Mick and Blue were trying to shift a big, heavy cabinet. There was a crawl space behind it large enough for a person to just fit into and a hole in the wall behind leading to one of the locked rooms.
‘I reckon one of you has to go on the expedition,’ said Big Mick. ‘Ain’t no one else anyone’ll listen to. Got to be someone in charge. You should split up. One stay here, the other go on the journey.’
‘You’re probably right,’ said Blue, trying to get a grip on the chipped wood of the cabinet. ‘So, next question. Who stays and who goes?’
‘I dunno,’ said Maxie. ‘Mick seems to have all the answers. Maybe we should let him decide.’
‘Cool,’ said Mick. ‘Nobody ever asked my opinion on nothing before.’
‘That’s cos you’re a moron,’ said Blue. He stopped trying to move the cabinet and wiped sweat from his forehead.
‘You’d be nothing without me, Blue,’ said Mick. ‘You’d be lying in a dirt bed feeding the worms.’
‘If you could think as well as you fight I’d put you in charge of the expedition,’ said Blue. ‘And I could stay here and jam.’
Mick put his arm round Blue.
‘You and me, darling,’ he said. ‘We’re a team. Nobody splits us up.’
‘Worse luck,’ said Blue. ‘You stink badder than a dead grown-up.’
Maxie tried to ignore the stab of jealousy that had slipped under her defences. She still felt slightly awkward around Blue, wished she could put her arm round him as easily as Mick had. The two boys were old friends, with a history. She’d only really got to know Blue in the last week or so. Sometimes she felt like an intruder.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get this done.’ She picked up a bin bag; it was warm and squishy, and orange liquid dripped out of the bottom where it had split.
‘Sir, yes, sir!’ Blue put his shoulder to the cabinet and it shifted a couple of centimetres.
Maxie took the bag out to add to the pile in the corridor where the other two members of their party were keeping watch.
‘Mick’s made his choice,’ said Blue as Maxie came back in.
Mick looked at Maxie. He had a big, bony head and sticking out ears.
‘He goes and you stay,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Max.’
‘It’s a boy thing, innit?’ said Maxie with a smile. ‘Deep down you don’t think I’m as good a fighter as Blue.’
‘No, it’s not that …’ Mick looked embarrassed.
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s fine with me,’ said Maxie, actually quite relieved. ‘The less fighting I have to do, the better. Now let’s move that thing. I want to get out of here and get washed.’
All three of them put their backs into it. The cabinet creaked and groaned as it inched across the floor, revealing the hole behind.
‘Right,’ said Maxie bending down. ‘Let’s see what’s back here.’
She shone her torch into the hole.
‘Oh bloody hell …’
17
There were four grown-ups. Four that Maxie could see, at any rate. They’d made themselves a nest out of old newspaper, and were huddled in it, staring with wide eyes at the kids.
As Mick and Blue joined her, squatting at the entrance to the hole, Maxie flicked her torch round the rest of the room. It was very much like the one they were in, filled with shelves of fossils. She couldn’t spot anyone else.
‘We should just wall them in,’ said Mick.
‘The whole point of this is to make everywhere safe, and clean, you nunce,’ said Blue. ‘We don’t want to be living above rotting corpses.’
‘Fair point.’
The grown-ups looked almost like a family group. A mother and father and two teenage children – boy and girl. It would have made a weird family photo, though. Weird and pretty sick. They were all bald and the mother was naked. The father was missing his nose and top lip, exposing his top set of teeth. The boy was like a parody of a teenager: he had so many boils and spots and growths on his face it looked like a rotten cauliflower. The girl was shaking violently and had bitten the ends of her fingers down to the bone.
The hole into the room was maybe half a metre wide, and the same distance tall. To get in would require crawling. None of the kids fancied that. It would mean going in one by one and being completely exposed until you were through. For now the grown-ups were quiet, but there was no saying how dangerous they might be.
