The Hunted Read online

  ‘How long before they get here?’ she asked nobody in particular.

  ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes maybe,’ said the boy with the bruised face. ‘We can’t keep on running. We can’t get round them. We need to hide.’

  Sonya was now looking along the road towards the gate.

  ‘If you go carefully you can get over the wires,’ said Ella.

  Scarface grunted and gave her a look, as if to say, ‘Why are you inviting them in?’

  ‘They can help us defend the farm,’ she explained, hoping he’d understand.

  ‘I’m with Isaac,’ said the tallest boy, the oldest-looking one, who had a round face and spots. ‘I say we hole up here. We’re way off our turf and it’ll be dark soon.’

  The short boy, Harry, eyed Scarface suspiciously. He was wearing a black North Face jacket that he’d painted with slogans: kill all zombies – ladies’ man – i will eat you.

  ‘You sure Pizzaface is safe?’ he said.

  ‘Why would I lie to you?’ said Ella.

  ‘Why would I lie to you?’ Harry repeated, and Ella felt her face get hot. She wished she hadn’t said anything. Wished she’d just left these kids to look after themselves.

  Sonya walked over to the wires.

  ‘Show us the way.’

  Ella led them to the gate, carefully avoiding catching Scarface’s eye. He hung back, letting them get ahead, and she heard him making some noise behind them. She knew he’d be pulling the dog off the spikes and resetting the trap.

  ‘You must never try to open the gate,’ she said when they got to it. ‘Always climb over. And don’t go in the bushes. There are traps everywhere.’

  Once safely inside the farmyard the kids stood around awkwardly, taking it all in, unsure of themselves, trying to act tough. Obviously scared. They were older than her, the boy with spots being maybe fifteen. He introduced himself as Daniel, the quiet boy was Isaac and the other girl, who looked like Sonya’s sister, was called Louisa.

  ‘So what you got here?’ said Harry. ‘We gonna be safe?’

  ‘You got food?’ asked Sonya.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Ella. ‘Lots …’ She stopped herself. ‘Well, not lots, some.’

  Stupid. She’d wanted to show off. What if the kids were lying, though? What if they’d only really come here to steal stuff? What if they found out about the barn full of chickens? They might come back with friends, with their own army. She wished Scarface would finish what he was doing and come back. She didn’t feel like she could deal with this by herself.

  ‘He got weapons?’ Harry went on.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Ella, the words coming out in a rush. ‘Loads. He’s really good at hunting, he hunts grown-ups and he kills them, he’s very good at killing, every day he kills people …’ People like you, she wanted to add as a warning, but thought that might be going too far.

  ‘Do you live here then?’ asked Louisa. ‘With Ghostface?’

  ‘Duh,’ said Harry. ‘What do you think, Louisa? Oh, I forgot, you don’t ever think, do you?’

  Louisa blushed and looked at her shoes.

  ‘I didn’t always live here,’ said Ella, coming to Louisa’s rescue. ‘I do now. Scarface saved me.’

  ‘Scarface?’ said Daniel. ‘Him? The Predator?’

  Harry let out a burst of nasty laughter. ‘You can talk, Daniel,’ he said. ‘Are those your spots, or are you looking after them for a grown-up?’

  Daniel swore at Harry, who just laughed again.

  ‘You are such an arsehat, Harry,’ said Isaac and Harry copied him.

  ‘You are such an arsehat. At least I’m not an arseface like your friend,’ he added, looking at Ella. ‘He’s ugly as the Elephant Man.’

  ‘He got kicked by an ugly bastard wearing ugly boots,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Whacked by the ugly bat.’

  ‘He won Britain’s ugliest man competition.’

  ‘Britain’s Got Ugly Talent.’

  Sonya joined in with them. ‘Ugly Come Dancing.’

  ‘Ugly on Ice,’ said Louisa.

  ‘That’s crap,’ said Harry. ‘Ugly on Ice.’ He turned to Sonya. ‘Tell your dumb sister not to try to join in with the jokes.’

  ‘Actually I thought Britain’s Got Ugly Talent was lame,’ said Louisa.

