‘Without discipline we would all be dead,’ said David. ‘Wasn’t it the explorer Roald Amundsen who said “adventure is just bad planning”?’
‘Was it?’
‘I think it was.’
‘You remind me a lot of me,’ said Jordan. ‘And that is not necessarily a good thing. There’s not room here for two generals.’
‘I appreciate that,’ said David. ‘But I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.’
Jordan laughed briefly. ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said.
DogNut put a hand on Ed’s shoulder.
‘I’m sorry about Jack and Bam,’ he said. ‘They was good people.’
‘Yeah,’ said Ed. ‘The best. We should never have gone. Just three of us.’ He looked towards the café. Brooke had disappeared. ‘Is everyone all right here?’
‘Need to talk to you about that, blood.’
‘What?’ Ed looked at DogNut. He’d been assuming that the rest of the coach party were safe.
‘It’s the French girl,’ said DogNut.
‘Frédérique? What’s happened to her?’
‘You better come see for yourself. Don’t sweat, everyone else is fine. Is just her.’
‘Where is she? Is she hurt?’
‘We had to lock her up in the Blitz Experience,’ said DogNut, leading Ed to the back of the atrium. ‘To keep it safe.’
The Blitz Experience was a mock-up of a wartime air-raid shelter and part of a bombed-out London street. Ed had visited it once a couple of years ago. He remembered sound effects of planes going over and air-raid sirens and falling bombs and explosions, with radio announcements and cheesy recorded cockney voices taking you through it all. None of that would be working now. It would be dark and silent in there with no power for its lights and sounds.
DogNut fetched a candle and a rifle with a fixed bayonet and gave them to Ed, then, as they went down to the next level, he briefly explained what had happened.
‘D’you want me to come in with you?’ he asked as he unlocked the doors. ‘Just in case?’
‘I don’t know.’ Ed waited by the entrance. ‘Is she dangerous?’
‘She’s locked up. Handcuffed to a chain. But don’t get too close.’
‘I’ll see her alone.’ Ed stepped through into the darkness. ‘She knows me. She might be better with just one other person.’
‘All right. Good luck, brother.’ DogNut closed the door behind him.
61
The way in was through the fake air-raid shelter, little more than a concrete box with benches down the sides and reproductions of old wartime propaganda posters. Ed walked to the far end and went through to the main exhibit. There was a ruined street here with views across a miniature London skyline towards a cut-out of St Paul’s. He saw Frédérique at the far end by a bomb-damaged shop, sitting on an old wooden chair. She was hunched over, hugging herself, her arms tight over her stomach. She was bundled up in a big puffy jacket and a long skirt. A loop of chain snaked out from under her chair to an iron railing that was part of the set. There was a plate of untouched food next to her, a plastic bottle of water and a bucket that she hadn’t used. Lying on the floor next to the plate was what looked like a small, half-eaten chicken leg.
‘Frédérique …?’
As Ed approached her, she raised one hand to cover her eyes and gave a little gasp. Ed shielded the flame.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Is that better?’
‘It’s too bright,’ said Frédérique.
Ed wondered whether to blow the candle out – it was clearly distressing her. Instead he took it to the far end of the exhibit and put it behind the flat frontage of the London skyline. The flickering light gave a feeble impression of the old flame effect they’d used to bring the blitzed cityscape alive. He left the rifle down here as well, so as not to frighten Frédérique.
As he made his way back to her she watched him intently with staring eyes, her pupils so wide they looked like great black holes in her head.
Ed sat down on a piece of scenery.
‘Is that better?’
Frédérique sniffed the air. ‘Oui.’
Ed’s eyes were slowly growing used to the dark. He could see that there was moisture glistening around Frédérique’s nose and mouth and a run of spots in the shadow beneath her chin.
‘How are you doing?’ he asked gently.
