The Sacrifice (36 page)

‘I wish they were coming with
us,’ said Adele, standing in the rain. She wasn’t dressed for bad weather,
and her pink glittery clothes were already starting to look a bit sad.

‘We’ll be OK,’ said Will
and walked out to join her. The rest of them followed. They said goodbye to Bozo at the
gate, hunched their shoulders against the rain and trudged out
into the road.

As they rounded the end of the Houses of
Parliament, Ed turned right, towards Westminster Bridge. Kyle fell in beside him.

‘So, boss,’ he asked.
‘What do we do if Sam’s there? Do we take him back to the Tower? Or we got
to come all the way into town again?’

Ed adjusted his hood. ‘No more
plans,’ he said. ‘We’ll just take things as they come.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

The bridge looked clear. There were no more
sickos coming across for now.

‘Hey,’ said Kyle, when they were
about halfway to the other side. There were views both ways along the river and he had
only just taken in where they were. ‘Does this make you feel all gooey
inside?’

‘What are you on about?’

‘This is close to where we first met,
boyfriend.’ Kyle laughed and pointed upriver. ‘We got on the ferry over
there. This could even be our anniversary.’

It was true. The last time Ed had been up
this way was a year ago, trying to escape the fire. They’d got bottled up at the
next bridge along, Lambeth Bridge, and had been forced into a pitched battle with a
horde of sickos who’d been driven there by the flames. Ed had found himself
fighting alongside Kyle, who’d been armed with a garden fork. In the end
they’d escaped downriver on a tourist boat and he remembered with a stab of anger
Matt causing it to crash into a bridge and sink.

He wondered how he was going to react when
he saw
Matt again. Wondered what he might be doing to Sam and The Kid.
Ed had thought that the threat to Sam was from grown-ups, not children. He felt sick
that he’d wasted half a day getting into town.

Matt. He’d been trouble ever since he
got carbon-monoxide poisoning in Rowhurst. A big part of Ed wanted to just go in there
and cut him down. Kill him on the spot.

He had to get there first, though,
didn’t he? It wasn’t over yet.

They were exposed to all the weather could
throw at them crossing the bridge. The others pulled on hats and caps and flipped up
hoods to keep the rain off, but it trickled down their necks and slowly soaked their
clothes.

‘Beats washing them,’ said Kyle
with a big happy grin. ‘We’re using God’s laundrette.’

Ed grunted and wiped water from his face.
‘Don’t know how you can be so bloody cheerful.’

‘Hey,’ said Kyle, turning his
own face up to catch more rain on it. ‘Life is good.’

‘Life is crap.’

‘This is the first shower I’ve
had in over a year,’ said Kyle. ‘Washing don’t seem so important now,
does it?’

‘Not if you don’t mind
stinking.’

‘Which I don’t,’ said Kyle
and he gave a dirty laugh. ‘I don’t have to worry about that no more,
don’t have to worry about nothing. Like using deodorant. And not just any
deodorant. Oh no. You had to use the right deodorant, didn’t you? If you
didn’t smell of the right deodorant you’d be laughed at. Remember?
Everything had to be right. You had to wear the right label jeans. I never knew which
was the right label, did I? Changed all the time and I always seemed to get it wrong.
“Oh, Kyle, nobody wears Ecko
jeans any more, you loser.”
Well, now I can wear whatever jeans I like and I can wear them every day if I want.
“Oh, Kyle, gross, you were wearing those jeans yesterday, you bum.” These
days we got a better idea what’s important. This is a much easier life.’

‘What d’you mean, life’s
easier? Are you nuts?’

‘I never had days like this
before,’ said Kyle. ‘This has been a fine day.’

Ed made a dismissive noise, but Kyle ignored
him and ploughed on.

‘Man, I was getting so bored at the
Tower,’ he said. ‘This is good.’

Ed couldn’t hold it in.
‘It’s been hell, Kyle,’ he spluttered. ‘We nearly all got killed
or didn’t you notice?’

‘Yeah, but we didn’t get busted,
did we?’ said Kyle. ‘We knocked some heads. We
did
something. It
was a blast.’

‘I don’t see on what level you
can count what happened today as fun,’ Ed protested.

‘You see, that’s where
we’re different, you and me,’ said Kyle. ‘Before all this I bet you
was well happy.’

Ed thought about this for a moment.

