The Sacrifice
Authors: Charlie Higson
The Sacrifice
PUFFIN
The Action in this Book
Begins Eight Days After the End of the Fear.
PUFFIN BOOKS
Charlie Higson started writing when he was
ten years old, but it was a long time before he got paid for doing it. On leaving
university he was the singer in a pop group (The Higsons) before giving it up to become
a painter and decorator. It was around this time that he started writing for television
on
Saturday Night Live
. He went on to create the hugely successful comedy
series
The Fast Show
, in which he also appeared. Other TV work includes
Randall and Hopkirk
(
Deceased
) and
Swiss Toni
.
He is the author of the bestselling Young
Bond books, and
The Sacrifice
is the fourth book in his current horror series,
The Enemy.
Charlie doesn’t do Facebook, but you
can tweet him @monstroso.
Books by Charlie Higson
SILVERFIN
BLOOD FEVER
DOUBLE OR DIE
HURRICANE GOLD
BY ROYAL COMMAND
DANGER SOCIETY: YOUNG BOND DOSSIER
MONSTROSO (POCKET MONEY PUFFINS)
SILVERFIN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
THE ENEMY
THE DEAD
THE FEAR
THE SACRIFICE
For Sam and Joe
I would like to thank David Cooper for
showing me behind the scenes at the Tower of London, the place I would definitely run to
at the first signs of a zombie uprising.
I am grateful for the use of lines from
‘The Waste Land’ © Estate of T. S. Eliot and reprinted by permission of
Faber and Faber Ltd.
Come closer. Don’t make me shout. It
hurts me just to talk. Don’t get to talk much. Don’t get many visitors. Come
and sit with me. Come on. I’m not going to eat you …
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha …
Sorry about that. Just my little joke. A
typical Dad joke. Why not? I
am
a father. I had two boys and a little girl. She
came out wrong. My girl. Please. Don’t hide over there in the darkness.
All right. Stay there then.
Let me tell you about myself.
I am a fallen angel. Wormwood. I came down
to earth with a bump. A bump so big the whole earth shook. Lay there for a long while,
just dreaming. Not alone. Not then. Other angels had fallen from the stars with me. Some
died – millions upon millions – never got to make friends with anyone. But enough of us
lived.
Our first friends, they weren’t much:
small fry, hardly VIPs, just germs and microbes really. We lived among them. Long time
ago that was. Back when everything was all just swamp and bog and butterflies. Then the
crawling things made friends with us, took us in. That was swell. It was a bug’s
life. We could get about more, see something of the world, riding with the insects,
praying with the
mantises, battling with the beetles, eating crap with
the flies. You know the sort of thing.
No?
Kids these days. They don’t know
anything.
God, I’m hungry.
Come closer so I can smell you better.
Where was I? Oh yes, back in the jungle –
the big green. We were happy living inside the bugs, but we wanted more. We knew we were
destined for greater things. It was the mosquitoes showed us how, the fleas and the
ticks, the little blood-sucking vampires. They showed us how to move up in the world.
How to make friends and influence people. As the blood-suckers sucked, we moved on to
bigger things. I did a bit of social climbing after that. Made friends with rats and
bats and monkeys. But our best friends, the ones we really loved to get inside, were the
human beans. Walking around on their two legs. Couldn’t get enough of them. We got
on like a house on fire. Though back then there weren’t any houses, of course, not
yet. Just trees and leaves and dirt and the big, big green.
Oh that
green
. How I miss it. We
lived in a green world, my people and me. You should have heard the monkeys sing as they
scratched their fleas …
I’ve got you under my
skin
… That’s what the human beans sang.
What’s that you say?
I’m
a human bean …
I guess I look like one. I guess a
part
of me is human. I’m a whole lot
more
than that, though,
so stop interrupting and let me tell you my story. Because when I finish we’re
going to eat.
I was telling you about the big green.
Things went well. Year upon year. I
couldn’t have wished
for more. I thought we were kings of the
world. And the walking men did whatever we wanted. Still works. Haven’t lost it.
Even here the human beans bring me things. Mostly it’s junk food. Rats and mice
and cats and dead birds. When they get fired up, though, and the song is in them, when I
sing to them so sweetly, they bring me what I really want.
You.
So sit still now while I tell you my story.
There’s no point running around like that, in the dark, you’ll only hurt
yourself. There is no way out. Don’t you think I haven’t looked?
Come closer so I can smell you. We need to
get ready for the feast …
You probably can’t see me too well;
they keep it dark in here. They know the light hurts my eyes. But they must have told
you all about me? Yes? I am Wormwood, the fallen star. Grew up in the green and the
green got into me. Maybe you can see me glowing just a bit. My green skin. Wormwood, the
star, the angel, the Green Man.
Now I was telling you about way back when we
were kings of the jungle, me and the other fallen angels. Well, pretty soon. After only
a few years, a few thousand years, maybe a few million, who’s counting? But as I
say,
pretty soon
– when you measure it against the stars up there, twinkling
away like it was just a bit of fun – pretty soon there weren’t any walking men
left, only us angels. Making ready to birth our children into the green world.
What fools we were. Thinking we were kings.
We weren’t kings of nothing. We were just dirt-eating monkeys. No better than the
bats and rats and beetles who’d been our friends over time.
I was just a flea. That’s all. A
fallen flea. An angel, was I? Maybe once, too long ago to mean much. We’d been
living
inside the creatures too long. The walking men had been the best
fit, but we were as foolish as they were. We’d spent too long with them. Their
thoughts seeped into ours. We got muddled. Shouldn’t never have listened to them.
Anyway, we asked them, ‘Is this the world?’ And they answered us,
‘Yes. Yes, it is. It is all of it, the green, the muddy river, the trees, the
dirt, the rats, the bats and the monkeys.’
‘
This is the whole
world.
’
And then one day we realized we’d been
living in a cupboard. Ha, ha, ha, good one! Stuck there in the dark, thinking that the
cupboard was the whole house. Because, you see, if you’d lived your whole life in
a cupboard that would be all you knew. You’d think there wasn’t anything
else.
There was a whole lot else, though, and it
was big and bright and loud.
Sometimes I think we should have stayed
there, dreaming that our little huts under the trees were the whole world. But one day,
not so long ago, we opened the cupboard door and out we went, blinking into the
sunlight. Too bright for us, got us all turned around at first, muddled and befuddled.
There was a lot to take in. Found we weren’t alone and we weren’t kings at
all. Soon saw there was a whole lot more to the world than green. There was blue and
red, bright yellow, black and white, and grey.
So much grey where the walking men had made
their homes, chewing up the green. I do still miss the green that was my home for so
long. Here it’s grey and black and dust and ashes.