The Sacrifice (43 page)

Slowly, slowly, the kids pushed through the
crowd, nudging sickos out of the way, trying not to look at their worm-eaten faces,
their boils and blisters and sores, their stupid, staring eyes, expecting at any moment
that the mob would suddenly come alive. Bare their teeth. Go into a killing frenzy.

None of them moved, though.

Someone had pressed Pause on the DVD.

‘Keep moving,’ Ed whispered.
‘Stay close together.’

‘My head aches,’ said the Green
Man. ‘I can’t keep them still much longer. There’s such madness there.
A hunger. They want to kill you all.’

‘Maybe it’s you they
want,’ said Kyle. ‘Maybe we should leave you here as bait.’

‘They don’t want to harm
me,’ said the Green Man. ‘They’re my brothers and sisters. We came
down from the stars together. They want me to tell them what to do. But I can’t
hold them.’

‘You have to,’ Ed hissed.
‘It’s the only way we’re going to get out of here.’

He led his group to the end of the run of
cafés and into an open space with a weird, angular metal building in the middle of it.
He remembered that it stood at the top of the walkway that led down to the bridge.

‘If we can get across to the South
Bank we can make a run for it,’ he said. ‘Get away from here. If we’re
fast they won’t catch us.’

‘Why can’t we run now?’
Tish asked.

‘I’m scared if we do that
they’ll come straight for us.’

‘I’m slipping,’ said the
Green Man. ‘Can’t focus.’

‘Hold ’em still, bogeyman, hold
’em still,’ said The Kid. ‘You can do it.’

‘I can’t. I’m weak. I
don’t like it out here. I want to be back in my hole.’

‘No, you don’t. You’re a
VIP, remember, not a POW.’

‘They’re mad, they’re all
mad. And I’m hungry. I’m too weak. Let me go back.’

Ed felt an awful tension in the air. The
sickos were like fighting dogs, being held back on leads. All they wanted to do was
attack, but this force was holding them. When it snapped, it would be like a cork
released from a shaken-up bottle.

There was an equal tension in his group.
They all wanted to break away, to run. The two forces were pulling against each
other.

Which would break first?

Some of the kids were speeding up, walking
faster, opening up their protective circle.

‘Keep together,’ he said, trying
not to raise his voice. ‘Don’t go too fast.’

But he could feel his hold on them slipping,
just as the Green Man’s hold on the sickos was slipping.

They’d reached the top of the walkway
and could see right down it to the bridge. The walkway was narrow and gently sloping,
with modern buildings on either side. There was a crossroads about halfway down. It
looked like the sickos were thinner on the ground here, most of them having made their
way to the cathedral.

There were still a lot of them, though.
Still too many to fight.

Ed swallowed. Wishing for a drink of
water.

It was an escape, but it was also a
gauntlet. A rat run.

They moved down it, the tension tightening
with every step. Passing only centimetres away from the unmoving sickos.

Will came forward and fell in beside Ed.

‘I used to come down here from the
tube every day to get to school,’ he said. ‘That’s it up there on the
right. We go straight past it. I sometimes used to have little fantasies. What would
happen if zombies attacked? Never thought it would come true.’

‘Does this make any sense to
you?’ Ed asked. ‘The sickos behaving like this?’

‘Nothing that’s happened today
has made much sense,’ said Will. ‘And it looks like your Green Man has got
something to do with it all.’

‘We couldn’t have got this far
without him.’

‘You trust him?’

‘I have to.’

There was a tall father with a big barrel
chest standing right in the middle of the walkway just before the crossroads, glaring at
them. A stone troll. An enchanted giant from a fairy tale. As the kids got nearer, he
began to sway from side to side, letting out a low moan.

It was the first movement they’d seen
since coming out of the doorway. And it wasn’t just him who was coming alive. Ed
could sense a change in all the sickos. Some of the pointers were dropping their hands,
like volunteers at a hypnotist’s show waking up. There was more – shuffling,
twitching, heads turning. Ed heard the rattling of breath in pus-filled throats. The
shuffling and rustling of clothing. He raised his sword above his shoulder. Felt it
shaking in his grip.

Hayden moved ahead. Macca sped up and
overtook her.

‘We’re losing them,’ said
Will and Ed wasn’t sure if he was talking about their own gang or the sickos.

