DogNut spat. Swore viciously. Was about to say something when a hideous racket started up – banging and shouting and clanking.
What now?
Smoke wafted from the house and the next moment the Collector came staggering out as if he’d been shoved from behind. He squealed as bright sunlight hit him and he raised an arm to shield his eyes. The sheets of newspaper were still incongruously pinned to his belly, like a napkin in a gimmicky restaurant. They flapped in the breeze.
Marco and Felix and the three museum boys now burst out of the front door, banging pots and pans together. Felix had a rolled-up newspaper that he’d set light to. He waved it at the sicko and the boys threw their pans at him. He tottered across the pavement. The fire, at least, seemed to frighten him and Marco was goading and prodding him with his spear, all the while yelling and screaming like a mad person.
The waiting kids now formed a circle round the sicko and began jabbing at him with their own weapons, and they, too, shouted, hurling obscenities at the huge father who tried to ward them off with his massive arms. Every now and then he would let out a long high-pitched wail and try to charge out of the circle, but every time he was driven back into the centre, the dogs snapping at him.
Sharp blades flashed and flickered at him, ripping his clothes. The newspaper was getting shredded. Patches of blood were appearing on his filthy, darkened skin.
‘Do him!’ someone shouted, and the kids laid into him with greater ferocity.
Paul went over to Felix and Marco.
‘Did you find her?’ he begged. ‘My sister. Where is she?’
‘Yeah, we found her,’ said Marco softly. ‘She’s dead, mate. I’m sorry. Weren’t nothing you could have done for her.’
‘I want her body.’
‘No you don’t,’ said Felix. ‘Leave her be.’
‘No …’
Paul made a move towards the house, and Felix and Marco held him back.
‘Leave her be!’ Felix repeated.
Paul fought his way free of them and turned on the Collector.
‘I’m going to kill him …’
Courtney stepped back from the circle of flailing kids. She couldn’t bear it any longer. The Collector was disgusting. He’d killed and mutilated God knows how many children, but to see him like this, a trapped animal, she couldn’t help but feel pity for him. She couldn’t watch as he was worn down by a thousand tiny cuts. The kids’ faces looked insane, drugged, worked up into a frenzy of bloodlust, every vile word they could think of spitting from their twisted lips.
This must have been what it was like to watch bear-baiting or a bullfight.
Hideous.
Still the cruel darting blades plunged into the father. Still the dogs’ teeth nipped at him. He was making a circle of blood in the road, stamping it into the ground with his bare feet as he kept up a horrible shrieking, crying sound. His strength was seeping away from him. He couldn’t last much longer. He fell first to his knees and then on to his side, and the kids just hacked and slashed at him and clubbed him and swore at him even more.
Finally he slumped forward, face down in the road.
The kids jeered, kicked him, battered him …
‘Stop it!’ Courtney screamed. ‘Stop it now.’
They stopped. Startled. Stood there panting and heaving, staring at the bloody mess on the ground, unable to quite believe what they had done.
Courtney went to the body. He was still just alive, still breathing. One yellow eye stared up at her, uncomprehending.
‘Can’t somebody just finish this?’ she said, and Paul rushed forward. He had got another knife from somewhere. He leant over the Collector and stabbed him repeatedly in the back, but it was no good; he wasn’t penetrating deeply enough to finish him off.
He was crying, his tears falling on to the bloody back of the Collector as his knife chopped and chopped and chopped. At last, DogNut and Robbie managed to pull him away and Jackson took his place.
‘I’ll do it,’ she said, and stepped on the Collector’s head, holding it still. She carefully placed the point of her spear in the same spot she had stabbed him before, just below the ear, but this time she was able to angle it towards his brain.
She pressed down with all her strength. His eye went wide, and then the life went out of it.
‘It’s done.’
36
Just as DogNut and his crew were heading off back to the museum, another group of kids were setting off on their own expedition, a mile away to the east at Buckingham Palace.
The mood in the two parties could not have been more different. DogNut’s gang was in high spirits, coasting on a wave of bloodlust and sweet victory. They laughed and shouted as they re-enacted the death of the Collector. It was true that one or two of them, Courtney included, weren’t joining in, but most of them were behaving like conquering heroes returning home after a war.
In contrast, Jester’s group was quiet and miserable and fearful. They had no idea what might be waiting for them out there. They hadn’t met their monsters yet.
Jester himself was furious. As he walked out through the palace gates, he was ranting to Shadowman and waving his hands in the air.
‘Three!’ he protested, showing three fingers. ‘Three kids! What does David think I can do with three kids?’
‘We’ll be all right,’ Shadowman tried to reassure him.
‘No, seriously, Shadowman, what the hell does he think I’m gonna do with three bloody kids?’
‘What did he say exactly?’
‘Just a load of bullshit basically. As usual. Said he couldn’t spare anyone else, that he didn’t want to leave the palace undefended. The bastard couldn’t even spare me any of his bloody guards. I’d feel a lot happier with a couple of red blazers armed with rifles in my squad.’
Shadowman checked them out. Jester’s little group was armed with spears and knives. All except for Jester, who didn’t seem to have a weapon of any kind. Unless he had a knife in the leather satchel he’d slung over his shoulder.
