The Fallen (11 page)

‘How old is he?’ Zohra asked.

‘Nearly ten.’

‘What happened to the other Sams? Are they still with you?’

‘No. Big Sam died ages ago, and Curly Sam died on the way here. We were attacked by diseased monkeys in the park. They escaped from the zoo.’

‘Diseased monkeys?’ Zohra looked like she was trying not to laugh. ‘You’re joking.’

‘No. It was horrible. They got Josh, and Joel died as well. Godzilla used to be his dog, Joel’s dog. We look after him now.’

‘So what happened to your brother then, what happened to Small Sam?’

‘Grown-ups got him. They took him away in a sack. We were playing in the car park behind the shop.’ Ella went quiet; tears welled in the corners of her eyes, then rolled down her cheeks as if racing each other.

Zohra put her arms round Froggie, who was sitting next to her.

‘I couldn’t bear for anything to happen to Froggie,’ she said, holding him tight. ‘Not my little brother.’

Froggie pushed her away.

‘Oi, leave me alone,’ he said, his mouth full of food. ‘You’re worse than Mum.’

This only made Ella cry more. ‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘Why did they have to take my brother? He looked after me. He was only small, but he looked after me.’

‘Is he dead then?’ said Froggie.

Ella looked at him and sniffed. Froggie reminded her a little of Sam. She nodded quickly.

‘Are you sure?’ Froggie pressed on.

‘No,’ said Ella. ‘We never saw him get killed, but they took him, a load of mean grown-ups. How could he survive? Sometimes – sometimes I wish he
was
still alive, that somehow he escaped. That he’s out there now looking for me. But I know it’s just a dream. Lots of kids have died and they don’t never come back. So why should Sam?’

‘Maybe he will,’ said Zohra, and she looked at her brother. ‘I’d come back. If sickos took me. I’d escape and I’d find you again, Froggie.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Froggie. ‘I wouldn’t bother. I’d stay with the sickos and have parties. You never let me do anything.’

Zohra gave Froggie a mock punch and he laughed.

‘I wonder,’ said Ella, watching a fat tear plop on to her plate. ‘If he
was
out there, still alive, what he’d be doing right now. Would he be happy? Would he be sad? Would he be hungry? Would he be scared?’

She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up into Zohra’s eyes.

‘And sometimes I think he’s better off dead, because then he can’t be cold or hungry or scared or lonely any more.’

16

‘So we both gonna go on this bloody expedition? It’s gonna be hairy out there. More fighting before it’s done.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Maxie. ‘Do you think we can trust Justin? Maybe we should put someone else in charge of the expedition and both stay here.’

Blue grunted. He was straining to shift an ancient wooden cabinet.

‘I wish I’d never agreed to it. I wish I’d never agreed to none of this.’

‘As far as I can remember,’ said Maxie, ‘this was your great idea.’

They’d been working down in the lower level for two days now, moving from room to room, corridor to corridor, clearing out the grown-ups. It didn’t seem so much of a maze now that they’d learnt their way around, but it was still dark and confusing enough to lose your bearings if you didn’t concentrate.

And nobody wanted to get lost.

They’d eventually got their heads round the basic layout of two long, wide corridors that ran from one end to the other, linked in the middle by one main cross corridor. At the T-junction nearest the front of the museum was their chief navigation point – a sign on a pillar reading G
IRAFFE
C
ORNER
. There was a huge lifting platform here beneath a trap door. Boggle had explained that it had been where a herd of stuffed giraffes had once been kept.

If they ever got disoriented they only had to find Giraffe Corner and they could get their bearings.

The three big main corridors had cables, lighting and ducts running along the ceiling, and various cabinets, boxes and rubbish piled along the walls. Every now and then smaller passages broke off to either side and everywhere there were doors. Doors to countless rooms. More rooms than they could ever have imagined. Any that were locked they ignored, but if they were open they had to be investigated. The only windows down here were in the extreme outer walls. For the most part it was dark and airless.

As the kids cleared each section, they sealed it off to make sure no grown-ups could get back in. So far they’d found twelve living ones and had killed every one of them. It had been tense and often disgusting work. The grown-ups had been living down here like animals and had collected all kinds of filth – bits of rotting flesh and bone, faeces, ragged clothing.

They’d found no sign of the two missing museum kids yet – Stacey Norman and Paul Channing. They assumed that they must have either been torn apart and their remains mixed in with the foul piles of debris in the dark corners, or they’d been dragged away and disposed of somewhere else. Whatever the case, having got rid of the living, the kids didn’t have the stomach to look too closely at the dead. As far as they were concerned, the quicker they could finish the job and make the place safe, the better.

Maxie and Blue were nearing the end of their shift. They had Big Mick and two more of Blue’s crew with them.
They were all wearing face masks and rubber gloves and had spent the last half-hour scooping up the unidentifiable muck they’d found in one of the smaller rooms. The room had been lined with shelves containing fossils, but had obviously been used as a nest by the grown-ups. The kids had dumped everything they could into bin liners and were stacking them outside the door. The smell was appalling; it was so intense it was almost physical, as if someone was rubbing grubby hands over them, forcing the stench into their noses and eyes, their ears, their hair. The end was in sight, though, and they were working fast, sweat crawling across their skin beneath their clothes.

Mick and Blue were trying to shift a big, heavy cabinet. There was a crawl space behind it large enough for a person to just fit into and a hole in the wall behind leading to one of the locked rooms.

