The Sacrifice (21 page)

Shadowman hadn’t seen this behaviour
before.

He swivelled round and checked the other
direction. No sign yet of the strangers who’d been following him from the
Lexus.

Only a matter of time
.

He slipped his bow off his shoulder, checked
it, said goodbye to the dead couple and went down the stairs.

Once he was back on the street he moved
cautiously towards the feeding strangers. As soon as he was close enough, he aimed at
the back of an ageing mother and pulled the trigger. The bolt thumped into her and she
fell forward. He put the end of the bow to the ground, slipped his foot into the stirrup
and hauled up the string, snapped it in place, fitted in another bolt. The whole action
took him less than thirty seconds. He’d had plenty of time to practise. The other
strangers didn’t seem to have noticed that one of their gang had been shot and two
minutes later four more of them had been hit. Two lay still, killed outright, but the
rest were crawling around with the bolts embedded in their diseased bodies right up to
the feathers.
One was flipping about on the ground, arms and legs
twitching.

Shadowman reckoned he’d done enough.
It was safe to advance. He was fast with the bow, but time was running out. He had to
get back to the car before the main mass of The Fear reached it. He slung his bow over
his shoulder, drew his machete from its sheath and walked quickly up to the surviving
strangers.

A mother had Ricky’s head and was
smashing it on the ground trying to break the skull open so that she could get at the
brains. It looked like an old rubber Halloween mask found in the bottom of the
dressing-up box, floppy and out of shape.

Shadowman fought back a wave of nausea as he
lifted the machete and swung. The mother had wanted brains, well here they were. The top
of her head came off like the top of a boiled egg.

‘That’s how you get to the
brains,’ he said, but had to turn away so as not to look at the shiny pinkish grey
gloop that spilt out.

He shivered as he laid into the other
strangers and soon they all lay dead.

Except for the one who was standing still as
a rock up the road. As Shadowman checked him out, he noticed that there were two more,
spaced the same distance apart, about ten metres or so, waiting, with their arms held
out.

A word came into Shadowman’s mind.
Sentinels.

No time now to work out what they were
doing. The main thing was that they were ignoring him.

So he would ignore them.

He had to find that key.

Shadowman tried not to think too hard about
the mess that was strewn everywhere. He remembered going on family trips to the
countryside when he’d been small. Remembered the first time he’d seen
roadkill. He’d been struck by how hard it was to tell what the animal had once
been. So many cars had gone over it, smearing it into the road surface, and so many
birds had pecked away at it that it was an unidentifiable smudge of fur and blood.

Ricky looked the same. The horde had made
quick work of him. A hundred hungry mouths had torn into him. There wasn’t a lot
left. Bones, shiny bits of gristle, a length of intestine, shredded clothing. He could
see a hand lying under a parked car; one of the strangers had been trying to get to it
when Shadowman had shot him.

He saw the stab-proof vest, which was still
in one piece. He removed his backpack and bow and put the vest on. It hadn’t done
much to protect Ricky, but it was better than nothing. Nearby was his leather jacket,
also still in one piece, but covered in blood and faeces. Shadowman picked it up and
hurriedly went through the pockets. There were a few pathetic reminders of Ricky’s
life. A crumpled photo of his mum and dad, a valentine’s card, the membership card
for a sports centre, a ticket to a football match, a lucky
rabbit’s foot (ho, bloody ho) and a penknife that Shadowman pocketed.

But no keys.

‘Damn.’ He tossed the jacket
away and wiped his hands.

Keep moving.

There was a pile of stuff in the gutter by
the side of the road, a disgusting mangle of skin and hair, inedible body parts and torn
clothing. He poked through it with the toe of his boot, turning it over, trying to find
something he recognized. This was taking too long. He sucked in a deep breath, went down
on one knee and went to work with his machete, lifting the layers to see what was
underneath. At the bottom he found what he was after – a pair of jeans. They were
filthy, covered in what looked like the entire contents of Ricky’s stomach. Some
vile scraps of flesh clung to the inside. He felt the pockets and his fingers closed on
something hard.

The key to the Lexus.

