The Sacrifice (8 page)

‘Wait!’

Now what?
Ed turned to look down
the corridor. The
green girl had stopped halfway and was squatting down
by one of the doorways.

‘Come on!’

Sickos were approaching the girl through the
smoke. They were lit a demonic red by the still blazing flare.

‘Come on!’

He ran back to grab her, but she
wouldn’t move. Ed realized it was the doorway where he’d killed the thing
that had grabbed his leg. He looked at the body on the floor. It wasn’t a sicko.
It was another girl. Also dressed in green.

He’d killed her.

Ed swore. She was missing a hand and her
neck was slashed where he’d hacked at her. But then he saw that her stomach had
been ripped open and her intestines had flopped on to the floor. The sickos had got her
first – that’s why she’d been on the floor.

‘She’s dead,’ he said.
‘Leave her.’

The girl didn’t move.

‘Leave her!’ Ed shouted, and
pulled the girl up by her sweatshirt. A sicko came close and Ed angrily sliced his blade
across his face, blinding him. Then he dragged the girl along the corridor to the stairs
and almost threw her down. She found her feet and stumbled ahead of him and he hustled
after her, his heart pounding.

Mercifully they made it safely to the bottom
and were soon out in the fresh air where Macca and Will were waiting for them.

‘We need to leg it,’ said Macca,
pointing westwards to where another knot of sickos was approaching along Byward
Street.

The kids didn’t wait to be told twice;
they raced across the road and legged it down towards the castle gates.

Ed was grinding his teeth. He’d had a go
at Kyle for almost killing another kid and now he’d done it himself.

Brilliant.

He told himself that she would have died
anyway – she was too badly wounded. Better a quick death than a long, slow one. He told
himself that it had been an accident. That they wouldn’t have been able to carry
her out of there because of the sickos.

In the end, though, there was no getting
round the fact that he’d killed a kid.

‘Well done, boss,’ said Kyle as
they helped the gatekeepers close the big black gates behind them in Middle Tower. They
were both panting, their chests heaving.

‘Another successful mission. No one
hurt. One girl rescued.’ Kyle slapped him on the back. ‘Result.’

It had all been worth it.

Hadn’t it?

He supposed it was only a matter of time.
The Fear had to eat. There were too many of them now to rely on the few children they
caught. Shadowman had tried to count the strangers, but it was too hard. They only came
out at night and he couldn’t risk getting too close. It was difficult to get a fix
on them through his binoculars. He’d pan over the horde and then lose track of
those he’d counted and those he hadn’t. There were definitely more than
fifty, maybe even more than a hundred, and there were new arrivals every night,
stragglers, who seemed drawn to the bigger pack.

They’d been moving steadily across
north London, from house to house, street to street, eating anything in their path, like
a spreading stain. Shadowman followed along behind, trying not to think too closely
about what they left behind, the bones, the scraps of skin and clumps of bloody hair.
But they also left in their wake food that they couldn’t get at, unopened tin
cans, dried food wrapped in tough plastic, unopened bottles and jars, and this Shadowman
scavenged.

He was impressed at how thorough they were.
What an incredibly destructive force.

Was it really only a few days ago he’d
left the relative
safety of central London where he’d been living
and headed up this way with a group of friends looking for other children? It struck him
just how useless they’d been, finding no one until it was too late. There
were
other children, though, and The Fear were finding them easily
enough.

They marched slowly on, covering only a few
streets a night. They could only move as fast as the slowest among them and there were
some very slow mothers and fathers in the pack: older ones, more diseased ones, those
who’d been injured. They hobbled and crawled and staggered, twelve of them at his
latest count. Easier to keep track of, as they were always at the back, closest to him.
Shadowman almost felt like he was getting to know them. Had made up names for most of
them.

Well, that had been a waste of time.

When it happened, it happened so quickly it
had taken Shadowman completely by surprise.