‘It’s always the same with David,’ Jester went on. ‘He makes all these big promises, then when it comes to it he doesn’t give you half what you expected.’
‘He doesn’t like to risk putting his precious red guards in any danger, Jester,’ said Shadowman. ‘You should know that.’
‘What’s the point in having a trained army if you never let them fight in case you lose any of them? I don’t get it. Instead of sending his soldiers into battle he sends bloody civilians.’
‘Are they that bad?’
Jester lowered his voice and looked round to make sure that the three kids who were moping along behind them couldn’t hear any of their conversation.
‘He asked for volunteers. That’s all we got. Well, there were five of them originally, but two dropped out overnight. This lot weren’t exactly keen this morning, either. I begged David to give me some more, but he claimed he didn’t want to force anyone. They’re not completely useless, but they’re nothing like the best fighters at the palace. We should have had Pod and his toughest rugby players, not those three dopes.’
The three dopes in question – an older boy and girl, and another boy who looked about thirteen – were lagging further and further behind, dragging their feet and complaining to each other.
‘What are their names?’ asked Shadowman.
‘The couple are Tom and Kate, the little guy’s Alfie,’ said Jester. ‘He’s good company, but I’ve never seen him in a fight.’
‘Why did they volunteer if they didn’t want to come in the first place?’
‘David offered them extra food, special privileges. I doubt he’ll keep his promise, but … I don’t know. They probably mainly came because they were getting bored to death in the palace with nothing to do all day except work in the vegetable gardens. I don’t suppose any of them seriously thought through how dangerous this might be. Stuck in the palace behind those high walls you can easily forget what it’s like in the rea
l world. The first sign of a fight they’ll probably run all the way home.’
‘Yeah, well, hopefully we won’t get into any fights,’ said Shadowman. ‘That isn’t the plan, is it?’
‘I guess not. The plan is simply to look for kids to recruit.’
‘Yes. Don’t worry, Jest. I’ll keep you out of trouble and maybe we’ll pick up enough kids along the way to return as a proper fighting unit. In the meantime, any sign of any strangers and we scarper.’
‘I don’t need to tell them that.’
‘You listen to me, OK?’ said Shadowman. ‘Do as I say. I’m used to this. I can spot the danger signs.’
‘Thanks. If you hadn’t agreed to come along, I think I’d have ditched the whole thing and told David he could go off recruiting himself. I can just see him in a royal bloody carriage swanning about, waving one hand out the window at his grateful subjects.’
The two of them laughed.
‘But seriously, Shadowman,’ Jester went on, ‘what are our chances of getting into trouble?’
‘I won’t lie, Magic-Man, it’s dangerous. The streets round here are generally pretty quiet during the day – there’s very few strangers about – but I don’t know what it’s going to be like the further we get from the palace … You scared?’
‘A little. You? D’you still get scared?’
‘All the time,’ said Shadowman. ‘And you know what? I sometimes think it’d be better if you didn’t parade about in that nasty coat of yours. It just reminds me of all the mates we’ve lost.’
Shadowman was referring to the patchwork coat that Jester always wore. He had cut a patch of material from the clothing of all the friends of his who had died since the disaster and sewed them on to it. There were forty patches, and while lately he was sewing on fewer and fewer patches, kids still died. If strangers didn’t get them, there was always illness and accidents.
‘It’s not supposed to remind you of their deaths,’ said Jester. ‘It’s supposed to remind you of their lives.’
There were patches representing Big-Man, Cool-Man and The Fox, as well as other kids who had holed up in the big house in Notting Hill with Jester and Shadowman after the disaster. When they’d been forced to leave, most had made it safely to Buckingham Palace, but some were only remembered by the patches on Jester’s coat.
‘Whatever,’ said Shadowman. ‘Living or dead, it still gives me the creeps, and I don’t want to end up as just another decoration for you.’
‘You?’ said Jester. ‘No chance. You’re a survivor. I reckon you’ll well outlive me.’ He turned round and looked at Kate and Tom and Alfie, who were plodding along about ten metres behind them, their weapons drooping in their hands. ‘Can’t say the same for those three, mind you.’
37
She waited for the children to go past. Squatting down by the window in the empty shop. Feeling the tension among the others. They were hungry and hurting. They wanted to rush out now. Fall on the children and tear them to pieces. But there had been hunters around earlier, and she couldn’t be sure where they were now. And if the hunters were close they would come with their spears and their knives and their clubs.
How she hated the hunters.
It hadn’t always been like this. At first it had been easy – children wandered the streets lost and confused. Lots of them. Weak and weaponless. Back then the ones like her had the upper hand. They feasted day and night. They got strong. But the children got strong too. The ones they couldn’t kill. They banded together. Moved into safe places. Learnt how to fight back. She had been forced to join up with others and work together as a pack or die. Every day there were fewer of them, though. Some were taken by the sickness, some starved to death, some were killed by the hunters.
She knew that soon she would have to move away from this area and find somewhere easier. Somewhere where plump little children didn’t have sharp blades and heavy clubs.
