The Hunted (37 page)

Brooke was desperate. Couldn’t work out what had happened. Trying to see what was going on. One moment Ed had been sitting beside her, looking for Kyle in the battle, and the next he’d sworn, leapt up and gone racing down to the arena, completely unarmed.

He was somewhere out there. She scanned the arena and then felt relief flood over her. There he was, helping Kyle to the side, holding his axe, and swiping it at any sickos who came close.

He got to the barrier and Brooke went down to meet him. Kyle was clutching his arm and grumbling that he was all right. Ed kept telling him to shut up. Brooke helped them to climb over and she could see that Kyle was having difficulty using his right arm.

They went back to their seats where Lewis and Ebenezer asked them what had happened.

Brooke looked back down at the arena. The last three sickos standing, the fastest and strongest, were moving round the edge, trying to get away. Guards behind the barrier pushed them back with their weapons. Some kids in the front seats kicked out at them, laughing. The gladiators attacked in a pack and down the sickos went, one, two, three, in a flurry of flashing blades and flying blood.
The Sandhurst boy even managed to finish on a high note: he swung at the last mother and took her head clean off with one blow.

‘He’s just showing off,’ said Kyle through clenched teeth.

The cheering from the crowd was the loudest yet at the races. The Sandhurst boy paraded around, holding the mother’s head up by the hair, dripping blood everywhere. The guards moved in and started to drag the dead bodies clear.

Just another afternoon’s sport
, thought Brooke. But she knew it wasn’t over yet.

Sophie had been standing at the barriers with some of her team, bows at the ready in case they needed to put down any sickos. She walked up to Ed’s group.

‘You ever seen anything like that?’ she asked. Brooke could see there were spots of blood on her face.

‘No,’ she said. ‘And I never want to again.’

‘Then maybe you won’t want to stay for the last event,’ said Sophie. ‘They’ve saved the biggest, toughest, ugliest grown-ups for last.’

‘It just gets better,’ said Kyle. ‘See you around, Brooke.’

But Brooke stayed put.

‘What do you do with them bodies?’ asked Lewis, as two kids pulled away a fat father, one leg each.

‘There’s a big bonfire tonight and a big party apparently,’ said Sophie. ‘They go on that. I guess it’s like a Guy Fawkes made of real people.’

‘Nice,’ said Brooke.

It took a while for the arena to be cleared of corpses, and while it went on the gladiators took the cheers from the crowds. Lots of the kids threw things down to them, soft toys and bits of clothing, scarves that the gladiators
tied round their wrists. Brooke could see that already this event was developing its own rituals as the kids celebrated their triumph over the enemy, making the nightmares go away, showing that the sickos weren’t all-powerful, weren’t all to be feared.

As they were sitting there, Josa came over, carrying her baby. She was alone. None of her boys around. To Brooke’s surprise she offered to shake Ed’s hand.

To her even bigger surprise Ed shook it.

‘Respect,’ said Josa and offered Ed a toothless smile. Then she turned to Kyle.

‘Clean slate, yeah? I know when I’m beat. You all could of come and joined us, you know. We need killers like you.’

Ed shook his head, hardly believing what he was hearing. ‘If you’d been a bit more welcoming maybe we’d have considered it,’ he said.

‘You know what it’s like.’ Josa gave a shrug. ‘We gotta survive. We don’t trust no one. And I
do
like to play games.’

‘You’re a bastard, Josa.’ Ed said it almost politely.

‘Ain’t I just?’ Josa laughed. ‘Respect to you, though, yeah? From one warrior to another.’

‘Are you apologizing?’

‘Maybe.’

Ed nodded. ‘I guess
maybe
’s good enough for me.’

‘I was just doing what I had to do,’ said Josa. ‘Like I learnt it.’

‘You’ve kept your people alive. You’ve pulled them through some hard times. I know how tough that is. Just remember what Arno said – the grown-ups are the enemy. If we’re ever gonna make anything of this whole big mess we’re gonna have to work together to rebuild.’

‘You think that’ll happen?’ Josa asked. ‘You think any of us got a chance?’

‘Maybe.’

‘
Maybe
’s good enough for me too,’ said Josa.

‘That army has to be stopped first, though.’

‘What army?’

‘The sickos that came through the other night.’

‘That was way heavy, man. Was all we could do to keep them out.’

‘They’re massing. But I’ve got a plan.’

‘A man with a plan.’

‘Yeah. Can I rely on you to help me out, Josa?’

‘Is like you said, funny face.’ Josa stared at Ed. ‘
Maybe
.’

Her baby struggled in her arms and gave a little cry.

‘What’s he called?’ Lewis asked.

‘He’s called Tyler after his dad.’ Josa poked a dirty finger in the baby’s mouth. ‘His dad was a bit of a moron, to tell you the truth, but, you know, he
was
his dad. He died early. Golden Girl killed him. We ain’t never liked them Windsor kids. Hope they don’t win the cup again this year.’ She lifted her baby’s little arm and made him wave at Ed and his gang.

‘Say goodbye to the nice people, Tyler.’

Brooke watched her go. She was understanding all this better now. Arno was clever. These games made sense. They were a neutral place where kids could get together and sort out their problems, and if a few sickos got mangled along the way, well then. She shouldn’t be so squeamish.

As Ed said, they were the enemy.

She just wondered what was going to happen to the rest of them in the final event.

