The Fear

by Charlie Higson

  ‘This is the minerals gallery,’ said Brooke quietly. ‘It’s big and has lots of light and can easily be secured. They used to keep lots of valuable rocks in here, you know, like crystals and meteors and diamonds and things, so there’s heavy gates this end, and a sort of vault at the other end. If we were ever attacked, we could easily fortify ourselves in here.’

  DogNut looked. There were heavy iron gates and grilles all round the doorway. The room itself looked like something out of a medieval castle. It was illuminated only by the odd tea light burning in a little dish here and there, and stretched away into the gloom, the length of a football pitch. There were arched windows down both sides, and two rows of square columns holding up the ornate ceiling. Old glass and wood display cabinets were ranged among the pillars and the kids had adapted the spaces between them into little sleeping areas, personalizing them and decorating them with screens and awnings and bits of furniture.

  ‘I’ll show you properly in the morning,’ Brooke whispered. ‘Most of the kids have already gone to bed. We usually go to sleep as soon as it gets dark. I was waiting for you to arrive. Come on, though, we’ll get you something to eat.’

  She led them through the gallery. As they passed each cubicle space, they saw that not all the occupants were asleep. Some kids sat murmuring with friends, and they looked round curiously at the new arrivals as they went past.

  A door at the end led to a short stairway that took them down to the gallery below, from where another staircase climbed to the old staff canteen. It was like being in a tunnel up here, the ceiling arched over in a semicircle with large curved windows set into the bottom. There were modern tables and chairs and it was well lit with oil lamps, similar to the one that Brooke carried.

  There were three kids waiting for them.

  ‘We kept you some grub just in case you turned up,’ Brooke explained, and they sat down to a simple meal of boiled eggs, rice and cabbage.

  The kids wolfed the food down and Brooke watched them with amusement.

  ‘So tell me,’ said Courtney when they’d finished. ‘Why you wearing such weird shit, girl?’

  Brooke looked down at her old-fashioned clothes and laughed. ‘You remember Kwanele? That African kid who was always really well dressed? Even when we was escaping from the sickos?’

  ‘Wheeled that little posh suitcase around the whole time?’ Courtney asked. ‘Yeah, I remember him. Don’t tell me he made that dress!’

  ‘No way,’ Brooke shrieked. ‘But there’s this other museum just over the road. Is called the Victoria and Albert. We broke in there cos we saw from the maps there’s this big courtyard in the middle. We built all these planters in there, is a well safe place to grow food, but you should see what’s in the museum itself.’

  ‘What?’ asked DogNut, intrigued.

  ‘Well … Is mostly art and stuff, you know, like statues and paintings, but they got, like, furniture, plates and jewellery and things, even fashion. All clothes from history and, like, movie-star dresses, you know, hundreds and hundreds of them. It’s wicked. We get all our stuff from there that we need to make this place like home. Home for a king, that is. Honestly it’s like a palace in there. You got to see it. And Kwanele, he’s in charge of clothing and that. Making the stuff fit. We dress up and we’re princesses.’ Brooke stood and did a little twirl in her dress, then stopped in a fit of giggles.

  ‘You should get yourself something, Courtney,’ she said. ‘We should glam you up a bit.’

  ‘You saying I ain’t well dressed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You saying I need to be more glam, though?’

  ‘Yes.’ Now Brooke put on a simpering, lisping little girl’s voice. ‘You could be a lovely princess! Princess Courtney!’

  ‘Courtney?’ DogNut scoffed. ‘Courtney ain’t no princess.’

  ‘You what?’ Courtney turned on DogNut with an angry scowl.

  ‘You’re a queen,’ he said hurriedly. ‘A warrior queen.’

  ‘Maybe we can find you a crown in the Victoria and Albert,’ said Brooke, and Courtney laughed.

  ‘So, you gonna tell us then,’ she said. ‘What the hell you all doing here? And why you pissed David off so much?’

