The Hunted

by Charlie Higson

  ‘It was a mess inside and upstairs we found signs of a fight. Some dead adults clustered round a door. The door had been barricaded up, but the attackers had managed to force it a little way open. Me and Henry forced it further. Inside the room we found a father and his son, at least that’s what it looked like. Both dead. Henry did his thing – he was getting good at this – found the father’s car key in his jacket pocket. A Citroën this time. We spotted it outside and there was still petrol in it. We drove it back to where Andy and Susannah were waiting in the Volvo and started to swap our supplies over from the boot.

  ‘It was while we were doing this that the kids arrived. A gang of them appeared from nowhere, armed with sticks and tools and clubs. We quickly jumped into the Citroën and locked all the doors. Had no idea if they would be friendly or not. But we had a bunch of food and couldn’t offer much of a fight.

  ‘Susannah was in a state, though. The first time I’d seen her get worked up about anything. Like a different person. She started up about how we hadn’t moved all the food, that we’d left some in the other car. Maybe I’d gone on too much about how important the food was. She was getting all anxious and hysterical. I think she was probably a bit unhinged to start with. Odd, you know. We were all odd. A real odd bunch. But this was freaky. She was going nuts.

  ‘The kids got nearer, ignored us and started getting the stuff out of the boot of the Volvo, and Susannah just flipped. She jumped out of the car before we could stop her and ran over to them and started to fight one of them over a box of biscuits – biscuits! The guy dropped them and they spilt all over the floor and she tried to pick them up and one of the other boys hit her with his stick, knocked her down.

  ‘I got out of the car, but about five of them lined up and gave me a look that said, “Back off”.’

  Malik paused. Sighed. Ella could hear him breathing heavily. She waited for him to carry on.

  ‘If it was today,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper, ‘I’d have taken them on. Smashed them to pieces. But I hadn’t learnt to fight then, and I was still weak and in a lot of pain, bleeding, limping, half blind, a useless piece of chewed-up meat. There was nothing I could do except stand there. There were too many of them; if I’d tried to do anything they’d have massacred us.

  ‘I watched as Susannah managed to get up, and she got into the Volvo. She got it started. I’d left the key in the ignition. She went zooming off out of control, smashed right into one of the petrol pumps and knocked it flat. No petrol had spilt out, but you could smell the fumes pouring out of the damaged pump. The kids were running towards the car to get the stuff out of the boot, laughing, jeering. And then Susannah must’ve of tried to start the engine again and there must’ve been a spark because next thing there was a big sort of whoomph sound and a fireball around the car. Some of the chasing boys were knocked over and I felt a hot blast, like a kick. That was enough for me. I was back in the Citroën. I turned the key and we were out of there.

  ‘Andy was crying and Henry kept asking about Mary and was she going to come and help and I felt sick. I’d hardly known Susannah, but I hated for this to have happened to her. You’d think you’d get used to it, people dying, friends getting killed, but somehow, for me, each new one is worse. I made a decision then that I was going to save people. Somehow I was going to save people.

  ‘I didn’t do a great job, did I? The next to die was Andy. In Slough. Not a great place to live. Worse place to die. The Citroën got us there. Only took us about half an hour. But when we arrived I wondered why we’d bothered. Why had we come here? What was I expecting to find? Happy families dancing in the street? My sisters rushing to meet me with big smiley faces? Yeah … Slough had been banged up much worse than Rowhurst. The whole town was ripped apart. It was chaos. Looked like there’d been a riot, or a war, or something.

  ‘We should’ve expected it from the drive in. When we were on the motorway, we saw these fields full of dead bodies, like they’d been dumped there and bulldozed into piles. You couldn’t believe how many there were, rotting away, rubbish tips of bones and skulls and mangled flesh. The sky above was thick with birds, crows and seagulls, and there were great clouds of flies. The mounds were crawling with rats and dogs. We kept the windows wound up tight. It was like passing through hell, and when we got to Slough …

  ‘You know how some places, even now, they look normal, untouched, just like they always must’ve done? Maybe some weeds have grown up, grass and that, but otherwise they look fine. Ascot and most of Windsor are like that. But Slough was a wreck. It was like everyone who lived there, everyone who hated the place, had finally found an excuse to trash it. Shops were smashed in, houses burnt-out, cars as well; there was rubbish and litter and rubble everywhere. Dead bodies piled up, skeletons and rotten corpses, half-eaten children, pets. Flies everywhere. So many flies, like they’d taken over the town. It stank something awful.

