The Sacrifice (46 page)

Her room wasn’t all that big. She
didn’t need much. There was a wardrobe for her clothes, a bookcase for her books,
a bed beside a low table where a candle burned. It was dry in here. Safe. It got
freezing cold in the depths of winter, as they had no heating, but that was the same
everywhere.

Wasn’t too bad tonight.

She was standing at her mirror, brushing her
long red hair and thinking of the boy who had come earlier. Ed, with his armour and his
scar. She wondered if she’d ever see him again. It had been an unusual day to say
the least, what with all the oppoes out on the streets. Even Ryan and his hunters had
been freaked out by it all and normally nothing fazed them. She’d stayed up late,
talking to some of her Cabinet about it. Going over the day’s events.

Things were changing, that was for sure. She
couldn’t fight it and she knew they couldn’t live in this false bubble
they’d created forever. Playing at adults, taking votes, passing laws and hardly
ever leaving the grounds. Sooner or
later the kids had to stop hiding
from the grown-ups. Take London back. Start to live normal lives.

And if they were going to survive
they’d have to start having children of their own. One of the girls here was
pregnant. And she was terrified. Everyone was. How were they going to deliver a baby,
for God’s sake? Would the girl survive? Would the baby survive?

Nicola laughed. It was crazy. People had
been having babies for thousands of years, hadn’t they? It couldn’t be that
hard. Mice did it. Flies did it. Monkeys did it. But she’d read enough books to
know that in the past having children was dangerous. There were a lot of things that
could go wrong. Without doctors. Without medicine. Without somebody who knew what they
were doing.

Sooner or later Nicola would have to find a
boyfriend, settle down with him, decide to have children, take that scary plunge.

In a way life after the disease had been a
big game. You didn’t have to worry about all the old problems any more. But she
knew they couldn’t go on like this forever.

Change was coming.

Real life was returning.

And she was thinking of Ed. He’d
seemed intelligent and decent, certainly knew how to look after himself.

She laughed again. No point in having silly
schoolgirl fantasies about him. He might be dead now for all she knew. Hadn’t he
gone back into the badlands?

There was always David, over at Buckingham
Palace. She knew full well that he was obsessed by her. David was a catch as her mum
used to say. He was powerful, in charge of all those kids. But she didn’t have the
slightest interest in him on that level. Couldn’t force herself to fancy him.
Had no desire to link up and be like a queen from the Middle Ages,
marrying some king just to make a strong alliance.

The thought of kissing
David … 

She made a face in the mirror. Pretended to
gag.

But Ed … 

Well, Ed had a weird face with that scar;
somehow, though, it didn’t bother her. She’d never gone for the boring
pretty boys, had always been attracted to the outsiders, the ones who were different.
The ones her mother didn’t like.

She got into bed, flinching at the coldness
of the sheets, and kicked her legs to warm them up. She blew out her candle. Lay there
in the dark.

Wondered once more if she would ever see Ed
again.

Ryan cursed as his dog shifted in her sleep
and her legs twitched, scrabbling at the floor.

‘Be still,’ he growled and
slapped her. He was having trouble sleeping tonight. He had trouble sleeping most
nights.

He and his hunters and their dogs were all
piled on top of each other on the floor of a big old house near Victoria station. The
hunters lived alongside their dogs. The dogs kept them warm and safe.

They never stayed anywhere long.
Didn’t want any wandering grown-ups to get their scent. Plus, the buildings got
pretty filthy. They never did any cleaning and just left rubbish where it dropped. The
dogs always picked a room to use as a toilet and in a few days the place would be
stinking worse than a grown-ups’ nest. So they’d move on, break into
somewhere else.

Why not? There was no shortage of empty
buildings, was there?

On the whole they had a good life. Getting
food and anything else they needed off the more settled kids in exchange for helping
them out. Plus, there was always stuff to be found on the streets.

And Ryan was king of the streets around
here. He could walk proud and free wherever he wanted.

He was respected.

But at night, when it was dark, with them
all huddled together, mixed up with the dogs, living like animals, he felt very lonely.
He could never tell anyone. He was Ryan Aherne, the meanest bastard in London, with a
mask made out of a dead father’s face and a string of trophy ears hanging from his
belt.