  Brooke smiled at her friends. ‘I’m telling you, is a long story …’

  24

  ‘Going back to that night. I can close my eyes and watch it like a DVD, remember everything that happened, as clear as if it was, like, you know, happening right now. The rest of the time I can switch off, put the DVD back in its box and stick it away somewhere and not think about it no more. But I close my eyes now and I’m there, back on the bridge, the lorry slowly moving across, and Justin driving. Jesus, I ain’t never seen a more worried-looking nerd. He was sweatier than a fat man eating chillies in a sauna. If I hadn’t of been so scared I would’ve been laughing, but behind us half of London was blazing, and we was trying not to run over any of the kids who was squashed on to the bridge, all panicking, crazy with fear. It was hard; there was broken-down buses, broken-down cars blocking the way, people hollering. We didn’t wanna get out and look, was way too dangerous, but we could hear screaming and then this, like, fresh wave of panic seemed to pass through the kids on the bridge. We couldn’t exactly see what was going on behind, but when I’ve looked in the mirror there was smoke and fire and a mash of, like, scared faces. So we knew. We knew the sickos was attacking the kids who couldn’t get on to the bridge. We just kept on driving, slowly, slowly, slowly. We was getting across, but that David. What a freak! He and his boys in their red jackets and with their guns they’d got from your museum. Like little soldiers they was. I know we had a deal – he was supposed to protect the lorry and we was supposed to share some of our food with him once we was safe. I know we had a deal … But when I seen what he was really like I didn’t want nothing more to do with him, man.’

  Brooke stopped talking and took a deep breath. DogNut looked at her, sitting in the candlelight, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘What did David do?’

  ‘There were these kids in the middle of the road,’ Brooke went on. ‘They’d got into an argument, started fighting, an’ we couldn’t get past them. David was telling them to get out of the way, all bossy, like, and they was ignoring him, or just laughing at him. And you know what he did? I’ll never forget it. I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe anyone could do that. Not to another kid. But I saw it with my own eyes. He’s pointed his rifle at one of the boys and shot him down, right through the chest. I don’t know if he killed him, but, even if he didn’t, how could a kid survive that? A bullet in him. With no doctors, no medicine or hospitals. I don’t like to think about it. Don’t like to think that it was our fault. I was shamed that David was with us. The worst thing of it was, though, that I was, like, secretly, sneakily, glad he’d done it. I know it’s cold to say it, but to be honest I was glad that he’d cleared the way. The kids was moving aside finally. The road was empty. I’ve turned to Justin and I’ve told him to keep going, not wait, not stop, not worry about anyone else, just drive. I’ve told him we had to get as far away from David and his boys as we could. I’ve screamed at him to put his foot down and just keep going. Outta there. And quicker now, bit by bit, we’ve managed to get off the bridge. We was way excited, and still scared and worried that we didn’t know where Ed and the others were. And the thing was …’ Brooke paused for a moment and turned to Courtney. ‘I didn’t know that you and Aleisha had got off, to go and help Ed. If I’d of known, I’d of waited, but we didn’t know, did we? We was confused, but most of all we were just glad that we’d got over and got away from the fire and the sickos, and all I could think about was driving on and leaving David and his mates for dust.’

  Brooke stopped again. This time she stared at the table, as if reading some message in the pattern of stains and scratches on its surface.

  ‘There was something else, as well …’

 
‘What?’ Courtney asked when it looked like Brooke wasn’t going to carry on. And when she raised her head they could see that she was crying.

  ‘Something else I ain’t proud of.’

  ‘What?’ Courtney asked again. ‘We ain’t gonna judge you.’

  ‘It was Ed.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I didn’t want to see him again. I couldn’t stomach it. I wanted to get away from him. What they’d done to his face. Justin wanted to wait for him and the others, but I wouldn’t let him. Told him we could come back and find them later. Maybe I really thought we might come back. When it was calmer, when I could think straight. But right then the thought of Ed, of Ed’s face, upset me too much, made me feel sick. I didn’t want to ever have to look at him again. I was wrong in the head. It was all muddled up in there. All I wanted was to get away, leave all that behind, all that had happened, as if the fire would scrub it all out. I wanted to excape. And so we did. We drove on. Didn’t stop. It wasn’t easy. There was still hundreds of kids on this side of the river. They was pouring over the river across all the bridges, wandering in the road, wondering where to go, not knowing this part of town. Some stopping, looking for places to hole up, some moving on like us. It was wild – I was shouting at Justin, he was shouting at me … “Where shall we stop? Where do we go?” We needed to find somewhere safe where there wasn’t too many other kids. We knew there was safety in numbers, but we also knew that our food wouldn’t last long and we didn’t want to share it. You get too many people in one place, pretty soon there’s no food, no water. As I say, we was arguing like a married couple on Eastenders, and then Justin had a brainwave. I guess it was all down to you …’

  Brooke put her hand on DogNut’s.

