The Fallen (24 page)

The five of them had been sitting here for what felt like
hours while the museum kids trooped in and took it in turns to sit on the other side of the table and answer their questions. The idea was that they were going to find out who the traitor was. That’s what they were calling him or her –
the traitor
.

Only they hadn’t got anywhere, had they? Big surprise. It was the same every time. Nobody knew anything, they’d all been together the evening of the big attack, nobody liked to go anywhere alone, they were too scared … ‘I was with so-and-so, we went there together, I helped such and such a person when the sickos came …’

Maxie supposed it was quite a good way to get to know people, but after a while, as she got tireder and hungrier, the kids all began to merge into each other and become the same person.

One single frightened child.

Unless they were the greatest actors in the world, not one of them seemed capable of opening those doors, letting the sickos in, watching their friends get attacked and killed. Not one of them had a motive.

She wished Blue was there. He had a good bullshit detector. Maxie had grown up trusting people, believing them when they told her things, thinking the best of people. Blue was the opposite. He didn’t believe anyone, didn’t trust anyone, thought the worst of people. You had to prove it to Blue when you said something. He’d have surely worked out by now who the traitor was.

If there even was a traitor.

All Maxie had to look forward to was a long afternoon interrogating the rest of the kids.

‘Can we have a break?’ Maeve asked. ‘Robbie looks knackered.’

She was looking at the boy. Wasn’t too happy about him being here either.

‘I’m fine,’ Robbie said and took a sip of water, his hand trembling slightly.

‘I wouldn’t mind getting out of here and grabbing some fresh air as well, actually,’ said Maxie.

‘All right,’ said Justin. ‘Don’t be too long.’

Maeve and Maxie walked downstairs and out into the sunshine.

‘It’s like doing exams or something,’ said Maxie.

‘Oh, don’t,’ said Maeve as they settled down on the steps. ‘There are some things about the old life I don’t miss one bit.’

The main road on the other side of the fence was empty. In fact, since clearing out the lower level, Maxie hadn’t seen a single grown-up. If it wasn’t for the weirdness of Samira disappearing it would have felt pretty safe and secure in the museum.

A group of kids was working on the vegetable patches, checking for weeds and pests. Maxie recognized some of them from the interviews.

‘But this new life,’ said Maeve, ‘it’s killing me, Maxie.’

‘We just have to make the museum safe.’ Maxie leant back and turned her face up to the sun.

‘It’ll never be safe,’ said Maeve. ‘It’ll never be safe as long as we stay in the city. We’ll never be anything more than scavengers, fighting among ourselves because there’s not enough to go round, scared and hiding from the grown-ups. We need to get out of town and into the countryside.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ said Maxie, who’d heard Maeve’s arguments about leaving town before. ‘There’s everything the dead left behind. We’ve done all right scavenging.’

‘We can’t just live like parasites,’ said Maeve. ‘In the countryside we could properly grow our own food. And there’ll be a lot less grown-ups around. We should have gone months ago.’

‘Yeah,’ said Maxie. ‘It’ll be paradise.’

‘Nowhere’s going to be paradise,’ said Maeve. ‘I’m not saying that. But we’ll never properly start to rebuild things if we stay here. It’s like when the Romans left Britain. The British people didn’t know what to do with the towns and cities. They were like us, like kids. They returned to the countryside, left the buildings to rot and went back to their farms.’

‘What do we know about being farmers?’ said Maxie. ‘It’s not like Farmville, you can’t just click on a few keys and have a load of cute cows filling up your fields.’

‘There’ll be other kids out there. They’ve had a year to set up farms.’

‘Oh yeah, and they’ll be well pleased when we tip up and want half their food.’

‘Anything’s better than this,’ said Maeve.

‘It’s gonna be all right,’ said Maxie.

Just then something rattled next to her and she saw some bits of stone falling to the ground. She twisted round and looked up, squinting against the bright sky. Thought she maybe saw a movement high up on the roof, a dark silhouette. It was quickly gone.

Just a pigeon probably.

Everything was going to be all right.

39

Loser. Noob. Useless twat.

Big Mick wanted to kick himself in the arse. He’d always been like this. Scared of the sight of blood. Not other people’s blood. He didn’t mind that.

His own blood.

Just the thought of it made his head shrink in on itself and he’d go all dizzy and nauseous and pathetic. One time he’d had to give a blood sample. He’d made the mistake of watching the nurse stick the needle in his arm, saw the little plastic tube fill up with dark blood. It was like all the air had been sucked out of him. The next thing he knew he was waking up in the chair with his mum and the nurse staring at him. His mum looking worried. The nurse was smiling, virtually laughing at him.

Didn’t like hospitals. Didn’t like nurses. Didn’t like doctors.

He’d grabbed Blue as they were getting ready to head deeper into the building. His heart had been thumping and he’d hoped he could talk without tripping over his words. He had to stay on top of things.

‘Don’t you think we need someone to stay here and keep a look-out?’ he’d said, pleased that his voice hadn’t let him down. Blue had shrugged.

‘Maybe. Dunno.’

‘What if more grown-ups rock up?’ Mick pressed on. ‘Try to get in behind?’

‘Could happen.’

‘I’ll stay if you want.’

‘Yeah? You sure?’

‘Yeah. I’ll keep my three guys. We’ll watch your back.’

‘Cool. Don’t reckon we’ll be long.’

