The Dead

by Charlie Higson

  ‘Keep calm and carry on,’ said Jack.

  ‘Exactly …’

  ‘And holiday at home.’

  Ed laughed. ‘I prefer you when you’re like this,’ he said.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Jack shifted and propped himself up on one elbow.

  ‘Well, you know. This is like the old days, how things used to be. Us two just having a laugh. I’ve noticed with you, when things are safe, you know, quiet, like now, you’re cool, we get on all right, but as soon as we’re out there, in any danger, you get all aggressive and you start having a go at everyone, not just me. It’s like you turn, like you’re two different people.’

  ‘Oh right,’ said Jack, his voice harder, wary. ‘So I’m two-faced, am I?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘You mean like with my birthmark? I’m like a villain out of Batman, or something. Two-face?’

  ‘I didn’t say two-faced, Jack, did I? I just meant … Well, you’re doing it now. One minute you’re my best mate and the next you’re having a go at me. I’m not used to it.’

  Jack slumped back on to his mattress with a grunt and stared at the ceiling.

  ‘I can’t help it, Ed,’ he said. ‘You’re right – it’s when I get stressed I lash out. It’s like I know I’m doing it, I don’t want to do it, but I can’t stop myself. I’m so knackered all the time and strung out. I could sleep for a year … But I can’t get to sleep.’

  ‘Let’s try, though, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, goodnight, Ed.’

  ‘Goodnight, Jack.’

  35

  It was morning. The rain had stopped, the clouds torn away by a strong cold wind from the south. The sun was shining and the glistening, silvery streets were drying out.

  There were two flowerbeds underneath the twin naval guns in front of the museum. Frédérique was kneeling down on the grass next to one of them with her cat box next to her.

  There was a big wide-bladed army knife sticking up out of the flowerbed like a tool. Frédérique looked like she might have been gardening, trying to sort out the tangle of overgrown plants. Except she was very still. Kneeling there with her hands by her chin, almost as if she was praying.

  ‘Frédérique?’

  Jack had come out of the building and was coming down the steps. He was wearing his Russian helmet and his sword was dangling at his side. He walked between two yellow artillery shells embedded in the paving, like outsize bollards, scanning the area for any sign of sickos. Nothing moved anywhere. The park looked pretty in the sunlight. The drifts of rubbish that were stacked up everywhere might have been early spring flowers.

  When he got to Frédérique, she didn’t look up.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I cannot keep Dior locked up. It is not fair. She will have a better life by herself. I must let her go. My father would have done the same.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘She can find her own food, I think. Better than what I can give her. I have run out. The only problem is, she does not want to go.’

  Jack squatted down and peered into the cage. Dior was flattened against the box at the far end, looking fearfully out, her eyes wide.

  ‘You should hurry,’ he said, straightening up. ‘The sickos can’t easily get into the park but if they spot us by ourselves they might just try.’

  ‘You go in, Jack. I am all right.’

  ‘I’m not gonna leave you out here by yourself, Fred.’

  ‘Please …’ Frédérique sniffed, coughed and put a wad of tissues to her nose. She was crying again. Jack sighed. He didn’t know what to do or say to make things better.

  ‘Come back inside,’ he said. ‘We’ll find food for the cat.’

  ‘Leave me.’ She said it so forcefully, even angrily, that Jack backed away across the grass, leaving her alone with the cat.

  He watched as she made little encouraging noises, cooing to the cat in French until at last it crept cautiously out, tiptoeing, and tensed. It looked around, making quick nervous movements with its head. Frédérique closed the cage and sat back on her heels. The cat made its way into the flowerbed. Frédérique coughed again and the cat darted away. In a moment it had disappeared. Frédérique stood up, head bowed, shoulders shaking. She dabbed her nose again with the tissues. Jack went to her and put his arm round her.

  ‘Come on, it’s cold out here. Admittedly it’s not much warmer inside, but you don’t want to get ill.’