  ‘Living in the War Museum, the way you did, gave Justin the idea. He got it into his head that he wanted to live in a museum too!’ She spread her arms and laughed.

  ‘We didn’t hole up in the war museum because we was interested in history,’ DogNut scoffed. ‘We went there cos it had guns, weapons. What use are a load of stuffed animals and dinosaur fossils?’

  ‘It wasn’t the stuffed animals he was interested in,’ said Brooke. ‘Nor the dinosaurs. It’s the labs, the equipment, and all the other gear, next door, in the Science Museum. He knew there was technology in there, things we could use, inventions going back hundreds of years, things that didn’t all need electricity. Things we could use to start putting the world back together. The museum is big, man, but he figured it would be easy to secure. Places like this were made to keep people out, as they got so much valuable stuff in them. No other kids had thought to come here; we knew we’d have to break in. We was only a bunch of nerds and girls and little kids, though. All the fighters had stayed with Ed. Luckily we met up with some other kids on the street, a guy called Robbie and his gang. Justin persuaded them to help us. They’re all still with us.’

  ‘We met Robbie outside,’ said DogNut.

  ‘Yeah. He’s took over the fighting side of things, protecting the place, guarding us, dealing with the hunters. In those early days there was a lot more sickos around and we had some close moments. Some sickos tried to get in a few times. We killed lots of them. As I say, there’s still some down below.’

  ‘And other kids have joined you here?’ said DogNut.

  ‘Yeah, slowly. We’ve got a good thing going, with the gardens out front where we can grow things, and there’s all these other, like, courtyards in the buildings around us. We cook things in the kitchens, we collect water from the roofs and from storage tanks, and from the Serpentine.’

  ‘What’s the Serpentine?’ Courtney asked.

  ‘Is this, like, big lake in Hyde Park. Just north of here.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I know. The Princess Diana fountain’s there.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s crap. My uncle took me to see it this one time, and then we went out in a boat on the lake. It was a big deal for him. Not me. It was well boring, man.’

  Brooke laughed. ‘You don’t change, do you?’ she said. ‘Always moaning.’

  Courtney felt a flush of anger. Why did Brooke have to keep saying that? She had changed. She had. She tried so hard not to complain all the time, specially when she was with DogNut, but now, being here with Brooke, she was changing back. Turning into her old grumpy self. Being who Brooke wanted her to be. After the joy of meeting her old friend the confusion had started to creep back. She hated the way DogNut looked at Brooke. It made her feel jealous and angry. There she was, pretty Brooke. Thin Brooke. And here she was, fat, grumpy Courtney.

  ‘Don’t have a go at her,’ said DogNut, smiling at Courtney. ‘She’s all right. She’s my right-hand man. She don’t moan like she used to. You better show her some respect, Miss Brooke.’

  Brooke leant over and gave Courtney a big hug. ‘She ain’t yours, DogNut!’ she cried. ‘She’s my Courtney. I wouldn’t have her any other way, and now she’s back I ain’t never gonna let her go.’ Brooke buried her face in Courtney’s thick curly hair. ‘I missed you so much, girl. So much.’

  DogNut wasn’t sure he could take any more of this girlie behaviour. It was getting in the way of his plans for Brooke. If he couldn’t get her alone, he couldn’t work his magic on her.

  He was about to say something when he heard his name being called out. He turned round and couldn’t believe how pleased he was to see Justin, king of the nerds.

  25

  Justin looked a lot older and bigger than when they’d last seen him, but he hadn’t lost his air of geekiness. He was wearing pyjamas and a dressing-gown and was blinking in the feeble light.

