The Fear

by Charlie Higson

  Brooke took all the new arrivals to a long empty gallery at the back of the main hall where a tree had been painted all the way along the ceiling. Some metal beds were lined up in a neat row and DogNut and his friends gratefully took out their sleeping bags and settled down.

  DogNut realized just how exhausted he was. It had been a long and unbelievably stressful day. As soon as they’d got to safety his energy levels had dropped and he felt like he’d been drugged. His head hit the pillow, his eyes closed and he fell into a doze.

  Brooke sat on the side of Courtney’s bed and stroked her hair flat like a mother with her child.

  ‘It’s so good to have you back, girl,’ she said softly. ‘I didn’t realize how much I missed you.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Courtney, though in truth she was still picking her way through a complicated tangle of emotions, made worse by her own tiredness. ‘It’s weird being here.’

  ‘This is my life now,’ said Brooke. ‘Can’t hardly remember nothing else. Seems so long ago, being with you on the bus, and Greg and Liam and Jack and Ed and all that. Another lifetime, like it happened to someone else. A lot’s changed in this last year.’

  ‘For all of us,’ said Courtney, and she suddenly gripped Brooke’s arm. ‘Did they make it?’ she asked urgently. ‘Did they all make it? The other kids on the lorry? Are they all here?’

  ‘They all made it,’ said Brooke with a smile. ‘Wiki and Jibber-jabber, Zohra and little Froggie, Kwanele of course, and Chris Marker, remember him? The boy who always had his face stuck in a book. Tomorrow you’ll see them all.’

  ‘Good,’ said Courtney. ‘Some good things do still happen in the world.’

  She started to tell Brooke about everything that had happened to her in the last year. Brooke listened, wide-eyed, not interrupting, finding out about another life.

  In the end Courtney fell asleep halfway through a sentence. Brooke sat there for a long time, trying to take it all in, still not quite able to believe that Courtney was really here.

  At last she stood up. She was just about to leave when there were shouts from the other end of the room; a very tall, very thin boy dressed in black was walking quickly towards the beds.

  ‘Are you all right, Paul?’ she asked when the boy got closer. ‘Try not to wake anyone. They need to sleep.’

  Paul looked very excited. But it was an excitement mixed with anxiety. Happiness and fear were struggling to take control of him.

  ‘Where is she?’ he said.

  ‘Where’s who?’

  ‘Where’s my sister, Olivia …?’

  26

  DogNut was struggling to make sense of what was going on. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep. He didn’t even remember nodding off, and had no idea where he was. There were raised voices. A boy and a girl. Was he back at the Tower? This room was unfamiliar. It smelt different. Maybe he should go back to sleep. Not possible. Someone was shaking him.

  ‘What …? Go away. I’m trying to sleep.’

  ‘Wake up.’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Wake up.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He forced one eye open. Too shattered to open them both. Some deep part of his mind obviously knew where he was, knew he was safe, or his conditioning would have jerked him into wakefulness and out of bed, ready to face any threat.

  There were no monsters, though, just a girl holding a lamp.

  Brooke.

  Oh, yeah …

  It was coming back to him now. The museum. Nerd central. He sat up, groaning. Saw a boy wearing a black roll-neck jumper, black denim jacket and black jeans.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This is Paul Channing.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Olivia’s brother,’ Brooke explained.

  ‘Olivia’s brother? I don’t know what you mean.’

  DogNut’s brain wasn’t slipping into gear. Too mushy. Now the boy came over to the bed, leant in closer, shook him by the shoulder.

  ‘I heard Olivia was with you,’ he said. ‘Apparently one of your guys said Olivia was with you. But nobody will tell me where she is now.’

  ‘Olivia’s brother?’ Things were starting to make sense, but DogNut wished more than anything that he was still asleep.

  Olivia.

  ‘I’m sorry to wake you up like this,’ the boy went on. ‘I’ve been working, checking the lower-level doors.’

