The Dead

by Charlie Higson

  Ed sighed.

  ‘No.’ In truth he couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning the lorry. It had their whole lives on it, as well as being a safe place for the kids. There was no getting away from the fact, though, that the conditions on the bridge were only going to get worse. More and more kids were arriving from every direction and filling the space around the roundabout, and the longer they sat here waiting for it to clear, the closer the fire was going to get. The wind was still blowing strongly in this direction. The smoke was so thick in the air it scoured Ed’s eyes and throat so that he couldn’t stop coughing.

  David shoved him back against the side of the lorry and fixed him with a cold hard stare.

  ‘Are you just going to give up?’ he asked.

  Ed shrugged. He just wanted to curl up under the lorry and go to sleep.

  ‘Is that what your friends would have wanted?’ David went on.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then do it for them.’

  David was right. What had it all been for? To have come through everything, to have fought so hard, for Jack and Bam and the others to die …

  Ed wearily picked up his rifle.

  ‘I’ll fight,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ David looked at his watch. ‘It’s gone six o’clock. We have to push on. What we haven’t considered is exactly what’s on the other side. The Strangers will all be coming out of their hiding places. The quicker we get to a place of safety the better.’

  There was a shout and David turned to see Pod returning with his scouting party.

  ‘Some morons in cars have crashed,’ Pod explained when he arrived. ‘They’re arguing and fighting with each other. More cars have come up behind and tried to get past and they’re just making it worse. They’re blocking the whole bridge.’

  ‘We’ll have to clear it,’ said David.

  ‘How?’ Ed asked, amazed at David’s confidence.

  David raised his own rifle. ‘We’ve got these, haven’t we?’

  ‘You can’t shoot everyone on the bridge.’

  ‘I’m not going to,’ said David, as if he was talking to a complete fool. ‘But it’ll give us some authority. Come on, Pod, bring everyone, we’re going to make a path for the lorry.’

  David’s troops marched towards the bridge, David yelling at the milling kids to get out of the way. Miraculously they did. Ed went along to the cab and shouted at Justin to follow but now they were vulnerable to the hordes of angry kids who couldn’t go anywhere. They were tired and hungry and desperate. If they knew what was in the back of the lorry they could easily be tempted to attack.

  As the lorry rolled slowly forward, Ed jumped up on to the footplate and leant in the driver’s window.

  ‘Don’t let the gap close,’ he told Justin. ‘David’s going to try and cut a way through. Keep your doors locked and your windows up. Brooke, you stay here with Justin. You’re in charge of the lorry now.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Stay out here and make sure nobody gets any bright ideas about jacking us.’

  ‘OK.’

  Ed dropped down and pushed his way to the back of the lorry. The shutter was rolled halfway up, the kids staring out at the crowds from among the cages.

  ‘I need help,’ he said, climbing up on to the tailgate. ‘David’s lot are going on ahead and I need more bodies down here protecting the lorry.’

  At first nobody moved, then Matt and Archie Bishop and their acolytes clambered down, awkwardly carrying their banner. Courtney and Aleisha, looking scared but determined, came after them. Kwanele, Chris Marker and the younger kids made no move to follow.

  Ed couldn’t blame them. It was getting pretty intense out there.

  ‘You two stay at the back here,’ Ed said to Chris and Kwanele as he swung down into the road. ‘Keep off anyone who tries to get in. We won’t be far away.’

  Chris nodded, his face white. Kwanele picked up a rifle with a fixed bayonet and came over to the opening. The weapon was shaking in his hands. He looked out. There was a field of faces looking up at him from the road behind the lorry and behind them there was a flickering red and orange glow above the buildings. Every few seconds a great shower of sparks would blossom up and spiral into the sky.

  For a while it went OK. The lorry crept forward and Ed’s small band patrolled the back and sides. So far nobody was bothering them; they were all too intent on trying to get over the bridge themselves. The people being barged out of the way at the front weren’t too happy about it, but when they saw the rifles in David’s boys’ hands and the massive lorry rumbling and fuming up behind them they didn’t argue.

