The Sacrifice (45 page)

The Kid took hold of Wormwood’s arm
and pulled him along the road.

‘Come on, Wormy,’ he said.
‘Got to keep moving.’

They all set off again, not running any
more, but keeping up a fast walk. Ed fell in beside The Kid.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Been better, been worse, bean
stew,’ said The Kid.

‘If you say so.’

‘I do, I do, I do.’

‘What about him?’ Ed nodded at
the Green Man, who was mumbling and muttering to himself.

‘Why don’t you ask him
yourself?’

‘Wormwood?’ Ed felt strange
talking to a sicko. ‘You all right to keep going?’

‘My head’s buzzing,’
Wormwood moaned. ‘I can hear the fallen calling to me, their angel voices. Are
they angels or are they insects? Hmm? Chirruping. It was quiet in my hole, but out here
it’s like being back in the big green; oh, you don’t know how loud the
jungle orchestra can be.
Click, click, bang, bang, zzzzip, zzzzzip
. The green
is coming to the city. My fallen brothers are coming and I can hear them down the long
pipeline; spreading out, they are, all around, like a spider’s web. You know what
I mean? And there’s a great brother far away. He’s strong, stronger maybe
than me, and he wants to come closer. But that won’t be tonight. He wants his
swarm around him first. There are others, though, coming closer, running, chasing;
they’re so hungry and they’ve spoken to me through the pipeline;
they’ve sent their love. Listen. They come closer.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Ed was
trying to make sense of the jumble of words that came tumbling out of the man. He turned
to The Kid.

‘Do you understand what he’s
saying?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘They’re coming,’ said
Wormwood. ‘My brothers.’

‘D’you mean there are more like
you?’ Ed asked. ‘Coming this way? Should we be careful?’

‘We could find them. They’re
very hungry. They are chasing a fly. Fresh meat. God, I can almost smell it. They need
it bad.’

‘A fly?’

‘Meat on the move. Moving
fast.’

‘You mean a child?’

‘I mean dinner.’

‘There’s sickos chasing someone,
yeah?’ Ed wished Wormwood would just talk straight. ‘How many? How many
adults?’

‘I don’t know,’ said
Wormwood, sounding very sorry for himself. ‘Leave me alone. Don’t bug
me.’

‘How many? Too many for us? I need to
know.’

Kyle had been listening to their bizarre
conversation. Now he spoke up.

‘We’re not doing any more good
deeds tonight, boss.’

‘There’s a kid, maybe more than
one. Imagine if it was you, Kyle.’

‘I can look after myself, Ed,’
said Kyle. ‘Wouldn’t expect anyone to help.’

Ed ignored him, pressed Wormwood for more
info.

‘How close?’ he said.

‘As close as the bug flies. The
flapping of a butterfly’s wing in Australia.’

‘What’s that supposed to
mean?’

‘So long since I’ve seen the
night,’ said Wormwood looking up at the clearing sky, where the stars were
beginning to show. ‘The clouds and all the houses and the life,’ he went on.
‘Too long. I’d love to go back to the big green. I had space there all
right. I had the whole world, the whole green world. I was king of the
jungle.’

‘Tell me where these sickos
are!’ Ed was getting angry. ‘This kid they’re chasing.’

‘We don’t stop,’ said
Kyle. ‘You can’t risk any more of us getting hurt.’

‘No one else will get hurt,’ Ed
snapped. ‘I promise.’

‘It’s not really down to you,
though, is it? If a thousand
hungry sickos come round the corner there
ain’t much you can do about it.’

Ed stopped walking, took hold of the Green
Man and shook him by the shoulders.

‘How many adults?’ he spat in
his face. ‘How far?’

‘Not many. Close.’

‘And how many kids?’

‘One square meal.’

‘It’s one kid,’ Kyle
shouted. ‘Just one. Leave it, Ed. You can’t save everyone. You can’t
rescue them all. You can’t save the whole world.’

‘We have to do what we can.’

‘I know what this is about,’
said Kyle quietly, so that the others wouldn’t hear.

‘What?’

‘Matt’s kids, at the cathedral.
You couldn’t help them.’

‘It’s not
that … ’

‘Adele. Gone.’

‘Kyle … ’

‘Tish and Bren. Leaving them on the
bridge. Tish’s friend, Louise. Killing her that day. You’re trying to make
up for it. A life for a life. One kid lost, another one saved. But what if you lead us
into a fight we can’t win? Do you want to lose everything we won today?’

