The Sacrifice Page 20

  ‘This way!’ he shouted, and turned to his left into a narrow alleyway called Cousin Lane that ran along the side of the station.

  ‘Are you insane?’ Macca screamed. ‘We’ll be trapped down there.’

  ‘It’s our best bet,’ Ed replied. ‘Believe me. You can take your chances with that lot if you want, but I’m getting out of here.’

  ‘Stick with him,’ said Kyle. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘It’s crazy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kyle. ‘Innit?’

  Cousin Lane sloped gently downhill, with the great brick arches that supported Cannon Street station running down one side, each with some kind of workshop built into it. At the far end was a pub, The Banker, also built in one of the arches. It reminded Ed that before everything had fallen apart this area of London had been the financial centre. Past the pub was the wide expanse of the Thames with the Cannon Street railway bridge jutting out across it.

  Just before the pub there was a dark opening to their left with a sign saying Steelyard Passage. One of the arches was open there, and as the kids drew level with it, a group of sickos lunged out at them and they found themselves in a desperate, sweaty, close-up fight. Ed laid into the sickos with a cold, brutal fury. The first few went down quickly and the others shrank back into the passageway underneath the station.

  The killing frenzy had come over Ed. He wanted to follow the sickos and kill every one. Chop them into small pieces. He had retreated into himself, withdrawn all the nice civilized parts of his personality and hidden them safely in a hard shell, leaving only the harsh, emotionless, animal part of him. The part that hacked and cut and killed and delighted in the bright sprays of red blood.

  ‘Ed, come on, they’ve gone!’ Will shouted and Ed stopped, taking a big shuddering breath. He stared at Will and Will backed away from him.

  ‘Christ, Ed,’ he said. ‘You look like you want to kill me.’

  Ed sighed and wiped his face. ‘Sorry, Will.’

  There were some steps next to the pub that led down to the water. Ed led his group over to them.

  ‘Yes!’ He punched the air triumphantly, flicking drops of blood into the air from his sword. ‘What did I tell you, Macca? Stick with me and you’ll be all right.’

  There was a narrow strip of muddy beach, about two metres wide. They leapt down the steps and were soon squelching their way west again, their feet sinking into the thick London clay.

  No sickos, thought Ed and no Sam either. As he’d feared, his plan to get a feel for the streets, to look for any clues as to what might have happened to him, had gone out of the window as soon as they’d come across their first sicko. If the poor kid had come this way yesterday he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.

  They clambered over two beached rubbish barges laden with rusting containers that were blocking their way. Will stopped on top of one of them.

  ‘Would you look at that?’ he said. He was gazing ahead at Southwark Bridge, its jolly green and yellow ironwork looking out of place on this grey day filled with violence. There was a steady flow of sickos crossing over it from the south.

  He started to recite some lines.

  ‘Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,/A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,/I had not thought death had undone so many.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Just some poem I had to study at school. It’s near here.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘My old school. City. It’s on the river near St Paul’s. We’ll be able to see it from the other side of the bridge. We’ll go right past it. I haven’t thought about it in all this time. That poem just came to me.’

  ‘That’s typical of you, Will. You see a bridge full of sickos and you think of a poem.’

  ‘What do you think of?’

  ‘More killing, more blood. No end to it. That’s why we need people like you, Will. To stop us all turning into, I don’t know, turning into Kyle.’

  Will hesitated before going on.

  ‘You really looked like a monster back there, you know, Ed? You really looked like you were going to kill me.’

  ‘It’s this scar. Makes me look creepy.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s you, Ed.’

  Ed shrugged, went to move on. Will put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Are we going to live?’ he asked.

  Ed carried on moving.

  ‘Yeah.’

  They slogged their way under the bridge, the mud coating their lower legs and making their trainers thick and heavy. There was a strong smell from the river. But it wasn’t a bad smell. Not compared to the sickos. It was the smell of life.

