut, and now this new lot, who we know nothing about …’

‘Well, if DogNut
was
some kind of spy for David,’ said Jackson, fighting the rising passion in her voice, ‘you don’t have to worry about him any more, do you? Unless you think his dying was some sort of clever plan.’

‘I’m sorry, Jackson …’

‘He saved my life,’ said Jackson. ‘Me and Robbie and Ethan. He held the sickos back so that we could get away. I’ve never run from a fight in my life, but I had to save Robbie. So don’t you ever say anything about DogNut ever again. OK?’

‘OK. OK. As I say, I’m sorry.’

‘You better be.’

11

Achilleus was only just waking up. He’d slept long and deep, untroubled by dreams, but as soon as he woke his body told him it wasn’t happy. He felt like he’d been run over by a steamroller. He ached everywhere, his stiff muscles solid and creaky. The fight at the palace had taken more out of him than he’d realized at the time. His ear was the worst. Just John had cut it half off with his evil three-bladed spear, and that girl at the palace, Rose, the nurse, had clumsily stitched it back on. Now it burned and throbbed so intensely it made him feel sick.

He needed some heavy-duty painkillers, and he needed them fast. The bed was warm and soft, though. He could lie here forever. Wait for the pain to flow away. Maybe if he could go back to sleep …

‘Hi there, how’s it going?’ Achilleus couldn’t turn his head. His neck had seized up. He didn’t recognize the voice. A girl’s voice.

‘Been better.’

‘They thought it was best to let you kip.’

‘They thought right.’

‘Hurts, huh?’ The girl leant over him, far enough for him to see who it was. A bandage covered half her head. What he could see of her face was bruised and swollen.

‘You’re the girl we rescued from the park, right?’

‘Yeah. My name’s Brooke.’

‘Yo, Brooke. I’m Achilleus.’

‘I know. Everyone knows. You made enough noise about it last night.’

‘True that.’ Achilleus sniggered.

‘You like bigging yourself up?’

‘Wasn’t no bigging up. Just telling it like it is, yeah.’

‘Well, Mister Big, you and me have got something in common.’

‘Yeah? And what’s that?’

‘We both got pretty slapped about. Man, we are
flattened
. In my case it was sickos, but I hear you was swinging with another kid.’

‘Yeah, the wiry tosser cut me up with his spear and put a few, like, dents in my skull with his shield.’

‘I bet it hurts.’

‘Like a bastard.’

‘Me too.’ Brooke sat on the edge of Achilleus’ bed.

‘Got bitten?’ Achilleus asked.

‘Nope. This one grimy mother had a knife.’

‘She was carrying?’

‘Yeah.’

Achilleus sucked his teeth noisily.

‘Ain’t heard of that before. If them zombies get tooled up, life is gonna get a whole lot harder.’

He looked at Brooke. Her eyes were black and blue. The rest of her face had a yellowish tint. There were spots of dark blood on the bandage and her lips were cracked and dry and flaking.

‘Do I look as krutters as you?’ he asked.

‘You don’t look too piff, to be honest, soldier, but then I don’t know what you looked like before.’

‘Never was no R-Patz.’

‘That’s a relief,’ said Brooke. ‘Not my type. You shoulda seen me before, though,’ she added. ‘I’d a broken your little heart.’

‘Doubt it,’ said Achilleus, sitting up and groaning with the effort. ‘Take a lot to break this heart.’

‘I can imagine.’

Achilleus closed his eyes and let out his breath in a long sigh.

‘There’s people here can help,’ said Brooke. ‘We got drugs, antiseptic, yeah, that kind of thing. Some antibiotics, but we got to be careful with them. I was going to go over and see about it. You want to roll with me?’

‘Sure. If I can ever get out of this bed.’

‘You want me to help you?’

‘Yeah. Why not?’

Brooke took hold of one hand and hauled Achilleus hard. He swore and for a moment felt like he might faint again. He fought it, grunted and stood up. As he waited for his head to clear and the pain to subside, he spotted Paddy fast asleep on an inflatable mattress on the floor at the foot of his bed. Paddy’s mouth was open and he was snoring loudly.

‘Lazy little tyke,’ Achilleus said and went over to give him a kick. ‘Rise and shine, caddie. We’ve got some golf to play.’

‘Wha …?’ Paddy looked very confused. So Achilleus picked up the side of the mattress and rolled him on to the floor. Paddy swore at Achilleus, who laughed at him.

‘If you want to be my slave you got to stick by me at all times, Paddywhack. Ready for anything. You’re no use to me asleep.’

‘Yeah, sorry, Achilleus, yeah, I’m on it.’ The area around
Paddy’s mattress was scattered with Halo action figures; he must have been playing with them before he went to sleep. Now he hurriedly packed them away into his backpack and pulled on his trousers.

‘You want your weapons?’ he asked, looking around for the golf-bag.

Achilleus looked at Brooke. Brooke shook her head.

‘Nah,’ said Achilleus and he booted Paddy up the backside. ‘But get your scrawny Irish arse in gear. My head hurts and I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.’

As they went out on to the balcony outside the minerals gallery, Achilleus took in the view of the central hall. Light streamed in through two rows of windows on either side of the great arched roof and he could appreciate just how huge and ornate the place was, like a cathedral.

There were kids busy below, hauling bodies across the tiled floor towards the main doors.

‘You find any more live ones?’ Achilleus asked Brooke.

‘I don’t know. Don’t think so. I ain’t been involved in that.’

‘I shoulda been,’ said Achilleus.

‘Maxie said to let you sleep. She said you’d be more use to us fit and well and rested up.’

‘Yeah. But I sure do love to whack a grown-up in the morning.’