Blue had clapped him on the shoulder then turned and joined the rest of the group. Soon they’d gone. Disappeared down a corridor next to the reception desk. It felt very still and quiet without them.

Now Mick was sweating in a chair. If he’d had to stand up any longer his legs would have given out, they were trembling so much.

Why was he such a loser?

He could mash grown-ups into the ground and knock their eyes out, slit their poxy bellies open, didn’t bother him one bit. But his own blood. I mean, it wasn’t as if the cut on his arm he’d got from whacking the grown-up in the mouth was even that bad, but there was this little waggling flap of skin, and a smear of blood up his arm and …

He closed his eyes, feeling faint again. Felt acid rising in his throat and choked it down.

Useless loser.

He’d got away with it, though, hadn’t he? Made it look like he was being a hero. Guarding their rear. That was good thinking. And he’d be all right in a few minutes. The tingling sensation in his head would pass. Maybe he could go out and scope the area, walk the perimeter, do something useful. They really did need someone to watch their backs …

What if he’d got an infection, though?

He couldn’t stop himself. Pictured germs inside him. Little tendrils spreading out from the wound, worming their way through his body. Down his arm to his fingers, then going all round his body, carried in his blood, carried to his heart, his lungs, his brain.

Didn’t want that. Didn’t want to go nuts.

Nobody really knew if a grown-up’s bite could infect you with their sickness, like in zombie films. Most kids died pretty quickly if they got bitten, but there was no way of knowing if they died from some random infection or from the grown-up’s disease itself.

Funny how nobody had given it a proper name. It was just the sickness.

The disease.

Mick knew all about diseases. The one thing he didn’t want was to die of blood poisoning. His little brother, Ant, had got it and it had nearly killed him. Septicaemia, the doctors had called it. Sepsis. Mick would never forget those words. What happened was Ant had got the flu, and then he’d got a toothache. Silly sod never cleaned his teeth properly, drove Mum mad. He got some kind of abscess under the tooth, down in the gum. A nasty rotten hole full of pus. The doctors said the bacteria had got out of the abscess and into Ant’s blood, and he was too weak from the flu to fight it off. They only worked all this out afterwards.

At the time they thought his symptoms were all just from the flu. He started shivering, his temperature went through the roof, he started panting like a dog, and then he went crazy. Spouting all this mixed-up babble. Mick had thought it was funny at first, before he’d got seriously freaked out by it.

It was only when Ant started fainting that Mick’s mum thought to take him back to the doctor. Then it was all go. They rushed him to the hospital and stuffed him full of tubes and drips, pumped antibiotics into him.

Nope. Didn’t like hospitals. Didn’t like nurses. Didn’t like doctors.

Ant nearly died. The whole family was there, round his bed in the Whittington Hospital, watching him as he took little tiny quick breaths, his whole body shaking and shivering. Sweat pouring off him. Occasionally he’d come round and look frightened and shout some nonsense. Mum had wanted to get a priest in. In the end, though, it hadn’t come to that. Ant had fought the sepsis for three days and then it passed, the fever broke, the drugs kicked in, killed the bacteria and settled him down. Mum hugged the doctor. Mick had never really known what bacteria were before. But he’d hung around the hospital long enough to learn all about it. He’d even looked it up on Wikipedia. He wanted to know all about it so that
he
didn’t get septicaemia, or any of the other illnesses bacteria could give you.

He found out that bacteria are tiny living organisms, and they’re everywhere. They live in your gut, and on your skin, and in the ground. Forty million of them in a single gram of soil. A thousand million of them in a litre of fresh water. They were so small you couldn’t see them, but they were in everything, and if you piled them all up in one place they’d weigh more than all the other plants and animals on the planet put together.

When it came to the ones in Ant’s blood, the doctors had settled their hash, though. Wiped them out. Napalmed them with antibiotics. Saved poor Ant. Well, there were no doctors now, no one to fix you if the bad
bacteria got inside you. If you got the sepsis you were dead meat.

What if Mick had septicaemia now? What if there were tiny little creatures infecting him? His arm felt suddenly itchy and he manically scratched away at it, being careful not to scrape his bandage off. Was he hot? Feverish? Or was it just warm in here? His feet felt cold. He was shaking a bit.

Sod it. It couldn’t happen this quickly. He was all right. Just imagining his worst nightmares. It wasn’t bacteria that had got in him – it was fear.

How do you tell your stupid brain to shut up? It was just a scratch. Don’t be such a baby.

He took a long, slow breath. Tried to calm down. If he was still feeling jittery in a while he’d take the other three outside. Much better to be doing something rather than just sitting on his arse worrying about shit.

40

Jackson was sticking close to Achilleus. It had felt like something real when they’d both attacked that father together, hadn’t it? A moment. They hadn’t said anything to each other, just moved fast. One mind. Got the sucker from both sides. Surely Achilleus had noticed? The way they’d worked together. Surely he’d seen that she was more than just some museum nerd? Surely he could tell? But he was hard to get through to, with his gnarly head all chewed up, his manner like nothing mattered. His swagger. Like he could deal with anything and was laughing at you the whole time. She’d never known how to be with boys. Always said the wrong things, did the wrong things. Tried to impress them by doing something extreme, dangerous, wild, something she thought was cool or funny but they always thought was stupid and weird. It was OK when she was just hanging out, being their mate. She’d always had lots of friends who were boys, just no boyfriends. She wished it wasn’t important to her, wished she didn’t care. Why did it matter whether she had a boyfriend, whether boys even liked her?