The Sacrifice (22 page)

‘So long, you mugs!’

The car sped down the road, swerving
slightly from side to side as Jaz tried to steer with one hand. It banged and the bottom
scraped horribly as they went too fast over a speed bump. The windscreen was so cracked
and streaked with filth it was hard to see ahead.

‘Slow down,’ Shadowman croaked.
Jaz said nothing. There were tears streaming down her face.

What a mess.

Jaz didn’t slow down; if anything she
sped up. Johnny was giving directions from the back, but he wasn’t confident of
the route, which was making Jaz more and more tense. Shadowman couldn’t risk
getting his backpack off to reach for his A to Z. He didn’t want to take his hand
away from Jaz’s puncture wound. The point of the spear looked like it had gone all
the way through her shoulder. He was already slick with her blood. She was losing a lot
of it. Only fear and adrenalin and a deep-rooted sense of survival were keeping her
going.

Was it enough, though, to get them back to
her camp?

They bounced and rattled round corners, Jaz
only just managing to keep control of the big heavy car. It was clear that she was
desperate to get home. They might have made it if they hadn’t spotted another
group of strangers. About twelve of them, wandering down the road in three strung-out
groups.

‘Jesus. Where are they all coming
from?’ said Johnny.

‘Who cares?’ said Jaz.
‘But I know where they’re going.’

‘Leave it,’ said Shadowman.
‘All that matters now is getting back safely.’

‘They killed me,’ said Jaz.
‘The filthy bastards killed me.’

She stomped on the accelerator and the Lexus
roared straight into the first knot of strangers. Shadowman realized he didn’t
have his seat belt on. None of them did. There hadn’t been time. He braced himself
with his free arm and there was a grating thump as they hit the first stranger, then
another and another; bodies flew past the car and then the Lexus was out of control,
veering wildly across the road towards a lamp post.

Jaz cried out and wrenched the wheel round
so that they swung back the other way, ploughing through the rest of the strangers. Now
they were in danger of hitting a parked car on the other side of the road. Again Jaz
hauled on the wheel, oversteering and causing the car to swerve back too sharply the
other way. It was completely unstable now, driving on two wheels, and as Jaz tried to
right it, it twisted round completely sideways, slamming into the last few strangers
before at last tipping over. Shadowman’s head banged into the roof as they went
into a roll.

He could still hear the noise, the thudding
and crunching, the rattle of breaking glass, screams. He remembered the weird, unreal
sensation of being upside down in a car, the world outside spinning round, as they went
over and over and … 

Now here he was.

How long had he been unconscious?

Long enough for it to get dark.

He must still be in the wrecked car. Lying
in a cocoon
of twisted metal. He was on top of a body. Was it Johnny?
Jaz? One of the strangers?

At least he hadn’t been eaten. Had the
Lexus miraculously wiped them all out? Or had they pulled the other kids free and were
eating them before they moved on to him? Had they tried to pull him out and failed?
After all, he was well and truly stuck here.

‘Hello? Johnny? Jaz?
Hello … Is there anyone here with me? Anyone? Anyone … ’

He had to get out.

Christ. What if they’d already
started to eat him?
He couldn’t feel his legs. Could they have chewed
away at them?

He growled in fear and fury and
frustration.

Too many questions.

Too many unknowns.

One thing was clear, though. And it was a
big positive. Whatever had happened, he was still alive. And he was going to get out of
this somehow.

He heard the scuff of footsteps.

Froze.

Someone was moving around out there.

More than one person by the sound of it.

They’d come for him.

He closed his eyes and opened his mouth and
howled … 

‘We found seven more Nephilim this
morning. God knows how they’re getting through. We’ve repaired any damage to
the Wall we could find, but there were no obvious weak points. Without knowing exactly
where they got over we don’t have a clue where to start fixing things up.
It’s too big a job to reinforce the whole Wall. It took us nearly a year to build
it. We need more soldiers out on the streets, regular patrols.’

‘The Lamb will look after us,
Nathan.’

