The Fallen Read online

  ‘That’s Chris Marker,’ she explained. ‘Our chief librarian. He was the one who organized the World Book Day celebration.’

  ‘Looks more like they was celebrating World Wrestling Federation Day,’ said Blue, and Maxie laughed through her nose and exchanged looks with him.

  ‘Something went wrong last night,’ said Justin quietly, almost to himself. ‘Someone sabotaged us.’

  ‘Seems that way,’ said Blue. ‘And that’s your problem. Somebody here don’t like you.’

  ‘As I see it, there are two explanations for what happened,’ said Justin.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s possible that there’s someone here who’s, as you said, like a, you know, a traitor. And they might have unlocked the doors to let the sickos in.’

  ‘That’s all there is to it,’ said Blue.

  ‘But nothing like this has ever happened before,’ said Justin. ‘That’s why I think there might be another reason.’

  ‘What other reason could there be?’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘That it’s got something to do with you lot.’

  ‘Us lot?’

  ‘Yes. That you’ve come here to try to take over. You somehow let the sickos in and then conveniently turned up to save us all and then we –’

  Justin had been keeping his eyes on Blue, expecting any trouble to come from him, but it was Maxie who launched herself at him. She was up and out of her chair in a second and had latched her hands on to Justin’s throat, forcing him back so that the two of them collapsed on to the floor, where Maxie sat on him, her fingers still locked round his neck.

  ‘Don’t you ever, EVER think that again,’ she hissed. ‘Or you’ll have worse to deal with than a few manky grown-ups.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

  Maxie let him go. Stood up, embarrassed. She felt like a school bully. In a moment Justin had gone from being the main man here at the museum to a frightened nerd, slobbering on the carpet. She’d felt a brief thrilling surge of release, a rush of power to her head, and then a feeling of emptiness. And now she hated herself.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I overreacted. It’s just – the last couple of weeks have been bare heavy. I lost a lot of mates. My boyfriend among them.’

  She paused. Had Arran been her boyfriend? Nothing had ever happened between them. In her mind, though, he’d been that. Her soulmate. That’s how she’d remember him.

  She glanced at Blue. He was watching her. What were they now? The two of them.

  Blue shrugged and turned to Justin who was sitting back down in his chair.

  ‘Looks like we got us a situation, innit?’

  ‘Please, you must understand,’ said Brooke. ‘We really, really can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for us.’

  Blue didn’t even look at her.

  ‘You don’t trust us,’ he went on. ‘And, to be honest, we don’t trust you. Makes sense not to give your trust too freely. So there’s only one question really.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘How do we go about getting each other’s trust?’

  Justin stared down at the table, tapping his fingernails on the varnished wood surface. Thinking.

  ‘There is one thing you can do for us.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We need more medicine, chemicals, drugs.’

  ‘You mean like vitamins and that? Makes sense.’

  ‘Not only stuff to keep us healthy,’ said Justin. ‘We need materials for our labs. You might think we’re crazy, but we’re trying to figure out how the disease works. Maybe even find a cure.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Blue. ‘We do think you’re crazy.’

  ‘Well, for a while we’ve been talking about setting up an expedition, but we’ve never had the manpower.’

  ‘That’s us,’ said Blue. ‘Manpower. Girl power too.’

  ‘It would prove you were genuine.’

  ‘So you want us to put a team together?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Fair enough. That’s your side. What about our side? Why should we trust you? When one of you is a traitor? You get us out the doors, you might just lock them behind us.’

  ‘I don’t think –’

  ‘Uh-uh, is my turn to talk,’ said Blue. ‘We didn’t get here by being stupid. We’ll send out a top squad, don’t you worry yourself none about that. And you’re sending some of your guys along with us.’

  ‘Of course, we’ll have to. I was going to say that, otherwise you won’t know what to look for.’

  ‘The rest of our people stay here. You feed them. You keep them happy. The younger ones you look after, the older ones you put in charge of security.’

  ‘We have our own security.’