‘So what’s the plan then?’ said Mick. He was pretty fearless, and always up for a fight. Down here, though, in the cramped, dark and claustrophobic conditions, Maxie could tell that even he was uneasy.
‘Can we lure them out, d’you think?’ she asked.
‘What with?’ said Blue. ‘You want to offer them a piece of you?’ He shouted through the hole. ‘Oi! Come and get it. Maxie’s got a nice juicy arse on her.’
Maxie hit Blue, who sniggered.
‘Very funny.’
‘What then?’
Maxie took a deep breath. ‘I’m gonna risk it.’
‘You going in?’
‘It’s the only way.’ Maxie knelt by the hole. ‘You be ready to back me up. As soon as I’m in, I want one of you with me.’
‘I’ll be right behind you,’ said Blue, and he picked up the short sword he’d been given by one of the museum kids.
‘Me too,’ said Mick.
Maxie poked her club through the hole and left it within reach on the other side. The four grown-ups were still just sitting there, watching.
‘Hold up.’ Blue grabbed Maxie’s shoulder. ‘Justin said he wanted us to try and take some of them alive, remember …’
‘You must be joking, Blue. We kill them, and we kill them quick.’
‘You’re the boss.’
No, I’m an idiot, thought Maxie, a stupid idiot.
She didn’t want to think about it any longer; she needed to get in before the ‘family’ knew what was happening and decided to get any more lively.
Here goes nothing …
She threw herself forward through the gap, scraping her back on the top, which knocked her flat. The wind went out of her and for a moment she saw stars.
This wasn’t a good start.
She slithered forward on her front like a snake, groping for her club. And now at last the family came awake. With surprising speed, the naked mother came at her, her long fingernails raised like claws. Maxie floundered around, trying to keep away from her and get into a position from which she could stand up. The mother raked her fingernails down Maxie’s arm, snapping two of them, but doing no damage. They were unable to penetrate Maxie’s leather jacket.
Now the other three were moving too, making the familiar hissing noise of angry grown-ups.
‘Hurry up!’ Maxie screamed.
‘Your feet are in the way,’ Blue shouted back.
‘Oh crap!’
Maxie drew her knees up, clearing the opening, and rolled on to her side towards where she thought her club was. She couldn’t see it, and couldn’t have picked it up anyway as she was having to use her hands to keep the family at bay. The daughter was scurrying around on all fours, snapping like a dog. The mother was trying to get her arms round Maxie. The son had stood up. He was tall. He swayed above the mother as if drunk. He had a long bone in one hand that he swung at Maxie, smacking her in the side of the head.
Maxie howled in pain and managed to kick the legs out from under him before he did any more damage. Then she had to return her attention to the mother, whose skin felt slimy and hot as she wrestled with her.
Only the father remained unmoved. He just sat there, nodding his head like a novelty toy.
‘Maxie!’
Blue was through. He stabbed the daughter in the back and put her out of action. She flopped to the floor and writhed around for a moment before going into an almighty spasm and freezing in a contorted shape like a startled kitten.
Blue used his boots to get the mother off Maxie, who was at last able to spring up and get sorted. She spotted the c
lub where it had been shunted to one side in the scuffle.
She picked it up and, filled with a fury built from fear and frustration, she swung it with all her strength at the mother’s head. It made a nasty, wet slapping sound followed by a crack as her forehead slammed into the floor. Blood and brains mingled with the squalid debris in the room.
Blue meanwhile had skewered the son, and only the father was left.
He appeared to be smiling. And stroking something in his lap.
Blue stepped closer.
‘What is it?’ said Maxie.
‘Looks like we found Stacey.’
Maxie saw the girl’s head in the father’s hands.
‘Bastard.’ Blue stuck his sword into the father’s mouth and twisted.
The fight was over.
Maxie put her back to the wall and slid down to the floor, sobbing.
‘I hate this, Blue,’ she said. ‘I hate it, I hate it, I bloody hate it.’
Blue sat next to her and put his arm round her shoulders.