  ‘We lived in the Castleview area. As Slough goes, it was one of the nicer parts – not any more. Looked like there’d been a hurricane through there. It took me a while to even find our house because I didn’t recognize the place and, of course, by the time we got there I wasn’t expecting to find anything. This was all just bad news.

  ‘In the end I found the house and we stopped outside – we only just made it because the car was nearly out of petrol. You see when a little kid draws a house? With a red pointy roof and square windows, a tiny front garden, a garage, chimneys? A typical English house? That’s what our house looked like. Semi-detached. Another Muslim family lived in the other half. The street was all the same. All these boring houses. And now we’d got here I didn’t really want to go in. I mean, what was I going to find in there?

  ‘It was Andy who persuaded me. Said if I didn’t go in, it would be a waste of time and that Susannah would’ve died for nothing. I didn’t want to say anything, but, let’s face it, she had really, hadn’t she? Whatever I found inside. So we all three of us got out of the car, and Henry helped me get Andy into his wheelchair.

  ‘We’d passed a couple of gangs of kids roaming the streets, heavily armed, and we’d avoided them, but so far we hadn’t seen any grown-ups. It seemed quite quiet at the house. We went up the path and in through the front door. It wasn’t locked – the lock had been kicked off. The downstairs of the house was like the rest of Slough – wrecked. Broken glass, broken furniture, all my mum’s photos on the walls scrawled over or spray-painted, books thrown everywhere, plates smashed in the kitchen. No signs of life, though.

  ‘Or death.

  ‘Until I went upstairs …

  ‘I found my sisters in their bedroom. I only recognized them from their trainers. It was just three dried-up corpses, all shrivelled, lying on the bed next to each other. In a row. I sat down then, on the floor, and I cried. For the first time since this had all begun I cried. Until I was too tired to cry any more. I curled up in a ball and I think I fell asleep. I didn’t care about anything much right then. About Henry and Andy downstairs. About me. I mean, I don’t think I’d ever expected to find them alive, but the reality of it, seeing them there, their bright trainers as good as new, their bodies …’

  Once again Malik fell silent. And Ella waited, squeezing his hand gently.

  ‘Did you find anyone else?’ she asked after a while.

  ‘No.’ Malik’s voice sounded flat and unemotional. ‘And to tell you the truth I didn’t want to look. I just hoped that my mum and dad had gone to somewhere better. I bundled my sisters up in a sheet and carried them downstairs. They hardly weighed anything. My faith says you’re supposed to bury the dead as soon as possible. It looked like Ameena, Nadia and Zahra had been dead for weeks. They were good girls, though; they hadn’t lived long enough to do anyone any harm. So I knew that if there was a heaven they’d already be there. God wouldn’t worry too much about what they’d left behind. I couldn’t bear for their bodies to be exposed like this, though. So I took them out the back to bury them.

  ‘We had
a shed at the bottom of the garden where Dad kept his tools. I opened the door without paying attention. I was thinking too much about my sisters. And there inside the shed were about ten grown-ups, all squashed together in the dark, like a fresh litter of puppies. It was hot in there and the smell was rank. I stood there, like, frozen, not knowing what to do. Then they started to move and I grabbed a spade from where it was hanging on the wall and backed away. The grown-ups sort of unfolded, expanded from the squashed-up lump they’d been, like when you pour water on to a balled-up, dried-out cloth and it swells like a flower opening. They were coming up off the floor, eyes opening, lips parting, all teeth and tongues and gums. And then they were coming after me.

  ‘I tried to slam the door shut on them, but I wasn’t quick enough, or strong enough. They forced it open and came out blinking into the light. I swung the spade at the first one, got him in the side of the head with a big clang and he fell into a couple of the others, but he didn’t go down. I swung again, this time with the sharp edge of the spade, and I managed to hit him in the neck. That stopped him all right. Couldn’t stop the others, though.