  Frédérique threw her arms round Jack and gave him a powerful hug. She had more strength in her than she looked. Jack hugged her back but he still didn’t know what to say.

  Bam and Ed had now come out of the museum and were looking at Jack locked in his embrace with Frédérique.

  ‘Ah, young love!’ said Bam.

  ‘Touching, isn’t it?’ said Ed, and they laughed.

  Jack broke away from Frédérique and came over to join them.

  ‘This is what we need to take on the sickos,’ he said as he passed the naval guns. ‘Bloody big cannon.’

  ‘We’re not doing too badly with this lot.’ Ed brandished his rifle, the bayonet stuck firmly on the end.

  ‘We’ve got nothing to fear,’ said Bam, slipping two shells into his shotgun.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Jack. ‘But, still, I’d be happier if there were a few more of us.’

  Even as he said it there was a commotion at the doors and Brooke came out, all in a fluster, carrying a long spiked club and whingeing back over her shoulder at someone behind her.

  ‘Get off my case, loserface, I never said I liked Justin Timberlake …’

  She stopped when she saw the others and skinny DogNut followed her out of the museum, his head bobbing up and down as if he was listening to loud music.

  Jack frowned at her. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What’s it look like? I’m helping. Didn’t want you to have all the fun, did I?’

  ‘This isn’t a game, Brooke,’ said Jack angrily.

  ‘What? And you think I don’t know that? We survived a long time on the road, me and my girls. Don’t think we can’t look after ourselves.’

  ‘Yeah but …’

  ‘Yeah but what? This is the twenty-first century, Jacko, or hadn’t you noticed? Girls have got a lot more to offer than just knitting and cooking and having babies.’

  ‘Making babies,’ said DogNut with a smirk. ‘Now you talking.’

  Brooke spun round and slapped DogNut hard in the face. His head seemed to wobble like it was on a spring and he looked completely stunned.

  Jack laughed.

  ‘I’ve had just about enough of you, you tosser,’ Brooke shouted. ‘Keep your big mouth shut or I will shove it so far down your throat you’ll be smiling out of your arse.’

  ‘Yeah, OK …’ DogNut mumbled, and Brooke turned her attention back to Jack.

  ‘I’ll admit I got freaked out on the bus, but I can handle it. You should have seen me whack Greg with that hammer thing. And now I got something better than a hammer.’ She swung the club and Jack had to jump back to avoid being spiked.

  ‘I figured if I’m not going to be scared I’ve got to stand up to them,’ Brooke went on. ‘This is how it is now and the quicker I get used to it the better.’

  ‘What about him?’ Jack nodded at DogNut, who still hadn’t fully recovered from being hit.

  ‘I can’t shake him off. He’s been tagging along behind me like a fart cloud all morning.’

  ‘You come to wave us off, have you, Donut?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Not Donut, DogNut.’

  ‘What kind of a name’s DogNut?’ Brooke asked with a withering look on her face.

  ‘It’s my gamer’s tag. See, like the dog’s nuts.’

  ‘So why ain’t you called Dognuts?’

  ‘Yeah, or Dogsnuts?’ said Bam.

  ‘DogNut sounds better,’ said DogNut.

  ‘You reckon?’ Brooke asked.

  ‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing out here,’ said Jack. />
  ‘I come to help, blood,’ said DogNut. ‘I’m pretty good in a mash-up, and I go mental being banged up in there. I need to get outside and feel the wind in my hair now and then, seen? So let’s bust some chops, eh? Hiyaa!’ He did a bad kung fu kick and Jack was forced to smile.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘I am coming with you.’ Frédérique was standing by one of the yellow shells, the big knife in her hand.

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘It’s all right, Fred …’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t care. I will come with you. I am like Brooke. I do not want to be scared any more. I want to help find food. I want to be useful.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jack. ‘I did say we needed more bodies, though this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

  ‘Oh good, you ain’t left yet!’

  More kids were coming out of the building. Big Courtney and little Aleisha, both carrying weapons that looked all wrong with their hair and their make-up and their bright clothing.