‘It is better in here.’ Frédérique’s voice sounded low and dull. ‘Outside it was too bright. The sun was too hot. I couldn’t think right. You know? In here it is more quiet. The voices in my head are asleep. Where is Jack?’
‘He’s … He’s OK. He wanted to stay longer at his house.’ Ed couldn’t bear to tell her the truth. ‘There were things he wanted to do,’ he added lamely.
‘I would like to see him. To talk to him.’
‘You can talk to me.’
‘All right.’
But Ed didn’t know what to say to her. How to approach what had happened. And it was obvious what that was. He sat there for a long while just looking at her while she stared into the distance, hardly moving, leaning forward, folded in her arms.
In the end Ed realized there was no easy way to ask what he wanted to ask, so he just came straight out with it.
‘Frédérique?’
‘Oui?’
‘How old are you?’
Frédérique sighed. She closed her eyes. Her head dropped so that she was curled into a ball on her seat.
‘Fifteen,’ she said quietly. ‘Nearly sixteen.’
‘Right …’ Everything became very clear to Ed. It had been staring them in the face all along, but they’d misread all the signs. ‘That’s what you were scared of, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Not the adults. The disease.’
‘Yes. I thought that maybe when Greg was not sick there was some hope for me. But then … even he … I am very hungry, Ed.’
‘There’s food here. They’ve given you food.’
‘I can’t eat this. I need … Oh … I did not used to eat meat. Now … All I want … I don’t know what I want … what I don’t want.’
‘I’m so sorry, Fred.’
‘I’m going to die, aren’t I?’
‘Not necessarily, I mean, not everyone …’
Frédérique gave a short bitter laugh. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You are right. Not everyone dies. You think that will be good, yes? To be like them. I have seen them. I don’t want to be like them. They are … red.’ Again Frédérique sniffed.
‘Red?’
‘The word, I don’t know, the English word … red … rouge … sang … Oh …’
Frédérique mumbled something in French that Ed didn’t understand.
‘How bad is it?’ he asked.
Snot ran out of Frédérique’s nose and she snorted it back in.
‘I have a, what you call, un mal de tête?’ she said.
‘A headache?’
‘Yes. And my stomach is bad. It is alive. My skin itch. I want to scratch all the time. Scratch-scratch. In the light I can’t think. In here I am safe. But I don’t know how long …’
She raised her head and looked at Ed with her wide black eyes, the whites tinged with pink. Her nostrils widened and she sucked in air through her nose. It bubbled and rattled in her throat.
She sighed, licked her dry lips, then pulled her long hair back from one ear.
‘Look.’
Ed leant closer. There was a growth of ugly fat boils, full of pus. They clustered around her ear and inside it, blocking the hole. From there they ranged down her neck and under her chin, getting smaller as they went.
‘That is not the worst,’ she said. ‘My body is the worst. Oh, Ed, I do not want to be sick. I do not want the red to have a baby.’
‘Sorry? What? I don’t get it.’
‘I didn’t mean to say that. I … I want to say … I don’t know. I need to eat. But I am so dry. Do you have some water, please?’
‘There’s a bottle there,’ said Ed. ‘
Do you want me to open it for you?’
‘Thank you, you are very kind, a kind of méchant.’
‘What’s that?’ Ed asked, picking up the bottle. ‘Is that a French word?’
‘I don’t know. Why is it so dark?’
‘You said the light hurts your eyes,’ said Ed, unscrewing the lid.
‘What?’
‘You asked me why –’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Here. Drink some of this.’ Ed kept his distance and stretched the bottle out towards her. Even from here he could smell a wet-dog stench coming off her.
She made no move to take the bottle and he shuffled closer. She was a pathetic figure. He felt sorry for her, not scared. Then he heard a drip and looked down to see that there was a puddle of blood beneath her chair.
There was something wrong about this.
He looked at the bottle, the plate of food, the scrap of raw chicken on the floor. The skin white. Raw.
No. That didn’t make sense.