  ‘Right, yeah …’

  ‘Brooke said you were in charge and … and I have to know. I can’t see her here. Is she – Is she here? Is Olivia with you?’

  DogNut closed his eyes. Fantasized about burying his face in the pillow and drifting off … Longed for this to be over. He didn’t know what to say. Hoped that if he stayed like this Paul would disappear and he wouldn’t have to face him. In the end he heard Courtney’s voice from the next bed.

  ‘She was with us.’

  DogNut sensed Paul moving away from him towards Courtney.

  ‘Did you leave her somewhere?’ he asked. ‘Did she stay at the palace, maybe? I just want to know she’s safe.’

  ‘No. She’s not at the palace. She wanted to come here with us. She wanted to find you. She was very brave.’

  ‘But where is she?’

  ‘She didn’t make it.’

  ‘You mean …?’

  There was a long silence. DogNut was fully awake at last and could feel the tension in the room. People breathing. Bad vibes thickening.

  Then Courtney’s voice again. ‘A sicko got her. Wasn’t nothing we could do … Hey!’

  As Courtney shouted, DogNut opened his eyes and sat up. Paul had grabbed hold of her.

  ‘You let her die?’ he was shouting. ‘You let her get killed?’

  ‘Hey, cool it,’ said DogNut, struggling out of bed. ‘We nearly got her here. Wasn’t Courtney’s fault she was killed.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Paul turned on him. ‘Then whose fault was it?’

  Mine, DogNut wanted to scream. My fault. I left her behind.

  ‘I’ll tell you whose fault it was,’ he said, almost shouting. ‘The fat sicko that got her. All right? He collected dead kids! So don’t blame us. We was only trying to get her here.’

  ‘Maybe you should have tried harder.’

  DogNut put a lid on his anger. Paul had every right to be upset. But this was all too raw for any of them to deal with right now.

  ‘Do you know what it’s like out there?’ he said, his voice bumpy with emotion. He was desperate not to start crying. Knew he had to go on the offensive, though, or crack up. ‘Do you?’ he went on. ‘Do you ever go out there? The streets at night?’

  ‘Not really, no, not that much.’ Paul had calmed down. He was confused by the change of direction the conversation had taken.

  ‘We brought her all the way here from the other side of London,’ said DogNut, hoping that if he could convince Paul he could maybe convince himself that he hadn’t made a monumental mess of things. ‘We almost made it too, but we got trapped. We was that close. I’m sorry, man, all right? I’m sorry she never made it through.’

  The anger went out of Paul to be replaced with sorrow and he slumped on to a bed. Courtney got up and sat next to him. Putting an arm round his shoulders she slowly and quietly explained what had happened. DogNut was grateful that the only thing she didn’t tell him was how they’d left Olivia behind. In Courtney’s version Olivia had died as they tried to escape.

  As Paul listened, the rage came back, but it was no longer directed at DogNut and Courtney – it was focused on the sicko, the Collector. It was a black rage mixed with disgust and fear.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ he said when Courtney had finished. ‘I will. I’ll show you. I’ll show you I can go out there. I’ll find where he lives and I’ll kill him.’

  ‘Whoa, hold on, soldier,’ said DogNut. ‘That’s exactly what I wanted to do when I realized Olivia hadn’t made it. I wanted to take him on all by myself. Kill the evil bastard. But I couldn’t of done it, and
neither could you. You ain’t going out there by yourself, OK? Your sister wouldn’t want you to die for her. You wanna go kill him, fair enough. He needs to be killed or he’s gonna carry on catching and killing other kids. But we do it properly, yeah? We’ll take a squad. The best fighters you got here. I’ll go with you – I don’t mind going back there.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Paul.

  ‘Yeah. Tomorrow. If we’re ready. In the daylight, when he won’t be so strong. OK?’

  Courtney looked at DogNut, trying to read his face in the half-light. The thought of going back there appalled her. What was he thinking of? They’d only just managed to get away themselves. The plan had been to find Brooke, which they’d done. Their mission was successful. All they had to do was rest up for a couple of days and then head off back to the Tower.

