The Hunted (33 page)

It was the day of the races. It was warm and sunny and there was a party atmosphere. Ed was up in the grandstand of the Ascot racecourse with all the other kids, waiting, praying that somehow he was going to pull off his plan. It had been a risk. He’d had to balance waiting a few more days here in Ascot against hurrying back to town and seeing what was going down with the sicko army.

In the end he’d decided to risk staying here. If it went his way it would mean he could return to London with a proper fighting force.

And Ella.

All the best fighters from all the kids’ settlements were going to be here. So that meant two things. If Ella
was
around in this part of the world someone here would know about it. And if Ed wanted to put together a crack squad this was the place to do it.

Only thing was, he was going to have to somehow win the races.

At least he’d had some time to get things ready.

A couple of days after they’d arrived, once they’d felt rested enough, Ed’s team had joined up with some of
Sophie’s archers and they’d gone out to find the car. It was much quicker and easier in the daylight, with no sickos around; the countryside seemed mostly empty. They’d spotted one stray grown-up in the distance, limping across a field, and that was it. When they got to the car they were glad that Ebenezer had thought to shut the door behind him when he got out.

The car was a mess. It was covered in filth from the sickos, dried pus and blood and crusty streaks of saliva, as if it had somehow caught their disease. There were dents where the sickos had taken out their rage on it, plus some unidentified lumps of pinkish grey stuff that looked like growths on the metalwork.

But none of them had had the sense to open the doors.

Lewis climbed into the driver’s seat and fished the key out of his pocket. ‘Hope it starts,’ he said, putting the key in the ignition. The kids had all cheered when the engine rumbled into life.

Lewis put it in reverse and as many kids as could get around it had pushed and shoved until it came up out of the ditch and on to the road.

A load of them had crammed inside it and the rest had walked behind as Lewis had driven it slowly back to Ascot.

When Ed left Ascot, he hoped to have a lot more vehicles with him. And a lot more kids.

For the last three days they’d been arriving from all around. Mostly on horseback or on foot, but one or two in cars, usually the leaders of the various camps, showing off. They’d marched in from the surrounding countryside, bringing sickos with them. The sickos were kept in the racecourse stables over the road. When Ed had found
out exactly what the sickos were for, he’d at first been appalled. He’d kind of come to terms with it now. Saw that there was a twisted sense to it. He still hadn’t made up his mind if he was going to join in that part. The rest of the set-up was pretty straightforward, a mixture of horse races and fights.

Most of the kids stayed in tents they’d put up in the middle of the giant racetrack. It looked like an army encampment, or a rock festival like Glastonbury.

This had been the most famous racecourse in England. Where the Queen visited every year for Royal Ascot. There were notices and signs and information boards about the event everywhere Ed looked. Photos of the Queen and Prince Philip arriving in an open-topped carriage escorted by soldiers in old-fashioned uniforms riding matching horses. Photos of the aristocracy enjoying themselves. Celebrities. The rich and the famous. He remembered seeing things on the news about it; women parading about in stupid hats.

Now it had been taken over by children.

The locals lived in a big old hospital behind the track and the guy in charge was known as the Mad King. In the past he would have been described as having a syndrome, or a condition. You weren’t allowed to call people mad then. But that’s what he was. He didn’t say much, and most of what he said made no sense. A guy called Arno Fletcher looked after him. He went everywhere with the King and interpreted everything that came out of his mouth. Ed could see that the whole thing was a scam. Arno was the real boss man, hiding behind the Mad King, twisting his words to mean whatever he wanted.

The King was huge, unnaturally so. His head was big and
bony with a heavy brow. He walked stiffly and awkwardly as if he was in pain all the time and he looked at you with deep-set, wary eyes. Arno was about Ed’s age, small and skinny and clever, with long hair. He was always laughing and joking and came across as being friends with everyone.

Ed recognized him as a born politician.

