The Sacrifice (14 page)

One of the grown-ups grew brave enough to
advance, squinting through tightly pressed eyelids. He hobbled over to the turnstiles
and tried to squeeze through. Finding that impossible, he flopped on to the solid
turnstile housing and started to crawl across it. Just like Sam had done.

‘No, you don’t!’ The Kid
darted forward and smashed his sword down on the father’s head. The blade glanced
off, struck the metal housing and snapped in half. The blow had at least taken a chunk
out of his skull, though. Thin, watery blood spilt out and some greyish jelly, exposing
a patch of bright white bone. The father writhed in agony. The Kid hit him again, with
the broken stub of blade, hacking off his ear.

Sam had been concentrating so hard on what
The Kid was up to he hadn’t noticed that the other grown-ups had come forward as
well and were all now trying to get across the barriers. He ran over to them and jabbed
a bald mother in the shoulder with the point of his sword, not wanting to risk breaking
it like The Kid had done to his. The point barely pierced the mother’s skin. She
looked at him with dull eyes and her tongue flopped out of her mouth. He stabbed her
again, aiming at the same spot, and only succeeded in making the mother angry. She tried
to grab hold of the blade and, when her fingers closed round it, Sam yanked it free.

It came away bloody and Sam saw that it had
cut into the tendons of the mother’s fingers.

It wasn’t enough to stop her,
though.

Normal humans might have held back, scared
of the weapons, not wanting to get injured. Grown-ups didn’t think clearly enough
for that. They had no sense of danger.

And that made them dangerous.

Above them Tish was still calling for help
and battering her fists against the locked gates.

The first grown-up finally made it over the
barrier. The Kid had taken chunks out of him and was still chopping at him with his
broken sword. Each time he cut another bit off him and each time it wasn’t enough
to stop the father from advancing.

Sam broke away from the wounded mother and
came over to help The Kid, stabbing the father in the back. He felt his blade scrape
against the man’s ribs, cutting him. He knew he would have to try harder if he was
going to hit anything major inside him.

He tried aiming lower and dug into the soft
fleshy area below the ribcage and this time the point penetrated deeper. Before he could
try again, however, two more grown-ups got over the barriers. Sam turned and swung his
blade wildly, slashing one in the upper arm.

Again.

Not good enough.

Not a killing blow.

Sam and The Kid were forced to retreat now
as the rest of the grown-ups swarmed over, all five of them advancing as fast as they
could. And more were coming up the escalator.

The three at the front were bleeding, but
there was only one thought in their heads. To take the children down, kill them and eat
them.

The only thing that gave Sam any advantage
was that the grown-ups still seemed to be disturbed by the bright light. They turned
their heads to the side and rubbed at their skin as if the sun’s rays were burning
them.

Sam swung again, aiming low. He was more
successful this time. The end of his blade cut through the belly of the mother whose
fingers he’d sliced. She belched and gurgled and vomited up a stream of dark blood
which spilt down her front and joined the spreading stain on her dress.

With more confidence he swung again.

And missed.

With The Kid at his side, he backed steadily
towards the stairs, guided by Tish’s shouts.

What was the use of calling out for
help?

Sam swore. They were beyond help. Soon it
was going to be hand-to-hand combat. And what chance did they have then? One of the
fathers was twice his height with wiry muscles showing on his scabby, spotty, naked
arms.

Sam wasn’t strong enough to do
anything. He was just a boy. Not strong enough to make the sword any use. His arm ached
as he pathetically swung it back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum.

His eyesight was blurry with tears.

He stumbled up the stairs. It was only a
matter of time before he’d be backed up against the bars at the top. The grown-ups
were hungry; they were beating their fear of the sunlight, dribbling as they
advanced.

Sam should have stayed at the Tower. Should
have listened to Ed.

And then he heard voices – boys’
voices – and he turned round.

There were three boys outside, on the other
side of the gates. They were wearing soldiers’ camouflage jackets, green and
black. Two were carrying short spears.

One had a gun.