‘I know, babe.’
‘I pretend to be together.’ Maxie’s voice was wobbly, verging on hysteria. ‘I pretend everything’s all right. But it isn’t. Nothing’s right, and I sometimes think it never will be again.’
‘Maybe the kids here ain’t so crazy,’ said Blue. ‘We can’t go on like this. Maybe we should be trying to cure them rather than kill them.’
‘Yeah.’ Maxie sniffed and dried her face. ‘Something’s got to give. Is gonna be dangerous, but this expedition of theirs has got to be a success.’
‘You know it.’
Big Mick poked his head through the hole.
‘You aren’t half made a mess in there,’ he said. ‘I thought it was going home time. We gonna need bare more bin bags.’
‘This is it for today,’ said Maxie. ‘I don’t have the energy.’
‘Yeah,’ said Blue. ‘I’m getting too old for this shit.’
18
‘You gotta get yourself a better spear, Akkie. That one’s good for poking and stabbing, but it’s got no cutting edge on it. Anyone gets past the point and you’re in trouble.’
‘Nobody does get past the point.’
Achilleus tested the spear, spinning it around in the air, feinting at other kids, who swore and jumped out of the way. He simply laughed at them and accused them of being wimps when they complained. Finally he gripped the spear with two hands and thrust it at Paddy, the point just grazing his throat.
‘That’s not funny, Akkie,’ said Paddy, backing away. ‘You might of cut me.’
‘I’ll tattoo my name on your neck, bogtrotter.’
The expedition party was coming together under the diplodocus in the main hall. They were noisy and excited. Those who’d been working downstairs were looking forward to fresh air and open skies. The kids from the museum who were going were looking forward to seeing some more of the outside world. The hubbub of voices was making them sound like a much larger group than they actually were.
Achilleus was back to something like his old self. His ear was still heavily bandaged, but it didn’t seem to have become infected. He was still sore from his various cuts and bruises, though, and he figured that the best way to shake off the stiffness and take his mind off the pain was to get out there and do stuff. He’d been the first to volunteer for the expedition and anywhere Achilleus went Paddy came too. He was standing patiently next to Achilleus with the golf-bag full of spare weapons and Achilleus’ shield slung across his back. He’d polished it until it gleamed, and had sharpened Achilleus’ spear to a new point, the old one having been snapped off in the fight with Just John at the palace.
‘I made the mistake of over-sharpening it that time,’ Achilleus had explained to Paddy when he’d handed the spear over. ‘The tip wasn’t strong enough. It don’t got to be, like, needle-sharp, just enough to puncture skin without too much of a sweat.’
Achilleus had originally made the spear out of a steel pole, wrapping leather round the shaft to make a grip. It was short. Like Paddy said, it was good for stabbing, rather than slicing or throwing. Ollie had told him once that that was the way Roman legionaries used to fight, with a short spear called a pilum. And they’d conquered the world. He was very attached to his spear. As the whole thing was metal, he could theoretically keep sharpening it like a pencil whenever it got blunt. Although, of course, it would get shorter and shorter.
Ollie and three of his missile unit were coming with them. It was always useful to have fighters who could hit grown-ups from a distance. If you didn’t have to engage with them face-to-ugly-face they weren’t such a threat. Big Mick was in charge of another group of three fighters, and Blue was going to be their general. Lewis was staying behind with his squad, along with the rest of Blue’s people. Blue and Maxie wanted to make sure they didn’t empty the museum of all their good fighters, or Justin might just be tempted to lock them out.
They’d finished cleaning out the lower level last night, carting away the last of the rubbish and the dead grown-ups. Justin had positively identified the severed girl’s head as Stacey and they’d buried it that morning under a tree at the front of the museum. Of Paul Channing they’d found no sign and assumed he must have been eaten. It would be Maxie’s job to organize all the remaining kids in the museum into work parties to block up broken windows, seal doors and board up any openings they found.
