The Fallen

by Charlie Higson

  It was Achilleus who broke the spell. He walked over to the cage and rattled his spear against it.

  ‘Yo. Sick dudes. Whassup?’ The fathers slowly turned to look at them. Blue now saw that they had water bottles. He was still trying to figure it all out when one of the fathers spoke, making him jump.

  ‘You come to get us out of here?’ He was maybe forty, with very black hair, wearing jeans and boots, a denim shirt and a heavy canvas jacket. He had a bandage covering one eye.

  ‘You can talk?’ said Achilleus, standing back from the cage.

  ‘So can you,’ said the man.

  ‘That ain’t a thing,’ said Achilleus. ‘I’m a kid. You’re a gonk. You ain’t supposed to talk.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paddy sneered. ‘You ain’t supposed to talk, you’re supposed to die.’

  ‘Shut it, Paddy,’ said Achilleus and he slapped him round the head. ‘This ain’t a film.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Slowly the father who had spoken did up the top button of his shirt and got to his feet. He was stiff and tired-looking, groaned as he straightened his legs. Sighing with the effort, he hobbled over to the mesh and Achilleus dropped further back, not sure about any of this. The father was carrying a short spear with a wide leaf-shaped head on it. He rested it against the mesh and looked into the faces of the kids who were standing there gawping.

  ‘I asked if you’d come to let us out of here,’ he said, his visible eye glinting. His voice was dry and croaky, with a mild Irish accent. Blue wondered how long he’d been in the cage.

  ‘Maybe we have,’ he said and the man turned his glare full on him.

  ‘You in charge?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Blue settled his face. Took control. Turned down the temperature. Set his features in stone. Didn’t want to let this stranger read anything in him. The man held his stare for a few seconds then softened. Smiled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Got off on the wrong foot there. I expect you’ve got a lot of questions.’

  ‘I expect we have,’ said Blue. ‘Like how come you can talk for a start? How come you ain’t diseased? Still got your marbles.’

  ‘You know what this place is?’ the man asked.

  ‘Course we do.’

  ‘Then you know what’s through those doors.’ The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘We got a pretty good idea,’ said Blue. ‘At least we know what we hope’s in there.’

  ‘Medicine,’ said the man. ‘Drugs. Equipment.’

  ‘Are you saying you been using drugs from here to fight the disease?’ said Einstein, stepping forward and gripping the mesh. He was almost shaking with excitement.

  ‘Something like that,’ said the man.

  ‘So what you doing in that cage, soldier?’ Achilleus asked.

  The man sighed again and ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘We were doing fine,’ he said. ‘We were surviving. There were more of us. But then the monsters came.’

  ‘Monsters?’ said Achilleus. ‘Get out of here.’

  53

  ‘Yeah.’ The man stared at each kid in turn with his good eye, daring anyone to challenge him. ‘Monsters. That’s the best word for them. That’s the only word. They’re in there right now. They took over, kicked us out. We’ve been trying to get back in, but we’re stuck here. With your help, though, we can do it, we can open this bloody door and we can kill the monsters.’

  ‘What do you mean, monsters?’ Ollie asked, but before the man could reply Einstein butted in.

  ‘Are you saying there’s a cure?’ he asked.

  ‘What does it look like to you?’ The man came right up to Einstein and stood in front of him, separated only by the thin steel mesh.

  ‘How did you know what to do?’ Einstein went on. ‘Are you doctors? Scientists? What drugs did you use?’

  ‘Too many questions,’ said the man wearily. ‘Can’t you just get us out of here?’

  ‘What sort of monsters?’ Ollie repeated. He was holding back, keeping to the rear of the group in the shadows.

  ‘Freaks, mutants, horrible things, deformed … Clever, though.’

  ‘What? Like some kind of animals? What are you saying?’

  ‘Not animals. People.’

  ‘With the disease?’

