The Fallen (18 page)

She could lie about it. Say she’d forgotten.

Who would know the difference?

No.

She knew she couldn’t do it. She’d been brought up to be a good girl and always tell the truth. And, besides, it
wasn’t fair on Robbie. She turned and hurried back into the lab.

The toilet would have to wait.

Paul was moving in towards his prey. Slowly, slowly, carefully, carefully. Stay in the shadows. Try not to make any sound. When he was close enough he would show himself and that would be it.

End of.

He had to do this quickly and cleanly, and then get the body away as fast as he could. That would be the hardest part. The killing would be simple. The kid wouldn’t put up much of a fight.

He licked his lips. They were cracked and bleeding. He tasted his own blood. Sharp. Metallic. Alive. It zinged in his mouth and a wave of dizziness came over him. He closed his eyes for a moment, calming down, slowing his breathing. When he opened them again he cursed inwardly. Boney-M was there, lolloping across the floor.

Not now
, he wanted to say,
they’ll see you
.

Boney-M turned and fixed one glinting black eye on Paul. Like a shark’s eye. Cold and uncaring. It looked right through him.

‘Do it!’ the bird thing screamed. ‘Do it now!’

27

Jibber-jabber had heard a noise. A shuffling sound. Something scraping along a wall.

He was shaking all over, the toilet seat rattling under him. He was too scared to move, to pull up his trousers, to call for help.

He didn’t want to give himself away.

Where was Ella?

If only somebody would come. If only somebody else needed the loo. Then they’d come in. Rescue him. He’d never been a fighter. Had always relied on running away. He closed his eyes and felt tears squeeze out from under his eyelids.

This was a horrible way to die. Sitting on a stupid toilet. Horrible. Horrible.

Ella thought she heard something. Someone. Moving about in the dark places of the hall. She called out very quietly.

‘Who is that …?’ but there was no reply. She wanted to look, but had promised Jibber-jabber not to move. She wanted to hide. All his talk had made her scared. She’d been fine before. There had been too much happening to think about bad things. She wished Sam was here. They’d kept
each other going through the bad times. Looked after each other. She sent a sort of silent prayer out to him, wherever he was. To watch over her.

She froze.

There was definitely someone there.

But where could she hide?

If she moved they’d hear her. If she called out again …

Who was it?

Why were they creeping about like that?

Jibber-jabber sat there, eyes clamped shut, knees knocking together, feeling cold and dumb and terrified. He was on the verge of throwing up. The shuffling noise was coming ever closer. They’d sussed him out. They knew he was in there. If only he’d locked the cubicle door. His heart was thumping so hard he was sure they could hear it.

But there was hope, wasn’t there? Someone might still come. A bigger kid. Even one of the small kids. Anyone. It didn’t matter.

There was hope, there was …

The toilet door suddenly banged as it was pushed open and Jibber-jabber screamed.

Samira had managed to make herself not think about going to the toilet by concentrating on what she was doing. Searching for the box of sewing things …

And there it was! Neatly stored away in the new cabinet. A plastic tub labelled ‘needles and sewing stuff’. Alexander and Cass were mad keen on labelling things, organizing them. Why they couldn’t leave everything together in one place, she didn’t know. They didn’t know that much about medicine, weren’t particularly great at being doctors, and
still had a lot to learn before they would even come close to her, or Maeve. Maeve was amazing.

So maybe they organized stuff as a way of showing they had some kind of control. To try and convince everyone that they knew what they were doing.

They didn’t fool her. They were administrators. Management. They’d never be as good as her.

She picked up the box and elbowed the cabinet door shut.

Turned to go.

She made a sort of hiccoughing noise as she jumped in shock.

There was someone there.

She relaxed. It was a boy. He moved out of the shadows and she saw that it was Paul Channing.

He looked sick, red-eyed, his skin dry and peeling.

‘Paul,’ she said. ‘What are you doing? I nearly wet myself. Don’t ever do that again!’ And then a thought struck her. ‘Where have you been anyway? We looked everywhere for you. We thought the sickos had got you.’

He moved closer still, and his hand came up as if he was going to stroke her face. Samira frowned, and at the last moment Paul jerked his arm up quickly and punched her in the throat.

The stab was hard and deep. And then, with a sideways swipe, Paul’s knife tore through Samira’s windpipe and carotid artery. She choked and gurgled. Fell backwards, paralyzed by the shock. Her heart spasmed and froze and she crashed into a glass display case and then flopped to the floor.

As her heart stopped beating there was surprisingly little blood.

Paul leant over her, sniffed, checked she was dead.

He hadn’t expected it to be quite this easy.

He’d come in through the door that led from the roof terrace next to the laboratory café. He’d been intending to make his way to the exhibition hall, but had spotted Samira and changed his plan. It would be easy to drag her back out on to the roof and across to his den from here.