Archie noticed Nathan give a little look
that Matt missed. Nathan sighed. ‘But he’ll take any help he can get from
us, yeah? You should see it out there, Matt; it’s like Glastonbury for the
diseased. There’s more Nephilim rocking up every day and they’re massing on
the other side of the Wall like flies around poop. I never seen anything like it, man.
It’s getting bare crowded. Is like they’re after something.’

Nathan was Matt’s main man at the
cathedral when it came to security. In charge of all their soldiers. He was tall and
well built, had been a keen footballer before the collapse, had dreamt of getting a
try-out for one of the London clubs. Archie liked him. He didn’t take any crap
from anyone and he didn’t dish any out.

Nathan, Archie and Matt were plodding up the
endless spiral staircase inside the south wall of St Paul’s. Their feet clattered
on the wooden steps that were fixed on top of the stone ones underneath.

‘How many Nephilim did you say you
found on this side of the Wall this morning?’ Matt asked, slightly out of
breath.

‘Seven.’ Nathan was glugging
from a can of Coke and wasn’t finding the climb any sweat. Archie was too
knackered to even speak. Sports had never been his thing and since arriving at the
cathedral he hardly took any exercise any more. He stayed indoors, eating unhealthy
food.

‘Were they all together?’ Matt
asked.

‘Nah, one group of two, one group of
five.’

‘Were they any trouble to get rid
of?’

‘Not really. There was enough of us to
sort them out. We wasted them and dumped their bodies from off of the Wobbly Bridge. Big
splash. Bye-bye, Neph’.’

Matt stopped and turned to Nathan as they
reached one of the small landings.

‘Then what’s the problem?’
he asked. ‘You can deal with the few that get through, can’t you?’

‘Yeah, but there’s more and more
of them out there, man. You need to look for yourself.’

‘Well, that’s what I’m
doing, aren’t I? I’m not hacking all the way up here for my health,
Nathan.’

‘Won’t do you no harm,’
Nathan joked.

Matt tutted and carried on up the stairs.
Archie filled his aching lungs and followed.

Eventually they came to the Whispering
Gallery. Archie had never liked it up here. From the gallery you could look right down
inside the dome to the floor, miles below. You
felt like you were
hanging in this vast, open, empty space. Archie was scared of heights and had a crazy
urge to throw himself off.

When they’d first arrived, the kids
had all come up here. You could whisper into the wall and someone on the other side of
the dome could hear you perfectly clearly. The kids had spent ages whispering rude words
and giggling. Now they hardly came up any more.

Archie tried not to think about that
sickening view down to the black and white tiled floor and was relieved that they
weren’t stopping there this time. They were heading up to the Golden Gallery, at
the top of the dome, with its 360-degree views of the outside world.

It meant more stairs, however, and Archie
was already out of breath, his heart hammering at his ribs and his legs burning. Nathan
and Matt had gone on ahead. He could hear their voices echoing down the stairs. He
struggled on behind, swearing quietly to himself. There were benches for resting every
twenty steps or so and Archie had to use every one. The smoke wafting up from below
didn’t help. It got everywhere and as he passed through a thick haze of it,
trapped in the stairwell, he started to cough and choke. It was a relief to get out into
the fresh air when he reached the Stone Gallery that ran round the bottom of the dome.
Archie preferred it out here to the Whispering Gallery. The cathedral felt more solid
and secure. Somehow, looking straight down inside the building was worse than looking
out at the view across London.

He had a faint hope that they might stop
here, but the high stone balustrade made it hard to see clearly and the extra height
from the Golden Gallery gave a better view.

Besides, Matt would want to go right to the
top. It was easier to play God from up there. Lord Matt almighty looking out across his
kingdom.

Archie sighed as he saw Matt and Nathan slip
inside the small doorway that led to the next lot of stairs.

This was the worst part.

The dome had an outer shell and an inner
shell, and between them was a narrow space. Cast-iron spiral stairs had been built
inside this space and Archie would have to climb them to get to the top.

He hated those iron stairs. Not only were
there hundreds of them, but you could also see down through the holes in them.

