The Sacrifice Read online

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘Listen, noob.’ Saif flicked his fingers dismissively at Shadowman. ‘Zombies don’t bother us, man. They’re no sweat. Jaz could have coped with them fine. The only thing different yesterday was you.’

  ‘I told you, Saif,’ said Johnny. ‘This guy tried to help us.’

  ‘Lot of good that did.’ Saif slumped down into a deckchair, tried to stare Shadowman out. Shadowman held his gaze until Saif looked away.

  Shadowman turned his attention back to Johnny.

  ‘You really crawl all the way here?’

  ‘Nearly all the way. I was picked up by a patrol who were out on the streets looking for us.’

  ‘But you could hardly move.’

  ‘I guess when you want to keep on living you can do things you couldn’t do normally. Luckily I wasn’t hurt in the crash and could get out of the car, but the front was all, like, squashed in and I couldn’t do nothing for you and Jaz.’ He paused as fresh tears welled in his eyes. ‘I tried. I really tried. Jaz was still alive then. By some weird luck we’d taken out all the nearby zombies in the wreck. But I could see there was more coming for a look. That’s when I started crawling.’

  ‘Thanks, man,’ said Shadowman. ‘How you doing now?’

  ‘Not good. My leg’s all chewed up. Don’t think I’m gonna feel up to walking for a good while.’

  ‘Gotta watch out for infection as well,’ said Saif. ‘A zombie bite’s got more germs in it than a fresh dump.’

  ‘Nice,’ said one of Saif’s friends and giggled.

  ‘You got medicine here?’ Shadowman asked. ‘Antiseptic? Otherwise I got some.’

  Saif gave Shadowman a withering look.

  ‘Course we got medicine, dude. What do you think we are? Savages? I told you, I fixed this yard up the finest in London. Everything was cool here until you showed up.’

  ‘And I told you it’s not my fault,’ said Shadowman. ‘I’ve been tracking that bunch of zombies for days.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘What do you mean what for?’

  ‘I mean what I mean,’ said Saif. ‘Why was you tracking zombies?’

  ‘You know … to find out about them. They’re different, this lot. They’re organized.’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘Listen to him, Saif,’ said Johnny. ‘He ain’t bullshitting. I saw them, they’re weird, not like other zombies.’

  ‘Zombies is zombies,’ said Saif. ‘We’ve had a year to get to know what they’re like. They don’t change, man. They do their thing and we do our thing, by which I mean we splatter them.’

  Shadowman sighed. ‘That’s what Jaz said,’ he pointed out. ‘And that’s what got her killed.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Saif, hauling himself up out of the chair. ‘Like I say – the only thing different yesterday was you. You are what got her killed. You pulled her out of the car and your pal, Bluetooth, speared her. You gonna deny it? No. Soon as you are ready, I want you gone from my yard. Seen?’

  Saif made a sign to his friends and they all trooped off across the car park towards the main road, checking their weapons as they went.

  ‘He’s well proud,’ said Johnny, watching them walk away. ‘But he knows his business. He’s a good leader.’

  ‘Good leaders listen to intelligence,’ said Shadowman. ‘Good leaders show some signs of intelligence.’

  ‘He ain’t stupid.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Shadowman, rubbing his face. ‘I’m not making this up. I’m not imagining it. You were there; you saw what they were like. They’re different. And they get cleverer every day. I mean, like, did you see any of the sentinels?’

  ‘Sentinels?’

  Shadowman stood up and adopted the pose – arms stretched out, staring up at the sky.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Johnny. ‘I did see a couple when I was getting away. First one I saw I thought she was gonna come after me, but she just stood there.’

  ‘You ever seen anything like that before?’ Shadowman asked.

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘So what’s it all about?’

  ‘Reminds me of this wildlife programme I saw once,’ said Johnny. ‘One of those, like, David Attenborough things, you know? Was about jungles or insects or something.’

  ‘Reminded you how?’

