The End (20 page)

‘Counting what?’

‘Stuff.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Trees. People. Railings. Mostly people. I need to know how many.’

‘Why do you need to know?’

Blu-Tack Bill had shrugged.

‘He’s amazing,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘He’s a savant.
A master of numbers. You can try him on anything. Here …’

He’d picked up a bunch of gravel and thrown it on to a tarmac pathway.

‘How many stones, Bill?’

Bill had glanced at them. A few seconds was all.

‘Forty-eight.’

‘Go on,’ Wiki had said and Hayden had counted them. Bill had been right. Exactly forty-eight. The other kids had cheered, but Bill had just shrugged
again. It was nothing to him. Hayden tested him on a couple of other things to make sure it hadn’t been a fluke and couldn’t believe it. After that they’d stopped for lunch and Hayden had tried to talk to Bill. He wasn’t much of a talker, though.

Hayden worked them for a couple more hours and then left them to it. Paddy was starting to get tired. To be honest, drilling was a
little bit boring. He liked the mock fighting, but that made you tireder than anything, and the kids couldn’t keep it up for long. Paddy was hoping they were all going to stop soon so he could get back to the museum and rest. He looked at the big kids. They were in huddles, making plans, some of them building defences. Constructing a barricade out of wood and branches and railings. He
smiled. He was one of them. When the big battle came, his kids would be right there, fighting alongside the likes of Achilleus, Jackson and Blue.

‘OK, troop,’ he said, his voice a little hoarse from shouting all day. ‘Take five. At ease. Hang loose.’

The others gratefully dropped their weapons and slumped to the grass, started chatting among themselves. Paddy sat with Bright
Eyes, Zohra and her little brother,
Froggie. Bright Eyes had been sitting there, patiently watching them all day. Zohra and Froggie made a fuss over him. The two of them were always together. Paddy could tell that Zohra was proud that she’d protected Froggie, got him this far.

‘What will happen after the battle?’ said Froggie. He was too young really to know what it was all about,
what a battle was going to be like.

‘After the battle there’ll be peace,’ said Zohra. ‘We can get things back to how they were before.’

Froggie thought about that and nodded.

‘Which one of you kids is Blu-Tack Bill?’

Paddy looked up to see Jordan Hordern standing there with Hayden. Paddy jumped to his feet, cursing himself. What had he done wrong? The general scared
him. He wore those thick glasses, but he never looked at you straight.

Paddy pointed to Bill.

‘That’s him. I’m sorry we stopped training. Some of the smaller ones were a bit tired. Not me. We’ll carry on if you want. What have we done?’

Jordan looked at him sideways.

‘Nobody done nothing bad,’ he said. ‘I just want to talk.’ He turned to Bill who was staring at the ground.
‘You Bill, yeah?’

Bill nodded.

‘You OK to talk?’

Bill shrugged like he always did.

‘We’ll walk a ways,’ said Jordan. ‘Just you and me, yeah? You cool with that?’

Bill shrugged again and got up, and the two of them wandered off, the general doing all the talking. After
they’d gone a little way Paddy saw Bill take Jordan’s hand. Paddy hadn’t ever seen that before. Bill didn’t
like to be touched.

‘What’s that all about?’ Paddy asked Hayden.

‘The general needs a kid like Bill,’ said Hayden. ‘He always says that intelligence is your best weapon.’

‘Oh,’ said Paddy. ‘I’m not sure Bill’s intelligent really. He can do his number trick, but his brain’s a bit screwy.’

‘Jordan’s brain’s a bit screwy too,’ said Hayden. ‘They make a good pair.’

‘He taking him out of my fighting unit?’

‘Would you mind?’

‘Not really. Bill’s not a natural soldier.’

Hayden laughed. ‘Jordan will only take him if Bill agrees.’

‘We’ll be under strength.’

‘You’ll manage.’

After a while Jordan and Bill came back. Bill sat apart from the others as he often did. Jordan squatted down and rubbed Bright Eyes’s head.

‘This your
dog?’ he asked Paddy. Paddy beamed.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘She’s a good dog. She’s real clever. She used to be a seeing-eye dog. I’m training her to be a dog of war.’