Boney-M waddled and flopped over, poked at the unmoving body with his long, hard, pointy beak.

‘I didn’t know you had it in you. Thought you had pisswater running in your veins.’

Paul kicked the bird aside.

‘Go away,’ he snarled. ‘This is my kill.’

Boney-M called him a string of dirty names and Paul booted him into the corner. Laughed as the bird fell apart in a jumble of bones and leathery bits of skin and oily feathers.

He’d show the bird who was boss. He’d show everyone.

He leant down and picked Samira up.

28

‘Ella? What the hell are you doing?’ Jibber-jabber was standing with his trousers round his ankles, shaking violently, anger and relief and embarrassment struggling to get the upper hand.

Ella burst into tears. ‘I heard something,’ she said. ‘I wanted to hide. I didn’t know where you were. I came in here. I didn’t want to shout out in case it heard me.’

‘What? In case
what
heard you?’

‘The thing, the thing out there, it was following me. It’s after me.’

Jibber-jabber pulled up his trousers.

‘We’re getting out of here.’

‘But it’s there. It’s out there.’

‘We’re going to run,’ said Jibber-jabber, his voice wobbly. ‘Back to the stairs and up to the gallery, and we’re going to yell and scream all the way and somebody’s going to help us. I’m not staying in this bloody toilet a moment longer.’

They stumbled out of the cubicle, Ella clinging on to his arm. The guttering tea light sent wild shapes leaping and skittering about the toilet. They stopped by the sinks. They could see something moving outside, approaching the open door, throwing a big shadow across the floor. Crawling, sniffing, inhuman.

‘Are you ready?’ Jibber-jabber whispered. ‘We’re going to run.’

‘I don’t like it … It’s coming towards us … It’s coming in …’

‘Get ready … we’ll barge it out of the way …’

‘No … I can’t …’

‘Now …!’

Godzilla stuck his furry face round the door and cocked his head to one side. He barked. In his relief Jibber-jabber relaxed his bowels and unclenched his buttocks and did what he had been unable to do for the last five minutes.

29

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.

SECond ENTRY: Evening.

After the repairs were mended, and Jackson had fixed the trolley, we carried on. People were nicer about Achilleus now and didn’t moan about him so much behind his back, as they had seen how well he could fight. It was the same with all the new children. My friends understood now that it was going to be dangerous, and without the new children we were going to be in trouble, so they had better just accept it and be grateful for the help. Of course it wasn’t a surprise to Jackson and some others who had seen the new children in action when they had arrived at the museum and fought off the sickos from the lower level. I was also in a fight at the museum when some sickos got into the library, but Chris Marker is writing down that story so I won’t write it down here as well, except I will say that it was frightening and made me more scared of sickos than I was before.

Sorry, this is getting long. The important thing that happened on the road was that everyone understood that without the people from Holloway we wouldn’t have been able to make this journey at all. Jackson is a good fighter, and some of the other museum people, but we don’t have enough good fighters who are experienced in fighting out on the streets. We all feel safer having Achilleus and Blue and Ollie and Big Mick and the others with us. And more than that. I have seen the way Jackson looks at Achilleus. It is my job to watch and notice things (which is why I am sorry I didn’t watch the battle). Jackson is jealous of him and wants to be able to fight as well as him. Maybe she fancies him a bit as well. She might have a chance. He is ugly and probably doesn’t have many girlfriends, and Jackson is not very pretty. I don’t mean to be mean, but it is the truth and I have to write the truth.

I hope if Jackson ever reads this she will understand that I am only writing what I see. I am not saying anything about her. I like her, but she is not one of the pretty girls. Maybe she and Achilleus should get together. They are well suited, with the fighting and the not being good-looking and everything. She walks next to him all the time. With poor little Paddy struggling along behind them. They talk all the time. I think mostly about fighting.

We were going even slower than before, but the road got a bit better as we went. It was all up high, elevated is the proper word, so no sickos could get on it and be where we were. We went past tall buildings and offices with logos on them, still with more good views over London, and I started to really realize that we were actually going a very long way and I don’t think I was the only one who was getting more nervous the further we went. We felt like a very small bunch of people in a very big place. We mostly stopped talking. As we got tireder and tireder, and the people pushing the trolleys got tireder, the journey got harder. The road seemed to stretch on forever in front of us.

I also realized that I think I must have driven along this motorway, the M4, before with my mum and dad because I have seen signs for the west. My Auntie Val used to live in Bath which I know is west, also there is a church group near Glastonbury we used to visit (also west), so we must have come this way I think. Also I know we have flown from Heathrow Airport. When we went to Corfu one time we flew from Heathrow. So I don’t know how many times I must have been along this road in the car. In the car you could do it really quickly, unless there was traffic, and you don’t really notice things in a car always. I probably never even looked out of the window to see where we were and what we were travelling past. When you walk you see everything and have time to study it. As I wrote before, it is a long way.