The Sacrifice (41 page)

‘Come at us if you want, Matt, but I
warn you, we’ve fought our way here today through an army of grown-ups, sickos,
oppoes, Nephilim, whatever you want to call them. I can’t tell you how many I
killed because I lost count. We’re
all fighters. Killers. I
don’t want to hurt any kids, it’s not my way. But you lot are different.
You’re quite happy to kill other children. So the rules have changed.’

‘It was a sacrifice,’ said Matt.
‘We were making an offering to … ’

‘I said shut up, Matt. I don’t
want to hear it. I’m going now. To the centre of town. It’s safe there.
Normal. You don’t need to be frightened of Matt any more, his monster has gone.
There’s no sicko down there in the cellar. So if any of you want to come with us
I’ll forget this ever happened. The rest of you, I spit on you.’

Sam looked at the kids. Behind him were the
shelves, row after row of food, stacked high to the ceiling. Nobody moved. There was a
long, silent pause; no sounds from the outside world could penetrate through the thick
concrete walls all the way down here.

And then the stillness was broken by a mad,
high-pitched cackle and Matt came strutting out in front of Ed.

‘You’re a fool, Ed,’ he
said slowly and coldly. ‘Nobody wants to go with you. They’re all true
believers. See, they wear the green. In honour of Wormwood and the golden age when all
was green. They don’t stay here because they’re scared or because of all
this food. Look how many of them have the mark of the Lamb on their foreheads. They stay
here because they want to enter God’s kingdom with me. Nobody wants to go with
you. You’re a loser.’

Ed stood there, breathing heavily, his
heart pounding. He was suddenly very, very tired. Washed out. He wondered if he really
had the strength to make it back into town, to get Sam to the Natural History Museum.
How much easier it would be just to stay here at the cathedral, wait, safe and dry,
until the storm passed and the sun came up again. Eat some of Matt’s food.
Rest.

Matt’s craziness had affected him. He
couldn’t think straight. He had to forget about Matt and think about what he had
to do. He looked along his line of friends. At Adele, all in pink, Hayden, tall and
determined, Macca and Will, Kyle … 

He’d got them this far without any of
them getting hurt. Moving on now was going to throw them all back into danger. Could he
really ask them to do that again?

Could he really ask any of the cathedral
kids to leave this place?

Or was he just making excuses for his own
tiredness and fear?

Matt was grinning at him with a nasty,
triumphant look on his face.

Maybe he was right … 

‘Actually … ’ A voice
rang out small and clear and high. ‘I’d like to come with you, if
that’s all right.’

It was a young girl carrying a violin case.
Looked about Sam’s age.

Well, if
she
was brave
enough … 

Ed smiled, feeling his scarred cheek
tighten. ‘Of course that’s all right. What’s your name,
darling?’

‘Charlotte. I spoke to the other boy,
Angus.’

‘Angus? Who’s Angus?’

‘The Goat boy.’

‘You spoke to The Kid?’

‘Yes. I wasn’t supposed to. I
spoke to him and I quite liked him, and he called me Yo-Yo, which was funny, though I
wasn’t allowed to laugh. I liked him and I didn’t think it was right to hurt
him. It was a bad thing that happened. I believe in God and I don’t think God
would have wanted any of this to happen.’

She walked over to Ed, and Adele took her
hand, spoke quietly to her, reassuring her.

‘Well,’ Ed shouted. ‘It
looks like Charlotte’s braver than the rest of you.’

‘No.’ Another voice. Another
girl. It was Tish. She pushed through the scrum of kids.

‘I’m coming too. I know I did
something shitty. I feel awful about The Kid. I tried to convince myself that he was
evil, but I think he was just a boy. I can’t stay here. I understand if you
don’t want to take me, but … ’

‘It’s forgotten.’ Ed gave
her a brief hug. ‘It was all Matt’s doing. No one else.’

‘I ain’t staying here.’
Now Brendan came forward. Ed had met him back at the cathedral, and Brendan had
explained everything that had happened. ‘I never wanted to be here in the first
place. This ain’t nothing to do with me. If you’ll get me into town and not
back to the Tower I’ll come.’

‘Deal,’ said Ed.