  ‘Listen, Mister Museum, you’re not getting this. We are making a deal here. As I see it, your guy, Robbie, was supposed to be in charge of security, yeah, only he got himself whacked in a fight, am I right?’

  ‘We’ve got Jackson,’ said Justin.

  ‘She’s good,’ said Blue. ‘But she just one girl. You asked downstairs what we’re good at. Well, this is it. We can properly clean out your lower level. Put some systems in place. Make sure there’s no grown-ups within a hundred miles of this place. You show us some trust and we’ll find your medicines for you.’

  Justin thought about this for a while, tapping on the tabletop again.

  Maxie stared out of one of the windows that ran down the side of the room. There was a view into the central courtyard and, above the buildings, clear blue sky.

  ‘It’s a deal,’ Justin said at last and Brooke jumped out of her chair, delighted.

  ‘Cool,’ she said. ‘We’re all on the same side.’

  Blue came over to Maxie as she got up from the table.

  ‘What d’you reckon?’ he said, walking away so as not to be overheard.

  ‘So you’re in charge now, are you, big man?’ Maxie said, half smiling.

  ‘You gotta keep up,’ said Blue. ‘Instead of sitting there saying nothing. Nice take-down, though.’

  ‘Thanks. I felt a bit stupid, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘He had it coming. Seriously, though, Max, you cool with all this?’

  ‘I guess so. It’s more of the same. Dirty work.’ She headed over to the door where Justin and Brooke were waiting for them. ‘Just more dirty work.’

  14

  Paul had given in to the itch in his neck. He was in an ecstasy of scratching. Eyes closed. Tearing at his skin. He stopped and looked at his fingers; they were covered in blood and pus. He licked them clean. He was very hungry. Separated from the other kids he was also separated from their food. He couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten, it was at least twenty-four hours ago. Maybe later, when it grew dark, he could sneak down into the car park and take a chicken. For now all he could do was watch the kids eat.

  His former friends.

  They were in the staff canteen at the top of the museum, completely unaware that he was outside, hidden behind a stone buttress, spying on them through the big sloping windows.

  ‘Look at them,’ came a voice in his ear. A voice he recognized. Harsh and greasy. ‘Like chicks feeding. Peck, peck, peck.’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ said Paul. ‘Why are there so many of them? Why weren’t more of them killed by the sickos?’

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ said Boney-M, and Paul looked round at the broken creature, as it flopped and twitched on the floor. ‘Because you are a useless arse-wipe.’

  Paul turned back to the canteen, trying to make sense of it. How had his plan gone so badly wrong? And then he spotted someone he didn’t recognize. A boy with bright red hair. Small, clever-looking, with quick eyes. He was sitting with three other kids Paul didn’t recognize. And now more were coming in. Where had they all come from?

  ‘It’s not fair,’ he said. ‘There should have been less of them today, not more.’


  ‘Useless,’ said Boney-M and he nipped at Paul’s leg with his beak. Paul kicked him away and sat down out of sight. He clutched his head, trying to hold it together. It felt as if his brain was expanding, growing too big for his skull. It didn’t help that the sun was out, burning down on him, glancing sharp rays off the glass and metalwork and in through his eyes, making them water.

  ‘Baby,’ said Boney-M.

  ‘Shut up!’ Paul snapped. ‘Leave me alone.’

  All morning the creature had followed him around, sneering at him, whingeing and moaning and putting him down.

  ‘I can’t leave you alone,’ said Boney-M, ‘because you can’t do anything by yourself. You need me.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do, yes, you do, yes, you do … because the brats are cleverer than you. Because you’re a bottom feeder, a mouth breather. You’ll have to work harder, move against them quicker, not let them breed and multiply, like chicks. Chick-chick-chick-chick-chick …’

  ‘How can there be more of them?’