Ed said nothing. Kyle was smarter than he
acted most of the time. Knew Ed better than anyone else. It wasn’t just about the
kids today, though. It was all of them. Everyone he’d lost. Malik, Aleisha,
Bam … 

And Jack.

This was mainly about Jack. It always was.
He was always there, in the back of his mind. Ed knew he’d never see Greg
again, the father who had killed his best friend, so any sicko would
have to do.

And if it meant saving every kid in London
to make him forget Jack then he would.

‘You don’t have to come with me
if you don’t want to,’ he said to Kyle. ‘Stay with the others. Get
them to the museum. I’ll do it alone. But I’m going to help this kid –
whoever it is.’

Kyle sighed. Wiped his gory axe on his
trouser leg, then raised it and blew it a kiss before propping it back on his shoulder
again.

‘No sleep for you tonight,
Brain-biter,’ he said. ‘Lead on, boss.’

Ed prodded the Green Man.

‘Show us,’ he said.

They were coming down Regent’s Street
towards Piccadilly Circus. At their head was a single boy, limping along, head drooping,
eyes fixed on the road at his feet. He was dressed in grey camouflage, with some kind of
cloak flapping round him. If Ed felt tired this boy looked a hundred times worse. He
could barely stand and was propping himself up with a long stick. He had a crossbow
strapped to his back and a machete dangled from his free hand. Heavy as a packed
suitcase. He didn’t look like he’d have the strength to use either of his
weapons. There were about ten sickos on his tail, barely twenty paces behind him, like a
pack of wolves trailing a wounded deer. The alpha male appeared to be a father wearing a
filthy business suit, a Bluetooth phone device stuck in his ear.

He was also carrying a machete.

Ed’s crew took up position in the
middle of the pedestrian area, with the statue of Eros to their left and a row of
protective railings to their right.

Macca hadn’t had the chance to use his
own crossbow yet today. The fighting had all been close up, hand to hand, and to use
bolts would have been to waste them.

This was different. They had time. The
numbers were right.

‘Do it,’ Ed instructed him, and
Macca loaded a bolt.

‘He don’t look much,’ said
Kyle. ‘He’d better be worth it.’

Ed grunted. Where had he heard that
before?

‘Last one tonight,’ he said.
‘I promise.’

Macca waited until the sickos were in range
and fired off his bolt. One of the sickos went down. The limping boy looked up, amazed
to see other kids. Life seemed to flow back into him. He scooted forward with fresh
energy. Ed called out to him.

‘This way! Get over here.’

Macca had already fitted another bolt and it
whizzed past the boy as he hopped towards them. Another sicko went down.

‘You’re all right now,
mate,’ said Kyle as the boy arrived, almost fell. Will caught him.

‘Thank you,’ he croaked.

The rest of the sickos came on, too intent
on their pursuit to stop. Too crazed with blood fever and hunger.

‘Take it to them.’ Ed was
already striding forward, mortuary sword at the ready. Kyle was right behind him. Macca
let off a third shot and then dropped the bow and drew his own sword, went charging out
with a cry. Will stayed behind, holding the boy up and keeping an eye on Wormwood and
the three smaller kids.

It took less than a minute to deal with the
sickos. Four of them were chopped down in the first assault, joining the three that
Macca had already shot. A brief flurry of action and the only sicko left standing was
the father with the Bluetooth, his pack lying dead around him.

He was holding his machete up ready to take
the kids on, and they held back, wary of the blade in his hand. Ed
wondered again at how the sickos were relearning all their human skills. The father
looked dangerous. None of the kids wanted to risk getting too close.

‘That one’s mine.’ With
Will’s help, the boy had come over. He limped up to the father who raised the
machete in readiness, but the boy was in no mood for a sword fight. He swatted the blade
to the side with his stick then swiped his own machete cleanly across the father’s
throat. The father made an obscene sucking, gurgling noise, like a bath emptying, and
fell backwards.

‘Nicely done,’ said Kyle, and he
whistled.

But the boy hadn’t finished. He stood
over the father’s body and began chopping at his neck until his head came off.

‘That’s for Jaz,’ he said.
Then he knelt down in the road and wept.