‘Stay back!’ he said, and the
three trapped children cleared
the opening. The boy fired his gun
through the bars. There was a loud bang and a gout of stinking smoke puffed into the
stairwell. If the bullet hit anything it didn’t show. For a moment, though, the
grown-ups stopped in their tracks.

One of the other boys was fiddling with the
padlock. He had a bunch of keys hanging from a chain on his belt.

‘I can’t remember which one it
is,’ he said.

‘Hurry up!’ said Tish.

The grown-ups were still holding back,
trying to make sense of this new development.

‘Fear of the cutter!’ The Kid
shouted and he darted back at them, hoping to finish off the father whose head he had
shredded. He raised his broken blade then chopped once, twice down the man’s face,
splitting his nose in two.

‘Got it!’ said the boy with the
keys.

‘Come on!’

There was a rattling noise as the chain was
pulled free of the gate.

The Kid hacked again and at last the father
went over. He tripped and fell backwards down the stairs, trying to stop the rest of his
face from falling off with his hands. Encouraged by The Kid’s success Sam stabbed
the tall father in the throat. It was enough to stop him and then Sam felt himself being
yanked out through the open gate.

He was dumped in the street. The two boys
with spears poked them through the opening to keep the grown-ups back while the one with
the keys fought to slide the gates shut, before refastening them with the chain and
making the padlock secure.

Sam noticed that there were four more boys
out here, all dressed in variations of army combat clothing. For a moment he allowed
himself to feel safe. He couldn’t stop
his body from shaking,
though, and his stomach was burning with acid. He leant forward and threw up on the
pavement.

The soldier boys formed a protective group
around Sam, Tish and The Kid.

‘Can you walk?’ said the one
with the keys and the gun. He was tall, looked like an athlete.

Sam nodded and the boy helped him to his
feet.

‘It’s not far.’

Sam was too numb to say anything. Tish took
his hand and he walked in dazed silence down a paved area between some modern buildings.
Ahead of them was the side of St Paul’s Cathedral. A mass of white pillars,
arches, statues, windows and carved stonework rising high above the streets to the great
black dome at the top.

‘They got past the barricades again,
Nathan,’ Tish said to the tall boy.

‘We’ll sort it.’

Sam wasn’t really paying attention. He
felt sick and numb, the blood pounding in his ears. He looked at the imposing bulk of St
Paul’s. It must have seen a lot in the hundreds of years it had stood here –
riots, fires, the Blitz – but surely nothing as strange as what had happened in the last
few months.

Sam found it quite reassuring. That it was
still here. Whatever happened, whoever lived and died, the cathedral would still be
here. The world carried on.

They turned as they reached the cathedral
grounds and walked round the edge. Where exactly were these boys taking him? Sam looked
at them properly for the first time. They’d been at the dressing-up box. It was
funny what the different groups around London wore. They’d had no
uniform in Holloway where Sam had been living. Not like the kids at the Tower with
their armour and their swords and their medieval outfits. This lot, whoever they were,
obviously preferred the modern army look. Tish fitted in very well with them in her
green shirt and trousers.

She fitted in too well.

One of them had an identical wound to hers
on his forehead.

Sam almost stopped – it suddenly struck him:
she knew them. How else had she known they’d hear her shouts? And she’d used
the boy’s name – Nathan – just now, hadn’t she? But this wasn’t
Trafalgar Square.

Sam looked more closely at the boys. What he
had thought were army clothes weren’t necessarily that. Some of them were wearing
green-dyed trousers and hoodies.

They came round to the front of St
Paul’s and Sam was amazed to see a load more kids there, standing quietly, as if
waiting for them. There was something odd, and yet familiar, about them and it was a
moment before it hit Sam.

They were all wearing green.

Like the soldiers.

Like Tish.

He looked up at her and she smiled at
him.

‘You’ll be all right now,’
she said.

Why didn’t he believe her?

The world spun round him.

If he hadn’t already emptied his guts
he’d have done it now.

Why didn’t he believe
anything
she had told him?

Sam and The Kid were hustled up the steps
at the front of St Paul’s and in through the great central doors that were
standing wide open.