He was nauseous and sweating and shaking by
the time he got to the Golden Gallery, and as he ducked his head to get through the
doorway to the outside world, he gulped in lungfuls of cold air.

He concentrated on the spectacular view
until he had calmed down, then edged his way round the narrow gallery until he was next
to Matt and Nathan who were leaning on the rusted iron railing, pointing downwards.

In the early morning light Archie could
clearly see the Wall, the series of barricades that they’d laboriously built over
the last year, blocking off every street around the cathedral and creating a safe area
on the inside.

He could also clearly see a great crowd of
grown-ups – Nephilim as Matt had named them, after some giants in the Bible. It looked
like every sicko in London was heading this way. They were pressed up against the
barricades.

And he could hear them, tap-tap-tapping.

Dumb clucks
.

Matt had started the Great Song soon after
they’d arrived,
trying to keep it going all day and night. In
those days the grown-ups could come right up to the cathedral walls at night. And they
clustered there, copying the kids inside. It had spread like a craze among them. As if
music still lived on in some deep animal part of their brains.

Archie was amazed that all these new
arrivals had joined in so quickly. They were making quite a racket down there. You
couldn’t hear them from inside the cathedral, but, when the wind was in the right
direction, the sound rose up here loud and clear.

‘What do they want?’ Archie
asked, not really expecting an answer.

‘It’s the Lamb,’ said
Matt.

‘What?’

‘The Lamb. They know he’s here.
They’ve come for him. They want to destroy him.’

‘So you’ll admit it’s a
full-on army then?’ said Nathan.

‘They are the Emim, the Awwim,’
said Matt. ‘The Terrors, the Rephaim or Dead Ones, the Gibborim, the
Devastators.’

‘They’re a bunch of sick bunnies
is what they are,’ said Nathan.

‘They are the Nephilim,’ Matt
went on. ‘The fallen ones, the cursed ones. And this is their city,
Kiriath-arba.’

Nathan sighed. Archie could tell he was
trying to stay patient. Nathan was more interested in practical things, didn’t
have much to do with the religious side of life in the cathedral.

‘They’re something we need to
maybe worry about, though, yeah?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Matt. ‘I
don’t worry about anything. We have the Lamb. Our faith is strong. We will win
this.’

‘How exactly?’ said Nathan, almost
losing it. ‘I mean, seriously, Matt. What are we going to literally
do
?
How does it work? Is he going to lead us, the Lamb? Are we going to go out there and
fight them Nephs? Is he going to shoot laser beams from his fingers or will the clouds
open up in the sky and a big, like, ray of light come down and turn them into dust? I
mean,
literally
, Matt, are they all supposed to just drop down dead or
something? Tell me how it works.’

‘It will be shown to us.’

Archie bit his lip and turned away so that
there was no danger of Matt seeing his expression. Sometimes he wanted to hit Matt. He
could be
really
annoying. He’d known him since he was eight. They’d
been together seven years, first at Rowhurst junior school and then at big school. To
say that Matt had changed would be something of an understatement.

Archie’s father had been a vicar, but
Matt had never been religious, until he’d seen the light in a big way a year ago.
Archie remembered sheltering from the sickos in the school chapel. They’d been
burning wood and bibles and anything they could get their hands on to keep warm and the
fumes had built up until they’d all nearly died from carbon-monoxide poisoning.
When Matt came round, he’d changed. A strange religious mania had come over him
and he was now absolutely sure that he was right and everyone else was wrong. He knew
some hidden truth.

Archie often wondered how much of it all he
really
believed. If he confronted Matt he knew what the answer would
be … 

All of it. Every single word.

But he changed those words, didn’t he?
Nearly every
day. To suit himself. To fit the situation. The truth was
slippery.

Matt was completely crazy. Archie was a
hundred per cent sure of that. But maybe in a crazy world you needed a crazy person to
lead you.

And so far they’d done pretty well,
hadn’t they? Whenever Matt had said that the Lamb would look after them, it had
come true. Like a series of miracles. Unbelievable really, if you thought about it.