The Fear had been sleeping through the day
in a primary school. Old red-brick buildings, long since abandoned. They’d found
nothing to eat the night before and as the sun had come up over the streets,
they’d crawled inside to rest. Shadowman had found a good vantage point in a block
of flats over the road and had himself settled down to sleep like the strangers. He was
getting used to their rhythms and routines, tuning in to their behaviour. He slept
lightly, though, and could wake up and be on his feet in the time it took to flick a
switch. When they stirred, he stirred.

He wondered sometimes if he was becoming
infected by them somehow, turning into an insect, part of the swarm, the flock, the
herd, the stain. Other times, when he was feeling less dramatic, he reckoned it was just
their
smell that woke him. They gave off a powerful stench, so powerful
it masked his own smell and stopped them from finding him. He’d killed some of
them the other day, a hunting party led by a mutilated stranger he’d dubbed the
One-Armed Bandit. Afterwards he’d drenched his cloak in their blood, just to be
sure. He smelt like one of them now.

He’d woken at dusk as the first of The
Fear emerged from the school buildings and spilt out into the playground. He’d got
on to his knees and spied on them through a window. Watched as they congregated by a
climbing frame. Just like the old days when parents hung about chatting to each other
after dropping their kids off. They milled about, waiting for St George to come out with
his little gang of officers, as Shadowman thought of them.

And then they’d come. Spike, who still
had a crossbow bolt stuck in his ribs where Shadowman had shot him. Bluetooth, in the
tattered remains of a City suit, with a Bluetooth earpiece embedded in his ear. Man U,
in his red Manchester United shirt. And then there he was, St George himself, wearing
baggy shorts, a pair of glasses that had long since lost their lenses and the grubby
vest with the cross of St George on it that had given him his name. He had a huge head,
grotesquely swollen by the disease so that it was now almost too heavy for his neck to
support. It lolled on his shoulders and if his body hadn’t been so stocky, his
legs so sturdy, Shadowman might have wondered why he didn’t just fall over, he was
so top-heavy.

St George shuffled out into the middle of
the playground, scratching his great bald head, looking around at his fellow strangers,
staring them down, his officers flanking him.

Every day he appeared more human, less
confused.
Perhaps the disease was wearing off? Perhaps his body was
fighting it, but if so, why did he continue with his murderous rampage? If anything he
was more savage each night.

Then he stopped. Stood there, The Fear in a
big circle all around him, staring silently at him, as if listening. Was he
communicating with them somehow? Were they tuned in to his thoughts? There could be no
other explanation for what happened next. The Fear moved, as one, and grabbed the twelve
weaklings. Tossed them to St George.

Shadowman had seen it all through his
binoculars. Had watched as St George shuddered, turned his face, first to the darkening
sky, then down to the pathetic pile of humanity crawling on the ground at his feet.

Then he’d smiled and The Fear flowed
inwards and swarmed over the weak ones. Mercilessly and methodically they’d
butchered their own kind and were now sharing the meat around. There were too many
memories for Shadowman. Taking him back to a time before all this. He remembered summer
fairs at primary school, when all the parents had come to help out, cooking curries and
barbecues, sausages and cakes and vegetarian fritters. A band in the corner made up of
dads who still dreamt of being rock stars, playing old blues and rock and roll songs.
Teachers in the stocks having wet sponges thrown at them. Goal-kicking contests. Stalls
selling old clothes and books and unwanted toys. Everyone talking away, eating and
drinking and happy.

Well, this was like a horrible parody of
those days. Now the parents were eating
each other
. Thank God there were no
kids down there tonight. It didn’t really upset Shadowman watching adults being
killed and eaten. And that bothered him a little. Bothered him that he wasn’t
bothered.
How quickly he’d become hardened to it all. What did
that say about him? Before things fell apart this would have been the most horrific
sight. He’d have needed to go into therapy to cope with it. Now he was mostly
intrigued by the organization shown by the strangers, by the planning that had seemed to
go into the attack.

Something did bother him, though.

The strangers would be stronger now, better
fed, quicker … 

But still hungry. Always hungry.

Shadowman prayed that they didn’t find
any children tonight.

Her name was Tish. She was fourteen years
old. She’d grown up north of here in Islington, with her mother, a brother called
Neil and a dog called Boris. This much Sam and The Kid had learnt about the green girl.
Once she’d stopped crying.