There were a lot of kids like the Mad King here at Ascot, ones with conditions and syndromes. It was like they’d been collected, or, more likely, dumped here by other kids. There was a general air of craziness about the place and Ed sometimes thought it was appropriate they lived in a hospital. Once he’d got used to it, though, it was fine. The kids looked after each other and their combined strangeness gave them a sort of power.

It was Arno who’d come up with the idea for the races. And it was Arno who’d given Ed the idea for his plan.

Ed had eaten dinner with him the night after he’d arrived, sharing some cider and scavenged food.

‘I don’t like kids fighting other kids,’ Arno had said. ‘The races are a way of letting them compete without killing each other. At least most of the time. You see how football used to be? Or the Olympics? They were a way of waging war without too many casualties. Things around here are much better than they used to be. Plus, it stops us from getting bored. That’s the worst thing about the disease. Nothing happens for weeks and then there’s some sudden mad fight against marauding grown-ups, and for a short time you’re absolutely bloody terrified, and then it’s back to the grind and the boredom.’

‘But what happens exactly?’ Ed asked.

‘Each camp puts in a team. Simple.’

‘And what do you get for winning?’

‘Whatever you want, man. You get to choose. Until the next games your camp becomes top dog. Like Ancient Rome. You are the emperor.’

‘Does Ascot ever win?’

‘What do you think? You’ve seen what we’re like.’

‘Fair point.’

‘But the thing is, Ed – we don’t need to win. We make a profit from the races. Everyone coming here, betting. Just don’t tell anyone, yeah?’

‘But if you did win the races …’ Ed wasn’t going to let this go. ‘You could choose your prize?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who’s the captain?’

‘Can’t be me. Girl called Veda did it last time. But she ran off to Windsor. Never really fitted in here. I was going to ask Sophie; she seems sensible.’

‘Would you let me do it?’

‘We never win, Ed.’

‘So you’ve got nothing to lose.’

And that was why Ed was sitting there, wearing a baggy white T-shirt over his clothes, anxious to see how his team was going to do.

It was like a medieval tournament. Each of the six settlements had their own colours. If kids didn’t have jackets or shirts of the right colour they wore T-shirts over their other clothes, like Ed, or carried home-made flags, or headscarves. Some had even painted their faces.

Ascot wore white, Bracknell was green, Sandhurst was black, Slough was red, Maidenhead was blue and Windsor was yellow, or gold if they had it.

Ed had been there when the Windsor kids had arrived. At their head were the twins he’d heard about, riding matching white horses, and wearing gleaming black and gold armour that must have been specially polished for the event. They also both wore a plastic wreath on their heads, spray-painted gold, to show that they were the winners of the last races. There was something arrogant and lordly about the Golden Twins. They had a snooty look to them, like they thought they were some prince and princess arriving at a rival’s castle.

Behind them came their troops, well drilled and well behaved. A few of them had horses, and there were four pick-up trucks loaded with sickos, all securely tied up or chained. A group of smaller kids brought up the rear, nervous but excited. This was the biggest group to arrive.

The next largest group were the kids from Slough. Ed had watched them come in as well, keeping himself well hidden in the crowd of onlookers. Josa and Kenton had been at the front, Josa carrying a baby that must have been about a year old, her boys behind her, trying to look mean and tough, some of them succeeding. Ed reckoned they’d been lucky to get out of Slough without sustaining any serious damage from the wave of sickos passing through. It looked like they’d managed to round up most, if not all, of the ones that Ebenezer had released from the pens. They were being herded along in a group, chained and kept at a distance by Josa’s long wooden poles.

The Sandhurst kids were the smallest group, but they were a hard-looking bunch, dressed in denim and leather, with big boots, as if they’d modelled themselves on a biker gang.

There wasn’t much to distinguish between the Bracknell
and Maidenhead groups. They looked like any bunch of kids arriving at another school for an event, a football match or whatever, excited, slightly nervous, sticking together. In the past there would have been teachers herding the kids, making sure they didn’t misbehave. Now it was the other way around: the kids were herding the adults, and the adults were the problem. Diseased, violent, anarchic and stupid.