  ‘They’ve made friends. They’re good at making friends. Unlike you. Nobody likes you, pisswater.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Listen to me, little Pauly Pisswater. You have to watch and wait. Choose your time. Get the measure of them. Pick your target. One of the smaller ones. They’ll be easier to catch. Come down from the roof in the night, with your knife in your hand, and pluck one up. Pluckety-pluck, clucketty-cluck. Bring it back up here where they can’t find you. Then you can start to collect their bones.’

  ‘I don’t know … have I made a mistake?’

  ‘One of those ones would do. You know their names, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Wiki, Jibber-jabber, Zohra and Froggie. But they’ve got other kids with them I don’t recognize.’

  ‘The two little girls and the two little boys? Any one of them would do. Study them. Watch them. Pick your time. Soon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Paul closed his eyes and licked his lips. He could already taste their warm, sharp blood.

  15

  Blu-Tack Bill had seen him – outside on the roof. A skinny boy all in black, with long, thin arms and legs, like a spider. He was out there talking to himself. Bill didn’t like him. Wished he would go away. Nobody else seemed to have noticed him, and Bill took little glances out of the side of his eyes. At last the spider boy went away.

  Bill looked down at his hands. They’d been making chips out of Blu-tack. He really loved chips, but he hadn’t had any to eat in as long as he could remember. He’d eaten a little bit of the baked potato they’d given him. He had to. If he didn’t eat he’d starve to death. He didn’t like it, though, the potato. It was dry. And then Monkey-Boy had asked him if he was finished with it and he’d given him the rest. He’d eaten a tiny bit of cabbage too, even though it made him feel sick. They’d been promised some tinned fruit for afters. He was looking forward to that. He’d grown very thin over the last year. Not that he’d ever been fat. The bigger kids were always trying to make him eat. Whitney was like his mum – ‘You must eat. You’ll waste away. Eat something …’

  If only he could eat Blu-tack. He couldn’t. He’d tried it once. It was horrible. But just shaping it into chips made him feel a little less hungry.

  The others were all filling their faces. Not holding back. As if this was the nicest feast in the whole world. Not even thinking about what they were eating as they chatted away, forks clattering on their plates.

  Ella was busy telling the museum kids about her life back in Holloway, when she’d been living in Waitrose. It had been fine so far, like telling a great adventure, but he knew what was coming next and tried not to listen. He’d heard this story before. Many times. It didn’t get any better the more he heard it. He hated sadness. He sang a song inside his head, trying to blot it out. At the same time his fingers quickly bundled his blue chips up into a ball and started making something else, something bigger and more complicated so that his attention wasn’t on Ella.

  The girl called Zohra was staring intently at Ella. She had long dark curly hair and big brown eyes. She was leaning forward, her fork forgotten in her hand.

  ‘We used to call him Small Sam,’ Ella was explaining, ‘because there were two other Sams. I even think of him as Small Sam, even though he’s my own brother and he was older than me.’

  ‘How old is he?’ Zohra asked.

  ‘Nearly ten.’

  ‘What happened to the other Sams? Are they still with you?’

  ‘No. Big Sam died ages ago, and Curly Sam died on the way here. We were attacked by diseased monkeys in the park. They escaped from the zoo.’

  ‘Diseased monkeys?’ Zohra looked like she was trying not to laugh. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No. It was horrible. They got Josh, and Joel died as well. Godzilla used to be his dog, Joel’s dog. We look after him now.’

  ‘So what happened to your brother then, what happened to Small Sam?’

  ‘Grown-ups got him. They took him away in a sack. We were playing in the car park behind the shop.’ Ella went quiet; tears welled in the corners of her eyes, then rolled down her cheeks as if racing each other.

  Zohra put her arms round Froggie, who was sitting next to her.

  ‘I couldn’t bear for anything to happen to Froggie,’ she said, holding him tight. ‘Not my little brother.’

  Froggie pushed her away.

  ‘Oi, leave me alone,’ he said, his mouth full of food. ‘You’re worse than Mum.’

  This only made Ella cry more. ‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘Why did they have to take my brother? He looked after me. He was only small, but he looked after me.’

  ‘Is he dead then?’ said Froggie.

