The Fallen (15 page)

The trolleys are quite heavy at the bottom and they had to be carried, so I don’t need to tell you that now everyone was really grumbling and angry, and I suppose nobody was paying attention because the next thing we knew there were sickos there. I suppose they had come out from inside a nearby building. They were very diseased-looking and they threw everyone into a mad panic. There was all shouting and some people tried to run away back up on to the motorway. There were maybe about twenty-five of the grown-ups. It was Blue who took charge now, not Achilleus and certainly not Einstein. Blue was telling people what to do and the people from Holloway made themselves into a proper fighting squad.

Big Mick and three fighters took one side, Achilleus took Jackson and the museum fighters on the other side, Ollie stayed in the middle with his team. They had slings and javelins and even stones and other throwing stuff. Blue was moving all over, shouting out orders and bossing everyone around. I was scared and kept behind the fighters. There were others like me so I don’t mind saying it.

Ollie’s squad fired at the sickos, and they were very effective. The sickos fell back and one of them was knocked over. He looked dead. But the Holloway people didn’t want to let them get away. Achilleus led a charge and Jackson was in the charge with them. It is hard to describe, but Achilleus’ team came in from one side and Mick’s team sort of came in from the other and they chopped and hacked at the sickos with their spears and clubs and swords.

To tell you the truth, I couldn’t watch. I know I am supposed to be a witness and write about everything, I am supposed to be a neutral journalist, recording what happens, but you see I was scared by the fight, and there wasn’t anything I could do about that, or pretend it wasn’t so. I didn’t like to see the blood and everything. Next time I will be more brave and try to look properly. I promise. I did interview one of the key players (Ollie) as they are called, afterwards, so that I was sure I could make an accurate record. But anyway what happened in the end was that seven of those sickos were killed in all and the rest of them got away. However, the bad thing was that as the fight was going on another group of sickos came at us from somewhere else. From the back actually. We weren’t ready for them. They got very close before one of the museum people who was standing with me, Caspar Leverson, spotted them and gave a great cry.

‘More sickos,’ he shouted. ‘There are more of them.’ Or something like that. Certainly warning us there were more sickos. Next Blue turned round and quickly ordered everyone out of the way so that Ollie’s team could fire at them. The new sickos. They were just in time. They were very accurate. I think Ollie is a brilliant fighter. Also Blue and Einstein, and some of the museum people who weren’t in the main fight, attacked the new sickos after Ollie’s team had shot at them. Einstein boasted afterwards that he had fought them off and won the battle, but actually it was Blue and his fighters who really finished the sickos off.

Half of the new group were killed and the other half was driven off under a hail of missiles. Then everyone was loud and noisy and excited, all talking about the battle. Showing off. Luckily nobody had been hurt apart from Daryl Painter who fell over when the second lot of sickos attacked and cut himself on the pile of rubble and concrete. It was not serious, though. Blue said that we should all get moving quickly in case any more sickos came. He said they would be attracted by the noise and the smell.

I suppose he meant the smell of blood and dead meat. It was very strong, but for me the smell of the sickos was stronger. They smell horrible. Worse when they are dead. I tried not to look at the bodies, but some of the children went over and started poking the corpses and saying things and making jokes. I suppose they did it to try and get rid of their fear. Caspar started to kick one of the bodies and it sort of burst. Everyone said ‘eurgh’, and he had all like sticky green gunge stuff on his trainer. One girl was sick. It was Jasmine.

So then we still had to get the trolleys over the roundabout and up the other side where there was a ramp back up to the motorway. It took a long time and everyone was getting crosser and crosser. The high spirits after the battle were turning bad. People were stressed and moody. Blue got in a big argument with Einstein, and Ollie had to calm them down. Ollie is calm and sensible. Without him I think the Holloway people would be much more difficult and moody and there would be more fights.

We did get the trolleys back up on to the motorway, but we found that the road here was badly damaged with all cracks and potholes. There were plants growing out of it and they made the surface even worse. One of the trolleys got damaged when it went into a pothole; the wheel got sort of bent and wouldn’t go straight and it made a horrid squealing, creaky sound and the trolley wouldn’t roll straight. We tried to carry on, but it was too difficult, so Einstein said we had to stop and repair it. As you can imagine, this led to more arguments, but Einstein insisted.

That is where we are and why I can write this down while I have a moment. Jackson and Daryl worked on the wheel. Jackson had brought some tools with her. She is very organized like that, and very good with her hands. She has been working on the trolley for nearly an hour now and all the while everyone else has been getting grumpier and grumpier and more and more nervous. We haven’t gone that far from where the dead bodies are still lying out in the sun. It would be easy for sickos to come up the ramps to where we are. Blue posted guards and look-outs everywhere, but everyone is well jumpy. There have been lots of false alarms.

I will stop writing now because I think Jackson has got the trolley sort of working. At least working well enough to push it along. I hope there are no more delays so I will write the next part when we get to the warehouse and stop. With the delay caused by mending the wheel, and the battle and the fact that we are going too slowly anyway because of the trolleys, we are more than two hours over schedule. I heard Blue saying to Einstein that he was worried that we might not get to Heathrow before it got dark and whether we should go back and try again another day when we would be better prepared, but Einstein said we should carry on or all that time and effort would have been wasted.