And then Macca was running. And Hayden, Tish
and Brendan.

The world changed in an instant.

It was as if someone had thrown a switch.
Pressed Play.

The sickos came alive.

Grown-ups were closing in from all sides
now. More pouring in from the streets on either side of the crossroads. The big father
in the middle of the walkway lunged at the kids.

‘Sod this,’ said Kyle and he
swung his axe. Charlotte watched amazed, unable to look away, as the blade sliced clean
through the father’s neck and his head flew off.

‘Run!’ Ed yelled.

In a moment the kids were pounding down the
walkway in a blind panic. The bridge was only about two hundred metres away, but to
Charlotte it looked like miles. She was so tense her whole body ached and having to
suddenly go quickly was making her muscles burn. She hadn’t run this fast in
months.

The kids had split into two groups now. A
few of them had run on ahead. Charlotte was holding hands with Sam and The Kid, not sure
who was pulling who along. The bigger kids were in danger of breaking away from them and
the Green Man was awfully slow. She had a stitch in her side. She could hardly
breathe.

‘Wait!’ she cried out. ‘I
can’t keep up.’

Ed stopped and the big boy, Kyle.

‘Come on!’ Ed shouted at her.
‘You can do it.’

‘I can’t. I
can’t.’

A knot of grown-ups came close and the bigger
kids could do nothing but hack at them. Up ahead the first group of kids were also in a
fight. Ed and Kyle managed to force the grown-ups back, moving away from Charlotte as
they did so. Adele went with them, like a charging rhino, smashing into the grown-ups.
She was fierce when she had to be.

For a moment Charlotte, Sam and The Kid were
left unprotected. Charlotte wailed, clinging on to Sam, but Will came to their help,
slashing grown-ups away until Ed’s group returned.

As the sickos swarmed in all directions,
with no sense of order, a gap opened up. The way to the bridge was suddenly clear. Ed
spotted it.

‘Move it!’ he roared and the
kids were running again. Towards the crossroads, picking up the others on the way.

Charlotte’s feet slapped down on to
the ground. She looked up to see Adele at her side.

‘You’re doing all
right … ’

It looked like they were going to make it.
They were too fast for the grown-ups, but when they came to the junction, a thick mass
of diseased bodies surged in from the side.

In an instant the mothers and fathers were
among them. Charlotte couldn’t tell where anyone else was. It was chaos. Bodies
fell all around her and she didn’t have any idea if they were children or adults.
She was so hemmed in by hot, stinking flesh that she couldn’t see anything.

And then Adele was there again, cutting a
path through the grown-ups. Charlotte knew that everything was going to be all right.
Adele would look after her. Make sure nothing happened to her. The storm wouldn’t
knock her plane out of the sky. Adele was her air hostess.

Adele leaned down to pick Charlotte up and
Charlotte gasped as hard, bony hands took hold of her and pulled her backwards out of
Adele’s reach. The wind was sucked out of her and she could make no sound.

She threw up as she was spun around, no idea
which way was up or down. She was being flung about like a piece of washing in a washing
machine.

‘No, you don’t!’

A thudding sound. A spray of hot blood over
her face. Moonlight again. Broken clouds in the sky. She was lying on the ground and
Adele was standing over her. Smiling. She held out a hand to Charlotte.

Charlotte smiled back at her.

And then Adele was gone.

Charlotte scrambled to her feet.

Three mothers had got hold of Adele and were
dragging her away. In a second she was swallowed up by the mob, just as Charlotte had
been moments before.

‘Ed! Ed! They’ve got Adele!
Ed!’

There was Ed, trying to get to her. He
fought his way into the mob. He too disappeared from sight. And Charlotte felt sure that
she would never see him again. Wouldn’t see any of them. It was all over.

There was a terrible crunching sound, a thud
and a thump. The air was thick with blood. Bodies fell away. Kyle’s axe came
slicing down and Kyle was right behind it, cutting a wet passage with his axe. Moments
later Ed emerged, Sam and The Kid behind him.

‘Where’s Adele?’ Charlotte
gasped.

‘There’s no sign of her,’
said Kyle. ‘What do we do?’

‘Nothing,’ said Ed.
‘There’s nothing we can do. She’s gone.’

