The Hunted

by Charlie Higson

  ‘The thing is …’ Ed was trying hard to stay calm, neutral. There was a crowd of spectators forming. Wanting to see these intruders made to look small. Lewis was lost among them somewhere.

  ‘The thing is what?’ said Josa.

  ‘The thing is we really need this car. We’ve got to get back to London when this is all over, and before that we’ve a lot of ground to cover looking for our friends, you know?’

  ‘That’s not really our worry, though, is it, funny face?’

  ‘I appreciate that, Josa. But I’ve got my guys here who I’m responsible for. We can’t just walk off out of here into the night unprotected. Without that car, we don’t stand much of a chance.’

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t bet on you,’ said Josa and she laughed, her gang joining in. ‘As I say, you’re not my worry. You don’t mean nothing to me. My job is to look after my people here.’

  ‘And my job is to look after my people here. So it’s stalemate, I guess.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Josa. ‘I mean, you do the maths, funny face. You’re kind of outnumbered. And outgunned. And out everything.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘It is. And I ain’t gonna discuss it no more, it’s too boring, and it’s past my bedtime. Put it like this, posh boy, you can walk outta here as you are – we’ll even let you take some of your weapons. Or you can take us on and get whipped and go crawling outta here in your boxers.’

  ‘Or we can go out the way we came in.’ Ed was sounding quite cheerful now. ‘In the car. Nice and easy. Toodle-pip.’

  ‘I ain’t offering that. That’s not an option.’

  ‘Oh, but it is an option actually.’

  ‘Ain’t no option,’ said Kenton and he laughed, doing a silly twirling move with his shotgun.

  ‘You think we haven’t learnt how to look after ourselves in London?’ Ed asked Josa.

  ‘I think you’re all mouth, funny face, and I’ve heard enough of what comes out of it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kenton. ‘Just give us the keys and be on your way. Or Mister Shottie here will tattoo you worse than my face.’

  Once again he did the silly twirling thing, only this time Lewis moved in. And he moved much faster than Ed could have imagined. He seemed to come from nowhere.

  ‘Say goodbye to your little friend,’ he said as he twisted Kenton’s wrist and snatched the gun out of his hand before he really knew what was going on. A shout of protest went up from the gathered kids, but Lewis turned on them and levelled the gun, which shut them up.

  In the confusion, and while everyone was distracted by Lewis, Ed made his own move. He barged past Josa’s boys and grabbed her, getting an arm round her neck. She tried to bite him, but her lack of front teeth meant she didn’t manage to do anything worse than slime his arm. Brooke chucked Ed his sword and he held it out to the side, daring any of the kids to attack him as he backed towards the car.

  ‘I’m sorry about this,’ Ed murmured in Josa’s ear. ‘But it was kind of your idea.’

  Lewis had come to his side now and they stepped in time with each other, almost as if they’d spent days rehearsing this. Now came the tricky part, trusting Kyle to drive the car to the gates without losing control. He fired up the engine and started to trundle forward, Ed, Lewis and Josa walking in front, illuminated by the full beam of the headlights. Josa was kicking and screaming and trying to wriggle free. Ed ignored her. He’d developed enough muscle in the last year to have arms like steel.

  They kept in a tight bunch so that nobody would be tempted to take a potshot at them with a crossbow, and the other kids were all too scared of Kenton’s gun to risk getting up close and personal.

  Kyle was trying to keep the car steady, but Ed was nervous. They were almost in more danger of being run over by him than of being attacked by the Slough kids.

  Would they really let them walk out of here, though, without putting up some sort of fight?

  That’s where Ebenezer came in. It was all down to him now.

  48

  Ebenezer was supposed to have dodged through the long grass to the fence and worked his way round the back of the building using the undergrowth as cover.

  Had he done it? Ed had heard nothing yet. No shouts from the locals. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? It meant he hadn’t been spotted. Ed clung to that hope. Without Ebenezer’s help, they might not make it to the gates. It was only a matter of time before the locals got up the courage to rush them. Kenton was really mad. He was stalking alongside them, shouting insults, but hadn’t the guts to come for his gun. He’d been made to look a fool and caught off guard. He’d let his boss down.