‘I suppose I was.’

‘Your life was well sorted, man. You
had a nice family, a nice school, you was clever and good-looking, confident.’

‘I guess.’

‘Not me,’ said Kyle. ‘I
was never happy. Felt like I was carrying a world of shit around on my back.
That’s why I say life’s easier now. There’s not so many decisions to
make.’

‘It’s like a bloody horror film,
Kyle. What are you talking about?’

‘No, hear me out, man. I weren’t
happy at all before all this. Life was confusing. I was a right miserable sod. Always
in trouble, didn’t get on at school, couldn’t get my head
round lessons, didn’t see the point. Always behind. Trying to catch up. Well, not
really trying that hard as it goes. Used to hang out with the losers, the troublemakers,
the idiots. They didn’t expect nothing of me. I felt like a zero. My mum always
wanted me to do good at school. I let her down.

‘I was OK at primary school, I guess.
That wasn’t so bad until Year Five, Year Six. We did tests, exams, you know, what
d’you call them? SATs and that. Then a lot of my friends, I realized they was
cleverer than me, they was gonna do better at secondary school than me. I was OK at
football and that, but never brilliant. I was good at art, used to like drawing battle
scenes on giant sheets of paper with hundreds of little men, and tanks, and robots, and
helicopters. It ain’t easy drawing a helicopter. Teachers used to say why
couldn’t I draw something nice?

‘The one other thing I was good at was
fighting. That was what made things OK. I could batter someone and for a while I was the
big man. Never lasted, though. Soon I was back being a miserable loser. Then, when
I’ve gone to secondary school, I couldn’t get it on. Was behind in lessons
even before they started. I was taken over by these black moods, man. Right down in the
pit. Mum made me see a therapist.

‘You’re the first person
I’ve ever told this to, Ed, and you were the sort of kid I hated at school, the
sort I wanted to kill. And if you tell anyone else I saw a therapist I will cut your
head off and shove it up your arse. I mean it. Nobody at the time knew. But the thing
was, Mum was right, I was depressed. I mentioned to a doctor once that I sometimes had
proper dark thoughts. You know. Of killing myself. A lot of kids do, I reckon. Or did.
They don’t really mean
it, just want to, you know, like, DO
SOMETHING. Shake things up. I used to have these dark fantasies of taking a samurai
sword, or a machine gun, into school and mowing everyone down, all the clever kids, the
smug bastards like you who never had to worry about nothing. I’d give them
something to worry about.
Brap-brap-brap
. Then I’d blow myself up. Go out
in glory. Be remembered forever. That’d show the world. Never did, of course,
never would have done, but I had these fantasies and they used to cheer me up.

‘I couldn’t ever settle, Ed.
Felt uncomfortable in myself. Didn’t know who I was. Struggled to read. Dyslexia.
Well, that don’t matter now, does it? The only books I could get on with were war
stories. True life stories. And I used to wish that there would be another war and I
could be a soldier. I was jealous of the guys in the books, in the Second World War,
because their lives were simple. You’re in the army. People tell you what to do.
You go out there and do it. Simple. They feed you. They look after you. You’re
away from home. From all that
real-life
crap. Your mum has a go at you, your
girlfriend, you got an excuse – “Hey, I’m saving your ass here, leave me
be.”

‘War is easy. It’s kill or be
killed. You don’t have to worry about all the annoying little things that go on in
the world, back home – dealing with friendships, who likes who, who said what, putting
up with my mum, who was depressed herself, to be fair, worried about money and she took
a lot of drugs. That whole boring, difficult, real-life stuff, paying bills and buying
the right clothes and learning crap. None of that matters in a war.

‘I used to dream this was coming, a
war or a big disaster, the zombie apocalypse, whatever. Then I could survive,
be a hero, get a gun and hole up in a shack in the mountains,
blasting away at anything that moved. I had a zombie survival plan all written up. Yeah.
This was the simple life I dreamt of. I prayed that all this would happen some day. And
you know what? My dream came true. Kill or be killed. Hunt for your food. Kill the
enemy. Nothing else to worry about. Simples. I’m a fighter now, a good fighter, so
people respect me. I got status, Ed, I got respect. And nothing to worry about. Let it
all come down, I say. I don’t want to go back to what them kids back there in Big
Ben was doing – making life complicated. Boring. I just want to be able to go on doing
what I’m good at – knocking sickos into the ground. I can make my mark. Show the
world I’m a player.’

