The Fallen (46 page)

And then he saw it. A small cupboard door, tucked under the stairs, too small for a person to fit through, surely. There was nothing else down here, though, and his air supply was rapidly running out. Already his lungs were filling with carbon dioxide again.

He yanked the door open and shone his torch inside. There
was
someone there – folded up in a bundle of skinny arms and legs. It was her. She stared at him with dead eyes … He was too late. She wasn’t moving.

And then she blinked. Coughed as the smoke got to her.

Ollie took hold of her and dragged her out, scraping her knees on the edge of the door frame. He crushed her face to his chest to protect her from the smoke.

‘Come on,’ he croaked, letting the air out of his lungs. ‘We’re going up.’

And up they went, as the lack of oxygen squeezed his head and made it ache appallingly, his vision swimming, his legs weak, not sure if he could make it, Lettis a deadweight in his arms.

He tripped. Hit the wall again. Wanted to stop. Let go. Sleep. No. Not yet. Go up. Carry her up. Don’t think about it. Keep moving …

And then there was fresh air, daylight. He let Lettis slip out of his arms and collapsed on to all fours, took in a great gulp of smoky air, coughed, retched, fell flat as a surge of dizziness shook him. He fought it off, spat the sick from his mouth and turned to Lettis, who was lying beside him, unmoving, her knees gripped tight to her chest, her face blank.

‘Are you all right,’ he wheezed, every word an agony as they scraped at his throat. ‘Are you alive?’

Lettis still didn’t move. She looked like she was staring at something a million miles away. But then Ollie felt a movement – something warm touching his hand – and her fingers twined round his and he broke down into tears of relief.

81

‘You let them live? You useless piece of bogweed. You stinking snivel. You turdburger …’

‘There were too many of them. The new ones. That girl.’ Paul was curled up in a ball on the floor at the top of the tower, right up under the pointed wooden roof, where the pigeons lived.

‘A girl?’ Boney-M shrieked. ‘A bloody girl? You let a girl beat you down? You are worse than I thought. You are the scrapings off the bottom of a sewage worker’s boot.’

‘Oh, shut up. I’ve got a headache. I can’t handle this now.’

‘You’ve always got a headache, because you’re a
girl
. And girls always have headaches. Little Pauline heady-achey. Little Pauline pissypants. Little Pauline …’

‘Shut up, I said! Shut up – shut up – shut up!’

He’d had to come up here to get away from the stench. Samira’s body was liquefying, turning black and melting into the floorboards, covered in blossoms of green mould, crawling with flies and maggots. The decay had accelerated after he’d cut her stomach open. He should never have done that. Let all that foulness out. Released the bacteria that lived in there. He couldn’t eat any more of her and he was getting hungrier and hungrier. He needed to eat again and
Boney-M wasn’t helping. All the filthy bird did was screech into his ear, his voice drilling into Paul, burning through his eardrum like acid. Mashing and mangling his brain so that he couldn’t think straight.

He itched all over, wanted to scratch his skin off, to let the heat out somehow, wanted to drive a spike into his brain and release the poison that was pooling inside his skull. The air pressed down on him; even the light seemed to want to get at him. It was drilling its way in through every window, every crack and gap. It hurt his eyes just thinking about it.

There was only one thought that eased the pain. The thought of fresh meat.

He had to go down there again. He had to find one he could catch, just a little one, even at the risk of being spotted. Because he had to eat and the only thing he could imagine eating was one of them. The thought was like a warm, safe spot deep in his heart. Deep in his guts.

He’d been so close last night. If that stupid girl hadn’t stopped him he could have dragged Cameron up here. Fresh meat. That’s all he wanted …

‘Fresh meat.’

‘What’s that? Did little Pauline pickle-dickle say something?’

‘I need fresh meat.’

‘Well. What’s stopping you, darling?’

‘Nothing.’

Paul sat up and licked his dry lips. He could hear Boney-M still shouting, but couldn’t see him, and it wasn’t only him: there were other voices, distant and small, hundreds of them, thousands, yammering, buzzing like bees, humming bees, jabbering out their nonsense.

He wished they would all just go away and leave him alone.

‘SHUT UP!’

He lifted his knife and slashed at the stale air, stabbing ghosts. He looked at the blade, flashing and shimmering. Held it close to his face. Sniffed it, taking in the sick smell of death. There was a faint red smear on the steel; he licked it off, tasting the harsh, metallic tang of the knife and the warm, electric jolt of iron in the blood sizzling through his tongue. Electric. Plugging him back in. Ready for action.

He moved slowly and carefully, out of the tower room, down the stairs and out across the roof. He crossed over the blue-grey expanse of tiles, loping along, stopping now and then to squint through the dirty windows, to catch sight of one of them – down there. Fresh meat.

He was a hunter. And if he didn’t kill he wouldn’t live.