  As for Josa, she was keeping up her own string of abuse, calling Ed every name in her arsenal, while shouting at her kids to do something. Ed figured he’d heard enough and tightened his grip, choking off her whines.

  If Ed got away with this there were going to be some nasty arguments in school tonight.

  Come on, Ebenezer.

  At last there was a shout. High and shrill. And then another, and another. The knot of kids was starting to break up. Confusion was spreading.

  Now Ed saw Ebenezer running towards the main gates, carrying a javelin in each hand. Nobody was bothering with him, though. Their attention was elsewhere.

  It was a drastic plan, but the locals had been prepared to kick Ed and his friends out with no car and no protection in the middle of the night. They were only getting what they deserved.

  The shouts were growing louder, some screams, and then the locals were running in all directions, some towards the danger, some back towards the school building. The fighters among them were grouping together. They had a bigger threat than Ed and Lewis on their hands.

  Sickos.

  Ebenezer had opened their pens.

  Ed could see some of them now, wandering about on the other side of the road that led to the gate. He loosened his grip on Josa. Her usefulness was over.

  ‘What the bloody hell have you done?’ she shrieked.

  ‘A little diversion.’ Ed laughed. ‘You wanna go deal with it? Your troops look a little headless.’

  ‘Don’t hurt ’em!’ Josa yelled at her guys. ‘We need ’em for the races. Don’t hurt ’em. Round ’em up.’

  ‘You wanna go help?’ Ed repeated.

  ‘Let me go, you arsehole.’

  ‘Tell your guys not to even think of shooting or you’re coming with us.’

  Ed hardly needed to say this. Josa’s boys seemed to have completely forgotten about her and were charging about, trying to shut down the sickos.

  ‘Let me go.’

  ‘Anyone shoots at us I will shoot back,’ said Lewis.

  ‘Let me go!’

  Ed shoved her away and she went stumbling over the ground, trying not to fall over, then ran off towards the sickos, shouting at her team not to hurt them.

  Ed and Lewis jumped in the moving car, Brooke hauling them aboard, and Kyle sped up towards the gates. The kids were still guarding it, but were in a stand-off with Ebenezer who had his javelins at the ready. As the car got closer, Lewis jumped out, raising the gun.

  ‘Open it,’ he said, nothing dozy about him now, and the kids hurriedly scrambled to unlock the gate and pull it open. Then Ebenezer and Lewis were back in the car and they were speeding away down the main road.

  A lone crossbow bolt bounced off the roof and Ed’s team cheered. Ed twisted round in his seat to see kids at the gates waving their arms and shouting at them, throwing stones and javelins.

  ‘Idiots,’ said Ebenezer.

  ‘Luckily,’ said Ed. ‘Or we’d still be there.’

  They drove down to the M4 where Kyle pulled over and reluctantly gave the controls back to Lewis.

  Kyle kept saying, ‘I did all right. I reckon I did all right.’ And no matter how many times Ed agreed with him, he carried on saying it, probably in the hope that he would be allowed to keep on driving the car.

  Ed was trying to study the map, using the readin
g light. He had no idea how late it was. It had been particularly sadistic of Josa to keep them waiting until it got dark.

  ‘Where we heading then, boss?’ Kyle asked.

  ‘I think we’re gonna have to go back to the old folks’ home.’

  ‘Whaaaat?’

  The car was filled with noisy complaints.

  ‘What else can we do?’ Ed protested. ‘It’s late, it’s dark. At least we’ve found out a bit about the other settlements.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Brooke sourly. ‘From what I can make out, there’s six groups of kids round here, in Windsor, Slough, Sandhurst, Maidenhead, Bracknell and Ascot, and they all hate each other’s guts.’

  ‘So it’s not a great idea to be rocking up in the middle of the night,’ Ed pointed out. ‘We’ll go back to Amelia’s and start out again tomorrow – avoiding Slough – pretend today never happened.’

  ‘No way,’ Kyle shouted. ‘We’ve gotta have something to show for all that crap.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘I’m with Ed,’ said Lewis. ‘We ain’t gonna achieve nothing driving around in the dark like this. We start again tomorrow. In the light.’