  ‘I ran into the house. Andy and Henry were still there. Andy in his chair. Henry waiting patiently on the sofa, his hands in his lap. I noticed he’d pretty much stopped swearing now. Seemed calmer almost.

  ‘I told them we had to get out of there and Henry helped me wheel Andy into the hallway and through the front door. Only the whole street seemed to be filled with grown-ups now. They were all round the car. We had no way of getting to it. We tried to charge down the street, Henry pushing the chair, me clearing the way with the spade. It was hopeless. There was nowhere to run to and, in the chaos and confusion, Henry crashed the wheelchair into a trashed car and tipped Andy out. Some grown-ups got close to them and Henry went crazy. He was a bit uncoordinated, but he was wiry and tough and mad, lashing out all around him.

  ‘I kept the grown-ups away while Henry picked Andy up – he was stronger than he looked – and we ran back to the house. Where else was there to go? I saw that most of the grown-ups from the shed had come out of the front door and were wandering down the driveway and we got past them and back inside. There were two still there, though, slower ones, both mothers, I think. I went crazy, chopping and hacking and whacking with the spade until they were both down, and I shoved their bodies out. We barricaded the front door and the back door and took Andy to the sofa where five minutes earlier Henry had been sitting so calmly. He was bleeding. He’d badly cut his side on the rusted metal of the car. I tried to clean the wound and gave him a pillow to press against it.

  ‘I looked out of the front window. The grown-ups were milling about in the street. Some tried to get into the house, but couldn’t work out how. I felt like a fool. We shouldn’t have run. I should have just slammed the back door on the ones in the garden. I’ve learnt a lot since then. Wouldn’t make a mistake like that again. As I was looking out, one of the gangs of kids we’d seen earlier arrived; maybe they’d been following the car or something. Or maybe following all the grown-ups who were out there. I don’t know, but they chased them away from our house and forced them down the street, and in a while it was quiet.

  ‘So I went into the back garden and hoiked the dead father over the fence into next door’s garden. I didn’t stop. I used the spade to dig a grave in a flower bed and put the girls in there. Said a prayer for them as best I could.

  ‘When I went back in, Andy was in a bad way, crying and shouting and bleeding all over the sofa. Henry was just sitting there in an armchair, ignoring him. Hands in his lap. Like he was waiting. I looked at him and he asked where Mary was and right then I wanted to hit him with the spade, though I guess he couldn’t help how he was. I found another sheet upstairs and tore off some strips to make a bandage for Andy. Gave him some painkillers I’d kept from the doctor’s. The wound was deep, right in below his ribs. It looked really bad.

  ‘It was bad. We stayed there for a few days, eating our food and rationing the water we had. And Andy got worse and worse. The wound was infected and he went very pale and, like, blotchy. Feverish. All sweating and shaking. He said he probably had blood poisoning. He knew all about that sort of thing. He was smart. Said if he didn’t have antibiotics he’d die. I didn’t have any antibiotics, did I? But I knew where the nearest chemist’s was. An uncle of mine used to run it. I didn’t want to go back out on the streets, though. Not after seeing what it was like out there. I made excuses. Said I needed to make sure it was safe. Just scared really.

  ‘I spent ages at the window, peering out through Mum’s net curtains. Waiting until I was sure it was quiet. Trying to man up enough to do it. Andy was getting worse and worse. I couldn’t leave it any longer, so, armed just with the spade, I set off. Leaving Henry behind to look after Andy. Not that he was much use, sitting there asking, “Where’s Mary? When’s she coming? Will I have my proper tea today …?” But better than nothing, I guess.

  ‘Amazingly I made it to the chemist’s and back without seeing anyone else. I even managed to get in and find what I thought looked like antibiotics. It was hard to tell as all the pills and medicines had brand names, and I was in and out fast, dashing about like crazy, not wanting to be there any longer than I had to. Anyway, I was pretty sure I had the right thing, and I was thinking I was some kind of bloody hero, but when I got back Andy was dead. Lying there, screwed up on the sofa. Henry sitting next to him.

  ‘“Where’s Mary? When’s she coming?”

  ‘I went to hit him. I screamed at him and he stared at me. I sat down, said she’d be there soon, and he was happy.

