The Dead Read online

  ‘I won’t sit down. You all need to accept the Lamb if you want to be saved. The golden child, who is more than a child. I’ve seen him, walking out of the darkness, and all around him is light, and in his shadow walks a demon.’

  ‘Sit down, Matt.’

  Matt left his seat and went over to Ed.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘You’ll see that I’m right. It’s all in the pages, and if you can’t see that then you’re blind. We’re being tested. That’s what all this is about, the disease, the dead, don’t you see? God has sent a plague to wipe out the sinners, to kill the evil-doers. We have to found a new Jerusalem, in London, and welcome the Lamb who will come to save us.’

  ‘And just how do we welcome him?’ Ed asked.

  ‘We have to make a sacrifice.’

  ‘A sacrifice?’ Ed looked amazed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Matt. ‘The Lamb is ready for sacrifice, but we don’t sacrifice the Lamb, you see, we sacrifice the demon, the beast who walks at his side in the darkness, and then once he’s been cast out, the Lamb will be free and we can all rise into God’s kingdom here on earth.’

  This was all too much for Ed, he started to laugh. Matt stood there for a moment, his bony shoulders rising and falling heavily, then he turned away and stalked back to his friends.

  Chris was secretly smiling. He didn’t think Matt’s new religion would catch on. After all, he was just a kid.

  What did kids know about anything?

  He focused his attention back on to his book. He knew the others thought he was weird. Always reading. But the thing was, books were the future now. They held what was left of the world’s knowledge. All the adults were either dead or sick. All those teachers with their knowledge, all those parents, scientists, historians, gone.

  There were no more computers now, and wouldn’t be again until the electricity came back on. And how long would that take? What did kids know about generating electricity? Well, if they wanted to find out they were going to have to read books.

  First read the books, then build the generators, then switch the computers back on. Probably wouldn’t work after all that time. So they’d have to build new computers, which would mean reading more books …

  And in the meantime, all the gigabytes, zigabytes, mega-ziga-gigabytes of information that had once been stored in all the computers of the world would have vanished.

  All that knowledge lost forever. They were back to square one. Well, perhaps not square one. More like the Middle Ages. Before electricity, before the Industrial Revolution, before cars and machines.

  When there was just books.

  If Chris knew one thing, it was that knowledge is power. And where was all the knowledge in the world right now? In books. So that meant that books were the most powerful objects in the world.

  And he was going to use that power. He was going to keep on reading. He had to start collecting encyclopaedias, science books, history, geography, books of facts and figures. He had to start planning for the future.

  The scenery rolled past as the afternoon wore on, growing greyer and greyer. The drizzle never let up and their progress was painfully slow. Roads were blocked everywhere and whenever the rain picked up Greg had to slow down to a crawl because of the missing wipers.

  Several times they had to stop altogether and the bigger boys would have to get down and physically move cars out of the way while Greg watched out for sickos with his shotgun. Some of the cars still had keys in the ignition, but most didn’t. The boys smashed the side windows and then it was Greg who showed them how to disable the steering lock by jamming a screwdriver in behind the steering column. They didn’t bother trying to hotwire them, but simply put the cars in neutral and pushed them out of the way.

  It was not quick work, though.

  The sky steadily darkened as they crisscrossed the dreary streets on the fringes of south London trying to find a way in. Despite the rain there were fires smouldering everywhere, filling the air with smoke that made their going even more difficult.

  One by one everyone on the bus fell silent, retreating into their thoughts. Even the three girls at the back piped down. The only voice was Greg’s as he muttered under his breath, cursing and swearing.

  Liam sat staring at the great solid lump that was the back of his father’s head. It was so familiar from countless drives. The pale bristles of his short haircut, the big crease in the skin that ran all the way across his scalp, the red rash where his collar rubbed against his wide neck. Greg always complained that most shirts didn’t fit round his neck. The collars were always too tight.

  The hours Liam had spent in the back of the car studying this great fleshy boulder. He took after his dad. He had the biggest head in his class. When he’d had his glasses fitted the optician had been amazed. She said she’d have to give Liam adult frames.