  Kyle swore. In the end he always did what Ed told him, though, so despite constant grumbling they drove west along the M4 towards the next junction. Above them the red moon hung in the sky.

  ‘We’ll be back in less than ten minutes,’ Ed tried to soothe Kyle.

  They left the M4 and headed north on the country roads. Until Ed saw something ahead, caught in the car’s headlights.

  The night was going to be longer than any of them had expected.

  ‘Oh great,’ Lewis muttered. ‘Just what we need.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Brooke, leaning forward between the front seats.

  The road ahead was completely blocked by sickos.

  49

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Lewis. ‘I ain’t gonna risk driving through them. Didn’t turn out too good last time.’

  ‘We’ll try to get round them.’ Ed was twisting in his seat to check that the road behind them was clear.

  ‘Is this it?’ said Lewis. ‘The fresh wave that Mister Three warned us about?’

  ‘Don’t think about that,’ Ed snapped. ‘Just get us out of here.’

  The next few minutes were tense and confusing. Every road they tried seemed to be blocked by sickos. There must have been hundreds of them out there. In the end the kids found themselves going back over the motorway and into the open ground to the south.

  ‘Looks like you’re gonna get your way, Kyle.’ Ed sounded gloomy. ‘Somebody doesn’t want us to go back to The Beeches.’

  ‘Thank you, God,’ said Kyle.

  ‘So where are we going to go then?’ asked Ebenezer. ‘Maybe we should try to go back to London.’

  ‘I thought about that.’ Ed was trying to read the map and work out where they were. ‘But we can’t get back on to the M4 and all the roads that way are blocked.’

  ‘So, what then?’ asked Lewis.

  ‘We need to get somewhere safe and sit this thing out. You heard what Josa said about the open countryside. Look for signs to Ascot or Sandhurst. That’s our best bet.’

  ‘Didn’t they used to do horse racing at Ascot?’ Brooke asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kyle. ‘My dad lost a load of money on the horses. Silly sod.’

  There were still sickos on these country roads, but only in ones or twos, and the occasional sentinel.

  ‘Where are they all going?’ Ebenezer asked.

  ‘Let’s hope Slough,’ said Kyle and he laughed.

  ‘That wasn’t it then?’ said Brooke. ‘The wave? And if it was, it wasn’t so scary. There’s hardly any of them.’

  Ed kept his mouth shut. No point in freaking anyone out. He was looking out of the window, trying to work out how many sickos there must be on the march. There may not be that many here right now, but if you added them up, multiplied them, all round London, all heading in …

  That was too many to think about. He glanced up at the moon, partly covered by wispy clouds. He’d never seen it look so red. It wasn’t a good sign. Blood on the moon.

  ‘I reckon we’ve got past them,’ said Lewis, eyes on the road.

  And that was when it got really bad.

  As they rounded a bend, they almost ran into a pack of them, swarming across the road. Lewis had to slam on the brakes, and Kyle, who didn’t have his seat belt on, went sprawling on to the floor with a curse.

  The headlights lit up a massive force of sickos, tramping across the countryside. Lewis tried to back away, but there were more sickos coming out of the bushes along the verge and filling the road behind them. They began to flow past the car like a flooding river.

  Now Ed cursed. He remembered what it had been like the other day, how quickly they’d got bogged down when they’d tried to plough their way through. And there were many, many more of them in this mob.

  ‘What do we do?’ Brooke asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ And Ed didn’t know. At night, in the dark, on a narrow road, their options were slim. So far the sickos were ignoring them. But for how long?

  They were bunching up round the car, which was creating a bottleneck in the road. Ed could hear the thump of bodies hitting it.

  ‘There’s some buildings over there,’ Kyle shouted, and Ed could just make out some roofs where the moonlight was shining on them. They looked like factory buildings.

  ‘Can you drive there?’ he said to Lewis.

  ‘This hulk ain’t built for off-road,’ said Lewis.

  ‘Then we’ve gotta get out,’ said Ed.

  ‘What?’ said Kyle. ‘Are you insane?’

