DogNut was impressed. The old Brooke would never have done anything like this. She’d have been at the back with the sniggerers, tossing jibes at him. He looked around for Courtney. She’d want to talk about what had happened. Out of everyone here she was the one who knew Brooke the best.
Only Courtney wasn’t there. DogNut realized he hadn’t seen her since she’d stormed off.
He scratched his fuzzy hair and noisily blew out a long breath.
Better go look for her.
45
‘We shouldn’t of left him, Jester. That wasn’t right.’
‘We had no choice, Alfie. We couldn’t carry him, could we? He was concussed.’
‘But we should’ve stayed with him. Protected him.’
Jester said nothing. He and Alfie were hiding out in a first-floor flat on the Caledonian Road, peering out of a bedroom window from behind closed curtains. After leaving the railway tracks they’d charged around the local streets looking for Tom and Kate, only giving up when another gang of strangers had spotted them. Tired and scared, they’d looked for shelter and broken in here. They’d been lucky. There were a couple of ancient cans of beans in the kitchen and a bottle of Ribena that they’d diluted with water from their packs. As they sat at the window looking down into the road, they were eating the cold beans and sipping the sweet red drink.
The gang of strangers was still out there, hanging about on the opposite side of the road, trying to get at a scrawny cat that was cowering in a dead tree.
Until the strangers gave up and left, the two boys were stuck here.
‘We should’ve stayed with him, Jester,’ Alfie repeated, keeping his voice low.
‘Really?’ Jester hissed. ‘Did you see how many of them there were? Huh?’
‘Yeah, of course I did.’
‘Well, how long do you think us two would have lasted against them? Seriously? I mean, if Tom and Kate hadn’t legged it, maybe we’d have stood a chance. Maybe. They were a couple of whingers, but at least they knew how to fight. But two of us? Unarmed? Plus you’re not exactly the biggest kid on the block, are you? And I’m not exactly used to fighting.’
‘He was your friend, Jester. You just left him to die.’
‘He’ll be all right. The Shadowman can look after himself.’
‘How?’ Alfie looked amazed, tore his eyes away from the scene opposite and glared at Jester. ‘You said yourself he was concussed. He couldn’t even stand up.’
‘Just leave it, Alfie. It’s done. All right?’
‘Jester –’
‘Leave it!’ Jester spat beans into Alfie’s face. Alfie turned away. Tried not to think about what might have happened to Shadowman.
46
Shadowman wasn’t dead. Not yet. Though there had been times in the last two hours when he’d wished he was. Finding the stranger’s hand gripping his boot had shocked him into life and he’d wriggled away from him. He’d rolled down a bank and then tried to stand. As soon as he was upright again, though, he’d felt dizzy and only managed to stagger a few paces before collapsing and slipping back into unconsciousness. It was the touch of the stranger’s hand that had awakened him. Alarm bells had rung inside his brain and his eyes had snapped open to find the stranger’s face centimetres away from his own. He had been badly beaten in the fight, must have taken at least two hits to the face. Framed by long fair hair, it was an ugly mess, bloated and purple, the skin pulled so tight by swelling that his cheeks looked like two ripe plums with blossoms of green fungus across them. His eyes were tiny, lost in the swelling, and his nose had been reduced to black, piggy nostrils.
The stranger was no more able to walk than Shadowman. A blow or a stab in the back seemed to have broken his spine so that he trailed his useless legs behind him. He could still use his hands, though, his arms, his teeth …
Shadowman had kicked him away and carried on crawling. In all this time he’d covered no more than three or four hundred metres, dragging himself through a long-abandoned building site that had been part of the new development around the station. He had no weapons. He’d lost his club and his knife, so had nothing to fight the father off with except his fists and feet. He knew he had to build up his strength and coordination before he could risk fighting him, though. For now all he was able to do was try to get away. He would start out on his belly, then get up on to his hands and knees. From his knees he’d risk a low crouch, his head pulsing in time with his heartbeat, and when the dizziness didn’t immediately return he’d force himself fully upright …
And every time his brain would short-circuit and he’d tumble down.
And the father would catch up.
It was a pattern that had repeated itself all afternoon, like a nightmare version of the hare and the tortoise. Shadowman was faster, he got away, he passed out and the slow and steady stranger caught up with him and tried to sink his teeth into him. His mouth was a mess, the gums bleeding and swollen, the lips cracked, but he had a full set of teeth, looking incongruously white and clean in contrast to his purple skin. Shadowman had to keep those teeth away from his skin. He knew that even a small cut could get infected.
He’d lost track of how many times it had happened now. How many times he’d woken to find the father clawing at his trousers. No matter how far ahead of him he got he always caught up. The father wasn’t about to give up. His legs didn’t work, he was bleeding from a wound in his side, but the only thing that would stop him would be death. He might starve to death, he might bleed to death, or Shadowman might kill him. The question was – which one of them was going to die first?
The only thing that gave Shadowman any hope was the fact that each time he woke he felt a tiny bit stronger, a tiny bit more clear-headed. He was fighting off the concussion, though his head still ached terribly. And now he’d finally woken to find no sign of the dogged stranger.