  ‘We was worried you’d gone without us,’ said Aleisha. ‘Courtney took so long to get ready you’d think she was going to a party or something, not on a sicko-whacking expedition.’

  ‘Oi, that ain’t fair!’ Courtney protested. ‘I couldn’t get near the mirror in the bathroom this morning, not with Brooke putting on her make-up. “Oh what d’you think? D’you think Ed would like this colour of lipstick? Oh, do you think the spikes in this club go with these trousers?”’

  ‘Shut it, Courtney!’ Brooke shrieked. ‘That is so not what happened.’

  ‘It is so, darling.’

  ‘So, where we going then, anyway?’ Brooke asked Ed, trying to change the subject. ‘Back to the bus?’

  ‘Maybe, if we don’t find anything else,’ said Ed. ‘We didn’t get it all last night, but we took the best of what there was. We need to find proper food really.’

  ‘Crisps is proper food where I come from!’ said Courtney, and they all laughed.

  ‘We should go down Kennington,’ said DogNut. ‘There’s a supermarket there, a big Tesco’s, near the gasholders.’ He pointed to the road that ran down the west side of the museum. ‘Worth a look.’

  ‘You sure we shouldn’t just search some of the houses round here?’ Ed asked.

  ‘I grew up in Kennington, blood,’ said DogNut. ‘I know it bare good. There’s way shops there, eating places too, you know, like, restaurants and that, yeah? More than round here for sure.’

  ‘And what if we see any sickos?’ asked Courtney, who had armed herself with a sword that was a bit too long and unwieldy for her to use easily.

  ‘Depends,’ said Ed. ‘It’s best to run rather than fight.’

  ‘We have to assume we will meet some of them,’ said Jack. ‘And we will have to fight. If anyone’s got a problem with that, they should stay behind.’

  Nobody said anything.

  ‘Let’s go then.’

  ‘I must be crazy coming along with you,’ Courtney said quietly to Brooke as they went across to the steps that led down into the stretch of park at the side of the museum.

  ‘Sisters are doing it for themselves,’ said Brooke, and she gave Courtney a high five. Aleisha joined in and then the three of them forced Frédérique to do one too. They giggled at her half-hearted effort.

  ‘Get down, girl,’ said Brooke. ‘Don’t be so snooty and, like, grown-up all the time. We’re all kids in this together, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Frédérique tried again, this time really slapping Brooke hard.

  ‘That’s more like it, sister!’

  Halfway to the edge of the park they heard a shout from behind and turned round to see Justin the nerd running towards them, awkwardly carrying a rifle and bayonet.

  ‘Now what?’ said Jack. ‘Is he coming too?’

  ‘Surely not,’ said Ed.

  Justin was out of breath when he caught up with them, red-faced from running.

  ‘I’m going to help,’ he said.

  ‘You sure about this?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘We’re not going on a picnic, Justin,’ said Jack, sounding a little harsher than he had meant.

  Justin looked nervous and angry at the same time. He took a deep breath and the words tumbled out of him. ‘You said something to me yesterday, Jack. You said I wasn’t a proper nerd.’

  ‘I was mucking about, Just’.’

  Justin was blushing now. ‘I know what everyone thinks,’ he said. ‘That just because I’m clever, because I study hard and don’t do sports, just because I like computers, and know how they work, because I like Star Trek and Robot Wars and have every Doctor Who DVD ever made, going right back to William Hartnell and including the rubbish one with Paul McGann, just because I’ve never had a girlfriend and don’t know what type of jeans I’m supposed to wear, you all dismiss me. You all think I’m a useless nerd.’

  ‘We don’t think that, Justin,’ said Ed.

  ‘Yes you do. I know you do. You call me Justin the nerd. Nerdy Justin. El Nerdo. That’s all I am. Nothing more than a nerd, hardly human. But I am human, and, yes, I suppose I am a nerd, but I want to prove to you that I’m not a complete waste of space. I’ll help you to find some more food. I’ll fight if I have to. I’ve been picked on and bullied all my life so I’ve had to learn how to defend myself. I’m actually quite strong, if you want to know.’ Justin stopped and glared at DogNut who had sniggered. DogNut looked embarrassed. He stopped sniggering and walked on.