Why would they give her raw chicken?
She wasn’t an animal.
And that wasn’t chicken.
He looked again.
It was a human thumb. With a bloody flap of skin around the base and the white stub of a broken bone sticking out.
Ed swallowed. His mouth was dry as dust.
Whose thumb was it?
It must be hers.
But why would she tear off her own thumb?
And then he got it. Too late. Frédérique was up out of her chair and coming at him, arms outstretched. The handcuffs dangling from one wrist, the other hand, the free hand, missing its thumb. There was blood all over her arms and down her front.
She came fast, and before Ed could react she got hold of his shirtfront and shoved him hard up against the wall with more force than he’d imagined she was capable of, winding him. He tried to pull away from her but she held him tight. His head was spinning. He was worn out from carrying Jack yesterday, and all his muscles ached. He didn’t think he had the strength to fight her off. She bared her teeth. There was saliva bubbling between them. She put her face closer. The whites of her eyes were almost solid red. Thin trickles of blood came out of her tear ducts and ran down either side of her nose. Her jaws opened wide and she forced her mouth towards Ed. Her strength was appalling. Her breath stank like an animal house at the zoo. Ed was on the verge of fainting.
She stuck out her tongue and licked the length of Ed’s scabby wound.
‘No!’ he yelled. ‘Get off me!’
Somehow he managed to twist away and jab an elbow into Frédérique’s side, knocking her over. She howled and came straight back at him on all fours. This time Ed knew she was going to bite him. He kicked her in the jaw and she fell back.
Ed just had time to get to the rifle and hold it out in front of him before Frédérique recovered. She squatted there, writhing and spitting.
‘Frédérique, stop it!’
Then the poor girl doubled over in pain and started to retch, bringing up a sticky silvery stream of liquid that spattered on to the fake cobblestones.
With that, the fight went out of her. She slumped down, pressed her face against the floor and started to weep.
‘Kill me, Ed,’ she pleaded. ‘Please kill me. I cannot go on like this.’
‘No, Fred, no … It’s all right. You’ll be all right …’
How many lies was he going to tell her today?
Just one more.
‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get something that will help.’
‘OK …’
Ed backed away from her and knocked on the door for DogNut to let him out.
62
Ed walked quickly into the centre of the atrium where the two rival gangs of boys were eyeing each other suspiciously.
‘Right!’ he shouted. ‘Listen to me. I need you all to get your weapons and make two rows, leading from the stairs at the back to the front doors. Make a sort of passage, like, you know, running-the-gauntlet type of thing. I’m bringing someone through. She’s sick, OK? But she’s one of us, so I don’t want anyone to hurt her. I just want to get her out of the building and away from here.’
‘You sure you know what you doing, man?’ DogNut had followed Ed up from the lower level, his small head bobbing on his skinny neck, agitated.
Ed took him into the front entrance area.
‘We can’t keep her locked up in there like an animal,’ he said quietly and urgently. ‘She’ll only get worse. If I let her out, she can at least try and look after herself.’
‘So you don’t have to deal with her?’
‘No. Maybe. Yeah.’
‘But if you let her out, Ed …’
‘She’s a friend.’
‘She’s a sicko now,’ said DogNut. ‘That’s the word you lot like to use, innit? Sicko. And sickos ain’t our friends.’
‘But she was …’ said Ed. ‘She was my friend. She’ll just die in there.’
‘True that.’ DogNut pointed through the doors at the gardens. ‘And out there she’s free to attack any kid she wants.’
‘So?’ Ed shouted angrily. ‘What do you want me to do? Shoot her? Stick my bayonet into her guts?’
‘I dunno …’
‘Well, neither do I. So I’m going to let her out. Open the doors. And be careful – she got out of the handcuffs.’
‘How the hell she do that?’
‘She bit her thumb off.’
‘Holy Jesus …’
DogNut didn’t argue any more. He opened the front doors and then formed the kids into a gauntlet as Ed went back for Frédérique.