I hope, really hope we are going to get there in time and be able to go home today, although I am already quite tired of walking and we haven’t even come that far. Not very far, but the museum feels like a long way away, a million miles. I hope my friends there are all well and maybe they are wondering where we are and what we are doing and when they read this journal they will know.

23

At last it was growing dark. Shadows were creeping out of the corners in the museum, pooling like spilt oil. It had been a long day. Gripped by fever, his guts churning, Paul had sat in his den and waited, barely moving. Hot and cold at the same time, shivering, sweating, dribbling, burping – thick, caustic belches bubbling up his gullet like poison gas.

At least he hadn’t been troubled by Boney-M for a few hours. The little monster gave him a headache with his constant shouting. He’d rattled around for a while in the morning, limping and moaning, picking up crap in his beak, shaking it and dropping it, claiming that it was him that had made the new dangerous kids leave the museum, the little liar, and then he’d disappeared. It had been quiet up here since then. Just the sound of the wind gently probing, trying to get in. And every now and then distant thin voices would drift in through the cracks. Like insect voices. They’d tickle Paul’s mind then dissolve into silence. There had been a numb feel to the day, like nothing mattered. In the end even the wind had given up its nagging.

And Paul had waited, through the long, dull hours, and planned his move. Waited for when he could sneak down there and pick one of them off. A small one – a young one – too dangerous otherwise.

Couldn’t risk a fight.

Couldn’t go down there in the light either. Had to do it at night when he could think straight and there were more dark places to hide. If he left it too late, though, they’d all go into the minerals gallery and close the doors. He had maybe a half-hour window of opportunity. At dusk, when the light drained away and they all came strolling back from wherever they’d been working. They would gather in the main hall then move up to the gallery. He had to get one of them when they were on the move, defences down, looking forward to their beds.

Or in the toilet.

Yes. That was a possibility.

During the day the kids used some toilets Justin had had built outside. They’d been nicknamed the Dumper. Justin was very proud of his Dumper. The nerdy jerk. All their waste was collected in big stinky bins and emptied on to a midden, a great dunghill they’d started in some nearby gardens. They’d all sort of got used to the smell from the Dumper. But at night the kids couldn’t risk going outside and used some toilets just off the main hall instead, flushing them with grey waste water from their cooking and washing.

Maybe that was the best place to ambush one of them?

Yes. Time to move. Time to show Boney-M that he wasn’t useless.

Time to start his collection.

24

‘I’m supposed to be the head of security,’ said Robbie. ‘I can’t be stuck here. I’m useless. I could have helped the other night. But my leg …’

‘It’s all right,’ said Maeve, ‘we’re gonna sort that out,’ and she stuck a thermometer in his mouth.

‘Can you really fix it?’ Robbie asked, his words slightly muffled by the thermometer.

‘I can try,’ said Maeve. ‘It’s still sore, yeah?’

‘You could say that.’

They were in a small meeting room at the front of the museum, close to the minerals gallery, that the kids had set up as a sick-bay. Robbie was lying on a bed, covered by a sheet. Maeve was trying not to think too much about what she might find when they lifted that sheet.

‘I was helping Brooke,’ said Robbie. ‘Her and some friends of hers. Guy called DogNut, girl called Courtney and two other dudes, Felix and Marco …’

Robbie stopped and Maeve wiped some sweat off his forehead with a damp cloth. This was obviously a bad memory for him, but he needed to get it out, so Maeve let him talk.

‘We were escorting them to the Tower of London,’ he went on. ‘But we were ambushed.’

‘I know all about it,’ said Maeve. ‘I was there. Well, only after you’d got away. Brooke told me what happened.’

‘Yeah,’ said Robbie. ‘All the rest of them were killed, along with two of my team. We underestimated the sickos. If it wasn’t for Jackson and Ethan, who carried me back here, I’d be dead too.’

‘I know,’ said Maeve again, patiently. Robbie was slightly feverish, caught up in his own thoughts and nightmares.

There were kids in two of the other beds, sitting up, watching. A boy who’d been injured in the recent attack, and a girl who had some kind of stomach upset. Maeve had been brought here by Samira, who acted as one of the museum’s doctors. She was sitting on the opposite side of Robbie’s bed to Maeve, her hair tucked up inside a headscarf. Ella and Jibber-jabber were on hospital duty and sat on an empty bed watching. For once Jibber-jabber was quiet. Robbie looked very unwell and there was a hushed atmosphere in the room.

Samira had explained on the way over that Robbie had escaped being bitten, but his injuries were still bad and were proving slow to heal. He had a badly wrenched arm and a nasty gash in his other arm, but worst of all, apparently, was a puncture wound in his groin, on the inside of his thigh where his leg met his abdomen. As far as Samira could tell, one of Robbie’s friends had broken his sword in the fight and a sicko had got hold of a piece of blade that had snapped off. The pain as the sicko drove the metal into his body must have been awful and it had put Robbie completely out of action.