She adjusted her sunglasses. The sun was bright today, making it hard to think. And as she waited, trying to pull her thoughts into some sort of shape, the children moved further and further away. Before, they would have attacked without a thought, torn into them with teeth and claws. Not now. They were learning to wait. They had found a new lair, in a tube station, hidden from the hunters. But if they showed themselves, if they timed it wrong, they would be found out and attacked. More of them would die. She had to wait, find the right way to do it. There would be others. Other children. Other things to eat. Earlier this morning they had found a nice fat cat and that had helped. Their bellies were sore, though. They needed to eat again soon. Eat properly. Before too long their hunger would force them into the open; they would have no choice but to attack whoever came close.
Children, though. It had to be children.
The only thing that made the pain go away was the flesh of children.
One of the others stood, lurched towards the children, dribbling and shaking. She grunted and raised her knife. Showing her authority.
He backed away.
Not now. Not yet.
It was too dangerous to charge out into the open like the old days.
Wait until the time was right.
38
DogNut and Courtney were sitting with Brooke in what the kids at the museum called the Hall of Gods. It was the entranceway to the Earth Galleries, a section of the museum devoted to the planet, with exhibits about volcanoes and rocks and earthquakes.
Brooke had explained that the rest of the Earth Galleries were sealed off, but that the kids used this area as a meeting place. It was suitably grand. At the back a long escalator led up through a giant scrap-metal globe to the upper galleries. It hadn’t run since the power had all gone off soon after the disaster, but it still looked like a stairway to heaven. Lining the approach to the escalator were two rows of statues standing on plinths shaped like half globes. They depicted the advance of human knowledge, from superstition to science, starting with a figure of God the Creator. Opposite him was a statue of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders, then there was a Cyclops, a Medusa, and finally an astronaut standing across from a scientist at work with a microscope.
The walls that towered up several storeys on either side were black with silvery-white celestial maps painted on to them. Lit by flickering candlelight the whole place looked spooky and dramatic.
Chairs had been laid out facing the statues and that was where the three children sat.
‘So why does the King of the Geeks use this place for council meetings then?’ Courtney asked Brooke.
‘Dunno,’ said Brooke. ‘Maybe he just thinks it’s cool. Or maybe it’s to remind us of where we stand in the world. He wants to build two more statues, apparently, showing the future, one of a kid and one of a sicko.’
‘So what’s stopping him?’
‘We got a ton of nerds here, but we ain’t got any artists.’
‘True that,’ said DogNut, and he gave a dismissive laugh.
They had returned to the museum in triumph, telling their stories, bigging themselves up. And now they were waiting in the Hall of Gods for Justin, who wanted to show them the work he was doing at the museum. DogNut was sitting behind Brooke, leaning over on to the back of her chair so that his right elbow was pressing against her shoulder.
He probably thought he was being clever, not being so obvious as to sit right next to her. Courtney wondered why she’d bothered going on the hunt. DogNut hadn’t even noticed whether she was there or not. She should have stayed behind and caught up with Brooke, tried to re-establish their friendship. They’d been apart for a year and it was difficult to go back to how things had been, particularly because of how she felt about DogNut. She was pleased to see, though, that Brooke still acted totally offhand towards him, calling him Donut and taking the piss the whole time. She’d scoffed that it had taken so many of them to kill one grown-up. Not letting DogNut enjoy his triumph. That didn’t mean she didn’t fancy him, though. It was just her way.
Brooke was
weird with guys. Like it was all a big cruel game. If they obviously liked her, she treated them like dirt, which only seemed to make them like her more. And if they didn’t like her, if they weren’t attracted by her killer looks, she’d do everything in her power to change their minds. It didn’t matter what she thought of them. She’d encourage guys she didn’t like just so they’d hang around her and make her feel like she was the most desirable thing in the world.
Courtney wished she had that power over boys. She watched DogNut with Brooke. He was so obvious. She almost felt a little bit sorry for him, so desperate to get Brooke to take an interest in him.
Right now he was fishing, asking Brooke a load of questions. It was clear he wanted to know whether Brooke was attached. He wouldn’t come right out and ask it, though, and Brooke was pretending not to know what he was really talking about, and not giving him the sort of answers he wanted.
In the end Courtney forced it.
‘So, you got a boyfriend here then, or not?’ she asked.
‘Might have.’ Brooke leant back in her seat. Nonchalant.
‘Yeah, but have you got one?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Result!’ DogNut grinned.
‘I don’t got one, I got loads,’ she said. ‘I am, like, the most popular girl here. Most of the rest of them are either nerds or mingers like Jackson.’
‘Jackson’s cool,’ said DogNut.
‘You think so?’ Brooke looked horrified.
‘Yeah, she’s well hard.’
‘Right, but would you go out with her?’
‘Does she even like boys?’
‘Far as I know, but none of them will go near her. They’re scared of her.’
‘She scares me,’ said Courtney.
‘So what about you then?’ Brooke asked Courtney. ‘You got a boyfriend?’
Courtney blushed. Tried to avoid looking at DogNut. Didn’t know what to say. In the end she just shrugged.
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