It was decided then. They were going. Ed was
just starting to feel like everything was working out fine when a boy came running in
through the open doors of the storeroom. He was soaking wet and clearly terrified.

‘They’re here!’ he yelled.
‘The Nephilim are in the Temple. They’ve broken through the Wall!’

The open area in front of St Paul’s
was filled with a boiling mass of bodies, slick from the rain, black in the darkness.
The clatter from their makeshift instruments was filling the night with a noise that
rattled Ed’s teeth.

Kids were pouring out of the street that led
to the warehouse and stopping, bunched up and confused. The way ahead was totally
blocked. For the moment the grown-ups didn’t seem to be attacking anyone. They
were just milling, aimless, like a crowd at an airport waiting for an announcement.

St Paul’s loomed above them, its white
walls appearing to glow slightly, despite the rain.

‘Why don’t they attack?’
Kyle asked, twisting his axe in his big hands.

‘It’s like there’s
something on their minds,’ said Will.

‘They don’t have minds,’
said Kyle.

‘I don’t know any more,’
said Will. ‘These ones are organized.’

Matt came striding past them. ‘Stay
close to me!’ he shouted. ‘We’ll find a way through. Nathan, get your
best fighters together up the front.’

Matt stopped shouting and pushed his way
back through the tangle of kids to Ed and his group. He fixed Sam with a wild stare.

‘The Lamb must lead us,’ he said,
rain running down his face, making it look like he was crying.

Ed had no time for this. ‘If you mean
Sam,’ he said, ‘he stays with us.’

‘The Lamb will protect us,’ said
Matt.

A sudden poisonous bubble of rage exploded
inside Ed and he lashed out, striking Matt in the face with the flat of his hand and
making him stagger sideways.

‘What did you do that for?’ Matt
said, dropping all his front. He didn’t sound like some mad preacher any more; he
sounded like a sad kid in the playground.

Ed didn’t answer his question. He
simply swore at him and shoved him out of the way. Matt staggered back and tripped over,
falling in a puddle. One of his acolytes went to help him get up, but Matt snarled at
him to leave him alone.

Ed left him there and started rounding up
his crew. ‘We have to get back to the bridge,’ he said. ‘Stick
together. I’ll take point with Kyle and Adele.’

They formed into a wedge and edged round
behind the cathedral kids who were hanging back, unsure of what to do. Still the sickos
didn’t seem to have noticed their arrival. They seemed as confused as the kids.
Some were banging sticks and stones, bones and pieces of metal together; some were
wandering around as if they were looking for something. Whatever it was, they were
distracted. If they’d all gone into the attack none of the kids would have stood a
chance. There had to be at least three hundred adults packed into the area below the
steps, and Ed saw a steady flow of them plodding up towards the entrance. A small group
of frightened kids was trying to close the doors on them and fight them off at the same
time.

Matt had recovered and Ed could hear him
shouting orders, gathering his troops around him. Luckily he seemed more interested in
getting back into the cathedral and making it safe than in keeping Sam. Ed hoped
he’d admitted defeat.

Nathan was with Matt, trying to get the kids
into some sort of order. All the shouting was making the nearest sickos aware of them.
They were stopping, turning, sniffing … 

Ed looked back as Matt’s group finally
set off. There were a lot of kids, and most were armed, but only a few of them looked
like they’d be any use in a fight. The Wall had protected them. The Tree of Life
had fed them. They hadn’t needed to be out here, day after day, facing up to
sickos. He reckoned only Nathan and a handful of his guards really knew what they were
doing.

As they pushed their way into the crowd, a
ripple passed through the sickos; more and more of them were becoming aware, becoming
interested. They started to close in on Matt’s group.

And then they began to attack.

Nathan and his team were at the front of the
column. Behind them Matt and his acolytes, well protected. The kids at the back, though,
the slower ones, the less brave ones, the younger ones, had no idea what to do. Ed heard
screams as the sickos picked them off. Soon the tight order of Matt’s group was
falling apart; panicked kids were breaking away, running in all directions. And those
that left the main group were instantly taken down and swallowed by the mob.

‘Bollocks!’ Ed barked, short and
harsh. He stopped walking. Then he tensed and brought his sword up quickly as someone
grabbed his shoulder.

It was only Kyle, though.