  Ella heard something and looked round to see that Scarface had arrived without anyone noticing. He must have heard everything they said. She hated these kids being mean about him. Especially as he might be the only person who could keep them alive when the army arrived.

  He was standing there, silent, not moving. The other kids were peeking at him out of the corners of their eyes, not wanting to stare. Pretending they hadn’t been laughing at him.

  ‘We should check out these buildings,’ said Isaac, looking round the yard, changing the subject.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Daniel. ‘The farmhouse looks pretty solid.’

  ‘It’s not safe,’ said Ella, almost before he’d stopped talking. ‘It was burned.’

  ‘We should still check it out, though.’

  ‘He won’t even let me see inside,’ said Ella.

  ‘We gotta do what he says?’ said Sonya, her voice all sneery.

  ‘He’ll kill you if you try and go in there.’ Ella couldn’t think of what else to say. She needed to change the subject. Besides, it wasn’t necessarily a lie. It wasn’t working, though; the kids were still looking over towards the farmhouse. What if they searched everywhere and found the food, the chickens?

  ‘There’s a look-out,’ she blurted.

  ‘What sort of look-out?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘In the trees,’ Ella went on quickly, pointing up to where one of the platforms was just visible. ‘We can see where the grown-ups are maybe? They might not even be coming this way. We should check.’

  Ella led them over to a shed.

  ‘Who’s coming up?’ she asked. Sonya and Isaac stepped forward. There was a ladder you put against the shed, then you climbed on to the roof, and from there you could lean over and reach the first wooden board that was nailed to a big tree.

  ‘We’ve heard about The Predator,’ said Sonya as they began to climb. ‘Everyone talks about the creepy skulls and weird crap he has hanging up everywhere. But nobody really knew what he looked like. We keep away from him.’

  ‘He’s not a monster,’ said Ella.

  ‘Can he understand us?’ Sonya asked. ‘Can he talk, or what? What is he?’

  ‘He can’t talk,’ said Ella. ‘But he can understand.’

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ said Sonya. ‘I wouldn’t live here with him. I’d be scared he might fatten me up and eat me one night.’

  ‘I’m not scared of him,’ said Ella.

  ‘You should be,’ said Sonya. ‘We need him for now, but if you like, when this is over, we can try and get rid of him for you.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Ella, panicked. ‘No, you mustn’t.’

  Sonya laughed. ‘I was only joking,’ she said.

  But was she? Ella couldn’t be sure.

  There was only a small platform up in the tree, with just enough room for one of them at a time. Two ropes tied round the trunk led from there to another tree, then another. By using them as a bridge, they could get to the main viewing platform at the front of the farm. Sonya and Isaac went first, standing on one rope, their hands on the other, wobbling and swaying backwards and forwards, laughing to cover their nervousness.

  Ella waited till they’d reached the next platform and went after them.

  Once they were all on the main platform they looked out across the fields, but couldn’t see anything of the grown-ups. The army must be hidden behind trees and small rises in the ground.

  ‘Maybe they won’t come this way,’ said Ella. ‘Maybe we’ll be all right.’

  ‘They’re out there,’ said Isaac. ‘We all saw them.’

  ‘One of us needs to stay up here as a look-out,’ said Sonya. ‘I think you should, Isaac. You can fire your arrows down from here.’
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br />   ‘How many arrows have you got?’ Ella asked.

  ‘About twenty-five, thirty,’ said Isaac.

  ‘And how many grown-ups did you see earlier?’

  ‘Yeah, way more than that,’ said Isaac, and he gave a harsh laugh. ‘Better than nothing, though.’

  Isaac agreed to stay up there if they brought him something to eat and Ella took Sonya back down.

  When they got back to the yard, the other kids came over and crowded round them, asking loads of questions, trying to reassure themselves they’d made the right decision to stop here.

  ‘We couldn’t keep on running,’ said Louisa.

  ‘Specially as you run like a typical girl,’ said Harry, and he went into a silly run, all wobbly knees and flapping arms. ‘Look at me,’ he squealed in a high-pitched voice. ‘I’m a kind of crap dinosaur.’