He sat up and took his water bottle off his belt, managed to force down some water and hold it down. He smiled. Closed his eyes. Felt a delicious drowsiness flood through him …
And the next thing he knew he was fighting over the bottle with the stranger. How could it be? No time at all seemed to have passed. One moment he was alone in the middle of the building site and the next there was the stranger’s ugly face, and his bloody fingers grappling for the water. Shadowman saw that the flesh had been worn away from the father’s fingertips, which ended in yellow stubs of bone. It must have happened as he’d clawed his way relentlessly across the hard ground. The horrid bony claws rattled against the metal of the canteen as they scrabbled to get a hold.
Shadowman dragged it out of his grasp and smashed it into the side of the stranger’s head, knocking him away. He forced himself upright and staggered on, the building site slipping and sliding around in his vision … Cranes and diggers, piles of rubble, scrap, neat stacks of brightly coloured plastic pipework, deserted Portakabins.
He was able to stay on his feet longer this time and was just beginning to believe that he might at last make it clean away when he felt his brain slip out of gear, everything began to spin and he was teetering out of control. He made it as far as a big dirty cement mixer and collapsed against it. Before he lost consciousness, he wriggled around so that he was sitting with his back against it, and then he gave in to the darkness.
He wasn’t fully under, though; some spark of awareness remained. He swam up out of the depths and opened his eyes. The father was creeping towards him, pulling his way along the ground, no expression on his remaining features.
Relentless.
Single-minded.
Shadowman’s eyes drooped shut.
Fight it. Wake up …
He flitted in and out of consciousness. The periods of black-out mercifully growing shorter and less intense. Each time he opened his eyes he saw that the father was a little nearer.
He had to put an end to this nightmare. He had to stop the father once and for all. He glanced around, scouring the building site for anything he could use as a
weapon. At last, about five metres away, he saw what he was looking for. A tangled heap of rusted metal, made up of the twisted steel rods that were used in reinforced concrete. He took a deep breath, flopped on to his hands and knees and set off towards it, ignoring the stones and spikes that dug into him, shredding his skin further.
He got there safely, hauled himself up and began to search through the rods. Most were useless for his purpose – they were either too long or were welded to other rods to make a framework. Just as he was about to give up and search elsewhere, he tugged at a particularly sharp-ended rod and found that it was unattached. He drew it out of the stack. It was the right length. Gasping for breath, he used the pole as a walking staff and made his way back to the cement mixer, where he sat back down in his spot to wait for the father.
Soundlessly, the stranger crept closer and closer, scraping his horrid, fleshless fingers through the dirt.
‘Cme nn then,’ Shadowman mumbled, struggling to form the words properly. ‘Cme nng yugly bstrd …’
Fetching the weapon had taken a lot out of Shadowman, and, as the father got close enough to smell, he wondered if he would have the strength to do anything more than prod him with it.
He shuddered as the father reached his feet and ran his hands possessively over them, then started to edge his way up his legs, holding on to the torn material of his trousers. His mouth hung open, dribble pooling and spilling out from either side. He was shaking his head slowly from left to right, a low moan escaping from his diseased throat.
Shadowman raised the spike, drew it back, aiming for the father’s face. Then he drove it forward with all his remaining strength and the sharp tip disappeared inside the father’s mouth.
The angle that the father was coming at him – crawling face first – meant that the rod was forced straight down his throat and into his belly. Shadowman grunted and thrust again, twisting the spike to the side, so that the father was tipped over into the dirt on his back.
He wasn’t dead. He lay there twitching and gurgling, his bony fingers groping at the spike, trying to pull it out. It was no use – a good half-metre of rod was buried inside him, like some grotesque sword-swallowing act. Shadowman didn’t have the strength to finish him off. He sat there, drifting in and out of sleep as the father slowly expired.
Gradually the light faded from the day, as if mimicking the stranger’s dimming life force. Still he hung on, though, his fingers moving gently, like spiders, on the pole.
There was a growing smell of blood and faeces, which seemed to become more acute as it grew dark and there was less to see. And as night fell Shadowman started to hear noises. Things moving about. Animals? Strangers? Children? He couldn’t know. He couldn’t stay here, though. That was for sure. Sooner or later something would come and try to eat him.
He wrestled his pack round to his front and felt inside it for his torch. He found it quickly, slid it out and snapped it on. He swore. There was a group of six strangers making their way towards him. They shielded their eyes and froze as the torch beam fell on them, behaving more like wild animals than human beings.
They were possibly part of the same bunch that had attacked Shadowman’s party at the station. Friends, if that was the right word – did strangers have friendships? – of the father he had speared. He thought he recognized one of them, a mother with no hair and several missing fingers. Her companions were weak and badly gone, but in Shadowman’s concussed state he doubted he could fight them all off. It had taken everything he had to beat the father and he once again had no weapon.
He wasn’t going to just sit here and let them do what they wanted. He climbed up the cement mixer until he was on his feet and started to walk.
Good. Not too dizzy. No spiralling yet.
