The Fallen (4 page)

‘OK. And then we’ll stay at the bottom. Guard the main hall.’ Jackson’s voice wasn’t what Achilleus had been expecting when he first saw her. She was posh. Like a private school kid. Didn’t look like one, though. Looked like a bloke, to be honest.

She was staring at him, her lumpy potato face barely visible in the half-light. It was like she was waiting to say something, or for him to say something. He realized the two of them were alone; the others had moved down the stairs. All except for Paddy, who stood there, slowly drooping under the weight of the golf-bag.

Let him droop.

And let her wait. He had nothing to say to her. Except …

‘So what are you waiting for?’

‘Nothing.’

Jackson led them back down to the next level.

Bloody girls …

4

Dinosaurs … why did it have to be dinosaurs?

The gallery was stuffed with them, filling every space – fossils of complete dinosaurs, bits and pieces of others, heads, claws, teeth, models, toys, pictures. There were dinosaurs trapped in cases, leaning over them, hanging from the ceiling, up on platforms, peering round corners … The route through the gallery was on two levels: the ground floor and a raised steel walkway that snaked overhead. The route had been designed to weave past every exhibit, and in the near dark, lit by leaping candlelight and the jittery criss-crossing of torch beams, it had become a confusing maze, like some spooky fairground attraction, made all the more disconcerting by the jagged, skeletal shapes of the dinosaurs.

They weren’t the worst part, though.

As far as Maxie could tell, there were about twenty-five mothers and fathers in there. She couldn’t be sure, what with the kids running around and the busy jumble of exhibits, but there seemed to be adults everywhere. She could feel the sickly heat coming off their bodies. Smell that familiar sweet-and-sour stink. Hear them wheezing and shuffling and moaning. They weren’t particularly aggressive, but they were scared and cornered and fought
desperately when attacked. They’d split into little packs of three or four, and Maxie’s team had split up as well, losing all their discipline in the labyrinth.

Maxie had Big Mick with her and two of his crew from Morrisons, as well as a boy and girl from the museum. She hadn’t known Big Mick long, but it was long enough to know that, though he wasn’t too clever, he was big and he was reliable. Knew how to handle himself in a fight.

The museum kids were a different story. They weren’t a lot of use, except for holding the torches and lighting their way. Whenever they came across a knot of grown-ups trying to hide, the local kids would shrink back while Maxie and Mick and his boys cut into the adults with their weapons, hacking and jabbing them until they stopped moving. The museum kids seemed shocked by the violence, but Maxie just wanted it over, and the more aggressive and merciless they were, the better. She didn’t like it in here with the dinosaurs. If she let them into her mind she’d be a little kid again, screaming to be let out.

She finished off a young mother with hair so fine it looked like candyfloss, driving the point of her spear right through her neck, but then slipped on her blood as it sprayed on to the floor. She tried to right herself and flailed with her free hand for something to hold on to. She felt a stab of panic. A burning sensation like acid rose up her gullet. It was silly mistakes like these that finished you. She grabbed hold of the cold, hard leg of some stupidly tall fossil and saw a movement, something coming fast round the corner towards her; she was still teetering, fighting to stay upright, and she lunged towards the movement, letting her momentum right her. At the same time she brought her spear arcing up.

Then pulled it back just in time.

It was a kid, one of the fighters from the museum, running the wrong way. Maxie swore at him, but saw that he was crying, his face wobbly with fear. Whether that was because he was running away from something or because he had nearly been impaled on Maxie’s spear, she didn’t know, and didn’t much care.

‘You idiot,’ she snapped. ‘I could have killed you.’

The boy didn’t say anything. Just kept on moving, pushing past Maxie, who now saw what had spooked him.

Three big fathers wearing nothing but filthy underpants. They were fatter than the others, their skin studded all over with lumps and yellow-crusted spots, bulging where they shouldn’t be bulging. One was missing both his ears; the other two had tongues so swollen they squeezed out of their mouths.

They were going too fast to stop and, as Maxie clumsily thrust her spear at the one in front, all three of them careened into her, knocking her painfully against the dinosaur skeleton.

She gasped and went down under the weight of them. Luckily Big Mick had seen what was happening and came at the fathers from the side, jabbing at them with short, hard movements, being careful not to hit Maxie, who was somewhere in the tangle of bodies that was writhing on the floor.

One father got up and reached out for a museum girl who was cowering by a glass cabinet, too startled to defend herself. Big Mick’s focus was shifted from trying to rescue Maxie, and he aimed his spear at the father’s kidneys, plunging it into the soft flesh of his lower back.

Maxie was struggling to get up. She was covered in bodily
fluids from the three fathers and the dead mother with the candyfloss hair and trying not to think about it. She’d been sick as well, so some of the filth was from her own stomach. She was furious. Furious with herself for having been caught so easily, and furious with the grown-ups for catching her. She’d dropped her spear, and the museum boy who’d been holding the torch was nowhere to be seen. In the dark Maxie didn’t have a clue where her weapon might be. So she lashed out with her fists, battering at the fathers.

For a couple of minutes she was in the centre of a vicious hand-to-hand fight in the dark. Punching soft, stinking flesh, gouging with her fingernails, kicking, elbowing, butting, shouting her lungs out, her nostrils filled with the rancid stink of them. Sweating from the heat they were giving off, their skin slippery and greasy. And then there was a shout. A light shining in her face …

More kids were arriving. It was the rest of her team. Between them, they managed to deal with the fathers and it was quickly over. The kids stood in a circle, panting and heaving. The museum boy had disappeared. The girl was hurt, but not too badly.