‘You really used to hate people like
me?’ Ed asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Kyle. ‘And I
bet you hated people like me.’

Ed laughed. ‘Maybe.’

‘You were one of the clever, shiny
ones that didn’t have nothing to worry about. I was an ugly, spotty gonk.
You’ve met me halfway, I guess, with that face you got on you now, but I bet,
before, you had all the girls sniffing round you.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe … yeah. Maybe, baby.
But now everything’s changed. You ain’t so buff. I’ve got skills
people need. I’m happy, you’re depressed.’

‘You think so?’ Ed asked,
surprised.

‘Takes one to know one,’ said
Kyle. ‘I seen you, boss. You ain’t always happy. You turn in on yourself.
You got the darkness in there like me. Mine’s shut away for now, but I know it
could come crawling back up. But you, boss, you give in to it.’

‘Maybe.’ Ed wouldn’t admit
it to Kyle, but he did admit it to himself. There were bad memories inside him and they
poisoned his mood if he let his guard down. Too many nights he dreamt of setting fire to
Jack’s bed. Watching his best friend’s dead body being eaten by the
flames.

‘Don’t worry. I’m sticking
by you, boss,’ said Kyle. ‘Cos you’re clever and because you accepted
me. Didn’t have to. From the off, though, you fought shoulder to shoulder with me
and you fought well, best I ever seen, better than me even. You are a stone-cold killer,
dude, and I respect that. We’re brothers now, whether you like it or not.
We’ve shared our secrets. I do wish you could be happy, though, man, like me. I
sleep well at night. Never used to. Now –
bang
– the sun goes down and
I’m in the land of nod till dawn. No interruptions.

‘If all this hadn’t happened
what would I be doing now? I’d probably be banged up or maybe I’d have
finally done one, topped myself. I’d be in trouble one way or another, though,
that much I know. That much I
do
know for sure, brother.’

‘And this isn’t trouble?’
Ed asked. ‘What we’ve got now? A world of sickness and pain? Adults eating
children? Children killing adults?’

‘This? No way. This is fun!’

They were making good progress along the
South Bank, despite the destruction that lay all around them. The fire had ripped
through the buildings, opening them up and tearing them down. Out of control, it had
burned hot enough to crack concrete, to split brick and stone and bring everything
tumbling down. In the worst-hit areas there were just the blackened skeletons of houses
and offices, piles of rubble now thick with weeds and punctured by
saplings, forcing their way up towards the sky as nature clawed back the city for
itself.

Every now and then, though, they’d
come to a street or a run of buildings that seemed hardly touched, little islands of
order among the chaos. The big wheel of the London Eye was still standing, though it was
smeared with black and spotted brown with rust. The main structure of the Southbank
Centre – what had once been theatres, concert halls, restaurants and galleries – was
still there, a great dirty grey bulk, though the insides were gutted.

They saw a few sickos, but hurried past
them, eager to get on before it got dark. And night would come early today as the sky
was growing thick with storm clouds.

They came to Southwark Bridge and had to
skirt round a big pile of fallen masonry. Will came over to Ed.

‘Do you notice it?’ he
asked.

‘What’s that?’

‘Up there.’ Will pointed out a
sicko to Ed, one of the frozen ones, on top of the rubble. Ed had seen it, but it
hadn’t really registered. His brain had ceased to process them as a threat.

‘What about it?’ he asked.

‘There’s been one at every
bridge,’ said Will.

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah.’ Will was smart, always
looking, always thinking, spotting things others missed. Macca had better eyesight, but
he never stopped to think about anything. Not like Will.

‘I’ve not seen them anywhere
else, just at the bridges,’ he went on. ‘What are they doing, d’you
think?’

‘Ryan Aherne called them pointers.
Like dogs.’

‘Dogs hear frequencies that humans
can’t,’ said Will.

‘Yeah.’ Ed thought about this for
a moment. ‘Ryan told me he couldn’t bring his dogs this way,’ he said.
‘Something freaks them out. You think they can hear something we
can’t?’

‘It’s the same with girls
too,’ said Will.

‘Is that right?’ said Kyle.

‘Yeah. Their hearing’s
better.’

Ed remembered the strange noise that Adele
and Hayden claimed they could hear coming out of the pointer that morning.