Sam wasn’t sure if he’d ever
been inside the cathedral before. If he had he must have been so little he
couldn’t remember anything about it. It was vast in here, like something out of a
fantasy computer game; the ceiling looked impossibly high, held up by pillars and
arches. Marble statues stood everywhere. Painted scenes, gold and red and blue, covered
every surface. You couldn’t take it all in in one go. Sam noticed, though, that
there were plants in there. The kids had brought in branches and fixed them round the
walls, and there were more things growing in pots, jungly plants with big leaves,
climbers, great sprouting things.

He heard a squawk and something scurried
across the aisle in front of him. It was a chicken. He saw now that there were loads of
them, wandering around all over the place. Crapping on the tiled floor. Running in
between the legs of the children who were sitting on a field of chairs, dressed in
green. As Sam went past, they dropped to their knees and stared at the floor. It was
freaking him out. This huge open space, large enough to fit twenty houses inside
it. The plants. The chickens. The quiet kids falling to the
floor … 

All his senses were being bombarded at once.
There were fires smouldering in braziers and incense burners hanging everywhere he
looked. They filled the cathedral with smoke. It hung up by the ceiling like a cloud and
the light streaming in through the high windows caught in the blue haze, so that Sam
felt like he was entering heaven.

The smoke stung his eyes, though, and they
were already watering so badly that he had to wipe away tears. His dry throat was
further irritated. He was soon coughing and spluttering. The sickly scent of the incense
mixed with a woody smell from the braziers and the occasional waft of something harsh
and bitter.

Then there was the noise. A group of kids
was playing musical instruments and their din filled the cathedral like the smoke,
adding to Sam’s confusion. Some of the musicians were banging percussion
instruments – bongos, cymbals, drums, cowbells, tambourines – hammering out a rhythm in
exactly the same way as the grown-ups outside.

What had The Kid called them? The
Clickee Cult.

Others were playing violins and guitars,
saxophones, flutes and trumpets, anything they could get their hands on. Those who
didn’t have an instrument were singing, or rather chanting, wordless ums and ahs.
They were like some deranged school band. There didn’t seem to be a tune or even
any kind of set pattern. They were all just blowing and scraping and banging, setting up
a hypnotic drone. Most of the time it made a horrible discord, but every now and then
the different sounds came together and a melody of sorts would rise up and open out and
fly, only to collapse and return to the chaotic musical stew.

Sam’s whole body was throbbing and
tingling. Waves of pain pulsed through him. There was a growing ache behind his eyes. He
was suddenly hungry and thirsty and tired … 

A few minutes ago he’d been in a blind
panic, trapped in the dark tunnels, the worst place on earth, and now he was here. It
was a weird dream whose parts didn’t fit together. Just as the music kept drifting
between beautiful and ugly, between order and chaos, his own mood kept swinging –
between relief that he had got away and fear of what was going on now, between happiness
and confusion … 

‘Between the devil and the deep blue
sea,’ said The Kid, almost as if he had been reading Sam’s thoughts.

‘What’s going on?’ said
Sam.

‘Beats me with a stick,’ said
The Kid.

Sam asked the same question, louder, to one
of the boys who were escorting them. The boy said nothing. Made a point of ignoring Sam.
Wouldn’t look at him. Kept marching forward.

They came to two rows of carved wooden seats
facing each other across the narrower end of the cathedral. In the past, when there had
been services, the choir would have sat here. Now it was where most of the musicians
were sitting. They didn’t stop playing as Sam passed, but lowered their eyes so
that they weren’t looking directly at him. Some muttered a word, the same word as
far as he could tell – Sam couldn’t make it out over the din of their music.

The musicians looked glassy-eyed, drunk,
dazed, almost like diseased adults themselves. They had played themselves into a
trance.

The smoke haze was thickest around the
altar, at the very end of the cathedral, an elaborate construction of twisting pillars,
shiny marble and gold leaf. Sam could just make
out a group of six
boys standing here, waiting for him to arrive. As Sam got closer, he saw that they were
wearing some kind of religious robes, and they too had been dyed green.