  Sonya stepped up behind him and tripped him, sending him sprawling into the dirt. He swore at her, but she stood over him and held him down with the heel of her boot.

  ‘If you have a go at my sister one more time I will shove your head up your arse,’ she said. ‘And you can see what you had for lunch.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Harry. ‘Lost your sense of humour? Besides, you’re always having a go at her.’

  ‘She’s my sister, that’s different.’

  Ella left them to it and went to look for Scarface. She found him near the gate, rigging up more defences. Pulling some vicious-looking farm machinery into place. She said hello to him, but he ignored her. He looked in a bad mood, but whether that was because there was an army of grown-ups on its way or because Ella had invited the others in she couldn’t tell. When he was in one of his moods, he behaved like a little kid.

  ‘Are you cross with me?’ she asked.

  He shrugged.

  ‘I had to let them in,’ she went on. ‘You know that. We couldn’t leave them out there to get killed, could we? And anyway, if the grown-ups do attack, it’ll be helpful to have some more people to fight them off, won’t it?’

  Scarface just shrugged again.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Ella asked. ‘That I should have just let them get splatted by your trap? Would you have liked that?’

  Scarface gave Ella one of his sort-of-smiles. That made her feel better.

  ‘I didn’t tell them about the food and the chickens,’ she said. ‘And I scared them. I told them how fierce you are. How you’re the biggest killer on the planet. How they don’t want to mess with you. Is that right? Did I do the right thing?’

  Again all she got was a shrug. She hated it when Scarface was grumpy like this. She wanted to make him laugh.

  ‘I didn’t tell them about your books, and how you’re secretly a wimp and into baking and ballet and Justin Bieber. How your name is really Face-Ache the Belieber.’

  Scarface gave two quick snorts through his nose. It might have been a laugh. Ella told herself it was.

  ‘I’d better go and see what they’re doing,’ she said, trying to keep busy, trying not to think about the grown-ups getting closer. She looked to see if he had anything to add and, just as she had expected, he shrugged again.

  Bloody grumpy old Face-Ache.

  Daniel and Harry were sitting on some old logs that Scarface had set up like seats in the middle of the yard. They were checking their weapons and chatting nervously. There was no sign of the two girls.

  ‘Where’s Sonya and Louisa?’ asked Ella, trying to sound casual.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Harry.

  Ella strolled off, trying not to hurry. Where were they? What were they doing? She looked everywhere, as the shadows of night deepened, and eventually found them by the chicken barn, fiddling with the locks.

  ‘You need to be careful,’ she said, going over to them. ‘He’s got traps everywhere.’

  ‘What’s in here?’ said Sonya.

  ‘Farm stuff, I think,’ said Ella. ‘Tools and that.’

  ‘There’s a funny smell.’

  ‘That’s a farm smell.’

  ‘Like animals.’

  ‘There were animals here before, I think.’

  ‘If we’re gonna be safe, we need to get inside a building,’ said Louisa.

  ‘We live in the big barn,’ said Ella. ‘That’ll be the best place – we’ll all go in there.’

  ‘Why not the farmhouse?’

  ‘Oh, I never go in there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know …’ Ella had no idea what to say next. Why couldn’t Scarface deal with all this? ‘Shall I take something up to Isaac?’ was all she could think of.

  ‘Sure.’ Sonya dug about in her backpack and took out a bottle of water and a plastic box filled with what looked like trail mix, dried fruit and nuts and stuff. When Ella went to take it from her, Sonya held on to it tightly and put her face very close to Ella’s.

  ‘Are you holding out on us?’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Ella was trying not to get scared.

  ‘You’re all nervous and jittery. Like you’re hiding something. Like there’s more here than you’re letting on.’

  ‘I’m just scared of the grown-ups coming. That’s what we should be thinking about. Not … you know …’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ Sonya let go of the box. ‘I keep forgetting about the grown-ups, like everything’s OK, and then I suddenly remember, and I’m like, Oh-My-God. This is not happening. Isaac is gonna think we’ve forgotten about him. You take this up.’

  ‘OK.’ Ella walked slowly away, carrying the box and the bottle of water.

