The Fear (20 page)

‘There aren’t any going spare round here,’ said Shadowman, kicking a log on the fire with his boot. ‘All the best fighters are already in the other settlements, or with the hunters.’

Jester turned back from the window.

‘We could pay hunters to do it for us.’

‘No. You’d have to pay them way too much. They won’t fight other kids unless they have to, if they’re attacked or something. Mothers and fathers, yes, but not other kids.’

‘David wants me to go on the road,’ said Jester. ‘He wants me to go and look for kids further out, fighters who might be tempted to join us when they see how much food we have and how safe and well organized the palace is.’

‘You’d have to go pretty far.’

‘What’s the furthest you’ve ever been?’

‘I mostly stay here in the centre of town where there’s less grown-ups. I’ve been as far as Regent’s Park to the north, I suppose. I’ve not been further than Notting Hill to the west, though, and that was some time ago. It’s the Wild West over there now.’

‘What about east?’

‘Never risked going much further than Holborn.’

‘And south?’

‘No one goes south of the river any more, not since the fire.’

‘So it’s north or east?’

‘North. Sometimes you meet kids who’ve strayed in from the east. Trying to get away. Apparently the city, you know, like the oldest part of town, is really diseased, heavy-duty mothers and fathers rule the streets there.’

‘Some kids came through earlier. They were from the east. They’re living at the Tower of London.’

‘Cool. I saw them, I think. Wondered where they were from. Where are they now? We should talk to them.’

‘They left. David tried to lock them down. I guess they didn’t go for it.’

‘Pity.’

‘Thing is, though. They’ve got the east sewn up by the sound of it. No use trying to recruit there.’

‘So it’s the north then?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t do it by myself, though, Shadowman. I need to ask you a really big favour.’

‘You want me to come with you?’

‘Yes. We need a scout. Someone who’s used to the streets.’

Shadowman sucked his teeth for a long time, mulling this over and staring into the fire.

‘How long do I have to think about it?’ he said eventually.

‘Until tomorrow. If you want to come, it’s usual terms, usual payment, meet in the courtyard when it’s light. I can find a bed for you here if you want.’

‘Nah, it’s all right. There’s a girl in John’s camp I’m interested in. They’re having a big party down there tonight. They jacked a load of beer and cider today.’

‘How can you hang out with those dorks?’

‘Oh, they have fun, you know, Magic-Man. F-U-N. Not like here. It’s boring here. It’s drab. It’s dull.’

‘Are you going over to the dark side?’

‘No.’ Shadowman laughed. ‘You know what it reminds me of down there?’

‘What?’

‘You remember when we went to Glastonbury? It was a laugh for the first day, then it rained and the toilets were foul, there was filth and mess everywhere, too many people, non-stop music all day and night, rotten food. By day two I was knackered and dirty and strung out and you couldn’t get away from it, the noise and the dirt and the crowds.’

‘I enjoyed it,’ said Jester. ‘It was well cool.’

‘Maybe. But, anyway, that’s what the squatter camp’s like. Noisy and dirty and dangerous. Fun to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. It’s like you’ve got two opposites – law and order here at the palace, and total chaos in the camp. You need a balance, I reckon, somewhere in between.’

‘Maybe that’s what we’ll find in north London?’

‘What? And not come back?’

‘So far, Shadow, this is the best deal I’ve seen in London, but if there’s a better one, well …’

‘You reckon there might be something out there?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

‘If I come.’

‘You’ll come.’

Somehow the girl had kept going for hours. Running round the pitch. Escaping their clumsy attacks. They’d brought her here soon after dusk and now it was almost dawn. The great oval of sky that showed in the open roof of the stadium was growing light to the east, turning from grey to pale yellow.

She’d had three friends with her when she’d arrived. Three other girls. They’d been snatched from the house they were sheltering in and carried back here.

Her friends hadn’t lasted long at all.

And once the grown-ups had eaten them their need to kill this girl had dimmed along with the hunger pains in their bellies. She was fast and she had fight in her, and one by one they had given up trying to catch her.

Now they were only playing with her.