  ‘No, something else. They’re not human any more. As I say – they’re monsters.’ The man seemed to come alive, filled with a sudden flush of energy. He picked up his spear and paced up and down. ‘But together we could beat them,’ he said. ‘Kill them all. If we can get the door open we all go in together. You guys look pretty handy. Must be to have come this far. We can defeat them. Then all the stuff in there – it’s ours.’

  Blue thought back to when they’d been in the corridor. Jackson saying she’d seen something. Something she couldn’t explain, hiding on the shelves. A snake thing, she’d said.

  At the time nobody had believed her.

  ‘So how do we get in?’ he asked.

  ‘The keys are over there.’ The man jabbed his spear towards the wall behind the kids. Blue swung round and shone his torch over the breeze-block wall until it fell on a set of keys hanging from a hook.

  ‘I don’t get this,’ he said. ‘How did you end up in there?’

  ‘We came through the door from the main warehouse. We were beaten back, the freaks had been attacking us, we weren’t enough, they killed all the rest. We had a good thing going in there.’

  ‘They chased you into the cage?’

  ‘Yeah, and pulled the door down on us. There’s keys there that’ll let you in. And other keys that will get us all through into the warehouse proper.’

  For the first time Blue noticed that there was a door into the cage with a heavy-duty lock on it.

  ‘We go in hard,’ said the man. ‘And kill them before they know what’s happening. We got to be quick, though, cos, as I say, they’re clever. They’ll fool you. Twisting everything around. They’re more dangerous than I can get across.’

  ‘So to open the door to the warehouse,’ said Ollie, ‘we have to open your cage and come in there with another set of keys?’

  ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you trust us?’

  ‘No,’ said Ollie flatly.

  ‘It’s the only way in,’ said the man.

  ‘We can go back outside, force the main loading doors.’

  ‘Hah! You’ll never break your way in through them, pal. Believe me, we’ve tried. And while you were knocking politely on the doors they’d take you down one by one. It’s like a fortress, this place.’ The man paused, then offered the kids a smile. ‘I’m Seamus, by the way. I’d shake your hands and give you the old how d’you do, but until you open this door I can only wave.’

  ‘I can’t say as I like grown-ups so much,’ said Achilleus. ‘What’s stopping us coming in there and killing you?’

  ‘Well, there’s this for starters,’ said Seamus, holding up his spear. ‘But why would you want to go and do something nasty like that? Hmm? Can’t you see we don’t have the sickness in us? We’re the good guys.’

  ‘Who wrote that stuff on the door through there?’ Ollie asked.

  Seamus hesitated, thinking this over.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ he said.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Who else is going to do something like that?’

  ‘Who were you trying to warn off?’ said Achilleus and Blue heard Ollie swear under his breath. Blue wondered what had made him angry, and then realized that Achilleus had told Seamus something about what the writing said. Blue was learning that, while Achilleus was a fearsome fighter, he was something less than clever.

  ‘We wrote it there to try and warn off anybody who might want to come and get hold of what we had here,’ said Seamus. ‘It worked for a long time. Until the monsters came.’

  ‘But grown-ups can’t read any more,’ said Ollie. ‘Normal grown-ups. The only people who could read it would be kids. Why warn off kids?’

&nb
sp; ‘Do you know everything that’s going on in the world? Huh? Do you, Mister Clever-sticks? Do you know every threat? Every twist in the tale? You never knew there were any like us, did you? No. Now get the bloody keys and open up. We’re hungry and thirsty and knackered and we want to smash those stinking monsters to pieces for what they done to us.’

  ‘Why can’t we check them out before we go hammering in there?’ Blue asked and the man responded with a harsh bark of laughter.

  ‘Would you try and chat to a shark if you fell in his tank?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘You can’t talk to them, sunshine. You can’t argue with them or reason with them. They’re stone-cold killers. They don’t ask questions first. They’re clever. An animal kind of cleverness. If you hesitate for just one moment they’ll be on you and you’ll either be dead or in one of their cages. You got to go in quick before they even know you’re there. You understand?’

  ‘The quote on the door?’ Ollie asked. ‘Where’s it from?’

  ‘No more questions.’