‘You have to do something,’ said
Charlotte.

But before Ed could do anything there was
another scream. Tish was being dragged away. Brendan was swiping at the grown-ups with
his club, but there were too many of them for him to deal with alone. This time Will and
Macca and Hayden came charging in and were more successful than Ed and Kyle had been
trying to get to Adele. They freed Tish and she came staggering back, bleeding from cuts
on her arms. She’d lost her sword, though, and a fat father with no teeth came
wallowing out of the crowd, waving it around.

Ed swore and plunged his sword into the
father’s belly, ripping it sideways and spilling his guts. He tore the sword out
of the father’s hand and gave it back to Tish. He looked frightening, cold-faced,
like a monster.

All the while the Green Man had been just
standing there, a wide empty circle round him, clicking his long nails together. As if
none of this was happening.

Charlotte tried to look for Adele. There was
no sign of her. The sickos had been forced back, but they were returning and it was
still at least a hundred metres to the bridge.

‘Brendan, Macca, Will, grab the
youngers,’ Ed barked. ‘Kyle, with me. The rest of you make sure Wormwood
doesn’t get left behind. And Wormwood, if you can do anything to stop
them … ’

‘No, no, no … ’ The
weird goblin man shook his head.

The next thing Charlotte knew she was being
swept up into the air by Brendan and he was running for the bridge, knocking grown-ups
out of the way and yelling like a madman.

A hundred metres became fifty, fifty metres
became twenty-five, fifteen … Charlotte looked back to see Hayden
and Tish shoving the Green Man along. Too squeamish to grab hold of
him, they prodded him like a cow. Ed and Kyle were bringing up the rear, holding off any
grown-ups who got too close.

A tide of sickos followed them, swarming
down the walkway.

‘We’ve made it!’ Brendan
shouted, and at last they were on the bridge.

It wasn’t over yet.

There were still loads of sickos down below
on the embankment underneath the bridge. They obviously hadn’t worked out how to
get up yet. But there were other sickos on the bridge. They must have destroyed the
barricades at the far end and come over from the South Bank. A group of them were
bunched up directly ahead, blocking the way. Ed and Kyle saw the problem and ran past
their friends to the front. It was vital that they kept moving. The bridge meant safety
for all of them.

Ed didn’t stop running. He was
slipping into blankness. He saw a way ahead, like a red line drawn on a map, and he was
going to go down that line whatever. Nothing was going to stop him now. The sickos
weren’t humans, they weren’t even animals; they were just obstacles he had
to push out of the way. And push he did, using his sword, his elbows, his free hand, his
boots until a gap opened up.

He and Kyle held the rest of the sickos off
while the kids went past. They all looked exhausted and battered. Splashed with blood.
Macca, Will, Sam, The Kid, Charlotte, Brendan, Tish and Hayden. Then Wormwood, loping
along. Adele was gone. Nothing he could do about that. They were lucky it hadn’t
been worse. They’d fought their
way through God knows how many
sickos to get here.

‘Keep going,’ he croaked.
‘Once we get to the other side we’re away.’

‘That might be easier said than
done,’ said Macca and Ed turned to see what he was talking about.

There were sickos coming on to the bridge at
the far end. It was too dark to see how many of them there were. More sickos were
arriving at this end of the bridge as well. If Ed wasn’t careful they’d be
trapped and attacked from both sides. Kyle, Macca and Will grouped together to try to
stop the sickos advancing along the bridge from the St Paul’s end. How long could
they keep them back, though?

‘Wait … ’ Ed tried to
think what to do. He just wanted this to be over. Couldn’t face losing any more
friends tonight.

‘I’m going to stay here with
Kyle,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll hold off the sickos until we’re
sure the rest of you are safely away. Hayden, you take command. Punch your way through
as fast as you can. Look after the youngers and try to keep
him
alive.’
He threw a look at Wormwood who was waiting there, his hands hanging limply at his
sides.

‘No.’ It was Tish. She stepped
up to Ed. ‘I got you all into this,’ she said. ‘Let me hold the
bridge.’

‘You can’t hold it alone.’
Ed shook his head. ‘Kyle and me are the best fighters.’

‘That’s why you have to lead the
group,’ said Tish. ‘You’re the only one who can get everyone to
safety. Let me do it.’