  Ed looked at the flow. The tide was rising. The beach wouldn’t be there much longer. He sped up, urging the others on.

  They came to a big building that looked like a classical Greek temple. Will explained that it was Vintners’ Hall. Something to do with the wine trade in the City. Its fancy architecture would only be visible from the far side of the Thames or on the river itself. There was a raised terrace with steps leading down to the beach. Ed wondered whether maybe barges had once put in there to unload wine barrels, but then he noticed that the building was actually quite modern, faked up to look old.

  They climbed the steps and leant on the balustrade, exhausted, staring out at the great grey-green muddy Thames.

  ‘Anybody hurt?’ Ed asked.

  ‘No,’ said Hayden. ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘I grazed my finger,’ said Macca, wincing.

  ‘You grazed your finger?’ said Kyle, wide-eyed, and left his mouth hanging open.

  There was a moment’s silence and then they all started laughing, relief flooding out of them. They’d done it, they’d got this far in one piece, and Macca’s complaint about his grazed finger seemed to them to be the funniest thing they’d ever heard. They held on to each other and heaved and groaned until the tears were rolling down their faces.

  ‘He grazed his finger!’ Kyle gasped.

  ‘You idiot, Macca,’ said Adele.

  At last they stopped, settled down into silence, each of them alone with his or her thoughts.

  To their left was Southwark Bridge, to their right the Wobbly Bridge, as everyone called the Millennium Footbridge, and opposite, the burnt-out ruins of the old power station that had been converted into the Tate Modern art gallery.

  All that art, thought Ed, up in smoke. All those paintings, sculptures, gone forever.

  All those people.

  The end of the world.

  I had not thought death had undone so many.

  ‘So what now, boss?’ Kyle asked, propping his elbows on the low wall next to Ed.

  ‘We can carry on along here,’ Ed replied, putting his arm across Kyle’s shoulders. The laughter had cleared his head and cleaned out the blood fever. The over-friendly hug was half taking the piss and half for real.

  ‘When it looks safe, we’ll go back up on to the road.’

  ‘Or if the tide gets too high,’ said Kyle.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We ain’t gonna find the boys down here, though, are we?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Let’s face it, Ed, we ain’t gonna find those boys nowhere.’

  ‘I’m not giving up on them, Kyle.’ Ed straightened up, feeling bone-tired. ‘And we’ve done OK so far. If the worst we got to worry about is a grazed finger then … ’

  ‘If that’s the worst,’ said Kyle.

  ‘Yeah. Thanks for that. Always look on the bright side of life, eh? Let’s go.’

  38

  Shadowman realized he’d been awake for a while, staring at a ceiling light without really understanding what it was. He hadn’t expected to be looking at a light fitting, so his brain hadn’t accepted it. He blinked, trying to get his eyes to focus. He wasn’t supposed to be here – wherever here was. It didn’t fit. The last thing he remembered he was in the Lexus and they were dragging him out …

  Must have blacked out again. A tox
ic mix of pain, fear and shock had switched his brain off.

  One thing was clear: he wasn’t in the car any more. He was indoors. He forced himself to sit up and look around. His felt a single massive throb in his head, as if someone had attached a bass drum pedal to his skull. It was followed by a queasy lurch from his stomach. He fought not to throw up and closed his eyes for a moment until the pain and the nausea went away.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was in bed. In a neat, orderly room. Almost too clean and perfect. The world wasn’t like this any more. Fresh, crisp sheets. Matching pillows. Walls covered with subtly patterned wallpaper. Some wooden blinds. Closed, so that he had no idea what time it might be, whether it was even day or night. All the furniture looked brand-new. A chair, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. A rug on the floor. A bedside table with a lamp on it. None of the lights were working, of course. No electricity. The room was lit instead by a tea light in a glass holder.

  The door was closed.

  He rested back against the pillows.

  This was weird.

