The End (37 page)

‘Go away,’ said Achilleus again.

‘No,’ said Einstein. ‘I’m not going. Look at you,
crying
. What is that? Self-pity?’

‘Leave him alone,’ said Jackson. ‘Can’t you see he’s really upset?’

‘I loved that boy,’ said Achilleus.

‘That’s a bit
gay
, isn’t it?’ said Einstein and he gave a dismissive snort.

In
one quick movement Achilleus took Einstein by the throat and slammed him against the wall. When he spoke, there was no anger in his voice, just a horrible coldness.

‘What do you mean by
gay
?’ he said. ‘You mean gay as in homosexual? Or gay as in a bit crap?’

‘I suppose I mean both,’ said Einstein, refusing to be intimidated.

‘So it’s gay to have feelings, is it?’ said
Achilleus. ‘It’s crap to have feelings?’

‘Hit a nerve, have I?’ said Einstein. ‘Worried about your sexuality, are you, big man?’

‘No,’ said Achilleus. ‘I’m not worried at all. I
am
gay.
For as long as I’ve understood what the word meant I’ve known what I am. It’s no big deal. And I loved Paddy.’

‘Bit young for you,’ sneered Einstein.

Achilleus slapped him hard with his
free hand. Leaving a nasty red mark on Einstein’s cheek.

‘I didn’t love Paddy in that way,’ he said. ‘He was just a boy. But I did love him as a friend. Just as I love Jackson, and Sam, and Skinner, and all the decent people in the world. And just as I do not love you, Einstein, because you have no feelings. The only reason I’m not gonna kill you is because I’m not stupid. I
realize how valuable you are. Maybe you can stop the disease. But I’m warning you – if you can’t stop it, if your experiments are a waste of time, then I will seek you out and I will twist your neck until there’s no life left in you.’

He let Einstein go and Einstein stood there, coughing and spluttering, rubbing his bruised neck. Then he gave a sideways look to Achilleus and
went out, trying to look as dignified as he could.

Jackson touched Achilleus gently on the shoulder.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘I guess I should’ve done. I just never thought that a mashed-up thug like you could be gay at all.’

‘Anyone can be,’ said Achilleus. ‘And I meant what I said about you. I like you. You’re good. In another world, if I wasn’t gay, who knows? But
I am and I’m cool with it.’

‘I need to go back,’ said Jackson. ‘Will you be all right? The battle must’ve started by now. Will you come?’

Achilleus shrugged. ‘I don’t know if I’d be much use right now,’ he said. ‘Not sure I could even pick up a spear.’

‘Well, if you change your mind,’ said Jackson, ‘it’s still there.’

‘What is?’ said Achilleus.

‘Your spear. Sticking
out of that tree upstairs.’

‘Paddy said that whoever pulled the spear out would be the greatest champion of all,’ said Sam. ‘And they’d win the day for us all. He tried, we all tried, but none of us could pull it out.’

‘Right now,’ said Achilleus, ‘I’m not sure I could either.’ Tears came back into his eyes and he angrily swiped them away. ‘He was just a little boy. He
never deserved that.’

He sniffed again. Dragged his sleeve across his eyes to dry them.

‘I’m not gonna cry any more,’ he said. ‘Einstein was right. I should’ve been looking after Paddy. Then this wouldn’t have happened.’

They left him alone, and Skinner went off by himself. Climbed up to the next level and stood looking at Achilleus’s spear embedded in the wood. He put
his hands to it, hands that were nearly obscured by great folds of skin.

He held tight and he pulled.

The spear stayed where it was.

52

For a few minutes the sky was full of missiles. Ollie had never seen anything like it. He’d shouted the order – ‘Now! Shoot them down now!’ – and his missile unit, spread out along the barricades, had let loose.

First the bows.

The sounds of the bowstrings twanging, the arrows flying, their feathered flights hissing and fluttering, had all mixed together into
a single great sigh, as if the kids had been holding their breath and now they were releasing it in one mighty exhalation.

There had been enough arrows to darken the sky. They’d curved up, seemed to hang there for a moment and then fallen down, smacking into the front ranks of the sickos – arrow after arrow after arrow.

David’s captive royals had been at the head of the army,
as if leading them into battle. A row of them, decrepit, falling apart, their tattered dresses and fancy uniforms flapping on their scrawny bodies. One wore a tiara and it had glinted in the sun.

Ollie remembered how David had talked of using them to take over London. To be the figureheads of his new era.

His own royal family.

They’d been the first to fall. One moment they
were
there, some even looked like they might be smiling, proud … and the next moment total annihilation. They were gone. The arrows had slammed into them and cut them down to nothing. And the sickos behind marched over their bodies and trampled them into the dirt.

Still the missiles flew. Ollie couldn’t see how anything could survive that attack. But on they came.

And in a scarily
short amount of time the archers had run out of arrows.

Then came the javelins.

The breathy flutter of bows was replaced by the grunts of the kids hurling spears, the thud and thwack as the weapons hit their targets.

And on they came. Closer and closer. Until you could clearly see their faces. And now it was the turn of the slingers, Ollie among them. They fitted their
missiles, stretched back their slings and let fly. Slingshot rained down on the sickos.

All around him, kids were now throwing whatever they had at the advancing army. Stones and rocks, sticks, bits of scrap metal and concrete, anything hard and sharp or heavy enough to do damage.