He missed his mum and his dad, though.

He lay there on his back and pictured how it
had once been. Sitting at his computer, using Facebook, drinking Coke, watching horror
DVDs with his dad, eating his mum’s food and chatting about stuff.

He’d sometimes pretend that he was
back in his old bed. In his old room with all his things. If he closed his eyes tight he
could remember exactly where everything had been, how it looked. His TV, his posters,
his DVDs and computer games, his weights, his football trophies.

His mum and dad sleeping next door.

Sometimes, like tonight, he let himself
cry.

And it helped a little bit.

‘What are they doing?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are they all right?’

‘I don’t know, David. How could
I be supposed to know? I mean, they’ve never done this before, yeah?’

‘I’ll say it again. Are they all
right, Pod?’

‘Well, er, no, they’re not all
right, are they? They’re grown-ups. They’re sick. They’ve never been
all right.’

‘You know what I mean, Pod.’

David was with his head of security in the
royal bedroom at Buckingham Palace. They called the room that, not because it had been
where the queen had slept, but because it was where they now kept what was left of the
royal family. The six men and women were in various stages of decay. They smelt awful.
David had tried to house-train them, but they still went to the toilet whenever and
wherever they wanted.

‘They’re still alive,’
said Pod. ‘They just stand there, though, not moving.’

David raised his candle and let its light
fall on the strangers’ faces. Normally they would have backed away, shielding
their eyes. Tonight they didn’t react at all. Just stood there with their heads
tilted back, their arms held stiffly in front of them. Still as a bunch of royal
waxworks at Madame Tussauds.

‘How long have they been like
this?’

‘Not too sure, mate. One of the guards
looked in on them sometime late this afternoon. Saw them like this, yeah? And when he
came back an hour later, they hadn’t moved. They haven’t shifted for ages
now.’

‘Get someone to stay in here with
them,’ said David. ‘Let me know if anything changes. This lot are important
to my plans. I really don’t want them to die on me.’

‘I’ll put two of my best guys on
it.’

‘I’m going to bed,’ said
David. ‘I just hope tomorrow’s a better day.’

‘God, yeah, it’s been, like,
well
weird today,’ said Pod. ‘With all those strangers mooching
about. There’s been one stood over the road by the statue of Queen Victoria in
exactly the same position as this all day. Even right through the thunderstorm, yeah?
She’s still out there now, I think. Something’s going on all
right.’

‘Yeah.’ David pinched the bridge
of his nose. He felt a headache coming on. ‘Listen, Pod,’ he said. ‘If
there’s still a stranger doing a clothes shop dummy impersonation outside the
gates in the morning, do me a favour, will you? Go out there and kill it for me, will
you? Yeah? I mean
you
personally. See to it for me.’

‘OK, yeah, sure, no
problemo.’

‘I just want everything to be back to
normal,’ David said angrily.

‘Normal. Yeah. No worries.’

David yawned and gave a final cold look at
the bloody royal family. Why did things have to change? Why couldn’t everyone just
do what he told them?

Why couldn’t things be normal?

Shadowman had never brought anyone here
before. It was his secret place. His safe house.

‘I only use it in emergencies,’
he explained to the kids who had rescued him.

‘It’s well cool, Dylan.’
The big bony-headed boy with the vicious axe was nodding appreciatively. When
they’d asked him, Shadowman had told them his real name, Dylan Peake, too tired to
lie any more. He’d let all his defences down and now here they were. In his
base.

‘Is this where you were headed when we
found you?’ asked Ed, their leader, who was horribly disfigured with a scar down
one side of his face. He’d been stained black from head to foot with blood when
they’d met. But now they’d washed and had changed into some clean clothes
that Shadowman had dug out for them. Mostly stuff he’d found there when he’d
broken in.

‘I wasn’t really headed
to
anywhere,’ said Shadowman. ‘I was headed
from
. Just
trying to, you know, get away. Too knackered to think straight. Those bastards had been
chasing me for miles. All the way from Kilburn.’