  ‘Are there any more of you coming out?’ Jack asked, amused, staring back at the museum.

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘What about Chris Marker?’

  ‘That geek! No way is he coming!’

  36

  At that moment Chris Marker was exploring the museum, carrying an old oil lamp. He had discovered a series of interconnected rooms hidden away down one side of the building that contained stack after stack of books, pamphlets, papers, letters and documents of all kinds relating to the history of warfare in the last century. It would take several lifetimes to read all the words they contained.

  He wasn’t frightened being alone here in the dark. Instead he felt a deep peace. He was reminded of TV ads for plug-in air fresheners where some woman would stick the little plastic thing in a socket and animated fumes would waft out and everyone would lift their faces, close their eyes, breathe in deeply and go ‘Aaaaaah’. Like they were taking some kind of drug rather than inhaling chemicals. Well, the smell of all these old books and papers did that for Chris. He felt very calm.

  This place was like a church for Chris, a cathedral. In the unlit gloom the great shelves of books could easily have been solid walls. Walls of information. A castle of words.

  He was safe here. In the quiet, inside his wall of words, he could think clearly.

  It was strange to be at peace in a library where most of the books were to do with war, but he would need to learn about war now. He picked a cardboard box at random from a shelf and opened it. Inside was a pile of old army manuals, with instructions on how to fire different rifles. Whole little booklets for each gun. He had had no idea that guns were so complicated. He supposed that’s why they trained soldiers. All those guns downstairs in the exhibits and the armoury were useless without these manuals, little better than clubs or spears. It was only by using the power of these books that they could come alive.

  He’d need time. Time to pick out what was useful. He’d start to make piles of books and pamphlets. Maybe he’d move a bed in here, and live with the books. He’d only ever need to go out to eat, and use the toilet.

  He was smiling at the thought. It was the first time he’d been alone since this whole nightmare had started. Properly alone. It was a delicious feeling.

  No, not really alone, when he came to think about it, because he had the books for company, and to him they were like living, breathing things. The writers were there a
mong the book stacks with him, like friendly spirits. Whenever he opened a book and read the words hidden inside it he was waking a ghost and the ghost would talk directly to him. The long-dead writer would come alive.

  One of Jordan’s boys had told him that this part of the museum was supposed to be haunted by a real ghost, the Grey Lady. He wasn’t scared by the idea. He could imagine her, watching over him, watching over the precious books, the guardian of all the other ghosts they contained.

  He was aware of a presence. Someone was there. He’d caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked along one of the book stacks. There was a woman there, dressed in grey. Crouched over, watching him. For some reason he still didn’t feel scared.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, but the woman didn’t respond.

  He held up his lamp to get a better look. The woman’s skin was as grey as her old-fashioned clothes, but she didn’t look diseased, instead she looked beautiful, as if lit by an inner light. There was a half smile on her lips.

  He walked towards her, and as the light from his lamp fell on her she disappeared. One moment she was there and then she seemed to dissolve into the books.

  Chris had always seen ghosts. His mother had taken him to see a doctor who’d tried to explain that they weren’t real.

  What did doctors know?

  Chris sat down on the floor.

  He realized he was crying.

  37

  DogNut wouldn’t shut up. Jack reckoned it was because he was nervous. Leaving the park had felt like stepping out of safety into danger. The road they were on, Kennington Road, was pretty wide and gave them a good view in both directions if they kept to the middle and so far it had been weirdly quiet. They hadn’t seen anyone else but they all had a nervy prickly feeling as if they were being watched by unseen eyes. The others had tensed and gone silent, but not DogNut – he kept up a running commentary.

  ‘Why’s there never any zomboids around?’ he was saying. ‘Where do they all go in the daylight? Where’s all the dead bodies?’