  He had a sudden flashback to a memory of when he’d been much smaller. Sitting in the car – not the new Jeep, the old one, the Shogun – and there being two heads in the front.

  Mum and Dad.

  It must have been a really long time ago.

  Mum was gone now, back up to Coventry. She’d moved in with the man from the phone company. Daryl.

  Liam visited her three times a year, once on her birthday, once at Christmas and for two weeks in May when Dad went fishing with his mates.

  It suited all of them. Mum had never much enjoyed being a mum, and Dad was more fun. He did cool things with Liam. They went to the football, they went fishing, they watched DVDs together – old war films, mostly. They were Dad’s favourites: The Dam Busters, The Great Escape, The Longest Day, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Battle of Britain.

  They walked Charlie on Hampstead Heath. Charlie was a boxer. They’d left him with Uncle Ray when they’d set off down to Kent all those weeks ago. They weren’t allowed to take Charlie on to the farms.

  Liam wondered if he was all right. Maybe Uncle Ray was like Dad. Maybe he wouldn’t get sick. He hoped Charlie was all right. He loved him.

  He loved his dad as well, even though he sometimes scared Liam. Dad could get really angry and when he was ‘in one of his rages’ as he called it, Liam had to try to keep out of his way. He was worst when he was driving. He would swear at other drivers and say the most horrible things. Once Liam had been with Dad when he’d got into a fight with another driver.

  Dad had had a laugh about it afterwards but Liam had been really shaken up by it. He hated fighting himself, and spent a lot of time at school trying to keep out of the way of bullies. He never told Dad if he was bullied, because he knew Dad would only make it worse. Go round to the bully’s house and start a fight or something.

  Liam watched as Greg coughed and ran a hand through his hair. A fine spray rose up as he did so, like a mist. Liam thought at first it was water, and then he realized it was a spray of Dad’s hair, like when you go to the barber’s and they leave all those sort of powdery itchy bits down the back of your neck and in your hair.

  There was a bald patch where Greg had rubbed. And right in the middle of the patch was a spot. A single whitehead, glistening and fat with pus.

  Liam held his breath.

  He didn’t want to look, but he had no choice, the spot drew his eyes like a target. And Greg kept scratching at it, scratching and scratching, rubbing off more hair and making the skin around the spot red raw.

  Greg coughed again, like he had something caught in his throat. He reached for his plastic water bottle and drank half of it in one long swallow. Dad’s party trick was to down a pint of beer in one go. He’d tried teaching Liam how to do it with a glass of water, but it always ended the same way, with Liam choking and Dad laughing.

  ‘You’re no son of mine!’ he joked.

  You only had to look at pictures of Greg as a boy to know that wasn’t true, however. The two of them were identical. He supposed he’d be just like Greg when he grew up – strong and tough and not afraid of anything or anyone.

  That would be nice.


  He looked forward to getting home. It had been awful on the farm. With everyone dying and all that.

  And then there was poor Little Paul, the farmer’s youngest son. Liam had made friends with him.

  He shivered at the memory. He couldn’t help it.

  Little Paul had got hysterical when his dad and all his older brothers had got sick and Greg had had to shoot them. Little Paul had been like a crazy person. Screaming, shouting, crying. And then he’d gone very quiet. Wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t talk. Stared at the wall.

  Liam remembered how Greg had taken Little Paul out to the barn one night, and when he came back into the house his hands were all wet. He’d washed them.

  Little Paul never came back.

  Greg coughed, a long fit of it, and spat into a paper coffee cup.

  When he rubbed his head again he exposed another bald patch.

  There were three more spots on it, nestling in the crease of skin.

  Liam felt a coldness creeping up his legs, as if his heart was sucking all the blood back into itself like a sponge. His vision was turning black and white, like an old film.

  ‘Dad …’ he said, just before he passed out.

  25

  ‘He’s all right, he’s all right, give him air. He’s just fainted. Give him air. Liam … Liam … wake up, son.’