  ‘And I had to bury another body.

  ‘So now it was just me and Henry. A weird life we had there; couldn’t really talk to him about anything much. Andy had been good to talk to. He was funny and clever, even if he did talk weird, his mouth not working properly. Henry was different. He was damaged in the brain. No matter. I didn’t really want to talk. I was shattered. Done down by it all. Still recovering from my own wounds. Why I hadn’t ended up like Andy I had no idea.

  ‘Good luck, or bad luck maybe, you tell me …

  ‘We stayed there, slowly working our way through the food. I had to hide it from Henry otherwise he’d forget and just start stuffing his face with everything. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever, though, and after that? I had no idea what we were going to do. I was too depressed to think. I just lay there all day on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, and every now and then Henry would ask about Mary and I’d say she was coming.

  ‘I did find out a bit about him, piecing the bits together from what he let slip. I think he’d been abandoned when he was a baby. Maybe his parents found out there was something wrong with him and didn’t want him. I don’t know if he liked me, but we were together and he was staying with me because he didn’t have anyone else.

  ‘And then one day I woke up and he was gone. He must’ve wandered off in the night. I didn’t try and figure it out. All I knew was he wasn’t there any more and I was alone.’

  ‘Did you ever see him again?’ Ella asked.

  ‘No,’ said Malik. ‘I never did. I’ve absolutely no idea what happened to him.’

  22

  ‘After Andy died I got sick. I thought at first I was imagining it. You see like when someone says they have a cold and you suddenly think you have one too? Or someone describes the symptoms of some terrible disease and you immediately think you’ve got it? I told myself it was that. Just imagining I was going the same way as Andy. Just my imagination. Or I was just hungry or tired, or not drinking enough water, or I don’t know what.

  ‘First I got the shakes. Then I got the sweats. Then I got the nightmares … Proper weird ones. Got so I didn’t know what was real and what was in my head. Felt like I was going mad. Seeing giant bugs everywhere. Sometimes talking bugs. Kept seeing my sisters’ bodies, up and walking around. Sometimes I thought Andy was there, sitting in his wheelchair in the corner of the room, and we’d talk f
or hours and then I’d look round and he wasn’t there any more.

  ‘I was really dizzy all the time, puking, kept passing out, couldn’t get up, just kept a bottle of water by the sofa, although it was really difficult to swallow, like someone had their hands round my throat. It was horrible. I had lumps in my neck as big as tennis balls. I don’t know how long I was like that. It still happens to me occasionally. I’ve had it off and on ever since, times when I slip away into Weirdsville. Probably something to do with being bitten by the grown-ups. Figure they must’ve put some of their sickness in me and my body’s fighting it. I’m not a doctor. Never got that far in my studies. Even if I was … I mean, no one knows how this all works, do they, the sickness?

  ‘You know what, though? Sometimes it’s like they’re talking to me, the grown-ups. I’ve got this, like, sense that they’re there. That’s why I’m so good at hunting them. I know where they are. These last few days, two or three weeks, it’s been getting stronger and stronger. When that swarm of them hit the farm, it was like I could hear them buzzing, like locusts, right inside my head. But I’m half-crazy so it probably doesn’t mean anything. The other kids around here, they think I’m the bogeyman; they think I’m a grown-up, a monster, and maybe I am in a way. I’m fifteen now. I’m one of them as much as I’m a boy.

  ‘That was when I was most crazy, though, when I first got hit by the fever. Lost touch with the real world, and I was happy with that; it was cool as far as I was concerned. It was nice to drift off into another dimension and let this world take care of itself. I would’ve been happy to just totally freak out and become a nutjob. Live with the talking bugs and the dead people.

  ‘My body had other ideas, though, fought it off, sweated it out. My immune system went into overdrive and, little by little, I threw off the fever and came in to land. Seems I still wasn’t going to die. I stank like a corpse, though. My clothes were crusty and foul with sweat and I don’t know what. They’d stuck to my wounds. I had no way of washing. I was worse than an animal, very weak, and my food was running low, not much water left. I knew I had to somehow find more. Knew I had to get help. Get food and supplies. And I knew there was only one way I could do that. I had to find other kids.