Halfway down the main stairs they met Maeve coming up. She was a serious-looking girl whose parents had both been doctors. She’d acted as a doctor herself for Achilleus and the other kids when they were living in Waitrose.

‘I was just coming to find you,’ she said when she saw Brooke. ‘I wanted to have a look at the labs you’ve got here and somebody said you were heading off that way. I’m Maeve, by the way.’ She smiled at Brooke, who smiled back.

‘Yeah, we’re off to see the docs,’ said Brooke. ‘Join the party.’

The two girls fell into conversation as they carried on. Achilleus and Paddy dropped back and sauntered along behind them.

‘Can we do some training today?’ Paddy asked.

‘Nope.’

‘Oh, come on, Achilleus. The deal was I’d carry your gear if you taught me how to fight.’

‘You heard the girl, didn’t you?’ said Achilleus. ‘She said I need to rest up. Right now I feel like someone’s poured burning acid in my ear. I feel, like, dizzy and that. There was a guy, name of Arran, used to be our, like, leader sort of thing. Got a bite. Got infected. Went nuts. You don’t want that to happen to me now, do you, caddie?’

‘No.’

‘We’ll take our time, yeah. Ain’t no hurry. I try to fight you now, you’re liable to kill me.’

‘Yeah, but you said …’

‘Padawan!’ Achilleus cut him off. ‘Are you carrying any gear right now?’

‘No.’

‘OK. So I ain’t doing any training then.’

They walked past the entrance to the dinosaur gallery and Achilleus caught a glimpse of Maxie organizing a work party.

He nodded to her.

She nodded back at him and gave him a look that said she could do without having to deal with this right now. She looked tired and harassed. Not a very nice job, getting rid of dead bodies. The smell was pretty chronic. Live grown-ups smelt bad enough; dead ones were another matter entirely.

They went off fast. The effects of the disease seemed to accelerate after death. Once they were out in the sunlight they’d probably bubble and split and pop. The Holloway kids called exploding corpses ‘bursters’.

The passageway at the end of the blue zone opened out into a modern extension with a glass wall rising up five floors and supported by a grid of polished grey steel. That would have drawn all of Achilleus’ attention if it hadn’t been for the giant white concrete egg that stood next to the window, filling the space.

‘What the bloody hell is that?’ Achilleus asked.

‘It’s called the Cocoon,’ said Brooke, who had stopped to let the boys catch up. ‘We’ll go up through it to get to the laboratories.’

‘You really got laboratories here?’

‘We got everything, soldier.’

As they made their way up the sloping ramps inside the Cocoon, Brooke explained how Justin had got a couple of the museum labs running under the supervision of a boy called Einstein. It was their hope to discover more about the disease that had so changed their world, maybe even find a cure.

Achilleus said nothing. He found the idea that a bunch of kids might cure anything ridiculous. But if they wanted to arse about playing doctors and nurses he wasn’t going to stop them. That was their business. All he cared about right now was killing the pain in his head.

Paddy, on the other hand, seemed excited and delighted by everything, firing off a stream of questions at Brooke which she answered patiently.

The entrance to the labs was near the top and they emerged from the Cocoon to find several kids hard at work,
studying books, squinting into microscopes, fiddling with dirty-looking liquid in test tubes. Some of the kids were even wearing white coats. Achilleus felt sick. He was right back at school.

He set his face into default mode, a lazy mocking grin that said, ‘I am not impressed by you, and I never will be. You will never reach my level. So leave me alone, loser.’

Paddy was off and running, though, pestering the kids, asking them what they were doing, trying to look into their microscopes. Brooke left him with Maeve and took Achilleus through to a smaller room where a giant of a boy who looked about eighteen but couldn’t be was being tended to. A fair-haired guy and a girl with a headscarf were dabbing a nasty-looking wound on his arm with some kind of white cream.

Achilleus raised his chin in greeting.

‘This Holby City then, is it?’

‘Something like that,’ said the girl, and then she switched her attention to Brooke. ‘We thought you might show up here this morning. How bad is that wound?’

‘They looked after me pretty well at the palace,’ said Brooke.

‘Somebody going to take an interest in me?’ Achilleus butted in. ‘I didn’t come over here to fix your computers.’ He pointed to his bandaged head. ‘See this? It’s a clue.’

‘You want to compare wounds?’ asked Brooke. ‘See whose is the grossest?’

‘I’ll beat you, no contest, girl.’

‘You reckon.’

‘I reckon.’

‘OK,’ said Brooke. ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’

Achilleus laughed.

‘Deal.’

They each began to unwrap their bandages, the girl in the headscarf hovering nervously.

‘Oh my God,’ she said when she caught sight of Achilleus’ ear. She had gone bone-white and her lower jaw had dropped about a metre. ‘You look like Frankenstein.’

‘Cheers.’

‘That is the worst stitching job I have ever seen.’

‘It was that or lose my ear,’ said Achilleus.

‘Did they even sew it back on the right way up?’

‘Don’t think you’re going to get in there and try to make any improvements,’ said Achilleus. ‘Cos you ain’t. What’s done is done. If it gets infected, I’ll need some of your pills. For now just keep it clean.’

Brooke had finished removing her own bandage, and when the girl saw what was underneath she was, if anything, even more freaked out. She put her hand to her mouth and couldn’t say anything.

Achilleus took a look for himself and had to admit it was pretty rank. A ragged purple scab ran right across the girl’s forehead. The skin around it was puffy and swollen and pulled out of shape. She’d been patched up like him. But none of the kids at Buckingham Palace had exactly been surgeons. Brooke would always carry a nasty scar there. She implied she’d been hot before. Hard to tell, the state she was in. She sure wasn’t going to be hot any more.