She would wait until she thought they’d leave her alone and then run for an exit. They were always ready for her, however, and would lumber over to cut her off, slashing at her with their long dirty fingernails, snapping with yellow rotting teeth. Every time so far she’d managed to struggle free of them and return to the centre of the pitch and there she was now.

She was covered in blood from small cuts all over her body where her flesh had been torn. Her clothes were stained black with it and her long hair was matted around her face. Her mad, terrified eyes stared out from a red mask streaked with tears. She crouched in the middle of the football pitch, panting and gasping and trembling. Fear had taken all her humanity away and she was a pathetic animal thing, a mouse in a den of cats, liable to freeze with shock at any moment.

Most of the grown-ups, with food inside them, had wandered away to sleep, but some sat in the stands, watching her. A few remained on the pitch and one of them was watching her more intently than the others. He didn’t take his eyes off her. He had a great bald head on a short neck, a filthy vest with a cross of St George stretched across his belly and wire-framed glasses with no lenses in them. He had been poking his tongue into the eye socket of a severed head, trying to get at the warm brains inside. Now he threw it away into the long grass. Bored. Two skinny, starving mothers, too feeble to catch anything for themselves, had been watching him, dribbling down their fronts, and now they crawled towards the head and fought each other for it, snarling and hissing.

They could have his scraps – that’s all they were good for. He was top dog and they were snivelling filth. They looked up to him. They followed him. He could get them to do whatever he wanted. He was powerful, the most powerful of them all, and they understood it.

He kicked one of the mothers in the side of the head and she fell sideways, her neck broken.

The father belched and a thin stream of brown bile bubbled from his mouth. The girl had entertained him for a while and it had triggered memories, of coming here long ago. He thought perhaps he had lived here back then, before his brain had been cooked and tangled and twisted out of shape by the disease, before his flesh had been ruined by blisters and boils and sores.

He had come here with his boy, his Liam, he remembered that much, and he had sat and watched his team. Now the grass was up to his knees, weeds were sprouting. It had changed, this place, but it was the closest thing to a home that he had. They were creatures of habit, these sick grown-ups, slinking back to the places they knew so well.

More and more of them had been coming to the stadium. Tramping in from every direction. Drawn to it, just as they’d been drawn to it before – on Saturdays and Sundays, on weekday nights when the floodlights had blazed overhead and the grass had glowed bright green.

If he really concentrated, strained and struggled and forced his mind to be still, he could remember how it had been back then, with every seat filled and all of the fans shouting and screaming and hurling abuse as the players kicked the ball.

Kick, kick, kick …

Back then they had followed their team. Their Arsenal. And now they followed him. He had the badge of power on his chest. The red cross on the white. He was St George. Their leader, their saviour. He would kill the dragons.

All they had wanted before was to win, to beat every other team, be champions of the world. He would make it happen now. All he had to do was beat the enemy. Beat them down until they were bloody. Kick, kick, kick … Kick them down and butcher them and eat them.

That was what he was. Yes. It all came back to him now. He was a butcher. He could see himself in his shop.
Meat is life
. He could smell it in the air. The vans would arrive and they would bring in the boys and girls, and he would hang them from spikes and slit them from their belly to their throat, watch the blood draining away, pull out the guts, the heart and liver and lungs. He closed his eyes so he could see it more clearly. Licked his dry and cracking lips.

There they were in his gleaming white shop. The children hanging neatly, staring at nothing, opened up and cleaned, drained of blood so that they were white.

Chop, chop, chop, the butchering would carry on. Choice cuts. Shin, neck, breast, ribs, rump … He hummed to himself, rocking backwards and forwards, lost in the delight of it all, the sights and sounds and smells. The words kept on coming back to him – loin, leg, shoulder, cheek – he rolled them around his mouth.

He would lay the sweet red meat out on his counter and the mums would come in, or sometimes the dads, and he would wrap the little packets of flesh and sell them.

He smiled as he hummed.

