The Fallen (14 page)

‘As if,’ said Einstein.

Ollie wasn’t sure how to take Einstein. He seemed unreasonably cheerful, considering how dangerous their situation was. He wondered just how cheerful he’d remain after the first attack.

Because there would be one.

That much Ollie knew. There was no way they were
going to get ten miles across London and back without coming across any grown-ups.

Not to mention what might be waiting for them when they got to the technology park.

‘So have you found out anything yet about the disease?’ Ollie pressed him. ‘Anything useful?’

Einstein waved a hand in the air. ‘We’ve made
some
progress,’ he said. ‘We’re struggling, though, basically. In the end I probably know more about it than anyone else in London, but it wouldn’t exactly fill a book. A small pamphlet maybe. Is that what you wanted to ask about? The disease?’

‘In a way, yes. Well, actually, no … yes.’

‘All right,’ said Einstein. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, and I’ll keep it simple.’

He quickly ran through the discoveries he’d made in the labs and what they might mean. Although he stressed that a lot of his ideas were just that – ideas, theories, guesswork. He was more than happy to share it all with Ollie, though, who asked the odd question here and there for clarity. Einstein obviously loved showing off his knowledge and Ollie needed to get to the root of what was bothering him. In the end, as Einstein didn’t look like he was going to cover this area, Ollie came right out and asked him. Although he made sure that nobody else was listening first.

‘What happens,’ he asked, fumbling for the right words, ‘when you, if you, you know, if
someone
got older?’

Einstein laughed through his nose. ‘There’s no “if” about it really, is there, Ollie? We all get older. Fact of life. Fact of death. No way round it.’

‘Yeah, that’s not what I meant, though. I meant – what happens when someone hits fifteen?’

‘Ah, I get where you’re coming from, ginger. The penny drops with a mighty clang. You want to know if you’re going to get sick.’

‘Not exactly, no, I don’t mean me, I mean just in general.’

‘No,
of course
you don’t mean you. How ridiculous of me to think that. You were asking about a distant relative or a family friend no doubt. Maybe a favourite pet.’

‘Seriously, I don’t mean me. I just wanted to know. Out of interest.’

‘I’m fifteen,’ said Einstein. ‘Does that answer your question?’

‘Not really.’

‘
Not really
.’

‘Well … I don’t know what you were like before, do I? So I can’t tell if you’ve changed. I mean, were you always a sarcastic pain in the arse?’

‘Oh, that wounds.’

‘I mean, maybe your rude manner is simply a result of getting sick?’

‘Afraid not,’ said Einstein. ‘I’ve always rubbed people up the wrong way. They can’t cope with my superior intelligence. I’ve always had a very high IQ. I’ve always been very advanced for my age, and I’ve always been unnecessarily rude.’

‘So what you’re saying …’

‘What I’m saying is that it’s not like you’ll get to fifteen and suddenly start frothing at the mouth and trying to eat people.’

‘I won’t – I wouldn’t – get sick straight away?’

‘Come on, Ollie, be a man. Oh no, wait a minute, that’s what’s scaring you … Listen, it doesn’t make any difference to me. As I said, I’m already fifteen. We both know what you’re talking about. You’re nearly fifteen, you’ve got a
birthday coming up and you’re scared of what’s going to happen to you.’

‘No.’

‘Oh
please
 …’

‘I’ve just
had
my birthday actually.’

‘There you go. Well … Happy birthday. Do you
feel
any different?’

‘No.’

‘Exactly. The thing is, you need to look at it like this. We all talk about the disease only affecting people over the age of fourteen because, when it struck, that’s what happened. But it wasn’t a hard and fast rule, was it, if you think about it? It wasn’t like an exact line was drawn through the calendar. It was just a rough divide. A convenient way of looking at what was happening. And, of course, since then we’ve all been growing older, and since then we’ve seen no evidence of kids getting the disease.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘It doesn’t mean that kids definitely won’t develop the disease in the future, though.’

‘Great. You had me feeling good for about, oh, I don’t know, three milliseconds.’

‘Science can’t give hard answers, only theories,’ said Einstein. ‘That’s how it works. We observe what we can and make judgements based on that. And, as I say, so far we haven’t
observed
anyone getting sick as they get older. Until we really understand the way the disease works we won’t know what caused it and what might happen in the future. Are we immune? Are we incubating the disease? Did whatever was causing the disease stop doing what it was doing at a certain date? Did something happen fifteen years ago?’

‘Or stop happening.’

‘You got it. Exactly. And that’s what I’m trying to find out. Are we immune? Or are we all carrying the disease, all slowly getting ill? We just don’t know. That’s the point of this expedition, to find what we need to carry on our research.’

‘So we’re fetching chemicals?’

‘Chemicals, drugs, medicine, anything like that. I’m hoping the Promithios warehouse will have all we need. Unless it got burned down or cleaned out.’

‘And that’s what the trolleys are for?’

‘Yeah. I know they’ll slow us down, but we need to pick up a lot of gear.’

Ollie blew out his breath and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I never thought, when we were battling our way across London from Holloway, that it was to go on a shopping trip.’

‘Weren’t you all living in a supermarket?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then maybe it’s your destiny.’

22

This is the official report of day one of the expedition to the Promithios warehouse and supply depot near Heathrow Airport. Written by the scribe Lettis Slingsbury. It is as true as I can make it. Maybe someone else would see it differently. But I was there, and this is what I saw.

FIRST ENTRY
: We are stopped right now and this is my first chance to write anything in the journal. I don’t know how much I can write before we have to start up again, but I will try my best.