  ‘Where’s it from?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Achilleus, ‘where’d you get the old six-six-six bollocks from?’

  Once more Blue heard Ollie curse.

  ‘The holy sodding bible,’ said Seamus. ‘Where d’you think? Any more questions?’

  Blue had had enough. Enough talk. Enough brain strain trying to work out if these goons could be trusted. All he wanted was to get away from here and back to Maxie. And the quickest way he could see of doing that was going straight through the cage. Straight through the four fathers if necessary. The kids outnumbered them, so unless they had some traps in there, or some friends hidden, they could be taken down. Harder than normal grown-ups, true, but Blue’s squad knew what they were about. One wrong move and he would bang Seamus out.

  He’d make sure he was first through the door as well, in case of any surprises. That was his job. His responsibility. Get Achilleus to back him up. God, he missed having Big Mick here; he was a useful hulk to have at your side in a bundle. Blue felt naked and unprotected without him.

  He walked over and scooped the keys off the hook. Walked back to the cage with them jangling at his side. Had a quiet word with Achilleus, who nodded that he was cool with Blue’s plan.

  It took Blue a couple of goes to find the right key for the lock, and the others watched him in tense silence as he fiddled with them. There was a loud clunk as the lock turned.

  He swung the door open, caught Achilleus’ eye and stepped into the cage.

  54

  Blue looked at one of the other three fathers, who was still sitting on the floor, tapping his butcher’s knife on the concrete.

  ‘Easy.’ Blue jerked his chin in greeting. The father just stared back at him with a cold expression on his face and then stood up. Blue tensed, ready for the worst, but the cage was filling with kids, who fell in around him, and the father did nothing more than just stand there giving him the dead-eye.

  ‘See,’ said Seamus. ‘We don’t bite. Now get the gate unlocked.’

  The roll-down gate was about ten metres wide, made of jointed strips of metal. There was a chain system by the side of it connected to clutches and gears to move it up and down. The only lock Blue could find was by a crank handle. He selected the one key that looked big enough to fit and slotted it in. It freed the handle, which he began to turn. There was a loud rattling, ratcheting sound as the various gears turned and the chains moved. Slowly the door began to rise.

  ‘Wait!’ Seamus shouted. He was licking his lips, his eye glittering, turning his spear shaft in his hands, like a dog straining on a lead. Blue stopped winding and waited.

  ‘You got to be ready,’ Seamus said, his voice thick with fear and aggression. ‘If you even open that thing a little way they can get under. We have to be ready. Anything that moves – stab it.’

  ‘Do you want me to open it or not?’ Blue asked.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, in a minute,’ said Seamus and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. ‘When I say so try to get the door up quickly and as soon as the gap’s wide enough we all go through in a rush. But ready, yeah? Ready to kill? I know you lot can kill or you wouldn’t have survived as long as you have.’

  Yeah, thought Blue, we can kill, but the reason we’ve lived so long is we’re careful. This was all tipping out of his control. It was in situations like this that people got hurt.

  He grabbed Einstein.

  ‘Take over here,’ he said. ‘When I say, turn it as hard and as fast as you can. Don’t stop till we’re all through.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ Einstein was still excited, shaking and jittery.

  Blue marched to the centre of the door. A dull orange light showed under it where it had opened a crack. He could hear something echoing and distant. It sounded almost like music. He gripped his own spear tight. Realized he was scared. Out of his depth.

  Monsters, Seamus had said. Could they be worse than a bunch of diseased adults? If only he knew what to expect. He hated Einstein for bringing him here. Hated Seamus for putting him in this situation. Hated himself for not knowing what to do.

  ‘How many of them are there?’

  ‘Not sure,’ said Seamus. ‘Ten at least.’

  ‘Ten? Is that all?’

  ‘You don’t know them, Rambo. Don’t know how dangerous they are. They’re not human, remember, they’re freaks, they’re deadly. We go in hard and fast and kill anything that moves. Don’t give them a chance.’