‘Kilburn?’ said the bony-headed
boy.

‘Yeah,’ said Shadowman.
‘It’s crazy, I know. They wouldn’t give up. Wouldn’t stop. As
many as I killed, more
joined them. I couldn’t risk trying to
get in anywhere to hide. At night. In the dark. Could have been strangers hiding in any
of the buildings.’

‘Strangers?’ Ed asked.

‘Grown-ups.’

‘Sickos.’

‘Sickos?’ Shadowman smiled.
‘Yeah, sickos. I like that.’ He felt the smile dying on his face.
‘They’ve changed,’ he said. ‘They’re
acting … ’

‘I know, we’ve seen it,’
said Ed. ‘They’re acting more intelligent.’

‘They’re not acting, though, are
they?’ said Shadowman. ‘They
are
more intelligent.’ And he
started to tell Ed all about St George and his army. Their organization, their purpose.
They swapped notes on the sentinels or pointers as Ed called them. And Ed told him a
little about the green stranger they had in tow. Shadowman felt like he was on the verge
of understanding something. Like this was all going to make sense to him. If only he
wasn’t so tired. Aching all over.

‘Sickos … ’ Ed settled
back in his chair and wriggled his toes. ‘We’re going to have to deal with
them one day. But right here, right now, let’s forget all about them for a time,
yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ Shadowman closed his
eyes for a moment and enjoyed the feeling of peace.

Forget about the strangers.

Forget. Everything
.

Ed’s socks had holes in them and they
stank, but it felt good to have his boots off and his feet warming by a fire. He’d
smash into a shop tomorrow and get a fresh pair.

Dylan had this place nicely set up. It was
an upstairs private members club in a narrow backstreet near Trafalgar Square, all
leather sofas, carved wood, bearskin rugs and oil paintings. A fire burning in the
fireplace. It had more security than the Bank of England and was well stocked with food,
water and weapons. Dylan was sharing. Ed understood how hard that must be for him. This
was his crib. A bolthole like this could mean the difference between surviving and
dying. He must have been very happy the day he found it. It hadn’t been wrecked or
looted. It was a fortress.

It was safe.

They
were safe. Ed’s strange
little gang had made it here in one piece.

Kyle was drinking warm beer, warming his
arse by the fire, a bright green bowler hat perched on his head. Must have belonged to a
doorman at the club or something. Macca and Will were playing cards. Small Sam,
Charlotte and The Kid were chatting away madly by themselves on a huge sofa. Catching
up.

And then there was Wormwood, the Green Man,
wrapped in an old tartan blanket, sitting stiff-backed in an armchair, his hands in his
lap, his eyes glinting in the candlelight.

His smell battled with the smell of
Ed’s socks.

It was mad. To be sitting this close to a
grown-up. Especially one covered in fungus. A mad end to a mad day. Ed had explained to
Dylan who Wormwood was – what he was – and Dylan had gone along with it. Had seemed to
get it. Seemed to understand sickos. Wasn’t too uncomfortable about having one
sitting in his chair.

‘So you reckon he might be
useful?’ Dylan asked him.

‘Reckon so. He knows stuff if we can
only make sense of it. Plus, like I said, he’s got this power over the other
sickos. Some kind of mind-control thing. Telepathy.’

‘You really think so?’ asked
Dylan. ‘You really think they’re communicating just with their minds
somehow?’

‘What d’you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ Dylan
shrugged and shook his head.

Ed leant closer towards him. ‘Seems to
me,’ he said quietly, ‘that the disease has given them a whole new
sense.’

‘That’s not possible.’
Will got up from the sofa and came over to the fire.

‘We all saw it,’ Ed protested.
‘You said yourself that the pointers looked like they were acting like aerials or
something, spreading the word. And the way Wormwood made them hold back,
and … ’

‘I know,’ said Will, cutting him
off. ‘That’s not what I meant. What I meant was it’s not possible for
humans to suddenly develop superpowers like in a comic. We can’t change.
We’re what we are. We couldn’t suddenly start flying or walking through
walls. It doesn’t work like that.’

‘Then how come they all seem to know
what to do without talking to each other?’ said Dylan.