We set off in the morning when the sun was already high in the sky. There were twenty-four people. I have written the list of who they are at the end of the journal. We are bringing trolleys with us so that we can bring back all the supplies we are going to get. The trolleys are very slow. They have these very small wheels so they keep sticking in every hole and bump. The people pushing them don’t like it. The trolleys rattle noisily and judder and every time they hit something they jerk suddenly and painfully. There was a lot of complaining and swearing and grumbling as we went along our way.

Einstein had calculated that we would be able to get to Heathrow in one day. Which is where the warehouse is. The distance is roughly about fourteen and a half miles. So it should take roughly about five hours’ walking time, and a bit more for lunch and for resting. But he hadn’t calculated how much the trolleys would slow us down. He also hadn’t calculated what would happen if we met any sickos. Which is really stupid if you think about it, because there are lots of sickos out there, and London is a big place and nobody really knew what we might find. Einstein was confident and cocky because we had the new kids with us, the ones from Holloway, who are good fighters. He is not as clever as he thinks, I don’t think.

Apart from the trolleys and the complaining and the swearing, the first hour went all right I suppose. We travelled west along the Cromwell Road to Hammersmith, past big old houses and along a wide road. We also passed many offices and buildings of that nature, and went over the Hammersmith flyover. It wasn’t too hard to push the trolleys along this bit as the road was good, a four-lane highway, a bit like a motorway. It was good to be up high and look out over London.

This was the furthest I had been from the museum since we arrived a year ago. London is so big. There is so much of it. It all looked very still and quiet. There were some parts that had been burned down in fires, and there was some smoke in the distance. There was a mess still from the riots and battles that had taken place when the disease first came and there was no one to clear it all up. But it was a nice sunny day and actually London mostly looked quite nice. There was a big building that looked like a big glass bubble and Jasmine said it was called the Ark. Then there was a shopping centre on a roundabout and after that an old church, down below us. Nobody had damaged it. I felt it was quite comforting, seeing the church. I used to go to church before all this happened. I didn’t always enjoy it, but we went every Sunday. This journal record is not about me, though, so I must write more about what I saw.

On the opposite side of the flyover was a big theatre sort of thing. Emily Winter said she had been to see a concert there once. A boy band I had never even heard of, but she said were really popular. I’m not really into pop music, but this is not about me. Then a group of boys got excited, they said they had seen some sickos down below, and everyone crowded over to the side. We couldn’t see anything and thought they had made it up. We waited for a while, but nothing was moving and in the end Einstein said we should carry on.

Then there was an argument about who should push the trolleys – they really were a nuisance. A boy from Holloway settled the argument. His name is Achilleus. He is quite ugly. I know I shouldn’t say that, but it is true. And I have to write the truth. He has lots of injuries and scars, and one side of his head is all bandaged up. The bandage is really quite dirty. Maybe if he wasn’t so beaten up he would look OK, but I don’t think so. I think he is quite scary. He has all swirly patterns carved into his hair and has another boy called Paddy to carry his weapons in a golf-bag. It looks very heavy and I could see that Paddy was tired, but the boy, the other boy, the big boy, Achilleus, didn’t seem to notice, or at least be bothered by Paddy getting tired. Anyway, what happened was that Achilleus shouted at some children and threatened them and ordered them to push the trolleys. Einstein complained and said that it was his job to be in charge and tell people what to do and Achilleus just laughed at him.

Achilleus isn’t even in charge of the Holloway people. A black boy called Blue is their leader. Blue didn’t seem to mind that Achilleus was ordering people around. So we carried on. Nobody was very happy, but nobody would risk saying anything because, to be fair, it’s not just me; they are all scared of Achilleus, even Einstein I think. Although he tries to pretend he isn’t. The only one who isn’t scared of him is Paddy, and he is all red-faced and sweating, puffing and panting along.

Achilleus has other tough boys around him from Holloway, including another ugly one called Big Mick. Who is not only ugly but also big. I suppose that’s how he got his name. It’s not a clever one like Little John. I will not be rude about Mick, because he is a very good fighter and also when I got a bit tired and said so he carried me for a bit, sort of like he was joking, but it was nice. Mick is not so scary as Achilleus. My favourite one is Ollie, though. He rescued me from a fearsome sicko on the night of the World Book Day attack. Ollie is not scary, he is quite friendly, but quite quiet. I think he is the cleverest of them. He was talking to Einstein for a long time. I thought that if there was trouble Ollie would be sure to look after me. I was not so sure about Achilleus.

My friends from the museum started to grumble and mutter about the new children, but I thought it would be another matter if we ever did meet any sickos. Which we did. But I will come to that in a minute. We carried on like that for roughly about another hour, maybe more, and everyone was cheering up because we were going faster, and the road was good and wide and safe all the way. It used to be the main road west out of London, so it is wide. We went quite easily and were not too fearful of attack. It was mostly raised up or had railings on the sides so there was no danger of sickos coming after us.

Our route was to go along the A4 to the motorway, the M4, and travel out to Heathrow on that. But when we got to the start of the motorway there was a big roundabout there that the road was supposed to cross over and we found that there had been a fire and maybe a bit of an explosion. There were burnt trees and buildings and the skeletons of cars and lorries and buses and other wreckage, and the upper bit of the flyover that crossed over the roundabout had fallen down. There was just a big pile of rubble and broken up concrete in our way. Einstein said we would have to go round it and find somewhere to get back up on to the motorway. That was easier said than done. It would have been quite easy if we didn’t have the trolleys. But we did have the trolleys, we couldn’t change that fact, and had to get them down over the rubble on to the roundabout.