Malik was sitting on the floor of his cage, just outside the arena. He was watching some kids haul a cartload of dead adults away along the road. He’d known what to expect. He’d heard the kids talking about it enough. The reality, though, seeing those carved-up bodies, made him doubt, not for the first time, whether he was doing the right thing. But his mind was set and when he decided something he stuck with it. He’d decided to stay silent and hadn’t said a word since they’d caught him in their nets.

Right now he still wanted nothing to do with the world of children. He’d known when it was time, when it felt right to go back, and being hunted and trapped like an animal hadn’t made him like these kids any more. So let them think he was a grown-up. Let them think he was diseased and good for nothing. He knew inside he was better than them. He wasn’t going to give up. He was going to teach the kids a lesson. He was going to win.

Yeah, right …

When the Windsor kids had caught him, they’d beaten him unconscious and he’d woken in the back of a pick-up truck with several comatose adults, one of whom had died on the journey. That was the only time he’d wobbled, the only time he’d tried to speak. There’d been a boy
sitting on the back of the truck, holding a gun. Malik had lifted his head and croaked at him. Talking to Ella for all that time down in their hole in the ground had destroyed his voice. It was sore and dry and cracked. And a rope had tangled around his neck in the attack making it worse.

He couldn’t get any words out and the boy had kicked him and he’d fallen unconscious again. That had made his mind up. It was the last time he’d tried to talk. If he was going to get out of this he was going to do it on his own terms. His own way.

His mum always said he was stubborn, and now it was probably going to get him killed.

Just so long as he made his mark along the way.

At the castle he’d been locked in what had once been the dungeons with all the adults they’d captured. It had been filthy and stinking and vile. They’d fed him on rotting vegetables and bits of rancid meat, and he’d become feeble and sick. The kids weren’t that bothered. They only needed to keep him alive long enough to bring him here to be killed. For the most part the adults had left him alone. One night, however, a hungry father had got too close. He’d bothered Malik for hours and in the end Malik had strangled him. When the kids came in in the morning to check them out, they found the man half eaten. The others had been at him all night. Malik had stolen his clothes, disguising himself more fully, covering himself in their smell. Now he hoped they’d all – adults and children – leave him in peace.

It wasn’t to be, though. He was picked out and moved into another part of the dungeon with a smaller group of adults where they were looked after better, given proper food and cleaner water. And then they were moved out of
Windsor altogether. They’d been sold to Maidenhead. Seemed the kids there hadn’t caught enough adults of their own to make it to the races. So Malik had been exchanged for fresh food and petrol.

So he was a thing. Not even a person. An ugly, broken thing. Buried deep down inside him was a dark, festering thought; it chewed away at him. Was there another reason he kept away from kids? Was it the real reason he wanted nothing to do with them? Was it shame? Dirty shame.

He’d become a freak. Someone to be laughed at. They feared him because they knew they might end up like him, and,
because
they feared him, they hated him. As far as they were concerned, he was a monster. So why not behave like one? None of this would change if they found out he was a boy, would it? He could never properly be one of them. So that’s what he was going to be. A dangerous monster. He would turn their hatred back on them ten times worse. A hundred times. He would make them pay for his shame.

There was only one person who didn’t make him feel ashamed. Ella. She’d accepted him for what he was. And what made him lie awake at night staring into the blackness, his guts sour with worry, was the thought that he had no idea what had happened to her. Whether she was all right.

When they’d first brought him to Windsor, and he was lying there, sick and puked out, too feeble to even move, he wondered if they’d brought her here to the castle, and he wondered what he’d do if she came looking for him. He’d wanted to hide from her. Decided that she’d be better off with him out of her life. He’d only make things miserable for her. He was bad luck. She’d said it herself.

She didn’t need to be saddled with a dog’s dinner like him.

But at the same time he hadn’t wanted her to see him dead. And he’d known that if he wanted to survive he had to get well, to eat more, to look after himself. So when the kids brought in buckets of slops he’d made sure he was first to the trough, kicking back the other vermin down there, searching through for the best bits.

And this will to survive had remained strong at Maidenhead, where they’d been penned up outside. He’d killed another father soon after he’d arrived. The diseased old pus-bag had been top dog there before the newcomers from Windsor had been herded in. He’d wanted to fight Malik when he shoved to the front to get the best scraps. Malik had waited until he was sure no kids were around and strangled him like the other one, squeezing the life out of him with his bare hands. No one argued with him after that. The adults left him alone.

He could sense what they were feeling, as if he could soak up their thoughts and emotions through his pores, getting a weak pulse from their dull minds. They were hungry and confused and angry, in a sullen, sulky, depressed kind of way. And he was depressed from being among them for so long like this. He was used to hunting them, stamping them out; that’s all he’d ever thought of. Lashing out against the world that had made him what he was. He couldn’t kill all these ones, though – the kids would notice that something was wrong. Being with them, soaking up their pathetic, tiny, animal thoughts, he’d wondered if he’d been right. He didn’t belong among children, but he didn’t belong among adults either.

And now here he was. A pig. About to be taken to the
slaughterhouse. Already the cage was being opened. A kid was poking through the bars at the back with a spear to shift them all out of there. It was starting.

This was his last chance to try to speak.

He looked at the boy and he looked at the adults and he kept quiet.

Stubborn.

Stubborn and stupid and ashamed.

But they weren’t used to taking on someone like him. He would show them today how to fight.