  ‘There was all these, like, ants, yeah?’ Johnny fiddled with the piece of knotted cloth that held his long hair in a loose ponytail. ‘Soldier ants or some shit. In the Amazon, I think. And there was millions of them, but they all had their own things to do, as if they’d had a big meeting and agreed on it. “OK, you, like, you’re going looking for food, you guys is gonna guard the queen, you’re gonna protect the workers and you big guys, you’re gonna just stand on the edges like signposts, making sure the other ants don’t get lost.” Reminded me of them.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shadowman. ‘I know what you mean. They’re, like, showing the other zombies the way.’

  ‘One of the look-outs spotted another one this morning,’ said Johnny, pointing in the direction that Saif and the others had gone. ‘She’s still there, over the other side of the North Circular. Been standing there all day. Saif’s gone to sort her out. Said he was gonna use her for target practice.’

  Shadowman saw that Saif’s group had climbed up on to a footbridge that crossed over the main road and were waiting there.

  ‘I gotta talk to him.’ Shadowman went over and squeezed Johnny’s shoulder. ‘Thanks again, Johnny,’ he said. ‘What you did was well brave.’

  ‘Carl?’ Johnny had something on his mind. Shadowman waited.

  ‘What I did back there? It wasn’t because I was brave. It was because I was scared. More terrified than I’ve been before. I never want to feel that way again. Alone. Do you ever have those dreams where you’re in a house somewhere with a bunch of mates and something’s trying to get at you, only you can’t wake anyone up?’

  ‘Used to,’ said Shadowman. ‘When I was little.’

  ‘It was like that. A nightmare. You and Jaz were spark out. I was alone and the zombies was coming closer. It was fear made me crawl away. Desperate bloody fear.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter why you did it,’ said Shadowman. ‘The thing is you saved my skin. I’ll always owe you one.’ He smiled at Johnny and set off across the car park.

  He saw that the IKEA kids had fenced off the bottom of the footbridge with barbed wire and concrete blocks so that no grown-ups could climb it. They’d made a way to get to it from the car park, however, by building a protected ramp.

  Shadowman clambered up the ramp and on to the footbridge. Climbed the steps to the top. Saif and his gang were laughing as one of the boys fired a crossbow.

  ‘Nah, missed,’ the others jeered.

  ‘Jaz got herself killed, Saif,’ said Shadowman.

  ‘You still here?’

  ‘She panicked,’ Shadowman went on. ‘She took on more than she could handle and panicked.’

  ‘Jaz was a good soldier. She never panicked.’

  ‘She did, Saif. I was there.’

  Saif turned angrily on Shadowman, grabbing his jacket and shoving him up against the railings of the footbridge. Shadowman looked down at the wide four-lane road several metres below.

  ‘She was my best soldier,’ said Saif, ‘and she was my girl, seen? She never panicked.’

  Saif let him go and returned to his friends. A tall, skinny guy was lining up a shot at something on the far pavement. Shadowman went to look. It was a mother, standing in the familiar sentinel pose, oblivious to the boys up on the bridge. She was middle aged, bald, half naked and covered in growths.

  The crossbow clicked and the bolt flew silently off, narrowly missing the mother’s head.

  ‘Whoa! Yeah! Nearly.’

  ‘Why won’t you listen to me?’ Shadowman asked quietly, standing at Saif’s shoulder.

  ‘Don’t know you, man. Don’t trust you. You seem to like them zombies. Oh, they’re so clever, oh, they’re so organ
ized, they’re better than you. You still ain’t explained what you was doing tracking them. Maybe you wanna be one. Is that you? A zombie wannabe? Maybe you are one already. One of the clever ones. Don’t know nothing about you, man. Where you from? Where’s your yard?’

  ‘In the centre of town,’ said Shadowman. ‘There’s a few settlements there. I came up this way looking for other kids. I got split up from my friends and instead of kids I found this bunch of zombies who behaved differently.’

  ‘And you thought you’d follow them? That don’t make no sense.’

  Shadowman couldn’t really explain it. He wasn’t sure himself. It had felt like the right thing to do.

  That was all.

  It was now Saif’s turn to shoot at the mother. He leant forward and rested his crossbow on the railings, took very careful aim.