‘I reckon one of you has to go on the expedition,’ said Big Mick. ‘Ain’t no one else anyone’ll listen to. Got to be someone in charge. You should split up. One stay here, the other go on the journey.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Blue, trying to get a grip on the chipped wood of the cabinet. ‘So, next question. Who stays and who goes?’

‘I dunno,’ said Maxie. ‘Mick seems to have all the answers. Maybe we should let him decide.’

‘Cool,’ said Mick. ‘Nobody ever asked my opinion on nothing before.’

‘That’s cos you’re a moron,’ said Blue. He stopped trying to move the cabinet and wiped sweat from his forehead.

‘You’d be nothing without me, Blue,’ said Mick. ‘You’d be lying in a dirt bed feeding the worms.’

‘If you could think as well as you fight I’d put you in
charge of the expedition,’ said Blue. ‘And I could stay here and jam.’

Mick put his arm round Blue.

‘You and me, darling,’ he said. ‘We’re a team. Nobody splits us up.’

‘Worse luck,’ said Blue. ‘You stink badder than a dead grown-up.’

Maxie tried to ignore the stab of jealousy that had slipped under her defences. She still felt slightly awkward around Blue, wished she could put her arm round him as easily as Mick had. The two boys were old friends, with a history. She’d only really got to know Blue in the last week or so. Sometimes she felt like an intruder.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get this done.’ She picked up a bin bag; it was warm and squishy, and orange liquid dripped out of the bottom where it had split.

‘Sir, yes, sir!’ Blue put his shoulder to the cabinet and it shifted a couple of centimetres.

Maxie took the bag out to add to the pile in the corridor where the other two members of their party were keeping watch.

‘Mick’s made his choice,’ said Blue as Maxie came back in.

Mick looked at Maxie. He had a big, bony head and sticking out ears.

‘He goes and you stay,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Max.’

‘It’s a boy thing, innit?’ said Maxie with a smile. ‘Deep down you don’t think I’m as good a fighter as Blue.’

‘No, it’s not that …’ Mick looked embarrassed.

‘Doesn’t matter. It’s fine with me,’ said Maxie, actually quite relieved. ‘The less fighting I have to do, the better. Now let’s move that thing. I want to get out of here and get washed.’

All three of them put their backs into it. The cabinet creaked and groaned as it inched across the floor, revealing the hole behind.

‘Right,’ said Maxie bending down. ‘Let’s see what’s back here.’

She shone her torch into the hole.

‘Oh bloody hell …’

17

There were four grown-ups. Four that Maxie could see, at any rate. They’d made themselves a nest out of old newspaper, and were huddled in it, staring with wide eyes at the kids.

As Mick and Blue joined her, squatting at the entrance to the hole, Maxie flicked her torch round the rest of the room. It was very much like the one they were in, filled with shelves of fossils. She couldn’t spot anyone else.

‘We should just wall them in,’ said Mick.

‘The whole point of this is to make everywhere safe, and clean, you nunce,’ said Blue. ‘We don’t want to be living above rotting corpses.’

‘Fair point.’

The grown-ups looked almost like a family group. A mother and father and two teenage children – boy and girl. It would have made a weird family photo, though. Weird and pretty sick. They were all bald and the mother was naked. The father was missing his nose and top lip, exposing his top set of teeth. The boy was like a parody of a teenager: he had so many boils and spots and growths on his face it looked like a rotten cauliflower. The girl was shaking violently and had bitten the ends of her fingers down to the bone.

The hole into the room was maybe half a metre wide,
and the same distance tall. To get in would require crawling. None of the kids fancied that. It would mean going in one by one and being completely exposed until you were through. For now the grown-ups were quiet, but there was no saying how dangerous they might be.

‘So what’s the plan then?’ said Mick. He was pretty fearless, and always up for a fight. Down here, though, in the cramped, dark and claustrophobic conditions, Maxie could tell that even he was uneasy.

‘Can we lure them out, d’you think?’ she asked.

‘What with?’ said Blue. ‘You want to offer them a piece of you?’ He shouted through the hole. ‘Oi! Come and get it. Maxie’s got a nice juicy arse on her.’

Maxie hit Blue, who sniggered.

‘Very funny.’

‘What then?’

Maxie took a deep breath. ‘I’m gonna risk it.’

‘You going in?’

‘It’s the only way.’ Maxie knelt by the hole. ‘You be ready to back me up. As soon as I’m in, I want one of you with me.’

‘I’ll be right behind you,’ said Blue, and he picked up the short sword he’d been given by one of the museum kids.

‘Me too,’ said Mick.

Maxie poked her club through the hole and left it within reach on the other side. The four grown-ups were still just sitting there, watching.

‘Hold up.’ Blue grabbed Maxie’s shoulder. ‘Justin said he wanted us to try and take some of them alive, remember …’

‘You must be joking, Blue. We kill them, and we kill them quick.’

‘You’re the boss.’

No, I’m an idiot
, thought Maxie,
a stupid idiot.

She didn’t want to think about it any longer; she needed to get in before the ‘family’ knew what was happening and decided to get any more lively.

Here goes nothing …

She threw herself forward through the gap, scraping her back on the top, which knocked her flat. The wind went out of her and for a moment she saw stars.

This wasn’t a good start.

She slithered forward on her front like a snake, groping for her club. And now at last the family came awake. With surprising speed, the naked mother came at her, her long fingernails raised like claws. Maxie floundered around, trying to keep away from her and get into a position from which she could stand up. The mother raked her fingernails down Maxie’s arm, snapping two of them, but doing no damage. They were unable to penetrate Maxie’s leather jacket.