Jordan studied Bright Eyes, not saying anything. After a while he grunted and stood up. Walked away with Hayden, the two of them talking about something. Hayden glanced round now and then to look back at Paddy
and Bright Eyes.

‘They’re talking about me,’ said Paddy. ‘She’s probably telling him what a good officer I am, what a good job I done with you lot. Maybe he’ll even put us in the front
rank of the fighting. We’ll be handy. We can nip in there, chop them bastards in the legs.’

Paddy didn’t feel tired any more. He was fired up, his head filled with dreams of glory.

‘Come on,’
he shouted. ‘Let’s try a double-time quick march!’

Bill shook his head. Looked round at his friends and then ran off after Jordan and Hayden. Fell in next to them and, after a few paces, took hold of Jordan’s hand again. He turned once to look back at them all. Like he was saying goodbye forever.

28

This felt unreal. Too weird. Sitting in the back seat of a Land Rover Discovery with Bernie, driving north through empty streets. It even had that new-car smell. Ben had no idea where Shadowman had got it from – it really
was
a discovery. Where exactly they were headed was also a mystery.

Shadowman had come to find him and Bernie at the museum. They’d been working in
the kitchens, rigging up a better system for smoke extraction. It was so smoky in there from the open fire they cooked over that it was in danger of ruining the kids’ lungs. When Ben had first seen their system, he’d sworn and told the girl in charge – ‘You don’t have to worry about grown-ups getting you. This’ll kill you a whole lot faster.’

Shadowman had been secretive. From what
Ben had seen of him he was always secretive. He’d just told the two of them that he had a job for them, more important than getting rid of smoke. He’d led them out along the Cromwell Road to where he’d left the car parked up a side-street some way from the museum. He didn’t say anything, but it was obvious he didn’t want anyone at the museum to know that he had a vehicle.

So
far they’d been driving in silence. Ben and Bernie
were so gobsmacked by the whole experience that they were just staring out of the window like little kids up from the countryside on a day trip to the big city, marvelling at it all. It wasn’t like they’d even seen anything spectacular. No Trafalgar Square or Houses of Parliament, no London Eye or Tower Bridge. Just the ugly grey
streets of Earls Court and Shepherd’s Bush. But it was still thrilling to the two of them. For nearly a year they’d seen nothing except the small area of Holloway around Waitrose. Then there had been that short, intense, terrifying trip into town. Since then – well, since then they’d got used to being at the museum. Took it for granted. And now this.

It was like a trip to the most
exotic foreign country. They’d told themselves they’d never do something like this again. Drive in a car. Warm and safe. Not a grown-up in sight. Shadowman had even put some music on. Not something Ben would normally have listened to – it sounded like an old Rolling Stones CD – but just to listen to any music was extraordinary.

Ben couldn’t hold it in any longer. He
had
to know
what was going on.

‘So? What’s up?’ he said as casually as possible. ‘Where we going, dude?’

‘North,’ said Shadowman.

‘More info required,’ said Ben.

‘Right now we’re going round St George’s army,’ said Shadowman.

‘I get that,’ said Ben. ‘But what’s our destination?’

‘Did you know Ed at all?’ Shadowman asked.

‘Not really,’ said Ben. ‘I talked to him a couple
of times, but he wasn’t with us for long.’

‘I talked to him a lot,’ said Shadowman. ‘He told me
things. Like what happened to him before he arrived at the Tower of London.’

Ben didn’t say anything. He looked at Bernie – eyebrows raised. Bernie gave him a look back. They were both wondering where this was going, but Ben guessed that Shadowman wanted to tell them in his own way,
in his own time. Ben reckoned that when people did that it meant they weren’t really sure of what they were saying. He figured maybe Shadowman wasn’t entirely convinced by their mission. He was kind of creeping up on it, giving the explanation sideways.

‘What did he tell you?’ said Bernie. ‘And what’s it got to do with where we’re going? You can’t just kidnap us, bro. Nice
as it is to go for a drive.’

‘You know the Oval cricket ground in south London?’ said Shadowman.

‘Not really,’ said Ben. ‘We neither of us exactly cricket fans. They all wear white. We tend towards the black.’