  With or without Brooke.

  The last thing she ever wanted to do was go anywhere near that terrible house again.

  Courtney couldn’t see it, but DogNut was smiling. Maybe his mind was messed up by tiredness, maybe it would all seem stupid in the morning, but a plan was forming in there. He turned it over as he drifted back into sleep. For now it looked good.

  27

  ‘So what are they up to down there then?’

  ‘Same old same old. They’re not properly organized. They live in filth. A lot of them are ill. John’s a nutter. But they get by. They seem happy most of the time – when they’re not fighting each other.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can stick it, Shadowman. Living with those creeps when you could be living here.’

  Jester and Shadowman were sitting by the fire in Jester’s office at the palace. The room was part of a small apartment, tucked up in the roof out of the way. Jester liked it like that. Private. As far as he could tell it had once been part of the servants’ quarters, where one of the more important members of staff had lived. There was a bedroom, an office, a sitting-room and a tiny bathroom. He could keep himself to himself up here and not be observed by the other kids. David had a much larger suite of grand rooms with a massive office in the centre of the palace. He liked to show off his power.

  Jester kept his power inside. Like Shadowman.

  The two of them had been friends before the disaster. There’d been a little gang of them. They were the only people who Shadowman had felt relaxed with and able to let down his guard. Originally they were going to form a band, but that never really happened. They got as far as making up the band name – The Twilight Zone – and rock-star names for each other, and that was about it.

  Jester had been called Magic-Man because he reminded the others of Derren Brown, the mind-control guy. He had the knack of persuading people to do things and think things. Then there’d been Cool-Man, Big-Man, Go-Girl and The Fox. The others had all died in the early days of the disease, except for Go-Girl, who’d left London with a group of other kids months ago and headed for the countryside. They had no idea what might have happened to her. Back then Jester and Shadowman had been living together in a big house in Notting Hill, but when that had become too dangerous they’d moved to the palace. It was much safer here. Shadowman, however, didn’t like the rigid routines of the place, the feeling of being cooped up, walled in, under David’s thumb, so he hadn’t stuck it for long. He was restless and preferred to be alone, as far as that was possible in this dangerous city. He’d run with a couple of hunter gangs, he’d lived with Nicola’s kids at the Houses of Parliament, he’d stayed a little while at the Natural History Museum. The same thing happened every time, though: he started to feel trapped and would move on.

  Jester had tried to persuade him many times to come back and stay at the palace, but Shadowman kept on the go, checking in with his old friend every couple of weeks. Jester made sure he was all right and had enough food and water, because Shadowman was useful to him. He was his main eyes and ears outside the palace, the most important in a network of spies and contacts and informers. He would still have preferred to keep him under the palace roof, though, where he’d be a lot safer.

  ‘I work alone – you know that, Magic-Man.’

  Apart from David when he was trying to be matey, Shadowman was the only person left who called Jester that. Jester was a nickname he’d picked up since moving in here. It was a kind of joke at first, a way of putting him down, implying he was David’s little pet monkey. He liked the name, though. It was a disguise to hide behind. He could gain more and more power without anyone seeing him as much of a threat.

  ‘You know I don’t like to get too close to people,’ Shadowman went on. ‘I can’t face seeing them die. I figure if I just keep moving around I won’t get too attached to anyone.’

  ‘That’s harsh, Shadow. You are one callous dude.’

  ‘No, Magic-Man, that’s what I’m saying – it’s the opposite. I’m too soft. If I was harder, it wouldn’t bother me so much. You’re the cold one.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah, you. Don’t act so surprised. You’re sly. Always looking for the angle. People are only interesting to you if you can use them in some way. I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you.’

  ‘So why do you still stay friends with me then?’ asked Jester. ‘Why do you still come and see me?’

  ‘Because I don’t give a toss what happens to you, obviously,’ said Shadowman. ‘So there’s no risk of breaking my poor heart.’