  Justin managed to get the lorry across the roundabout but as they approached the start of the bridge there was shouting from behind and the crowd surged forward. People were being knocked over in the panic and others were rushing to fill the gap David had cleared in front of the lorry. The crush of kids was soon going to be too great to let them move any further.

  Ed thought at first that the fire must have got close, but when he looked up he could see no change. The flames still seemed to be a few streets away.

  So what was spooking everyone?

  He rounded up his little band.

  ‘We need to see what’s going on,’ he said. The others nodded, though he could tell they weren’t happy about going too far from the lorry.

  ‘Stick together,’ he said, and they fought their way back through the crowd towards the rear. It was impossible to see anything in the chaos and Ed was just about to give up when there was another stampede and a whole section of kids fell over almost as one, offering a clear view all the way back to the line of buildings.

  Aleisha was the only one to speak, but she summed up what everyone was thinking.

  She simply said three words.

  ‘Oh – my – God …’

  Packed together in a featureless mass were hundreds of sickos. Limping and shuffling up the road, angry, confused and as desperate to get away from the approaching fire as the kids. This first wave was going to be the fittest, the least diseased, the most dangerous.

  Behind them would come the ones who were nearly dead.

  And behind them the flames.

  Already the younger boys and girls in the road around them were screaming and climbing over each other as they tried to get away. Ed pulled a little girl to her feet and passed her to her friends to look after.

  ‘We’ve got to stop them panicking,’ he called out to his gang. ‘We’ve got to hold the sickos back.’

  He pushed through the crowd, grabbing anyone who carried a weapon of some kind, or who looked bigger or tougher or less afraid.

  ‘Come with me!’ he yelled at them. ‘We have to hold them off. We can do it, come on!’

  Most of the kids pulled away and swore at him or barged past towards the bridge, but a few understood what he was trying to do and joined him.

  When they got to the edge of the crowd they could see the sickos more clearly. They were pouring in from every direction, some of them covered in blood, some of them blackened by soot. Their fear had turned them completely crazy. They snarled and bared their teeth and shook their arms.

  Ed saw a girl who looked about ten running towards him. She tripped and was immediately swamped by sickos. An older boy went back to rescue her, and he too disappeared into the mass of bodies. Another group of kids turned to make a stand by the church gardens. They had no choice. There was nowhere for them to run to. But they were too few and only armed with sticks and broomhandles, which they thrashed vainly at the advancing tide. They didn’t have a hope in hell of holding them back. In a minute they were going to be massacred.

  Ed drew his pistol, fumbled with the safety catch and fired into the wall of rotting bodies. He had no idea if he hit anything but the noise was enough to draw everyone’s attention to him, kids and adults alike.

  For a second it was as if time froze. Ed stepped forward out of the ranks of children.

  ‘We have
to fight them off!’ he bellowed, his voice hoarse. ‘All of us. Together. Turn round and stand your ground!’

  He reholstered his gun. It would be a pointless waste of bullets to shoot anything else into that near-solid mass.

  ‘Anyone with a weapon come to me,’ he said, holding his rifle above his head with one hand.

  ‘The Lamb will protect you!’ Matt shouted, lifting his banner, and he, too, stepped clear of the crowd. Nobody had any idea what he was talking about or what the banner meant but it seemed to offer some sort of hope and kids began to rally round him.

  Now they charged forward to reinforce the smaller group by the church garden. They managed to beat the first wave of sickos back and form a line. Ed found himself with Courtney and Aleisha on his left and a big square-headed boy armed with a garden fork on his right. The boy was swearing under his breath and grinding his teeth.

  ‘Come on, come on, you sick bastards, come and get it …’

  After briefly dropping back the sickos came forward again. And they were soon close enough for Ed to pick out individuals. A mother with no lips; a teenager with a broken arm, the bones sticking through the skin; a fat father with bulging eyes whipping his head from side to side. And there …

  Pez.