All the arrivals had a few horse riders among them and there were more horses kept here at Ascot. Some of the new kids negotiated with the locals for extra mounts. There was a barter system in place. Kids were exchanging food and drink, weapons, armour, clothing, shoes, books, footballs and sports equipment, seeds and fertilizer, anything that was considered valuable and hard to get hold of. And some of this stuff was then exchanged for tokens to bet with. Arno Fletcher really did have a good system going on.

There must have been a few hundred kids here, but so far Ed hadn’t had any luck finding anything out about Maeve, Robbie, Monkey-Boy and Ella. Everyone had been busy sorting out their teams, setting up their camps, getting settled in. He’d had a short chat with one of the guys in charge at Maidenhead who said he hadn’t heard anything, and he’d spent a wild but similarly blank night with the Sandhurst kids, whose leader was a friendly psycho called Dara.

Despite their looks, the Sandhurst kids seemed to be the most welcoming. While other groups kept to themselves and even posted guards to keep outsiders away, the Sandhurst kids were here to party and didn’t much mind who joined them. They’d got hold of several cases of beer
and a whole load of cigarettes and vodka. They never appeared to eat anything and instead had all got stuck into drinking, wrestling, kick-boxing and general free-for-all fighting. Kyle had joined in and held his own pretty well.

So that left Bracknell and Windsor. There was no way Ed was going to get anywhere near anyone in the Windsor camp. There was so much security there it might as well have been Guantanamo Bay.

Ebenezer had found out that most of the kids from Maidenhead were practising Christians. Sandhurst had become Hell’s Angels, Slough were a bunch of obnoxious yobs who spat at the world, the Ascot kids were misfits, Windsor were trying to act like royalty, and it seemed that the Maidenhead kids had got religion. They reminded Ed of Mad Matt and his acolytes at St Paul’s.

Everyone had found their own way of coping with this new world; they were free to create their own identities. The kids around here were only doing what teenagers had always done – trying to find out who they were and how they fitted in.

Whatever helped you make it through the night.

And here they all were, sitting in different sections of the grandstand. Six blocks of colour. Red, white, green, black, blue and gold. The Ascot kids were sitting right in the centre. To their right were Maidenhead, past them Bracknell and then Slough. To their left were Sandhurst and then Windsor. Ed was glad that he was a good distance from Josa’s mob. He didn’t want the complication of having to deal with them right now.

A few kids were warming up their horses, an equal number of girls and boys cantering up and down the
straight length of track in front of the grandstand. Others were trying to form up in a line at one end. Some of them looked steadier in their saddles than others. A couple of the horses were already out of control, their riders yelling at them to hold still, and kicking them uselessly with their heels. One girl’s horse had taken off and was galloping madly round the track in the wrong direction.

A ragged little band of musicians was playing tunes, on trumpets and trombones, drums and cymbals, anything that could make a loud noise. It reminded Ed of the band that used to play at England matches, blaring out ‘Rule Britannia’, ‘The Dam Busters’ and ‘The Great Escape’.

Right now the Ascot band was playing the national anthem because the Mad King was coming out on to the track, being pulled along on a little wagon by four kids. Another kid, a little scary-looking, was riding at their side. He had a shaved head and a blank face and made a point of not looking at anyone. The King was wearing a little plastic crown on his massive head, a child’s toy, and had a cloak draped round his shoulders. He was happy, grinning and laughing. Ed didn’t know what to think. Was he being presented as a freak, a figure of fun? Or was he having the time of his life?

Maybe both.

In front of the wagon strutted Arno Fletcher, with a long staff in his hand.

‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,’ he called out, and miraculously all the kids in the grandstand grew quiet. ‘Welcome to the fifth New Ascot Race Meeting, which promises to be the biggest and best ever. Just you wait and
see! So give it up for the Mad King himself, King Nutjob the Thirty-first!’

The grandstand erupted.

The races were getting under way.