The last ragged tatters of the storm were
flickering in the sky, way off to the east, out over the Thames estuary. Above the Tower
of London the clouds were breaking up and the stars were bright behind them.

Jordan Hordern was standing on the top of
Byward Tower, leaning on the battlements and looking out over the rain-soaked buildings
towards St Paul’s. Before the storm had got too fierce he’d been up here,
watching the sickos as they streamed past, heading west. The streets had been full of
them. From this distance, with his failing eyesight, they’d just been dark shapes.
Now that the rain had stopped he’d come back up here. He liked to be alone in the
night.

And it was here that Tomoki had found him
when Hayden returned. She’d told Jordan and Tomoki everything that had happened,
and Jordan had listened with interest. He was glad that Ed hadn’t been killed. He
needed soldiers like Ed.

Now she’d finished speaking and Tomoki
had gone. He was aware that Hayden was waiting for him to say something. She was
shuffling uncomfortably. He did that to people – made them uncomfortable. Always had.
Didn’t really know what he could do about it.

The stars were simple. They were always the
same. You
always knew where they’d be, could track them across
the sky. He liked the stars. People were complicated, though. It would have been much
easier if they were all toy soldiers with painted-on expressions – the same every
time.

‘We’ll do nothing
tonight,’ he said.

‘You sure?’ said Hayden.

‘Too dangerous.’

‘Yeah.’

Jordan didn’t look at Hayden. He found
it easier not to look at people when he was talking to them. He could concentrate on
what they were saying. The way his eyes were now he couldn’t see much anyway.

‘D’you think Matt will survive
until the morning?’ he asked.

‘Depends,’ said Hayden. ‘I
think they got the cathedral doors shut, but who knows how many sickos were already
inside. And there was a million of them outside.’

‘A million?’ Jordan needed facts
to be exact.

‘No, not a million, but you know what
I mean.’

‘No.’

‘There were a lot,’ said Hayden.
‘Too many to count. The kids’ll be under siege in the cathedral. I mean,
they’ve got fighters … ’ Hayden tailed off. She was covered in
blood. Needed to clean up and sleep. Jordan would let her go soon.

Not yet, though.

‘This sicko you rescued?’ he
asked.

‘Yeah?’

‘Tell me about him.’

‘I can’t tell you much. It was
all really weird. Matt’s kids called him Wormwood or the Green Man. He seemed to
have some sort of control over the other sickos.’

‘You think that’s where they were
all going earlier? To this Wormwood?’

‘Could be,’ said Hayden.
‘As I say, the ones on the streets, the pointers, looked like they were signalling
to each other somehow.’

‘Things are changing.’

‘D’you know what you’ll do
in the morning?’ Hayden sounded very tired.

‘I’ll get together an army and
we’ll march over there and sort it out. Crush any sickos that might be left. Drive
the rest of them into the river.’

‘And what about Matt?’

‘He’s not my business. My
business is to get rid of the no-go zone. We make all the streets safe between here and
the cathedral and then carry on, into town, right up to the Houses of Parliament.
I’ve got no beef with Matt. He can stay in charge for all I care.’

‘What about all the food he’s
got? All the stuff in that warehouse?’

‘It’s his. I ain’t no
thief. I ain’t gonna go in and jack his stash. That being said, I might just tax
him a little for my hard work. I’ll do a deal with him. We protect him, he gives
us a few groceries. If he don’t want to play ball then we’ll see about
slapping him down. But he’s more use to us keeping a lid on things. We need kids
there, Hayden. We need safe places all through London. Like that girl Nicola you was
telling me about. Things is opening up. We got to go with it.’

‘He’s got so much stuff in
there, Jordan. You should of seen it.’

‘I will see it,’ said Jordan.
‘Thing is, though, we start in on that, we might go soft. We got to keep on
scavenging,
keep on trying to grow stuff, training to fight. We got to
build for the future, not live on the scraps that the grown-ups left us.’

‘But he’s got some good stuff
there,’ said Hayden.

Jordan straightened up.

‘Don’t worry, Hayden,’ he
said, making ready to go back down. ‘We gonna taste some of that sweet stuff, no
doubt about it. Now get some sleep. We gonna be busy in the morning.’

Nicola was getting ready for bed. She had
her own room in the Palace of Westminster. It wasn’t like they were short of space
after all. The place was huge. There were loads of rooms here she’d never even
been in.