  His lower jaw flapping at his chest.

  Ed sensed the blood fever coming on again. He could feel that weird out-of-body calmness settling over him and, behind it, something wild and furious and out of control like a crazed beast rushing out of the darkness.

  It was as if he was splitting into two people.

  ‘Take it to them!’

  72

  David was on the bridge with his boys, pushing steadily forward, the lorry inching along behind them. The crush of kids around them was getting worse and they were in danger of being totally overwhelmed. He was aware that something was going on to the rear – there had been shouts and screams, and then a gunshot. This had thrown the kids on the bridge into even more confusion and David was nearly knocked off his feet. The gunshot had given him an idea, though.

  He fiddled with his rifle, pulled back the bolt and managed to shunt a bullet up out of the magazine into the chamber. They had all done CCF at school, the Combined Cadet Force, where they’d learnt the basics of being a soldier, including how to fire rifles. The old Lee-Enfield .303s they were carrying were similar to the .22s they’d trained with, but the reality of using rifles in some sort of combat situation was very different to the calm and ordered atmosphere of a rifle range.

  The first thing was to get everyone’s attention.

  He aimed at the sky and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked, there was a loud bang and the bullet ripped up into the black smoke cloud that hung over the bridge.

  ‘Get out of the way,’ he shouted, aiming his rifle at the kids in front of him who had turned round to see what was going on. His boys also levelled their guns, some of which had fixed bayonets, and instantly a pathway cleared.

  ‘Forward!’ David commanded and his boys marched in formation, the lorry following.

  They soon got as far as the stalled cars. There were two gangs of boys fighting around them, other kids shouting from the edges of the scuffle, yet more crammed into the various stalled vehicles. By the side of the road a double-decker bus was on fire, adding to the chaos.

  ‘Stop what you are doing and move these cars!’ David barked. The boys barely looked at him. Some didn’t even hear him, so once again he fired into the air.

  Now they listened.

  ‘Get these cars out of the way,’ he said firmly, reloading the rifle. ‘You’re blocking the whole bridge.’

  ‘Shove it up your arse,’ said a stocky kid with a flat, blunt face. His friends laughed. David lowered his gun, aimed it at the boy’s chest and fired.

  The boy grunted and fell over backwards. Pod swore, not quite believing what had happened. Everyone else fell into a stunned silence.

  David glared at the circle of kids that had formed round him.

  ‘I said get these cars out of the way.’

  Instantly everyone jumped to life, starting engines, releasing brakes, pushing stalled cars, shoving back the crowd. In a minute there was a clear path down the centre of the bridge and David marched on.

  Sitting in the driver’s cab Brooke was appalled. She looked down to where the stocky kid was being cradled by two crying girls. He wasn’t moving, but whether he was dead or not it was impossible to tell.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘You can’t go around shooting people.’

  ‘He’s cleared the bridge,’ said Justin.

  ‘Justin, he shot that boy. Just like that.’

  ‘If we don’t get everyone over the bridge,’ said Justin, ‘a lot more people are going to die.’

  ‘Yeah, but … I mean, you can’t just shoot people; it ain’t right.’

  ‘It’s not right, no,’ said Justin. ‘But it’s done.’

  ‘You listen to me, Justin. Soon as we get across, soon as the road is clear, we got to get away from this nutter. You put your foot down, OK?’

  ‘What about Ed?’

  ‘We got to hope he’s with us. I ain’t getting out to look. I doubt we’re the most popular people on this bridge right now.’

  Ed stabbed his bayonet into the fat father and twisted. There was a splash of blood and a howl. He jerked the blade free, reversed the rifle and slammed the butt into a mother’s face. He didn’t stop now, but stabbed again, hacking into the sickos, splitting skulls, opening guts, hardly aware of what was going on. The square-headed boy was at his side, swearing with each jab of his fork, thrusting and grunting and kicking. Courtney and Aleisha were also still with him, but he was somehow alone, lost in a world of redness, channelling all his frustration and terror through the rifle into his bayonet.