  He rubbed his head. It was pulsing like it was about to hatch. Was it possible, he wondered, for a head to just spontaneously split open? Certainly it happened to strangers occasionally. They burst in the sun like overripe fruit.

  There was a glass of water on the bedside table. He sniffed it then took a sip. It tasted clean. He noticed his clothes, neatly folded on a low table, his backpack and weapons leaning up against it.

  He was wearing his T-shirt and underwear. He felt dirty in this clean, orderly room. He was aware of how much he smelt. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a bath or a shower. He tried to fumigate his clothes in smoke whenever he could and used the smell of it to mask his own pungent scent. Out on the streets, surrounded by evil-smelling strangers, he was positively fragrant. In this sterile room, though, he was a stinking, grubby monster.

  And he hurt all over.

  He ran his fingertips over his scalp. There were some fresh lumps to go with the one he’d got when his friend Jester had accidently whacked him with a baseball bat. If he kept on getting knocked about like this he was going to become punch-drunk. It couldn’t be doing him any good. He pictured himself as a shambling, dribbling headcase, fitting right in with St George’s army.

  He coughed and felt a sharp pain in his chest. He lifted his grimy T-shirt. There were some nasty bruises across his ribs.

  Oh well, could be worse. At least he was still alive.

  But where the hell was he and how had he got here?

  He struggled out of bed, groaning as his muscles cramped and twitched with pain.

  He hobbled over to the blinds and tugged on the cord. They rose up to reveal …

  Nothing. No window, just more blank wall behind.

  Weirder and weirder.

  He’d thought there was something too neat about this room, too perfect, and as he looked at it again, he realized the whole thing was fake, like a stage set. It wasn’t a real bedroom at all. He went over to the door. Knew what he was going to find – it would be locked. He was a prisoner here.

  His fingers closed on the handle, turned and …

  The door popped open.

  It wasn’t locked.

  He raised his eyebrows. Let go of the handle.

  Stupid.

  If he was a prisoner here why would they have left his weapons? His clothes? He wasn’t thinking straight. He’d always lived by his wits, had been a quick thinker. One step ahead of everyone else. He hoped the blows to his head hadn’t permanently affected his brain.

  He got dressed. Picked up his machete. Better to be safe than sorry. He slung his backpack over his shoulder and went over to the door again. Swung it slowly open and peered out. There was an almost identical room opposite, except it had one wall missing. He saw other rooms, odd bits of furniture standing around. Prices on them. Funny Swedish names.

  He laughed. He was in a furniture showroom. And not just any showroom.

  He was in IKEA.

  He’d been here before a couple of times with his parents.

  They’d bought tea lights, hundreds of them, in big plastic bags.

  He spotted a couple of kids sitting reading books by candlelight, another boy writing in a pad of A4. He looked up at Shadowman. Smiled. Came over.

  ‘You’re awake.’

  ‘I guess so – unless this is a dream.’

  ‘It isn’t – least as far as I know. Sometimes wish it was. I’m Dan.’

  ‘Carl,’ Shadowman lied and they slapped hands.

  ‘Yeah, Johnny said.’

  ‘Johnny? He’s alive?’

  ‘Yup. And so are you, thanks to him. Come on. He’s been waiting for you to wake up.’

  Shadowman followed Dan through the maze of the showroom. It had been designed to make shoppers pass as many items as possible, to encourage them to buy things they hadn’t intended to. Like tea lights.

  Shadowman could see where the kids who lived there had made living spaces for themselves in the dummy rooms. It all seemed very peaceful and quiet. Shadowman felt the pain and tension slipping away.

  Dan led him to the front of the building where there were windows and natural light. They went down a stairway to ground level and out into the huge car park. Johnny was waiting there by himself, sitting in a wheelchair, his leg propped up and heavily bandaged. He was surrounded by garden furniture, umbrellas and tables, a carpet of fake grass, walls made out of trellis and plants in pots. Shadowman smiled. The local kids had made a sort of garden for themselves.