  Liam felt a damp hand slapping his face. His eyes fluttered open. What was he doing lying on the floor? Dad’s big face looming over him. Boys and girls crowding round him.

  ‘You fainted, son, is all. Nothing worse than that. You feeling all right? Get him some water, one of you, come on!’

  ‘I’m fine, Dad. I’m fine.’

  ‘What set you off? What happened?’

  Liam couldn’t say anything. He looked up at his dad like he was an alien. Someone already dead.

  The spots.

  The cough.

  He couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say ‘You’re getting sick, Dad.’ Couldn’t say anything. Because saying it would make it real. And the reality of it was too terrifying to think about. If he didn’t say anything, maybe it wouldn’t happen.

  Dad’s face was covered with a thin film of sweat and the whites of his eyes looked yellowish.

  It had started like this on the farm. First Big Paul and his wife, and then the older boys.

  It could be something else, though, couldn’t it? Couldn’t it? Maybe Dad just had a cold.

  That was it. Just a cold.

  Liam smiled at his dad who smiled back. Greg coughed and sniffed and wiped his nose. Liam saw a thin smear of blood along his finger. Had anyone else seen it?

  Please, no. Not Dad.

  ‘Let’s get you up from there, son.’

  Greg pulled Liam up off the floor, dusted him down and took him to the front where he sat him in the driver’s seat and stood looking out through the rain-spattered windscreen.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ said Liam, feeling like he’d let his dad down and shown weakness in front of the other kids. ‘I didn’t mean to. You’ve had to stop the bus and everything. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘We needed to stop anyway, soldier,’ said Greg. ‘It’s getting late and it’s getting dark. I wanted to try and push on over the river and get back to Islington tonight, but it ain’t gonna happen. I’m knackered, London Bridge is blocked and it’s raining too hard. I can’t see a bloody thing without the wipers.’

  ‘Can’t we get home, Dad? If we go slowly?’

  ‘It’s too dangerous. Don’t want to hit nothing and damage the coach. It’s our lifeline. No, we’ll kip down here and hope the rain clears by the morning.’ He pressed his face against the glass of the windscreen. ‘Don’t seem to be no one else about.’

  ‘No, Dad,’ Liam pleaded, ‘not another night on the bus. We’re so close. If you go carefully …’

  Greg sighed. ‘I said, Liam, it’s too dangerous. Look at it out there – it’s coming down like stair rods. Plus I’ve got a banging headache. It’s been a very stressful day.’

  ‘All right, Dad, you know best.’

  Greg turned and winked at him. ‘Course I do,’ he said. ‘Besides, we need to work out what everyone else wants to do. Much as I love ’em all to pieces I ain’t having them all back to ours. I don’t want to be responsible for nobody but you.’

  Greg took a step up the aisle, looking at the rows of faces.

  ‘I don’t know where you lot want to go,’ he shouted. ‘But this ain’t a regular bus. I ain’t dropping you off all over.’

  ‘I want to go to the London Eye,’ said Froggie, and Greg laughed.

  ‘I want to go to the Tower of London,’ said Arthur. ‘I went there with the school, it was really cool, like a proper castle, I reckon you could be safe there, and there are, like, weapons and everything, and you’d be in a commanding location on the river, that’s why William the Conqueror built it there, it’s in a commanding position, you could fish for fish, I’m quite a good fisherman, my dad said so, we went this one time to Ireland and I caught a sea bass, it was quite big but the biggest one was –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, put a sock in it, will you, Jibber-jabber?’ said Greg. ‘You’ve not shut up since you got on this bus.’

  ‘Yeah, Jibber-jabber,’ said Froggie, ‘you talk more than my mum.’

  ‘My dad said I could talk for England,’ said Arthur, ‘if there was only an Olympic event, like the talking marathon, you know, like talking instead of walking –’

  ‘Jibber-jabber. Enough!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Ed had come to the front to see what was going on when Liam had collapsed into the aisle and he was now sitting with the Brains Trust.