  The car was rocking now, sickos trying to push it out of the way. Lewis swore and tried to move it forward, but they hadn’t gone five metres before they were completely bogged down.

  And now the sickos had noticed what was inside the car. They were pressing their faces against it, pushing from one side, and the car actually began to slide sideways across the road. It dropped into the ditch in the verge and started to tip over.

  ‘If we go over we’re stuck here.’ Ed was getting up out of his seat. ‘Most of our weapons are on the roof. I can’t use my sword inside the car. It’s too cramped. We have to get out now and get to those buildings.’

  ‘No way,’ said Brooke. ‘I ain’t going out there. Why don’t we just wait for them to go away?’

  ‘Do they look like they’re about to go anywhere?’ Ed shouted.

  There were faces squashed against all the windows now, slathering them with gunk. The faces that had filled Ed’s nightmares for the last year. Rotten, pustulent, bloated, hideous, deranged.

  Inhuman.

  ‘I ain’t doing it.’

  ‘Me and Kyle will clear a path.’ Ed was reaching for the door handle. ‘It’ll be all right. The rest of you follow and watch the sides.’

  ‘I’d be better up front,’ said Lewis. ‘I got the gun.’

  ‘You’ve only got two shells,’ Ed pointed out.

  ‘Yeah. Hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘We can still use it.’ Ed had his hand on the handle ready. ‘When I open the door, you blast a way out. Then drop the gun and use your katana. But only once me and Kyle are out. We’ll hold them back. Brooke, you follow Lewis. Don’t get tangled in the door. Ebenezer, you last. OK?’

  ‘OK. My javelins are not going to be much use. I need space to throw them.’

  ‘Use one to stab. Leave the rest. We stay in a tight group. Understood? On my word, Brooke, pull the door back and we’re on. You all do exactly as I say and I’ll get us out of this.’

  Could he keep his promise? Ed wondered. Did they have any hope in hell of getting across the fields to the buildings they’d seen? Or were they all going to get killed as soon as that door opened?

  Only one way to find out.

  ‘Do it.’

  50

  Brooke was trying not to look at the faces at th
e windows. Trying to pretend there was no one out there. A stroll in the park. All she had to do was follow Ed and he’d look after her and everything would be all right.

  Yeah, right.

  Lewis had shown her some tips on how to fight back at the museum after she’d taken him to get his Japanese armour and weapons. She’d practised with her short sword, but she wasn’t exactly an expert. And there was a whole world of difference between attacking some stuffed rubbish bags and a real human being – who moved and fought back. A few times the two of them had had mock battles using sticks and she’d always ended up dead within about twenty seconds.

  OK, so Lewis was young and fit and clever and hadn’t had his brain rotted by disease. One on one with a sicko she just might stand a chance of doing some damage. But two on one, ten on one, a hundred on one?

  No chance.

  And it was thick with sickos out there. This was worse than Green Park. They were five kids against a sodding army. She had a lot of respect for Ed, but what she remembered of him from last year was that he’d always been slightly wary, not the first to get into a fight.

  Oh Christ, girl, stop thinking. It didn’t help. She had to get out there and do it. Fear was good. Fear was OK.

  She remembered Macca. Glad she’d been able to keep her promise to him at the end. Had buried him in the woods with a little stone marker that just said ‘Billy’ on it. In the last few hours he hadn’t known where he was or what was going on. He’d lost all touch with reality. Seemed almost happy. The painkillers Dr Norman had been pumping into him had obviously helped. He’d been kind of floating. Blissed out. In a dream world. What was better? To die like that, no knowing what was going on, not feeling any pain or fear? Or to be alive, right up to the last second? In the moment. Even if you were scared and in pain and desperate …

  Brooke guessed the trick was not to die at all.

  ‘Do it.’

  Ebenezer was praying. Silently. Some kids took the piss out of you if you prayed out loud. It was the only thing that gave him any courage. Sending up a little message to God. Asking the old man to watch over him, to let Christ’s love shine down on him. Surely he deserved it. Not those freaks out there. Those abominations, they were against everything God believed in. They were possessed, taken by demons. He was God’s instrument now.