  ‘They told me you were here,’ he said, his voice sounding cracked, like it was in the middle of breaking. ‘I thought they were having me on.’

  ‘No, boss!’ said DogNut. ‘Is really us! We’ve come to show you how it’s done.’ He jumped up and offered Justin a high five, knowing it would embarrass him. Justin slapped his hand awkwardly.

  ‘How you doing, anyway, Mr Lorry-Driving Man?’ said DogNut. ‘You got your HGV licence yet?’

  ‘We don’t drive the lorry any more. We use it for different things now. My career as a lorry driver is sadly over.’ Justin stopped talking for a moment and smiled. ‘It’s good to see you again, DogNut,’ he finally went on. ‘Really good!’

  DogNut introduced the rest of his crew and Justin shook hands all round in a very formal manner. There was no way he was going to hug anyone.

  ‘You’ll have to tell us all about what you’ve been up to,’ he said. ‘Where you’ve been, how everyone is.’

  ‘Everyone’s cool, dude,’ said DogNut.

  Justin yawned. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was asleep. Tomorrow you’ll come to the Hall of Gods and tell the council all about what you’ve been up to.’

  ‘Hold up, blood,’ said DogNut, raising his hands. ‘Not so fast. What the hell’s the Hall of Gods?’

  ‘It’s where we hold all our meetings.’

  ‘I see I got a lot to learn. So I’ll meet the guys in charge tomorrow, yeah? In this Hall of Gods. Should be pretty damn awesome. Meeting gods and everything.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘What’s up? You saying I ain’t gonna meet them? They ain’t gods? Who is in charge here anyway?’

  ‘I sort of am,’ said Justin, shrugging his shoulders dismissively.

  ‘You?’ DogNut looked amazed. He was trying hard not to laugh. ‘But you’re like the übernerd, Justin. You ain’t no god.’

  ‘I never claimed to be a god. But I am in charge.’

  ‘That is whack,’ said DogNut.

  ‘Sometimes brains are more important than muscles,’ said Justin. ‘I’ve sorted everything out for the kids here and they appreciate that. We don’t need fighters in charge – we have a council for that.’

  ‘A council of nerds?’ said DogNut, no longer holding back his laughter.

  ‘Yes. That’s right. That’s what we call it. The Council of Nerds.�
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  ‘You’re joking me.’

  ‘Knowledge is power, DogNut. Mastering science and technology is what’s going to make sure we survive in the future. Here at the museum we’re going to lead the way.’

  ‘Listen, nerdo, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but mastering weapons and warfare is what’s going to make sure we survive.’

  ‘That’s your opinion. But we’re doing OK here, DogNut. Our way is working.’

  Justin opened his mouth wide in another big yawn.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m going to go back to bed. We’ll catch up properly in the morning. You should sleep too.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Brooke. ‘I’ll put them in the tree room. I’ll see everyone’s all right.’

  ‘Thanks, Brooke,’ said Justin, already walking away. ‘Get some of Robbie’s guys to give you a hand if you need. I’ll see you all tomorrow.’

  ‘Hold up,’ said DogNut, and Justin paused. ‘I want to ask you one thing. Make sure I got it straight.’

  ‘Yeah? OK.’

  ‘You know about David over at the palace? Yeah?’

  ‘Of course we know about David,’ said Justin, losing his cool, his face flushing with anger. ‘Sitting over there in his palace with his little red army. Sometimes I think he causes more trouble than the bloody sickos. And he hates us. He blames us for what happened on the bridge.’

  ‘He’s right to blame you, though, really,’ DogNut protested. ‘You abandoned him.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘You drove off and left him behind.’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea,’ said Justin, and he looked at Brooke.

  ‘You blaming me?’ said Brooke.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We don’t want anything to do with him. He wants to destroy what we’ve got, get back at me and Brooke and the others. But it’s not going to happen, because he can’t get in here. He’s like us – he can defend his palace for as long as he likes, but as soon as he crawls out of his shell he’s weak. He’s a threat, but only a small one. We don’t lose any sleep over it. And talking of sleep I really am going to have to go to bed now. Goodnight.’