He fished it out, wiped it clean on his own
jeans and zipped it into a jacket pocket.

He checked – the sentinels hadn’t
moved – then looked the other way. Just in time. His pursuers had finally arrived,
hobbling along the street, bunched together. He grabbed Ricky’s crossbow and slung
it over his shoulder next to his own and set off back to the car, sticking to the route
they’d originally taken when they were running from The Fear. The only problem was
that he would have to go past the sentinels.

Oh well. They were spaced out, unmoving and
unarmed, and he had his machete. He nevertheless gave the first one a wide berth,
expecting him at any moment to come awake and run at him. He didn’t even blink. If
it wasn’t for the
fact that his eyes were open he might have
been dead or asleep. It was the same with the second sentinel, and the third, and as
Shadowman turned the corner, he saw more of them strung out along the length of the road
at regular intervals. He counted them as he ran past. Three, four, five, six,
seven … 

And then he spotted the rear of the main
pack, a seething dark mass, shambling slowly in the direction of the car. It
hadn’t taken them long to eat Ricky, but it had delayed them long enough. With
luck, there wouldn’t be too many around the Lexus yet and Shadowman would be able
to get back in.

He couldn’t run through this mob,
however, so he bypassed them by ducking into the next street, which was mercifully free
of grown-ups. He ran as fast as he could. It was vital that he overtook the strangers.
His legs ached, felt as if they’d been filled with concrete, and his body was
flooded with lactic acid. He pushed on, ignoring the pain. How long had he been gone?
Five minutes? Six? Probably more like ten. He hoped Jaz and Johnny would still be there
after all this.

When he came to the next junction, he cut
through and caught sight of the car. There were a lot more strangers crowding round it
than he had hoped. The main body of The Fear had yet to arrive – there was no sign of St
George – but there were still maybe thirty of them there, three deep around the car,
with more arriving every second.

Once again he had a powerful urge to turn
tail and get as far away from there as he could. He’d watched plenty of kids die
in the days he’d been following The Fear. He clearly remembered that first one at
Waitrose, his head coming out on a stick. He could watch these ones die as well if he
had
to. There was no point in risking his life if there was really
nothing he could do.

Seriously, could he fight his way past
thirty strangers to get to the car?

He stopped running. Started to back
away.

And then the car horn sounded. A long
unbroken blast that caused the startled strangers to cower away for a moment, clearing a
space. Shadowman got a brief glimpse of Jaz sitting in the driver’s seat, her face
white with fear, mouth and eyes stretched wide.

She’d seen him somehow and was
signalling to him.

Damn her
. Now he’d have to
help.

And he had to move fast while there was an
opening.

He unslung Ricky’s crossbow and
started to run, faster and faster, with no real plan except to somehow get into that
car. The strangers hadn’t seen him; they were too interested in the Lexus.

Closer. Closer. Closer still
. He
sped up.

At the last moment he let out a roar and
fired the bow directly into the wall of bodies. A father went down. A fresh gap opened
up. He raised the bow and used it like a club, battering his way through. Diseased faces
turned towards him. Faces deformed by growths, by blisters and festering wounds, missing
eyes and ears, noses, teeth.

In films this might all have happened in
slow motion, clear and beautiful like a rehearsed dance. But this was real life and it
all happened too fast. It was choppy and messy and confusing. Shadowman was in among the
strangers. They swarmed around him in a blur, arms and hands with clawed fingers reached
for him. He was in a hot, stinking world of open mouths, bulging eyes, yellow flesh. And
then he recognized a dark blue business suit, a familiar face.
It was
Bluetooth, still with his earpiece in. He’d got hold of the spear and was pushing
through the crowd.

So he was in charge here, was
he?

Shadowman dodged him, hooked an elbow round
his neck and hauled him backwards, throwing him into the scrum of bodies and bowling
several over. Shadowman hurled the bow after him. It wasn’t any use to him in
these cramped conditions.

He powered into the strangers nearest the
car, shoving them out of the way. Now was his chance. The door was clear. There was Jaz
peering out at him.

‘Open it!’ he yelled, but Jaz
shook her head.