Until there was nothing left to throw.

Had it made any difference? Ollie had seen a lot of
sickos go down. But the ones behind had simply walked over them and kept on advancing. They had no fear. That’s what made them such a deadly enemy. They just kept on walking into the storm that the kids were sending at them. A normal army might have broken, fallen back, run away from that hail of death. But grown-ups – you could do what you liked to them and they would just keep on coming.
Ollie knew that it would be very different
when kids started to get killed, which they would soon enough – they might easily panic and run. Fear was a mighty weapon, but only one side was able to use it today.

Now the sickos were at the barricades, pushing at them, trying to climb over, expressionless and single-minded. Like a herd of cattle who would keep pushing and pushing.
Some were being impaled on the sharpened wooden stakes Jordan had driven into the ground, the sickos behind ramming them further on to the spikes.

Ollie gave the order for his troops to fall back. Some of them had weapons for close-up fighting, but not all. Until they found more missiles they weren’t going to engage with the enemy.

Jordan had another task for them. It was
their job to take any killed or wounded away.

They left the fighting to the other units, who were armed with long spears and pikes. They were thrusting them at the sickos and for now the barricades were holding, but it would only be a matter of time before the piles of fallen sickos on the other side got higher. They were slowly creating a sort of ramp so that the sickos who filled
the gaps from behind would be able to get closer and closer to the top.

Jordan had expected this and had prepared for it. He gave a signal to his trumpeters who sounded a prearranged blast. A group of kids opened up a section of the barricade in the centre, releasing the pressure and allowing a mob of sickos to spill through. Another blast and the barricades were forced shut,
but not before the press of sickos along the front had thinned as they tried to get to the opening, and in the chaotic tangle they were crushing each other.

Jordan had a division of troops waiting inside the
perimeter to deal with the sickos who had come through. These were kids who were skilled at close-up fighting, mostly from the Tower of London. They dealt ruthlessly with the
incomers, using short spears, clubs, axes and swords. In a surprisingly short while the sickos who had made it through were either dead or so severely wounded that they were out of action.

Ollie started shouting orders again.

It was his unit’s job to clear away the bodies.

They fixed surgical masks over their mouths and noses, pulled on thick gloves and got to work. They
went racing over with carts and trolleys and loaded the bodies on to them. It was disgusting work, and many of the kids went green and were too sick to help. Ollie yelled and shoved and made the others keep going. If you just did it, got on with it without thinking, it could be done. The sickos had been bad enough to start with, their bodies bloated and twisted, oozing pus and covered
in boils and sores, but in the vicious fighting they’d been cut to pieces and many were splitting at the seams. Some fell apart as you tried to lift them. It wasn’t just blood that came out of them, it was other bodily fluids: the contents of their guts and a strange grey jelly that looked almost alive.

Ollie followed Jordan’s plan. They took the bodies down to the extreme left
of the barricades, where they butted up to the Serpentine. The fighting was less intense here, as it was basically the side of the kids’ encampment. The biggest press of sickos was along the front.

Ollie’s guys started to pile the bodies along the bottom of the barricade, building a wall of flesh out of them. Other kids waited with sprays and buckets, ready to pour acid and disinfectant
and various flammable chemicals on
to the corpses. If it came to it this section would be set on fire to create an extra defence to keep the enemy out.

It took a long while to shift all the bodies, and once the operation was complete there was no rest because Jordan repeated the tactic, opening the barricades and letting more sickos through.

Ollie watched as the fresh intake
of grown-ups was chopped down. So far no kids appeared to have been harmed. Certainly Ollie hadn’t been asked to deal with any. About a third of the sickos were armed, but only with makeshift weapons, sticks and stones, broken glass, jagged bits of metal, anything they’d been able to get their hands on. If any kid went down and was attacked by the mob they wouldn’t last long, but these
kids were used to fighting and looking out for each other.

By the end of the second influx, however, Ollie saw that the defenders were getting tired. They couldn’t keep this tactic up all day without something going wrong. Sooner or later mistakes were going to be made. Too many sickos coming through at one time. The barricades not being closed fast enough. The sickos forcing
a wider gap …

And there was always the danger that the attackers would breach the wall somewhere else or start to get over the top.

It was even possible that the sheer weight of the sickos, the numbers of them pushing relentlessly forward, would simply flatten the barricades and roll over the kids like a tsunami.

Don’t think about that. Just do what has to be done.

Ollie and his team went to the fallen bodies, piled them on to their carts. Shifted them to the side wall. Came back.
Looked out at the sicko army on the other side of the barricades.

They looked no different. As many of them as when they’d started. This was going to be a long day. Ollie closed his eyes. Rubbed the back of his neck. It would be so easy now to find a hidden spot and
go to sleep.

He thought of Lettis back at the museum. He had somehow persuaded her to stay. She clung to him all the time. He’d had to pull her fingers from his sleeve. She was still completely freaked out. Unable to cope. He’d promised her he’d be back. He’d survive this. Return and look after her again. Could he keep that promise?

He had to. Because if he didn’t … if
they lost … it would mean that all these fighters would be dead. No one to defend the museum. No one to protect Lettis and Einstein and Small Sam. The antidote would never be finished. The disease would have won.

There was a shout. A trumpet blast. The barricades were opening for a third time.

Ollie opened his eyes.

There was work to do.