  ‘Die, you sick bag of pus.’

  He grunted as he pulled the trigger, then shouted in triumph as the bolt hit the mother at the base of her throat, just above the sternum. As she toppled over, the other boys cheered. They cheered even more as the mother’s body writhed and jerked on the ground before erupting in a bubbling mess of boils and her insides came gurgling out of her mouth. A minute later there was nothing recognizably human left of her, just a putrefying pile of flesh and blood.

  The boys slapped Saif on the back, congratulating him.

  ‘Nobody craps on my party,’ Saif said to Shadowman. ‘That’s what I’m gonna do to the zombies that killed my girl. It’s payback time.’

  ‘What are you planning to do?’ Shadowman asked.

  ‘We gonna wipe them diseased freaks off of the streets, dude.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘How many soldiers you got in all?’

  ‘Enough. By the end of today there ain’t gonna be a living zombie within five miles of here.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got enough soldiers?’

  ‘Won’t take more than twenty of us, twenty-five tops. We got weapons, we got rides, we got God on our side, so it’s bye-bye, zombie, bye-bye.’

  ‘You’ll need more bodies than that … ’

  ‘Don’t you tell me what to do, boy,’ said Saif, pushing past Shadowman. ‘You’re just some sad straggler with no home to go to. I don’t need no advice from a loser like you. Now, we gonna go collect our arrows. When I come back, I expect to see you gone.’

  40

  A procession of children was advancing out of the doors at the front of St Paul’s and moving slowly down the steps. They were all dressed in green and several of them were carrying branches. At their head was Matt, wearing a full set of bishop’s robes, originally embroidered in red and gold but now dyed green. Behind him came Archie Bishop, in similar gear. Then came the four acolytes, one carrying the banner that showed the Lamb and the Goat, a crudely painted image of two children, one shining and bright, the other dark and shadowy. Another acolyte was carrying the book of Matt’s revelations and was reading lifelessly from it as they went.

  ‘ … How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood … ?’

  Next came a group of the best musicians, including Charlotte, the little girl who The Kid had latched on to the night before, playing sweetly on her violin. Others were hammering away on drums or blowing trumpets, and one had a saxophone.

  Behind the musicians walked Brendan and Tish, both looking thoughtful and none too happy. Then came Sam and The Kid, with dog collars round their necks. Not the sort of dog collars vicars wore, rather the type that dogs wore, with chains attached. Nathan and one of the oldest and biggest guards were holding the chains.

  Bringing up the rear were the rest of the cathedral kids. The only ones who had not joined in the procession were a skeleton crew of guards and a second group of musicians.

  Sam could just hear the acolyte’s voice over the music.

  ‘The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he entered the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke came an army of the fallen, and they ate all in their path like locusts. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.’

  The procession turned south and began a circuit of the cathedral. Sam saw the long walkway that sloped down to the Wobbly Bridge and, in the distance, the bridge itself, cutting a straight line across the Thames. If only he and The Kid could break free and run and run, across the river, away from these crazies. He wondered if he was ever going to see Ella again. He had to cling on to the hope that he would. It was the only thing that kept him going.

  They came to the back of St Paul’s and turned to their left. This had been the most ancient part of the City, but apart from the cathedral, there wasn’t a lot left of old London. Sam had learnt at school how the whole area had been bombed in the Blitz, how all the buildings had burned down, except for St Paul’s, the dome of which had risen triumphantly above the flames. The new buildings were ugly and looked even worse now that they’d been abandoned for a year.

  When they got round to the other side of the cathedral, Matt led the procession over to an arch and through into a modern square where a pedestrian walkway curved away to the north.

  ‘When they have finished their testimony,’ the acolyte droned on, ‘the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the streets of the great city.’

  Sam felt miserable and stupid and self-conscious. He’d never liked being the centre of attention and, being paraded like this, chained up, was embarrassing. He’d had a good look at the banner when they were getting ready to leave the cathedral. You’d need a good imagination to think that the childishly painted boys on it looked like him and The Kid in any way. This whole thing was a joke. Except for that one thing. The name on the banner in big letters – Angus Day.