‘I can’t risk it. They’ll
get in.’

Shadowman heard the clunk as she engaged the
central locking.

‘Open the bloody door, you
idiot.’

‘Pass me the keys through the
window.’

Jaz waggled her fingers through the open
crack at the top of the door.

‘Let me in!’

Jaz shook her head again.

Idiot.

Shadowman pressed the unlock symbol on the
car key and before Jaz knew what was happening he tugged the door open. Unfortunately
Jaz was holding tight to the handle on the other side and, as the door swung wide, it
tugged her out of the car, spilling her on to the ground. There was a surge of strangers
rushing to get at her.

She screamed.

Bluetooth was at their head. He lunged with
the spear and the point went into Jaz’s shoulder, cutting off her scream with a
gasp of agony. Shadowman tore his machete
from its sheath and took a
swing at Bluetooth, but a mother got in the way and the blade crashed into the front of
her skull, spraying the car with blood and pus. Shadowman pushed her into Bluetooth,
whose spear became entangled in the crush of bodies. Taking advantage of the clear
space, Shadowman managed to scoop up Jaz. But he had to let go of his machete to do so.
It clattered to the ground.

He threw Jaz into the car, a small teenager
going with her. Shadowman hauled the teenager out and then, elbowing, headbutting and
kicking all the way, he squeezed in after Jaz, half lying on top of her. He rolled on to
his back and, using both feet at once, he repeatedly booted the faces of the strangers
who were massing at the open door. And then he was aware of a movement from the back
seat. Johnny wasn’t completely out of action; he was using the end of Jaz’s
iron bar to jab at the grown-ups.

It was all Shadowman needed. He sat up, got
hold of the door handle and pulled it. A mother had her hand in the way, however, and
the door bounced off it. It took him two more slams before she removed her mangled
fingers and he was able to close it properly. Then he squeezed the lock button on the
key.

Thunk
.

He was still on top of Jaz, who was
whimpering and panting and bleeding into the seats. Shadowman slid off her on to the
passenger seat, pushing her legs out of the way. He was covered in blood from head to
foot, but couldn’t tell yet if any of it was his.

‘Well done, mate,’ said Johnny.
‘That was awesome.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ Shadowman was
trembling and felt like he might throw up again at any minute. The strangers had gone
into a frenzy, hammering on the car with a noise like
thunder.
Shadowman tried to ignore them. They weren’t in the clear yet.

‘I assume Ricky was the driver?’
he said.

‘Yeah,’ said Johnny.

‘Can either of you two
drive?’

‘I’ve done a bit. But the way my
leg is I don’t reckon I could use the pedals.’

‘What about Jaz?’

‘She’s had a bit of practice.
Can she do it, though, like that?’

‘She’s gonna have to.’

Shadowman helped Jaz upright. She leant
forward against the steering wheel for support. Her shoulder was soaked with blood.
Shadowman pressed a hand to her wound, trying to stem the flow.

‘Can you drive?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Jaz was
even paler than before. ‘It hurts like hell. I’m gonna die, aren’t
I?’

‘We just need to get away from
here.’

‘That spear was dirty, had zombie
blood on it. That was like an injection of shit.’

‘Don’t think about that
now,’ said Shadowman. ‘The main thing is to get moving.’

‘I don’t know if I can.
I’m gonna pass out.’

‘No, you’re not.’

Jaz jumped as a grown-up whacked the
windscreen with something hard and heavy. Cracks appeared.

Shadowman rammed the key into the ignition
and turned it. The engine rumbled into life. Outside, Bluetooth was using the spear to
try and smash a side window; another father was chopping into the bonnet with
Shadowman’s machete.

‘Just drive,’ Shadowman shouted.
‘Go, go, go … ’

Jaz winced as she tried to put the car into
gear. She
couldn’t move her left arm, though. Shadowman checked
the gears. It looked like an automatic. He pulled the lever to the drive position with
his free hand. Jaz stamped on the accelerator and the Lexus lurched forward, bumping and
jolting as it ploughed through the strangers. Johnny gave a cheer from the back.