Bernie laughed. ‘So true,’ she said. ‘With us, it’s all about black. With them, it’s all about white.’

‘Is there any sport where they all wear black?’ said
Ben.

‘Maybe a team of referees,’ said Shadowman. He had a sense of humour at least.

‘Wasn’t there a rugby team called the All Blacks?’ said Bernie. ‘From New Zealand or something? Dad used to watch the rugby. I could never understand it, and he could never understand me. Why I painted my room black and listened to Marilyn Manson and My Chemical Romance all the time. But it
was him that taught me all about mechanics and engineering.’

‘What’s cricket got to do with where we going?’ said Ben. ‘You got to stop being so secretive, dude.’

‘About a year ago,’ said Shadowman, ‘when Ed was travelling through south London, he and some friends broke into the Oval, looking for gear.’

‘What did they find there?’ Ben asked.

‘Bodies mostly,’ said Shadowman.
‘Dead bodies.’

‘Watching the cricket?’ said Bernie. ‘Just like it always was.’

‘You see the government?’ said Shadowman. ‘Seems like they’d run out of places to dump the dead. The army had started loading them on to trucks and using cranes and diggers and crap to pile them all in the Oval. They’d filled the whole stadium up.’

‘Jesus,’ said Bernie. ‘I wondered what their
plan was.’

‘Wasn’t much of a plan,’ said Shadowman. ‘They all got sick before they could finish it.’

‘What exactly were they gonna do when they ran out of space in there?’

‘They were gonna blow the whole place up,’ said Shadowman, and he gave a dark little laugh.

‘For real?’ said Ben. ‘Cool.’

‘Burn the lot of them,’ said Shadowman. ‘Had the whole stadium rigged with
explosives and stuff to start fires. But, as I say, they all got the disease before they could ever do it.’

‘OK,’ said Ben. ‘Good story, but where is this going? Where are
we
going?’

‘
We’re on our way to Wembley
,’ Shadowman sang. Ben guessed it was some kind of football chant.

‘You mean we’re going to see if Wembley was rigged the same way?’ said Bernie.

‘You’re on it,’
said Shadowman. ‘That is exactly what we’re doing. Seems to me, if they rigged up one stadium
they might have rigged up more. And Wembley is the biggest of them all. At least around here. See this car? Belongs to a guy called Saif. He’s got a powerful settlement up that way. He’s got vehicles and he’s got troops. Plus, he has a thing going with St George. Bad blood. Wants to kick
the guy’s ass.’

‘Don’t we all,’ said Ben.

‘Well, plan is we can give him the biggest kick up the ass in history,’ said Shadowman. ‘We boot him with high explosives and incendiary bombs.’

‘Won’t that be a little …’ Ben paused, searching for the right word. Hazardous? Risky? Unsafe? ‘
Dangerous
?’ he said. Keeping it simple.

‘That’s what we got to figure out,’ said
Shadowman. ‘And that’s where you come in. You know about this type of stuff. About mechanics and engineering and how things work. Plan is we rig up as many vehicles as Saif can give us and turn them into car bombs. All you gotta do then is work out a way of driving them into the rear of St George’s army without getting killed and blow them all into another dimension.’

‘That’s
all
we’ve gotta do?’ said Ben, with heavy sarcasm. ‘Break into Wembley Stadium. Find out whether there’s actually any explosives in there. Work out how to get them out without killing ourselves. Rig up a fleet of vehicles as car bombs, and then drive them into the middle of St George’s army and blow them up without killing ourselves for a second time. This is assuming that Saif and his
guys don’t want to become suicide bombers.’

‘They certainly don’t,’ said Shadowman.

‘So you thought you’d just jack us, drive us up there and we’d do your bidding?’ said Ben.

‘I’ve already got some ideas actually,’ said Bernie. ‘This could be cool. A challenge. And if we get it right, man, if we pimp those rides and turbocharge them to the max, it could change everything.’

‘OK. It looks like we’re on board,’ said Ben. ‘What Bernie says goes.’

‘You never had a choice,’ said Shadowman. And as he said it Ben got his first glimpse of the stadium. Still some way ahead, but towering over the low buildings of Wembley. The distinctive shape of the massive white steel arch unmistakable.