  The Kid’s name.

  ‘I’d never have guessed you were called Angus,’ he said quietly, not sure if he was allowed to speak or not. Matt had so many rules and they kept on changing.

  ‘What did you think my name was?’ The Kid asked.

  ‘I don’t know, could be anything, could be Frankenstein or Dracula or Brian. I can’t think of you with a real name. Your nickname suits you fine. Though I guess Angus does sort of fit.’

  ‘You think, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Think on, midget brain. The Kid don’t give out his moniker freely.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ said Sam. ‘That you’re really called Monica?’

  ‘No way, Horace.’

  ‘So is Angus your real name or isn’t it?’

  ‘Course it isn’t.’

  ‘Well, how come … ?’

  ‘I ain’t no dumb-ass,’ said The Kid. ‘I keep my earlugs flapping and my peepers peeping. I sponged up all the info I could back at the Tower. When I hear something, it goes in my brain and sticks. It’s all in there, but it’s a bit of a jumble. Well, I talked to the Tower kids, didn’t I?’

  ‘What d’you mean? What about?’

  ‘I got interested in those fairy tales of the lamb and the goat. The Kid loves a good fairy tale, doesn’t he? So I boned up on it, found out all I could. There was quite a few of the population knew Matt from way back when. They knew him when he was daubing up his banner all fancy like. Big joke it was. They all loved that story. Ho, ho, yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen.’

  ‘What happened?’ Sam asked. ‘I don’t get it. What was the joke?’

  ‘Well, one of Matt’s microlights … ’

  ‘You mean acolytes.’

  ‘Is what I said. Boy called Harry was given the job of writing up some old Latin words on their big flag. Agnus Dei, if I’m not mistaken. Which I’m not.
Only he got his arse and his tits mixed up, and made a right pig’s elbow out of it. Harry doesn’t spell so well – my sympathies go out to him. Me and writing don’t always get on.’

  ‘You might get your words muddled,’ said Sam, ‘but you make more sense than some people I’ve met. So are you saying that’s why it says Angus Day on the banner? Harry got it wrong?’

  ‘As I say. Big joke. The Kid likes jokes, appreciated it, stored it away in the hamster cheeks of his noggin to chew on at a later date, savvy?’

  ‘So why did you tell Matt that was your name then?’

  ‘Well, first of all to stop him whacking me like a bad dog. But mainly cos I thought it might buy us some ticker-ticker-timex, throw the cat-o’-nine-tails among the pigeon fanciers. Bamboozle them right and proper. Only thing is it seems to have landed you in the Shinola with me. Apologies, my learned but stunted friend.’

  ‘I’m no shorter than you,’ Sam protested.

  ‘Inside I’m ten miles high,’ said The Kid.

  ‘Yeah, well, inside I’m twenty miles high and have laser beams that can shoot out of my eyes.’

  ‘That’s nothing,’ said The Kid. ‘I can make cheese out of wine.’

  ‘Numbskull.’

  ‘Deviant.’

  ‘Twassock.’

  ‘Whippersnapper.’

  ‘Fish lips.’

  ‘Slimy sculpin.’

  ‘Gibberfish.’

  ‘Gurnard, grunt, flabby whalefish, banjo catfish … ’

  ‘Seriously though, Kid,’ said Sam. ‘What’s going to happen to us, d’you think?’

  ‘Bad things,’ said The Kid. ‘Mad things.’

  ‘I still don’t seriously believe they’ll do anything.’

  ‘Are you nuts?’ said The Kid. ‘They’ve been playing too much Twister. They are round the twist and we are without a paddle. You were there, Spam, you saw him take his whip to me.’

  ‘How’s your back? Does it hurt?’

  ‘What d’you think?’ said The Kid. ‘Red raw and sore as brambles it is. I tell you, I hope they do sacrifice me, and put me out of my misery and torment.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Sam was on the verge of crying. This was all too much for him. Playing his silly games with The Kid was the only thing that took his mind off what was happening.