Maxie was still furious, though.

‘Where you all been?’ she snapped at her crew, even though it wasn’t their fault the local kids had run away.

‘We was chasing a big pack of them,’ said one of Mick’s boys. ‘They moved into another bit of the museum. We was after them when we heard you shouting.’

So it wasn’t over yet. They had to regroup and press on.

Maxie groaned, feeling the pain in her back where she’d been rammed up against the fossil.

Bloody dinosaurs …

Down on the lower level Blue’s squad were gradually driving a clump of grown-ups back along a dark corridor. Boggle and another museum kid stayed at the rear, shining their torches ahead. All Blue was aware of were white faces, gaping mouths, wide, frightened animal eyes, bony fingers held up for protection. And fingers didn’t offer any protection at all. Blue drove steadily forward. Spears held the grown-ups at bay, clubs battered them down, knives finished them off. Gradually the kids were reclaiming the corridor, stepping over fallen bodies as they went, leaving a bloody carpet behind them. One of Blue’s team stayed at the back, stabbing down with his spear at any grown-ups who still lived.

They reached a large door and Boggle cried out that that was enough.

Blue didn’t want to stop. All his anger and fear and frustration had surged up from where he kept it nailed down deep in his guts. He wanted to press on, slaughtering the grown-ups, wanted to press on until every grown-up in the world was dead. He was filled with a burning blood fever. A sick drive to keep on killing. Boggle held him back.

‘This is the door,’ Boggle said. ‘If we lock it then this corridor’s sealed off. We’re safe.’

‘Safe?’ Blue spat the word out.

‘You don’t have to kill any more,’ said Boggle. Blue looked at him; even though Boggle hadn’t been in the front rank his face was spotted with blood, and there was pus in his hair, probably from when Blue had smacked a grown-up in the face and his head had seemed to explode. There was blood and clumps of hair and bits of flesh stuck to the walls all down the way they had come. Blue fought the urge to be sick. His arms were sore. His head ached. He
had only just recovered from the concussion he’d got when a wooden shack had collapsed on him a couple of days ago. He had no idea what damage he might do if he pushed himself too hard.

He let it go. Felt his shoulders sag as the fight went out of him. Boggle and his friends were locking the door, shutting the remaining grown-ups in the darkness on the other side.

‘Tomorrow we’ll come back and finish what we started,’ Blue said. ‘Clear the whole place out. You can’t live with these creeps down here.’

‘It’s too big,’ said Boggle. ‘We can’t patrol the whole museum …’

‘No. You listen.’ Blue’s voice was hoarse and croaky, his throat dry. ‘We’ve got to do it properly. You hear me? Once and for all. We’ll flush them out, then arrange regular patrols, inside and out. You got to be serious about it. You lost friends tonight. You don’t want to lose any more. And you also got to find out how these doors got open.’

‘OK. But that’s enough for tonight. This is the last door. No more, yeah?’

‘No more.’

‘The lock doesn’t look damaged,’ said one of Boggle’s boys. ‘I reckon someone must have definitely unlocked it.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Boggle. ‘Why would anyone do that?’

‘Someone don’t like you,’ said Blue.

‘But who?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’m new here myself.’

‘Blue,’ said Boggle, his voice wavering again. He lowered his torch so that nobody could see that he was crying.

‘What?’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it. Seems all we do lately is other people’s dirty work.’

‘I hope you’ll stay. We need people like you.’

‘We’ll stay. Least for a while. We ain’t got no other home to go to.’

‘This can be your home now.’

Yeah
, thought Blue,
nice place
. There was a thump and a wail from the other side of the door. Blue kicked the door and swore loudly.

Bloody grown-ups …

Achilleus was sitting on the main stairs at the back of the central hall, Jackson on one side, Paddy the Caddie on the other, the rest of their team spread out behind him. They’d found no grown-ups anywhere on the upper levels and had checked that any connecting doors were securely locked. He was actually enjoying doing nothing. Letting others do the blood, sweat and tears for a change. His wounds hurt a whole lot more than he wanted to let on. He needed painkillers. And sleep.

He grinned as kids started to drift back from the green zone. Lewis strolled over, his spear slung over his shoulder, eyes half closed.

‘Didn’t find nothing,’ he said, scratching his messy Afro. ‘Just one crump old mother what couldn’t hardly even stand up. Brap! She won’t never stand no more. RIP mum. Apart from that, zeros, dude. We’ve went through all the galleries, shining our light into, like, every gap and behind every dead animal. All we’ve seen was bugs, birds and old bones. You?’

‘Nothing,’ said Achilleus. ‘Looks like I’m having the night off.’

At that there was a shout and several museum kids came running through from the blue zone.

‘They need help,’ one of them yelled. ‘There’s too many of them!’

Lewis looked at Achilleus, who grunted and hauled himself to his feet. Tried not to wince as he set off at a slow jog.

The night wasn’t over yet.

5

Maxie’s team had got stuck. Weren’t sure what to do. They’d chased some grown-ups through the corridors of the museum, past a load of stuffed bears and lions and bats. And then they’d run straight into a second, larger group that were coming the other way. In the chaos and near-panic, she’d ordered her kids through a big door into another gallery where they were now bottled up in the tight spaces between exhibits, unable to get back to the door.