‘I know what you’re
thinking,’ he said. ‘But it’s not our fight, Ed. Leave it.’

‘They’re kids like
us.’

‘We can’t do anything. We have
to look after ourselves.’

Ed looked at the frightened faces of his
gang. For the moment they were behind the mass of sickos, who were concentrating on
Matt’s kids. If Ed pressed on they might get right round the edge of the battle
and down to the bridge without a fight.

He turned to Will. Trusted his
judgement.

‘Let’s get out of here,
Ed,’ Will said.

‘OK.’ Ed shut his mind down.
Forgot all about Matt and his kids. He’d given them the chance, hadn’t he?
This was their choice.

‘Come on … ’

They kept close to the curve of buildings
around the edge of the churchyard, mostly cafés with offices above them. They could hear
the sounds of the battle. Kids crying out, sickos moaning and hissing, others still
clattering and banging.

Will turned occasionally to see what was
going on.

‘It’s OK, Ed,’ he said.
‘Matt’s kids are almost all through the doors now. Those that made
it.’

‘Fine,’ Ed grunted. He was
shutting down all the rooms in his mind, leaving only those animal parts functioning
that would help him get out of this mess.

‘The only problem is,’ said
Will, ‘once Matt’s lot are out of the way the sickos are going to be more
interested in us.’

Ed took this in. So far they’d been
left alone, but they were still only about halfway round to the walkway that led down to
the bridge.

‘They’ve closed the doors!’
Adele shouted.

It was almost as if her voice acted like a
signal. One moment the sickos were all facing the cathedral, trying to get in, the next
they’d stopped and turned, and were coming towards Ed’s crew.

Within seconds they were totally boxed in,
the way forward jammed with sickos.

‘Get off the street!’ Ed yelled.
‘Now!’

Charlotte was more scared than she ever
remembered being. Even when everything had started to go wrong she’d never felt
like this. Never seen so many sick grown-ups together in one go. They were everywhere.
The smell of them was awful, like a whole pack of wet dogs mixed in with bad toilet
smells and a mouldy gas that stuck in the back of your nose. She wanted to close her
eyes, block her ears. Instead she pinched her nose and clamped a hand over her mouth.
The only thing that gave her any comfort was having the bigger kids around her.
They’d made a human wall to protect her and Sam and were all chopping away with
their weapons, pushing and shoving their way through the crowd, trying to find a way
into one of the buildings.

They were going so slowly, though. Charlotte
had seen children killed trying to get to the cathedral. She imagined herself being
pulled away by one of the mothers or fathers, dragged into the crowd, pictured all those
dirty fingernails clawing at her.

One of the bigger kids was making a special
effort to look after her and Sam. A girl dressed all in pink and glitter, sparkling pins
in her hair. Charlotte had heard one of the boys call her Adele. She stood over
Charlotte and Sam when any grown-up got too close and bashed them away.
Every now and then she’d look round to check on Charlotte and smile at her.
Charlotte was glad of that smile. As long as Adele could keep smiling, it meant they
were going to be all right.

This one time Charlotte had been on an
aeroplane with her mum and dad, and they’d flown into a storm. The plane had
rocked about and kept on suddenly dipping like a rollercoaster. At first Charlotte had
been terrified, but then she’d seen an air hostess, just sitting there chatting to
another hostess, and she’d smiled at Charlotte in the same way as Adele, letting
her know there was nothing to fear.

There was a surge and several grown-ups got
very close. The bigger kids had to fight really hard. Sam took hold of Charlotte’s
hand, tried to smile the way Adele had done, but just looked sick and scared. He’d
wanted to reassure her, but she ended up reassuring him.

‘It’s all right, Sam,’ she
said. ‘Don’t worry. It’s all right.’

Sam nodded, too frightened to speak.

‘In here!’ someone shouted.
There was a broken-in doorway to an office; behind it a short passage led to a hallway.
Charlotte was bundled inside with the other kids. Then Adele took her and Sam on through
to the hallway while the others stayed to guard the door.

Charlotte and Sam flopped to the floor,
getting their breath back, still holding hands.

‘Are you OK?’ Adele asked. Sam
nodded his head, gulped. Finally spoke, his voice just a whisper really.