  Jester laughed. ‘I believe you, dude. I believe you.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  Jester got up and poured himself a fresh cup of tea from the big pot that was warming by the fire.

  ‘So what about these squatters then? Are they a threat, d’you think?’

  ‘They could be if they weren’t such a shambles,’ said Shadowman. ‘John has dreams of power. He’s like Attila the Hun, or something, wants to burn down civilization. Sees this place as the Roman Empire. He’d love to sack it. Take David’s scalp.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Totally. He’d like nothing better than to come in here, take everything you’ve got, march out with all the fit girls over his shoulder and burn the place to the ground. That’s what he likes to do, destroy things. He lives for chaos and mayhem. You know, I think he actually likes what’s happened to the world. He likes that it’s fallen apart. It’s one big playground for him now. He can do what he wants, take what he wants, smash up what he wants, and nobody’s going to stop him. He’s the lord of disorder.’

  ‘And you think he could be a problem if he gets his act together?’

  ‘No, probably not, to tell you the truth. As long as David doesn’t take his eye off the ball, John would never be able to storm this place. Not the way you’ve got it protected. Oh, he talks about it, yeah, tries to stir his troops up, but they’re just a rabble. He knows they’d be well battered if they tried to attack you here. You can forget any plans of developing St James’s Park, though. You plant anything there, or try to build anything, he’ll tear it down, dig it up, kick it over and piss on the remains.’

  ‘Where do they get their food from then?’

  ‘They forage, break into places, nick stuff off other kids if they can. They’re always raiding the weaker settlements, like the bandits in The Magnificent Seven. But that’s John’s biggest problem, actually – he can never get enough food to support that many kids. He’s always taking in fresh noobs, but every day two or three kids leave, melt away to join more organized settlements. If David wanted, I could easily persuade a few to come here.’

  ‘Maybe. I’ll talk to him. So are John’s numbers getting smaller?’

  ‘Nah. As many leave, more turn up. He’s got a high turnover, that’s all. Kids join him for the action, the madness and the fun and games, but then they get cold and tired and hungry and fed up with the non-stop partying, and they move on to something more civilized. Except for the crazies, of course – they stay. John’s people are getting more and more psycho and he keeps a hard core of nutters around him. As I say, he’ll never make a big en
ough army to really threaten you.’

  ‘We need the space in the park to expand,’ said Jester. ‘To grow more food. And the lake’s a good source of water.’

  ‘You’ll never do it as long as John’s camped out on Horse Guards Parade.’

  ‘So what we need to do is attack them before they attack us?’

  ‘You couldn’t do it,’ said Shadowman, shaking his head. ‘They’re mean, tough bastards. They’d take you apart. You’re strong in defence, but not in attack.’

  ‘That’s exactly what David thinks.’ Jester stood up again. He went to the window and looked out into the starlit night. ‘He wants to build up our army. Create an attack force. He wants me to recruit fighters.’

  ‘There aren’t any going spare round here,’ said Shadowman, kicking a log on the fire with his boot. ‘All the best fighters are already in the other settlements, or with the hunters.’

  Jester turned back from the window.

  ‘We could pay hunters to do it for us.’

  ‘No. You’d have to pay them way too much. They won’t fight other kids unless they have to, if they’re attacked or something. Mothers and fathers, yes, but not other kids.’

  ‘David wants me to go on the road,’ said Jester. ‘He wants me to go and look for kids further out, fighters who might be tempted to join us when they see how much food we have and how safe and well organized the palace is.’

  ‘You’d have to go pretty far.’

  ‘What’s the furthest you’ve ever been?’

  ‘I mostly stay here in the centre of town where there’s less grown-ups. I’ve been as far as Regent’s Park to the north, I suppose. I’ve not been further than Notting Hill to the west, though, and that was some time ago. It’s the Wild West over there now.’

  ‘What about east?’

  ‘Never risked going much further than Holborn.’

  ‘And south?’

  ‘No one goes south of the river any more, not since the fire.’

  ‘So it’s north or east?’