  Ella looked at him and sniffed. Froggie reminded her a little of Sam. She nodded quickly.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Froggie pressed on.

  ‘No,’ said Ella. ‘We never saw him get killed, but they took him, a load of mean grown-ups. How could he survive? Sometimes – sometimes I wish he was still alive, that somehow he escaped. That he’s out there now looking for me. But I know it’s just a dream. Lots of kids have died and they don’t never come back. So why should Sam?’

  ‘Maybe he will,’ said Zohra, and she looked at her brother. ‘I’d come back. If sickos took me. I’d escape and I’d find you again, Froggie.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Froggie. ‘I wouldn’t bother. I’d stay with the sickos and have parties. You never let me do anything.’

  Zohra gave Froggie a mock punch and he laughed.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Ella, watching a fat tear plop on to her plate. ‘If he was out there, still alive, what he’d be doing right now. Would he be happy? Would he be sad? Would he be hungry? Would he be scared?’

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up into Zohra’s eyes.

  ‘And sometimes I think he’s better off dead, because then he can’t be cold or hungry or scared or lonely any more.’

  16

  ‘So we both gonna go on this bloody expedition? It’s gonna be hairy out there. More fighting before it’s done.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Maxie. ‘Do you think we can trust Justin? Maybe we should put someone else in charge of the expedition and both stay here.’

  Blue grunted. He was straining to shift an ancient wooden cabinet.

  ‘I wish I’d never agreed to it. I wish I’d never agreed to none of this.’

  ‘As far as I can remember,’ said Maxie, ‘this was your great idea.’

  They’d been working down in the lower level for two days now, moving from room to room, corridor to corridor, clearing out the grown-ups. It didn’t seem so much of a maze now that they’d learnt their way around, but it was still dark and confusing enough to lose your bearings if you didn’t concentrate.

  And nobody wanted to get lost.

  They’d eventually got their heads round the basic layout of two long, wide corridors that ran from one end to the other, linked in t
he middle by one main cross corridor. At the T-junction nearest the front of the museum was their chief navigation point – a sign on a pillar reading GIRAFFE CORNER. There was a huge lifting platform here beneath a trap door. Boggle had explained that it had been where a herd of stuffed giraffes had once been kept.

  If they ever got disoriented they only had to find Giraffe Corner and they could get their bearings.

  The three big main corridors had cables, lighting and ducts running along the ceiling, and various cabinets, boxes and rubbish piled along the walls. Every now and then smaller passages broke off to either side and everywhere there were doors. Doors to countless rooms. More rooms than they could ever have imagined. Any that were locked they ignored, but if they were open they had to be investigated. The only windows down here were in the extreme outer walls. For the most part it was dark and airless.

  As the kids cleared each section, they sealed it off to make sure no grown-ups could get back in. So far they’d found twelve living ones and had killed every one of them. It had been tense and often disgusting work. The grown-ups had been living down here like animals and had collected all kinds of filth – bits of rotting flesh and bone, faeces, ragged clothing.

  They’d found no sign of the two missing museum kids yet – Stacey Norman and Paul Channing. They assumed that they must have either been torn apart and their remains mixed in with the foul piles of debris in the dark corners, or they’d been dragged away and disposed of somewhere else. Whatever the case, having got rid of the living, the kids didn’t have the stomach to look too closely at the dead. As far as they were concerned, the quicker they could finish the job and make the place safe, the better.

  Maxie and Blue were nearing the end of their shift. They had Big Mick and two more of Blue’s crew with them. They were all wearing face masks and rubber gloves and had spent the last half-hour scooping up the unidentifiable muck they’d found in one of the smaller rooms. The room had been lined with shelves containing fossils, but had obviously been used as a nest by the grown-ups. The kids had dumped everything they could into bin liners and were stacking them outside the door. The smell was appalling; it was so intense it was almost physical, as if someone was rubbing grubby hands over them, forcing the stench into their noses and eyes, their ears, their hair. The end was in sight, though, and they were working fast, sweat crawling across their skin beneath their clothes.