Ed had put her in with them, in their little
house on Mint Street built into the outer wall of the castle. Mint Street was like a
medieval street inside the Tower, with flowers growing in pots and clothes hanging out
to dry on lines. The houses were self-contained, mostly single-storey, with two or three
bedrooms each. They had little front doors and narrow arched windows that looked out on
to the cobbled street, on the other side of which were the high battlements and old
towers of the inner wall. There were some small windows at the back of the houses,
little more than arrow slits for the most part, going back more than a metre through the
stonework in a cross shape. You couldn’t see much through them and Sam was OK with
that. The less he saw of the world outside, the better. The Casemates were warm and dry
and felt utterly safe. No sickos were ever going to force their way into the castle.

Sam and The Kid shared a room, with a bed
each. A girl
called Ali had another room and Tish had been given the
third bedroom.

Ed had told Sam and The Kid that they were
to gently find out as much as they could about Tish. He felt he couldn’t face her
yet, felt awful about killing her friend, who he now knew was called Louise. He was
keeping a distance and wanted all the other older kids to do the same. Tish needed to
settle in and feel reassured.

‘Anyone coming here from the outside
world has valuable information,’ he’d told the boys. ‘When she’s
ready, Jordan can properly quiz her, but for now find out what you can.’

He’d been right to keep away. Tish was
really cut up about Louise, wouldn’t stop talking about her, about what good
friends they’d been. How she couldn’t get the picture out of her mind,
Louise lying there dead, her hand cut off, her throat slashed, her guts … 

It had taken her a few days to bottom out
and now she was obviously still very sad, but she wasn’t crying all the time. She
would either have to bury her sadness or go crazy. Like most kids she had horrible
memories shut away and had a sort of haunted look about her. She was calm, though, and
quiet, and seemed to like being with Sam and The Kid.

It was nearly bedtime. They’d all four
shared a communal meal in the café with the Tower kids – tonight it had been rice and
beans – before returning to their house.

Ali had gone to bed to read a book. She read
a lot. Had been quite happy living there by herself, didn’t seem to get lonely or
need company; nothing seemed to freak her out. She seemed OK with the three newcomers.
Hardly seemed to notice them really. Spent most of the time with her nose in a book.
Books were valuable, the only real
entertainment most kids had, apart
from when they fired up the generator and showed DVDs in the pub. The kids who went out
foraging always brought back any books they found and there were a couple of libraries
nearby that they visited regularly to pick up cartloads of new reading material.

Sam, The Kid and Tish were in the living
room of their house, their hobbit hole as The Kid called it, as if it had been burrowed
out of the flinty stones of the castle.

Tish was sitting on the sofa with her legs
curled up under her, drinking a cup of tea she’d brought back from the café, one
hand absently picking at the dark scab on her forehead. She was wearing her green
outfit: green sweatshirt, green trousers. They’d been washed since she’d
arrived, which had made the colours fade slightly, and they’d given her some other
clothes from the store, but this was her favourite look. Tish liked green.

‘What’s with the green,
sister?’ The Kid had asked her the first night she was there, to try and distract
her from talking about Louise.

‘Living here in London, in all this
grey, it reminds me of the countryside.’

‘I guess so.’

‘You can talk anyway,’ said
Tish. ‘You wear the weirdest clothes I’ve ever seen on anyone.’

It was true. The Kid had a very individual
dress sense. His favourite item was a woman’s battered old leather jacket that
he’d cut the sleeves off – ‘Too long. I ain’t no gibbon.’ And
since arriving here he’d taken to wearing a long dress over tartan trousers that
he’d picked up from the Armourers. He claimed the dress kept him warm. He’d
also picked up a seventeenth-century helmet that he liked to wear
when
out and about, even though it was way too big for him. He and Sam were proud of their
weapons and armour. Sam went for more of a medieval look. He’d found a leather
jerkin that fitted him OK – Ed said it must have belonged to a very stunted soldier –
and he had a short sword that he wore slung from a belt over his shoulder. He also had a
dagger and a flintlock. The flintlock was unloaded and probably didn’t work.