Right now Maxie was standing up on the first-floor balcony watching the group assemble. Wishing they didn’t have to go.
‘We’ll be back tonight, tomorrow at the latest.’
Blue and Big Mick joined her at the balustrade.
‘Don’t do anything crazy, will you?’ Maxie said and Blue looked at her like she was an idiot. Maxie apologized. ‘I know you won’t, but … Sometimes I wish we were still back in Holloway. Things seemed so much simpler there.’
‘Life is better here, Max,’ said Blue. ‘I don’t doubt it. We just got to prove to the nerds that we ain’t the enemy.’
‘I don’t want anyone else to get hurt,’ said Maxie. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt.’
‘If it looks ugly out there I’m bringing everyone straight back, no chat.’
‘Promise me. Don’t be a hero, yeah?’
‘I’ll leave that to Achilleus,’ said Blue and they looked down to where Achilleus was showing off to a group of the museum kids, working through his collection of weapons one by one, with Paddy looking on proudly.
‘Idiot.’ Blue chuckled and rolled his shoulders and picked up his backpack. It looked heavy with food and water. He gave Maxie a hug.
‘Don’t get fazed if it takes us longer, will you?’ he said. ‘We none of us know exactly what to expect out there. And it’s possible this Einstein dude might want to do some more shopping.’
‘Where exactly are you going then?’
‘The nerds checked out the suppliers for the museum labs, where they used to get all their chemicals and equipment from. And they’ve found where the suppliers was based. The best bet seems to be a place called Promithios out near Heathrow Airport. There’s some sort of science and technology park over there. Is only about ten miles away, straight down the M4. Should be a fairly safe route once we’re on the motorway.’
Blue seemed so together, so confident. Maxie resisted the urge to kiss him. She wasn’t sure if they were officially an item now. And none of the other Holloway kids knew that they’d got close during their time locked up together in the sick-bay at the palace.
Then, without warning, Blue suddenly kissed her. She must have looked surprised because he laughed.
‘Whassup, girl?’
‘Nothing. I just wasn’t expecting it.’
‘Well, you can expect a whole lot more where that came from.’
So that answered that one. She laughed now and threw her arms round him, giving him an over-the-top hug.
Big Mick made a rude comment and Blue swore at him, but before Maxie could say anything else Mick pointed down to wh
ere Einstein was marching along the corridor that led from the orange zone with an entourage of kids in white coats. Justin was trotting along behind, trying to catch up.
Einstein had changed into a baggy tweed coat that flapped about him as he walked. He had an old leather bag slung over one shoulder, a tightly furled umbrella in one hand, and his untidy hair had been crammed into a wide-brimmed hat. He looked full of himself, happy and puffed up. This was his expedition after all.
‘Don’t let that guy screw things up,’ said Maxie. ‘Don’t let him take you anywhere stupid. Don’t let him take you away from me.’
19
Justin at last managed to draw level with Einstein and put a hand on his arm, holding him back from joining the main group. Einstein stopped and bared his green teeth at Justin in a horsey grin, wafting bad breath into his face.
‘I’ve told you, Justin, there’s no point in banging on and on about this. It’s getting bo-or-ring.’
‘All I’m saying is there’s nobody else here as clever as you, Einstein. We won’t get anywhere without you running the research department. You are the bloody research department.’
‘That’s why I have to lead the expedition,’ said Einstein. ‘It’s my party. I’m the only one who knows what we need to pick up. I can’t just send a shopping list out with these morons, it’s not that simple.’
Justin snorted with embarrassed laughter and shushed Einstein.
‘Don’t let them hear you calling them that,’ he said, keeping his voice low.
‘Well, they are morons,’ said Einstein. ‘Look at them!’
Achilleus was now trying to swipe a tennis ball off Paddy’s head with a lethal-looking sword. Justin sniggered.
‘I want this to go well,’ said Einstein. ‘It’s not every day we get this opportunity. And because it’s important, I’m doing it.’
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