  It was a grey day but not too cold and it felt good to be out in the fresh air.

  Johnny grinned at Shadowman when he saw him, but made no effort to move. He looked tired, his face pinched and drained. One of his eyes was twitching. Shadowman went over to him and they gripped each other’s wrists for a moment.

  ‘I thought you were toast for sure,’ said Shadowman.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘What about Jaz?’

  Johnny shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Shadowman.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Johnny. ‘Still can’t believe it. It’s unfair. It’s too bloody unfair.’ Tears came into his eyes and he wiped them away, sniffing.

  ‘There was a body underneath me when I came round,’ said Shadowman. ‘I thought it was you.’

  Johnny shook his head again.

  ‘She was wounded by the spear, battered in the crash,’ he said. ‘But then she had the bad luck to lie there with her foot sticking out of the car. Stinking zombies chewed it off. She died from loss of blood.’

  ‘So what happened then?’ Shadowman asked, sitting down in a bright blue plastic garden chair. ‘I still don’t get how we’re both here.’

  ‘Crazy bastard crawled all the way here,’ came a voice from behind him.

  Shadowman turned as a group of kids arrived carrying weapons. The boy who had spoken was tall and fit-looking with glossy black hair twisted and tangled into something like dreadlocks. There were various bits and pieces knotted into his hair: lucky charms, ribbons, tiny bones and plastic figures. He reminded Shadowman of a character from Pirates of the Caribbean. He was good-looking and he knew it. His shirt was unbuttoned to his belly and he was wearing the tightest pair of black jeans Shadowman had ever seen on anyone.

  ‘It’s thanks to Johnny that you’re still alive, dude,’ said the boy. Shadowman didn’t need to be told that this guy was in charge here at IKEA. He carried himself with a certain swagger. Shadowman had been expecting a cool, understated, blond Scandinavian type. This guy was very much not that.

  ‘I’m Saif,’ he said. ‘Welcome to my yard.’

  Shadowman nodded. ‘You got a good thing going here.’

  ‘I know it, brother.’

  I bet you do, Shadowman thought. You really fancy yourself, don’t you?

  ‘This is my kingdom,’ Saif went on. ‘We got bare space. Dirty big fence all the way round. Good lines of sight. Plus – it gets better,
dude – I got rides. Yeah? Ain’t no one else in London got what I got.’ He shook his hand, snapping his fingers together. ‘They was even food when we first come. The joint was well rammed. Had all we needed, furniture, food, water. Now of course we got to go out scrounging for stuff. But there’s bare houses round here, the pickings is good.’ Saif stopped and gave Shadowman a cold look. Poked him in the chest with a long, thin finger.

  ‘Yeah, my friend,’ he said. ‘All was going well until you showed up.’

  39

  ‘Wasn’t me killed your people,’ said Shadowman. ‘It was zombies. Ricky didn’t stand a chance. He was swamped. Didn’t expect them to use weapons. One of them cut his arm off with a machete and then Bluetooth got Jaz with a spear.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘A zombie stabbed her.’ Shadowman felt a fool for letting that slip. Pushed on, running out of steam. ‘And then she crashed the car.’

  Saif wasn’t going to let it go. ‘No, before that, man,’ he sneered. ‘What’d you say?’

  ‘A zombie got her with a spear.’

  ‘That’s not what you said, though.’ Saif turned to his friends. ‘That’s not what he said, is it? Noob said something about a man.’

  ‘He said “Bluetooth”, I think,’ said a short boy with a flat head.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Shadowman. ‘Just a name.’

  ‘A name for what?’

  ‘One of the zombies I was following. He has a Bluetooth phone thing stuck in his ear.’

  ‘You give them names?’ Saif had an exaggerated look of amazement on his face. ‘Whaffor? They your friends or something? You know them personally? You want to be in their gang? Have tea with them?’