The boys stood there in two long lines, each bristling with sticks and bayonets, swords and clubs. They waited, some laughing and making sharp remarks, others quiet and thoughtful, like kids organized into a game whose rules they didn’t really know.
After a while Frédérique emerged, blinking and confused, covering her eyes with her good hand, the cuffs rattling.
She flinched from the weapons as she shuffled between the lines. A group of Jordan’s boys sniggered at her, and a couple made crude comments. Then she brought up her injured hand and they shut up.
Ed followed, his rifle ready in case Frédérique tried to turn and run back.
She didn’t. She just kept slowly walking towards the main entrance. When she got there she halted. Cringing away from the sunlight, hunched over. Ed came up behind her.
‘You have to go,’ he said.
She turned and gulped at him. She looked so sad suddenly, so normal, just a frightened little girl. She shook her head.
Ed turned his rifle round and prodded her with the butt.
‘Please, Frédérique. Just go.’
There were blood-stained tears running down her cheeks. Her lower lip was trembling.
‘Ed,’ she said.
‘Just go!’ Ed snapped, and shoved her so that she went sprawling on to the front steps.
DogNut swung the doors shut.
Frédérique got up, came over to the glass and pawed at it. DogNut winced when he saw the ragged tear where her thumb had been. She was pleading in French and sobbing.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ed, and Frédérique threw herself at the window, slobbering against it, smearing it with filth. An animal again.
Ed didn’t want to see. He turned away and left her there, thumping and mewling and clawing at the glass. He couldn’t believe how quickly she’d got sick, how fast she’d changed, fallen apart.
Would it be worse now that she was outside in the light? Quicker? He didn’t know how the disease worked, but he’d seen enough to know that sunlight accelerated it.
He tried to shut her out of his mind. Walked away between the lines of silent boys.
DogNut stayed where he was. Not looking at the girl, but up, at the sky.
He felt a cold hard lump in his guts.
63
Jordan Hordern was sitting at his desk. He had taken over the director-gen
eral’s office in the corner of the museum on the first floor. He had a bed against one wall and spent a lot of time in here reading and planning. The rest of his boys slept in the boardroom next door, which they’d turned into a dormitory. Both rooms looked out over the park and had good lines of sight.
David King was sitting opposite Jordan at the desk, his legs neatly crossed, listening as Jordan explained the rules. They were no different for David than they were for the coach party. If he and his boys could feed themselves, they were welcome to stay.
‘We might not want to stay.’
‘That’s your decision.’
‘You said yourself we can’t have two people in charge,’ David went on. ‘I think I know best, and I don’t want to be told what to do by anyone else.’
‘Fair enough, soldier. Where were you heading anyway, before you found Ed?’
‘Somewhere central. Somewhere with a good supply of food and water. Somewhere safe. Somewhere like this, really.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m afraid we got here first.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why London, though?’ Jordan asked. ‘Wouldn’t you have been better off in the countryside?’
‘For the next few years we are going to be a scavenger society,’ said David. ‘Living off what the adults have left behind. This place, for instance, is full of weapons that we couldn’t hope to make ourselves. Not until we learn the skills.’
‘True.’
‘So London is the obvious place to come. The countryside will be fine when it’s safer, when the Strangers have all died off, when we can learn how to grow our own food. But at the moment it’s pretty terrible out there. Funnily enough it’s quieter here in town.’
‘You’ll find somewhere else to hole up,’ said Jordan.
‘I doubt we’ll find somewhere else with as good a supply of weapons, though.’
‘OK,’ said Jordan. ‘That’s what this is all about, then? Weapons?’
‘You’ve surely got more than you can use.’
‘Not necessarily. Who knows how things are going to go? Who knows what we might need in the future?’
‘Twenty rifles,’ said David. ‘That’s all I’m asking for. Give me twenty rifles. You must have hundreds here.’
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