The End (30 page)

The best way was just not to think about the girl at all.

Concentrate on the sickos.

So many
questions that needed answers.

They were all down there, all the new ones, mixing with St George’s original army. What were they doing? What were they waiting for? Why had they gathered? What where they eating? How were they surviving at all? Did they really have a plan of some sort?

What Shadowman wanted more than anything was to get down there, right among them, but it was
too dangerous. He’d tried it once and had had to make a quick exit, running as fast as his still weak leg would allow. He’d only just made it. If the sickos hadn’t been slow and sleepy and reluctant to leave their nesting ground he’d surely have been caught and swamped. He was being much more careful now.

That had at least answered one question.

He’d thought he might be carrying
around a monster death wish, but when he found himself running for his life he knew it had passed. It wasn’t his fault what had happened to Yo-Yo. He’d had to tell himself that. Ryan had been just as responsible.

The thing was – nobody could have predicted the arrival of a massive new army when the streets had been so quiet.

You had to tell yourself these stories to stay
sane, to stay alive. If you let your mind go soft you were done for. To survive you had to stay strong in the head. Head, heart and hand. If any of them failed you, that was it. There had been a spell after Yo-Yo was killed when Shadowman’s heart had been hurt. But he’d slowly built a fresh wall around it. He’d moved away from other kids, and now he was back where he belonged, with his
sickos.

He was happy to be here. Happy to watch and wait. Hard of head, hard of heart, hard of hand …

He sucked in his breath and held it. There was a change. Black figures were moving out into the main road, heading south. First one or two, then clumps of them, then larger groups, finally a flood filling the whole road, like oil flowing into a channel. Greasy and filthy and
rotting.

It reminded Shadowman of match days. Football fans coming down the streets. Slow and purposeful. Massing. Expectant.

St George’s army was on the move.

It was starting.

42

‘You’re looking better. I really think you are.’ Fish-Face ran her fingers down the Green Man’s arm and then returned to her work. There was a nasty click and then a rattle as one long fingernail dropped to the floor.

Maxie shuddered. Fish-Face was using a pair of heavy-duty kitchen scissors to cut her father’s nails. Creepy. Personally she wasn’t sure about Fish-Face’s
judgement. Did Wormwood look less green? Was the evil fungus that covered him going away? He still weirded Maxie out. His pale eyes. The way he always seemed to have some hidden thought brewing in his brain. The way you caught him looking hungrily at you, and if you held his stare he dropped his gaze like a shamed dog.

Fish-Face had done her best to make him normal. She’d managed
to cut his hair and now she was getting rid of his horrible long fingernails. She’d also got him to wear clothes, a baggy T-shirt and tracksuit trousers, even though he complained that they hurt his skin. No shoes. He stuck at that. And he still always had his blanket wrapped round his shoulders and his ridiculous green bowler hat jammed on his head. So he was a long way from normal.
Was he better physically, though? Was he
healthier at all? Was it just Fish-Face’s improvements that had made him look more human?

What a couple they were. Maxie wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to the two of them. The way Fish-Face loved the old freak. Maxie knew that Einstein was experimenting on him. Using him as a guinea pig to try out the antidotes he was working on – made
from Small Sam’s blood. At least Einstein hadn’t killed him, like he had the mother on the lorry. He’d made a safer new serum, had tried a tiny, tiny amount at first. Had been building the doses up since. Maxie didn’t pretend to understand the mechanics of it, but something must be working.

She’d come to the birds gallery where the Twisted Kids hung out with Wormwood, to try
to find Skinner. He was the easiest to talk to and he could translate Fish-Face’s more peculiar outbursts. She still seemed to be getting messages from her friend Trinity who had gone out west with Ed.

Maxie needed to know if there was any news from them. Was Ed coming back? She didn’t know Ed well, but what she’d seen of him had impressed her. Plus, he’d taken three of their key
fighters with him – Kyle, Lewis and Ebenezer. Morale at the museum was disastrously low since Achilleus was refusing to fight. If Ed came back he might help rally the kids. At the moment, apart from a hardcore group here at the museum and most of Maxie’s crew, it was only the guys from the east who were prepared to go into battle, and she wasn’t really sure how much use the crazy
greens from St Paul’s were going to be. They were enthusiastic enough – manic, fanatical even – but they weren’t exactly fighters. She’d seen them practising in Hyde Park. Their tactics seemed to involve a lot of
prayer and chanting and music and not a lot of combat. Maxie knew grown-ups well enough to know that if the greens went into battle armed only with violins and trumpets
they’d be massacred.

There was no God to protect them. Despite what they thought. Maxie had seen enough of the misery in the world to know that. But if Ed came back it would really help.

She had to interrupt this touching scene.

‘Is Skinner around?’

‘He’s up with the smaller kids,’ said Fish-Face, without looking up from her work. She was so shy, poor girl.

‘Can
I help?’ she said, twisting her long neck so as not to look at Maxie.

‘Maybe.’ Maxie explained what she wanted.

‘I haven’t heard anything for a while,’ said Fish-Face when she’d finished. ‘At least nothing clear. It’s all been too confused, with those new grown-ups going through. And there’s so many of them, they block the signals. It’s just static out there now, white
noise, soup, a thousand voices all shouting at once. You can’t make anything out. I’ll tell you as soon as I know anything. I will … but Maxie?’ Finally she looked up at Maxie and there was pleading in her huge, wide-set eyes.

‘Is everything going to be all right?’