  ‘I’ve always said we should stick together,’ he said. ‘There’s safety in numbers. Maybe we should all go to Islington? I don’t really know the area but maybe there’s somewhere that –’

  ‘You don’t really know the area?’ Greg interrupted.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t really know anything, do you, buster?’

  ‘What?’ Ed was taken back. He gave a little unconvincing laugh. ‘I know a bit.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Greg sneered. ‘None of you do. I don’t want you with me. You’re a liability.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’ Greg copied Ed. ‘Look at you with your floppy hair. Your silver spoon ain’t gonna be no use to you now. And what use has all your fancy education been, eh? I’ll tell you. No use at all. All mummy and daddy’s money down the toilet. Is Latin gonna help you now, eh? Tell me that. You can’t, can you? Because you’re stupid. That school of yours ain’t taught you nothing you can use in real life. I bet you can speak about ten languages, can’t you? Maybe play the flute? Toot toot! Well, you’re dealing with a new world now, a new enemy. That lot out there, the sickos, they can’t speak French, or Spanish, or bleeding German, can they? They can’t even speak English no more. All they can do is grunt. You’re dealing with morons, and when you’re dealing with morons education don’t mean nothing. Wake up and smell the blood, Hugh Grant, you can’t just go waltzing into Daddy’s firm in the city. You need real skills now.’

  Greg shouted down the length of the coach at the other kids.

  ‘You wanna come with me? That’s fine. Just so long as you can get it into your pretty little heads that I’m in charge, savvy? Because I’m the only one here who can save you.’ He tapped his head and started to walk down the aisle.

  ‘Me who left school at sixteen with no qualifications,’ he went on. ‘Because I know about real life. I know how to work with my hands. I know how to kill and gut an animal. Yeah? Could you do that? Any of you? If you had to? Which you might have to. Could any of you skin a cat?’ He stopped and gave a meaningful look to Frédérique, followed by a mocking laugh. ‘There’s no supermarkets now to serve you your nosh all nicely packaged up in cling film with the blood drained out of it. No more Marks and Spencer’s ready meals. You wanna come with me you’re gonna have to learn and learn fast,
learn about the real things that matter in life.’

  ‘We’re not completely useless,’ said Archie Bishop.

  ‘Yeah? You know how to pluck a chicken? Break a rabbit’s neck?’

  ‘I do, actually,’ said Bam. ‘I’ve been out shooting loads of times. My rabbit stew’s the best in Kent. I might not have won any awards for my sausages, like you, but I make a mean stew. My barbecued rabbit kebabs aren’t too sloppy, either.’

  ‘You having a laugh, Lord Snooty?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Bam. ‘I’m a bloody good shot if I say so myself. I grew up in the country, you see, always out yomping round the fields. Plus, last summer I went on an SAS survival course in the holidays. I can build a shelter, set animal traps, net fish … I could live off the land if I had to.’

  ‘I’d like to see you try.’

  ‘No, seriously, I could.’

  Greg strode to the front and pulled the door open.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he shouted, nodding towards the exit. ‘I believe you was on your way to the countryside when I picked you up. Why don’t you walk all the way back there and start netting fish, Boris?’

  ‘Change of plan since then,’ said Bam. ‘Looks like it’s the city life for me in the foreseeable. Not sure if there are any rabbits in London, but I know there’s foxes. I’m sure I could bag one of them. Can you eat a fox? I suppose in the end you can eat anything if you’re hungry enough.’

  ‘You getting out or staying?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Staying, thanks,’ said Bam cheerfully. ‘All for one and one for all and all that. You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid, Greg.’

  ‘Yeah, well as I said, just you remember who’s in charge and don’t get cheeky or I’ll give you a slap. This is my coach. My rules.’

  Nobody said anything.

  ‘All right.’ Greg coughed. ‘Get some sleep. We’ll push on in the morning. I’ll take you all as far as Islington. After that you’re on your own.’

  26

  It was dark on the coach, very dark and very quiet. Except for when the silence was interrupted by distant shouts, or the sound of something smashing. And then there were the other noises, harder to identify, that could have been made by animals or by humans.