  Pez stared through red sore eyes. Seeing little more than shapes. But he could smell them.

  And he could taste them.

  His belly hurt, burning with a cold fire. The only thing that would make the fire go away was to take the blood of one of the small ones. He was so hungry. He couldn’t eat any more, though. He tried but he couldn’t chew. His jaws wouldn’t work.

  He tilted back his head. Such a pain around his mouth. His tongue felt over his teeth like a feeding parasite looking for scraps of food. There was no food.

  He howled in frustration. Why wouldn’t his jaws work? He didn’t know that they were unconnected, that his lower jaw hung uselessly down, the cheeks and tendons gone. All he knew was that he was hungry and he needed to kill.

  Aleisha was terrified. This was way worse than yesterday. What was she doing here? She’d gone along with Courtney without really thinking. She’d wanted to be helpful and now here she was in the middle of a full-on freaking battle, surrounded by kids, yelling and screaming as they hit out with fists and feet, bits of wood and garden tools, sports equipment and the odd proper weapon. But the sickos just kept on coming. A mindless wall of them pushing forward, smelling like raw sewage.

  She hung back behind Courtney and another big girl, poking her club at any sicko that got close. She might as well not have bothered. She was too small for this, not nearly strong enough and totally unused to fighting. Any minute now she was going to lose it big time.

  She looked along the line. Ed was there, his rifle swinging through the air. He had cut himself a wide circle and looked like something out of one of her little brother’s computer games, with the scar down his cheek and the gun in his hands and the blood all over him. He was wild-eyed and unhinged, grunting viciously as he hacked and stabbed at the sickos. The kids around him were keeping well away, obviously as scared of him as they were of the sickos. If she hadn’t known him, she’d have been scared too.

  The gap closed up and she lost sight of him. The sickos were advancing. She spotted Pez, wading through the ranks of the adults, spit running down his lower jaw and on to his chest.

  And then the line of kids broke and the sickos surged forward.

>   73

  As soon as Ed cut one sicko down, another took its place. It was like trying to empty an ocean with a bucket. He was plastered with blood and pus that stiffened as it dried. His arms ached from the wrists to the shoulders; the rifle felt as heavy as a telegraph pole. All around him the road was littered with bits of bodies and his feet kept slipping in puddles of blood. Wounded sickos crawled away or sat there stunned among the shapeless lumps of their dead companions.

  The kids were completely boxed in now, crushed up against the front line of the sickos. They’d been reduced to just pushing and shoving in a great heaving mass of bodies. Ed stopped a beat too long and even he was swamped. One moment there was still room to swing his rifle, the next he was wrestling with a sweaty policeman who seemed to be trying to speak.

  ‘Hold them,’ Ed croaked. ‘We’ve got to try and hold them!’

  But then something gave way behind them. The crowd of waiting kids moved and Ed found himself staggering backwards. He stumbled over a corpse, got his footing back, and then tripped again as three mothers charged at him.

  He went down heavily, jarring his spine. A knee got him in the face and for a moment he was dazed. He was in a tangle of legs, like when you fell over in a rugby scrum.

  Another boy had fallen near him and was being dragged away by a group of fathers as he twisted and squirmed in their hands and tried to pull free.

  There was another scuffle going on to his left. Sickos had got to a girl. He could only see her lower half. A young mother had hold of her club, another was tugging at her sleeves and the girl had nothing to fight back with.

  She was pulled to the ground and Ed realized to his horror that it was Aleisha. Even if he could get back on to his feet there were too many people between the two of them to get to her in time.

  He watched helplessly as a teenage girl with long hair flapping in her face lunged down at Aleisha. Aleisha struggled, but the other girl took hold of her and sank her teeth into her forearm. Aleisha screamed and hit out at her attacker with her free hand. The long-haired teenager ignored the feeble blows and dragged Aleisha deeper into the ranks of the sickos.