  Blue looked at one of the other fathers. He didn’t speak, but bared his teeth in a doglike grin. Licked his lips.

  ‘Wind her up!’ Blue shouted, and he took up a defensive stance, ready for anything that might come under the door. What if it was a snake thing? Like Jackson had seen. How fast did they move?

  He looked along the line. There was Seamus and his three friends, then Achilleus with Jackson, Ollie staying back in the second rank with his missile crew, Ebenezer looking like he was praying. Emily was over with Einstein. Good. They were out of the way there.

  God, but the door was taking an eternity to go up. It was agonizingly slow, and loud. Any monsters on the other side would know they were coming for sure. Blue kept his eyes on the widening gap, looking for any signs of movement – shifting shadows, dark, skittering things … A drop of sweat dropped from his chin and hit the floor with a soft pat.

  Then he mouthed the word ‘Maxie’ and Seamus was ducking under the door, yelling at the others to follow.

  Blue had no choice now. He too shouted, a meaningless yell of battle fury, and rolled in after Seamus, aware of bodies coming with him.

  The place was too big to take in in one go. A huge warehouse filled with white cardboard boxes, skylights in the roof letting in some light. Lamps and candles dotted about, giving off the orange glow. Far off that sound, a beat, definitely music.

  But no movement.

  No sign of any monsters. No sign of anything living. Nothing to fear.

  No. There. Behind some boxes. A white face. Watching. Black eyes. And then it was gone. Too quick to see if it was human. And then another. Higher up. Peering down at them. Perhaps a reptile, with wide-set eyes, fishlike. But twisted. Unbalanced.

  What were they?

  He was looking around frantically now. Trying to spot if there were any more of them. Ten, Seamus had said, but he hadn’t been sure.

  ‘There’s one!’ It was Seamus who had shouted. He was striding down towards a corner where two aisles met. The kids went with him, but holding back, letting him take the lead.

  When they reached the corner they saw what he’d been following. It was scurrying away from them, but none of them could have said what it was. Human. Animal. Insect …

  It moved surprisingly fast for such a weirdly shaped creature. Pulling itself along by its arms, which were long and spiderlike, the elbows pushed forward, the backs of its hands flat on the floor, palms upwards, long, thin fingers waving in the air, so that it was ‘walking�
�� on the bones at the back of its wrists. Its body was fat and bloated, its belly scraping along the concrete with a dry rustling sound, and there were two tiny shrivelled legs dragging along behind. The vertebrae that ran down its back stuck out like the plates along the back of a dinosaur. It was hairless, and on the sides of its neck were two big bulges, like inflated air sacs.

  ‘Got the bastard!’ Seamus yelled, raising his spear.

  Now Blue saw that the thing was wearing some sort of clothing around its waist, a skirt or a kilt, made of leather. He felt as if he was in a strange dream, trying, and failing, to make sense of what he was seeing.

  Then several things happened at once. When it heard Seamus’s shout the creature stopped and turned, just as Blue caught sight, on the edge of his vision, of another one, hiding in the shadows. A female. Impossibly thin with a head like a ball, very big eyes and a tiny mouth. Her head was so large and her body so stretched and skinny she looked like a matchstick drawing, a child’s picture of a person.

  Seamus twisted, one arm forward, the other pulled back ready to throw his spear.

  Blue saw the first creature’s frightened face.

  It was the face of a fourteen-year-old boy.

  Ollie leapt forward.

  ‘No!’ he shouted.

  He grabbed hold of Seamus’s spear. Seamus was so surprised he let go of it, and whipped round, off balance, snarling in fury, to see who had ruined his attack, and then, before Blue could stop him, or even take on-board what was happening, Ollie rammed the point of the spear into Seamus’s good eye.

  55

  Maxie was standing stock-still, mouth hanging open. The massive room was stuffed with huge statues, bits of buildings, tombs, gigantic columns reaching many metres up towards the roof … It was like being inside the ogre’s castle in Jack and the Beanstalk or something. Everything was way too big, crammed together like it had been looted from the treasure houses and palaces of kings.