‘I don’t honestly know,’ said Maxie. ‘If we can’t get everyone back on board and united I don’t know what’s
going to happen. Nobody wants to fight.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’ said Fish-Face.

‘Can you turn back time?’

Fish-Face shook her head.

‘No chance of going back and stopping Jordan taking
Paddy’s dog then. How about you take us into an alternative universe where the disease never happened?’

Fish-Face smiled shyly and shook her head again.

‘Then you’re as helpless
as me, I’m afraid,’ said Maxie. ‘Even some of my Holloway kids won’t fight without Achilleus – but I don’t know what we can do.’

‘We could just hope the sickos never attack,’ said Fish-Face.

‘We’ll get the St Paul’s crew to pray for it,’ said Maxie.

There was shouting from outside and the two girls looked round towards the door.

‘What is it?’ said Fish-Face anxiously.

‘I’ll go see.’

Maxie hurried out and went along the wide corridor with the sea monster fossils down either side, towards the main hall. There were kids milling around the diplodocus skeleton, excited, waving their arms, voices raised. As Maxie got closer, she spotted Blue, who seemed to be at the centre of it all. She speeded up and went straight to him. As soon as he spotted
her, he broke away from the other kids and took her to one side. He looked serious, trying to keep the stone face on and failing. Something heavy was up.

‘They coming,’ he said.

‘Who? What?’

‘The army’s moving. We have to get out there. Jordan wants us to make sure the sickos head towards Hyde Park. We have to drive them.’

‘Shit.’

This plan had been discussed at length.
The kids had spent day after day building barricades and laying down a firewall to try to direct the grown-ups to Jordan’s chosen
battleground. But they hadn’t nearly finished getting ready. The danger was that the army would simply spread out and advance down all the streets. Or even just go the other way entirely. Nobody really had any idea what their plan might be.

And since
Achilleus had thrown his tantrum the kids’ army had started to fall apart. They had only half the number of fighters to call on.

‘Are we ready?’ she asked, looking around at the nervous kids who’d gathered there.

‘Course we ain’t,’ said Blue. ‘We never will be.’

Maxie swore to herself. She’d really been hoping that Blue would lie.

43

‘The battle’s on and we are gonna show them what we can do!’

Paddy looked at Achilleus’s spear, sticking straight out from the slice of tree trunk. God – he must have thrown it really hard. It had gone right in. And that old wood, man, it was like iron. Paddy pulled the end of the spear down and let go. It juddered, like twanging a ruler on the edge of your desk, and
Paddy enjoyed the noise it made.

‘I’m gonna pull it out,’ he said. ‘Take it back to Akkie. Show him how strong I am.’

‘You’re no way strong enough,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘You’ll never pull it out. Not in a million years – which is about how old that tree is.’

The other kids laughed. His troop. His team. The kids he was going to lead into battle. And now he had the chance to
show them what he was. A hero like his hero, Akkie.

‘Easy’, he said. ‘I am Patrick of the Red Branch Knights. The greatest team of superheroes in Irish legend. I am Cúchulainn, back from the dead, reincarnated in this body!’

‘And I’m Hercules reincarnated,’ said Froggie. ‘He’s come back to life in my body.’ He did a strongman pose,
looking to his sister for approval. Zohra
laughed. Zohra always laughed at anything Froggie did.

‘I’ll show you,’ said Paddy and he gripped the spear with both hands. All he’d ever wanted was to be tough. He’d grown up in a big family, two brothers and two sisters. He wasn’t the youngest, so he couldn’t be the baby and everyone’s favourite, like Froggie. And he wasn’t the oldest. Couldn’t be the leader of the clan, like
his big brother, Daragh. He’d been stuck in the middle, ignored, nothing special. He’d been teased at school for his strong Irish accent. Kids would impersonate him. Teachers would tell him to speak more clearly. He’d wished he had superpowers, that he could suddenly grow bulging muscles and leap up and smash people to the ground. He’d worked out in his room in secret using Daragh’s
weights. They’d hurt his arms, but he knew that if he was tough he could
be
someone.

Not just Akkie’s caddie, carrying his spears around. He’d be a hero like his hero.

Except Achilleus wasn’t going to fight.

He’d kicked Justin out of his room, an old office at the front of the museum, and taken it over. He hardly ever came out. Sat in the dark with the curtains drawn,
swearing at anyone who came close.

So now it was up to Paddy to be the hero of the day.

He pulled on the spear. Achilleus had only thrown it at the slice of trunk. It wasn’t like he’d driven it in with a hammer or anything, but it didn’t budge. Not even a millimetre. Paddy realized he was looking like a fool.

‘Come on, superman,’ Froggie shouted. ‘Pull out the spear. Pull
out the spear.’

Paddy turned and cursed him, shocking the other kids.

‘Why don’t you pull it out then?’ he said. ‘If you’re so tough. You can’t, can you?’

‘I never said I could,’ Froggie protested.

‘Because you can’t,’ said Paddy.

‘I know.’

‘None of you can.’ Paddy looked around at their faces. ‘Nobody except Achilleus can pull this spear out.’

Yeah, that
was it. He loved all the old stories that his dad had told him when he was a kid. His dad had been a poet and a storyteller. He’d told Paddy all the Irish tales, and the Scottish tales, and the African ones, the Welsh, the Indian … even the English ones. Although, every time he did, he’d say, ‘You’ve got to remember, kiddo, that the Irish tales are best.’

Paddy remembered the
story of King Arthur. The sword in the stone. That only the rightful king of England could pull it out.