The torch lit his way. He didn’t get far, though. The bald mother caught up with him, and in grabbing for his arm knocked the torch to the ground where it cut out.
He closed his eyes agin and began to cry.
He thought he’d never needed any friends. Any family. But he felt so alone now.
And then an odd thing happened. The mother gasped as a weapon struck her from behind. Shadowman heard the confused sounds of a fight. He strained to see what was going on in the darkness. As far as he could tell, another group of people was laying into the six strangers.
He was being rescued.
‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Hello …’
The fight was short and brutal. The six strangers were easily killed and then the new group came towards Shadowman, vague shapes, moving fast, organized, fit, carrying weapons and apparently well drilled. But as they got close enough for him to make out their faces in the moonlight all his hopes faded.
Not kids.
Grown-ups.
Four of them.
All fathers.
The one in front wore a Manchester United shirt. Behind him was a bare-chested father with only one arm. Next to him was a younger father wearing a business suit, a Bluetooth earpiece sticking out of one ear. Shadowman didn’t have time to get a good look at the fourth one before they were upon him.
He closed his eyes again, ready to die now, too hurt and weary to care any more, hoping it would be quick.
47
Courtney was sitting holding a candle, looking up at a life-size model of a blue whale that was suspended from the ceiling in one of the museum galleries. It was an immense dark shape and she found it hard to believe that such giant creatures existed for real. She couldn’t get her head round the idea that somewhere out there, in the scary depths of the oceans, whales like this were actually swimming around. She’d seen them on the TV, on nature programmes, but to see one like this, even though it was just a model, brought home to her just how humongous they were. The biggest creatures ever to live on planet Earth, according to the information signs. Before the disaster the blue whale was in danger of being wiped out. Now they were free to live and grow bigger and bigger in the oceans with no humans hunting them down.
Hanging above the model were a few actual whale skeletons, looking like aliens out of some mad science-fiction film. Squashed at the end, by the blue monster’s nose, was a group of African mammals – an elephant, a giraffe, a rhinoceros. They looked like midgets next to the whales.
A voice came out of the darkness.
‘There you are. I been looking all over for you.’
Courtney kept her eyes on the dangling skeletons. She didn’t really want to talk to DogNut right now. But he came and sat next to her anyway.
‘Cool,’ he said, taking in the exhibits.
‘Did it not occur to you,’ said Courtney, ‘that maybe I didn’t want to be found?’
‘Too deep for me, girl,’ said DogNut. ‘My brain don’t work that way. I always think if there’s something to talk about you should just talk about it.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘Ain’t there?’
‘No.’
‘Listen, I didn’t know how you felt about me, Courtney.’
‘And how do I feel about you then?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Go away, DogNut. It’s a waste of time.’
‘No. I really like you, Courtney, and I don’t want you to be upset. I just never thought about you like, a, you know, a girlfriend or nothing. I need to make some adjustments.’
‘Don’t bother. I changed my mind.’
‘So you did used to go for me, then?’
‘You just made me feel stupid and small and ugly.’
‘You ain’t none of them things.’
‘I ain’t small?’
‘No.’
‘You saying I’m fat?’
‘No!’ DogNut looked at Courtney. Was she joking now? He never understood girls. It was all too tricky. She’d been crying, but now she smiled.
‘I shouldn’t be angry at you, Doggo. There’s no reason why you should go for me. I know you came here to find Brooke.’
DogNut put his arm round Courtne
y.
‘It’s complicated, innit?’ he said. ‘On top of everything else – trying to find food and water and keep warm, trying not to get eaten by sickos – on top of all that we got to go through all the same old same old, girlfriends-and-boyfriends and who-likes-who and how-do-I-look and does-anyone-like-me?’
‘Yeah. It’s complicated.’
‘But we still friends, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ said Courtney, and DogNut squeezed her.
‘Cool.’
Typical boy. He probably thought that was all it took. Thought it was over. That he could carry on like nothing had happened.
‘Why you alone with the whales, anyway?’ he asked her. ‘You like whales or something?’
‘Makes you think,’ said Courtney. ‘Where we stand in the world. We ain’t top dog no more. We’re just krill.’
‘What the hell’s krill?’
‘Is what blue whales eat. I was reading the signs. They huge and that, but they just eat these, like, tiny sea insects, millions of them in one swallow, like a sort of soup.’
‘You only been here one day, girl, and already you talking like a nerd.’
Courtney shrugged.
‘So that’s all we are now?’ said DogNut. ‘Krill?’
‘Yeah,’ said Courtney. ‘We’re just insects and the sickos is like blue whales, cruising around sucking us up, swallowing us down.’
‘Nice.’ DogNut released Courtney and stood up. ‘So you gonna come back and join us humans again now?’
‘DogNut?’
‘What?’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Yeah.’ DogNut sat back down again. ‘Me too. This ain’t our world, babes. We should leave it to Brooke.’
‘You mean you’d leave her behind? After everything?’
‘Yeah. Why not? She ain’t interested in me. Let’s go back, the two of us, where we belong.’
‘Yeah. Let’s do that.’
Maybe there was still hope.
48
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