  When she climbed back up to Isaac, she found him sitting on the platform, reading a book.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ she asked.

  Isaac looked up from the book and scanned the surrounding countryside.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No sign of them.’

  ‘No.’ Ella got the water and the food out of her backpack. ‘I meant, can you see your book? It’s getting very dark.’

  Isaac laughed. ‘Not really. But I was bored. There’s nothing to see, nothing happening. Maybe they’ve all gone another way. Maybe we’ll be OK. That’s what I’m praying for anyway. What’s going on down there?’

  ‘Getting ready.’ Ella handed Isaac the stuff and he started to tuck in.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asked and he flapped the cover at her.

  ‘It’s the first Alex Rider book,’ he said.

  ‘Is it good? I think Sam read it. My brother.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve read it before. Loads of times. We need to get some new books. I’d go into Windsor, but … you know.’

  ‘What’s Windsor?’

  ‘Where the big castle is,’ said Isaac. ‘It’s the biggest town around here. There’s a load of kids live there, but they don’t like anyone else coming close. Don’t like strangers.’

  ‘Where are you from then?’ Ella asked.

  ‘Bracknell. It’s quite far from here. On the other side of the grown-ups. We were stuck. Windsor kids one way, who’d probably have beaten on us, grown-ups the other. It felt like we had no options. No choice. It’s kismet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fate. Do you believe in fate?’

  ‘I don’t really know what that is.’

  ‘It’s like there’s a big book somewhere with your whole life written in it. Everything that’s going to happen to you.’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it like that,’ said Ella.

  ‘I have,’ said Isaac. ‘I have this feeling. That if they’re going to get you then that’s what’ll happen – they’ll get you.’

  ‘Is that fate then?’

  ‘I think it’s my fate. That it’s written down. They’ll get me in the end. If I dodge it today, they’ll get me tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s better not to think about things too much,’ said Ella.

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘What’s the matter with the moon?’ Ella asked, looking up at where it was appearing out of the darkeni
ng sky. It was turning red.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Isaac. ‘It’s not a good sign, though, is it?’ He gave a bitter little laugh.

  ‘What would make it red?’ Ella said.

  ‘Maybe smoke from a fire or something,’ said Isaac. ‘Or maybe dust or, I don’t know, particles in the atmosphere, you know, like, refracting the light.’

  ‘I think it’s pretty,’ said Ella. ‘So let’s not worry about it, yeah?’

  ‘Good plan. No worries. It’s just … They’re out there somewhere. I know they are.’

  Ella got Scarface’s binoculars out and scanned the fields. It was getting too dark to see much. She passed them to Isaac.

  ‘What else you got on you?’ he asked. ‘Anything useful like radar, or an RPG launcher?’

  ‘Nothing really.’

  Isaac adjusted the focus as he scanned the horizon.

  ‘So were you out looking for food and stuff today then?’ Ella asked, remembering the scav parties back in Holloway.

  ‘Yeah. There’s still quite a lot of stuff if you know where to look. Got a bit lost, though. Went further than we meant to, strayed into Windsor territory.’

  ‘Are the Windsor children really that bad?’

  ‘They’re all bastards. Them and Slough and Maidenhead. We only have any dealings with them at the races, at Ascot. Then we all get together and …’ His voice dropped. ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re coming …’

  12

  Ella found the other kids sitting on the logs, not really talking to each other. She was glad to see that Sonya and Louisa were there. She explained what she’d seen from the look-out and saw them get all hunched up and scared-looking, though they were trying hard not to show it. Ella had seen enough kids like this before to recognize the signs. Daniel swore. Harry laughed. Ella had no idea what at. Maybe nothing. Louisa looked towards the gate and shook her head.

  There was no sign of Scarface. He was still keeping to himself. Ella hurried off and tracked him down to the barn where he was sitting in his favourite garden chair, poking the fire with a bundle of sticks that he’d tied together.

  ‘They’re nearly here,’ she said. ‘We saw them from the tree with the binoculars. We’ve still got time to run. We could try to get to Windsor. We’ll be faster than them, I think.’