He loved the night, after he had eaten, when his head cleared and his memories returned. His special lads were nearby, finishing off one of the other girls. Cracking the bones so they could suck out the sweet marrow inside. They were the clever ones, like him. They stuck close by. His dogs. His boys. They brought him what he needed. Fresh meat. Living children. And every day he grew stronger.

Watching the girl being chased around the pitch had been fun for a while, almost like watching a game of football, but now he wanted to finish it. The girl and her fidgety scurrying movements irritated him. The young ones made him angry. He wanted to kill them all. He wanted to snap their necks just like he’d snapped the neck of the skinny mother.

Bored.

He yawned and stretched, his joints clicking. Then he belched again and spat a mouthful of bile on to the mother who sat in the grass chewing an ear. He lumbered across the pitch.

Bored.

Still the girl had not given up. She made a fresh break for it, sprinting towards the east stand. She pounded along, hoping against hope that this time, unlike the countless times she’d tried it before,
this time
would be different, she would make it to the edge and get away from this hideous place.

At the last moment a fat mother wearing a T-shirt with the Playboy bunny logo on it waddled over to cut her off and as the girl tried to duck past her she swung one of her heavy fat arms, bowling the girl to the ground. She crawled on, her breath hissing in and out of her tight throat. A father, long hair hanging down over his face, stamped on her. She squealed and rolled to the side, then struggled to her feet and limped back to the centre of the pitch.

St George was waiting for her. In the half-light it looked as if he was smiling, but the girl couldn’t be sure. Grown-ups didn’t really have emotions any more; they were just killing machines. There was something different about this one, though, something cleverer, more human …

She dropped to her knees in front of him.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please help me …’

For a moment the light of intelligence came into his face. He cocked his head to one side, like a dog listening, and a frown flickered about his eyes. He nodded his head, opened his mouth to speak. His jaws moved up and down, his tongue waggled in his mouth, but only a gurgling sound came out.

Was it possible he understood her? That she had stirred some memory of a time when adults looked after children?

‘Please,’ she said again. ‘I don’t want to die.’

He opened his arms wide, and now he definitely
was
smiling. The girl got up and staggered into him, pressed her head against his chest and drenched his vest with her tears. He wrapped his arms round her. One hand stroked her bloody hair. He too was crying as he breathed in her scent. That warm sweet scent they all shared, the smell of life.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank –’

The words were choked off as his grip tightened. Her chest was crushed so she could no longer work her lungs. She felt her ribs snapping.

Oh well, she thought, as the blackness swallowed her. At least it was all over now …

St George mumbled something into her hair, remembering holding his boy. Protecting him with his strong arms. Recalling the old days, the good days, when it had been the two of them against the world.

They were gathering under the dinosaur skeleton in the main hall. Some of them were excited, chattering away, unable to stand still; others were quiet and drawn into themselves; a couple looked downright sick. DogNut paced up and down, his head bobbing on his long neck, beatboxing softly, waiting for Robbie, the boy who had opened the gate for them last night. Robbie was in charge of security at the museum and would be useful to have along on DogNut’s expedition.

After breakfast DogNut and Paul had gone around talking to the more adventurous kids, collecting a posse. ‘
Who wants to come and kill the monster?
’ Afterwards Paul had taken DogNut up on to the roof and shown him the beacon fire. Despite the fancy name it wasn’t much more than a pile of junk in an old brazier that when lit sent up a tall column of smoke. If any of the hunter gangs were nearby, they’d see it and come to the museum, as they knew it meant a reward of some sort if they were able to help out. Paul had explained that Robbie was the only one authorized by the council to give the order to light it. But Robbie had left early, well before DogNut had woken up, to escort a work party of kids to a nearby courtyard to harvest crops.

Ignoring Paul’s protests DogNut had taken out the cigarette lighter he always carried with him and set light to the brazier, explaining that they couldn’t wait all day for Robbie to get back. Paul had tutted and fretted and moaned as the junk caught light and the smoke crawled up into the clear sky. A couple of runners had been sent out to fetch Robbie, but DogNut figured once he saw the beacon smoke he’d come back quick enough. DogNut was actually glad Robbie hadn’t been there to start with. It helped his plan.