82

‘We are the Twisted Kids. Twisted gits, the gifted twits!

We are the screwed-up, twisted kids.

Our life’s a joke, our legs are crap,

We try to walk but slip and slap.

You wouldn’t want to ask us round for tea …’

Skinner was up on the trolley, singing at the top of his voice.

They’d sat Lettis next to him. She wouldn’t walk, wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t react to anything. She just sat there, with that hopeless stare. Since she’d climbed down from the tower they’d had no other response out of her. She hadn’t even blinked when she’d seen Skinner and his friends from the warehouse, Trinity and Fish-Face. And now Skinner was trying to cheer her up.

It didn’t seem to be helping.

Skinner was enjoying himself, though. His voice rang out and was the only thing any of them could hear as they plodded along the wide expanse of the M4.

At first Ollie had wished he would be quiet. They needed to be able to listen for any signs of danger, to know if anything, or anyone, was nearby. And Skinner’s out-of-tune singing would be heard by every living thing
for miles around. But he’d got used to it, and was quite enjoying it now. At least Skinner’s singing meant they were still alive. Not beaten. Despite losing half their number.

God. What would the others say when they got back? Would they understand? It was worse for the museum crew, of course. They’d lost a lot of friends. Ollie had hardly known them really. And he hadn’t really been that close to Big Mick and Jake either, when it came down to it. They were with Blue. They’d only all linked up a couple of weeks ago. And …

Ollie grunted. Told himself not to be such a jerk. He knew what he was doing: trying to distance himself from what had happened so that it didn’t hurt so much.

He was walking along with Fish-Face and Trinity. Now and then Trinity mumbled a few words of the song and chuckled, but Fish-Face was as silent as Lettis. Ollie didn’t know what to make of her. She seemed so distant; her peculiar face was like a mask. Ollie couldn’t read her. Didn’t know if she was sad or happy, bored or what. Trinity seemed chatty enough, though.

Ollie had found out that Trinity actually had several names. As a whole, ‘they’ were called Trinity, but the boy part called himself Trey and the girl part called herself Trio. Three names. That was fitting. Ollie didn’t ask if the thing on their back had a name.

Trinity had four legs, two normal-sized ones and two short ones that they kept tucked up under their belly. The bodies were joined down the side, and as far as Ollie could tell they only had three arms. Trey and Trio bickered with each other the whole time and Ollie couldn’t imagine what it must be like being permanently joined
to someone like that. They worked efficiently enough, though.

Skinner was standing up now, the better to sing.

‘He always this noisy?’ Ollie asked as Skinner launched into a new verse.

‘Yeah,’ said the girl, Trio. ‘He gets bursts of, like, happiness, and then he gets long periods of being, like, down. And when he’s happy he sings. He’s not being disrespectful.’

‘We’re not used to other people,’ said the boy, Trey. ‘We never mixed. Never met anyone outside of our group. So we … well, we probably don’t feel about other people as deeply as we should. We’re quite turned in on ourselves. Only care about each other.’

‘Yeah,’ said Trio. ‘It’s like we know it was a bummer what happened to your friends, but … well, we’re free at least.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Ollie. ‘I hardly knew them, to be honest. Doesn’t really make it any better, though.’

‘Was it
bad
in there?’ said Trio.

‘Some of the worst I’ve seen,’ said Ollie. ‘We should have been there for them. Gonna have nightmares about this one long term. It was like falling. Out of control. I nearly lost it. Three times. I was attacked three times. Three times I nearly died. I was stupid.’

‘You’ll be safe now then,’ said Trey.

‘How do you mean?’

‘It’s the rule, haven’t you heard? The rule of three. Everything happens in threes. That’s how the universe rolls.’

‘Yeah? Not sure I’ve heard that one.’

‘He talks a lot of bollocks,’ said Trio. ‘He made the rule up. As a way of explaining how we got like this. Like we’re
important somehow. Part of God’s plan. Yeah, right, good one.
Special
. Massive cock-up more like.’

Ollie glanced down at Trinity’s legs, was impressed at how they worked together, not tripping over each other, in step. The two kids fitted round each other very well. If they even were an ‘each other’ and not one person …

‘We’re not a cock-up,’ said Trey. ‘We’re part of a grand tradition. The three wise men, the three musketeers, three blind mice, the three bears, the three little pigs, and us – the holy Trinity.’

‘Oh, stop there,’ said Trio. ‘You’re getting embarrassing, my little appendage. We have never even
begun
to be holy. Don’t ever say that, Trey. And don’t say
that
either.’

‘Say what?’

‘What you were just thinking. That was a well stupid thing to think.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Trey is full of it,’ said Trio. ‘But he’s right in one thing. We’ve spent too long by ourselves. We’ve had too long to think about stuff and now he’s making up mystical hogwash like it’s his own stupid religion. The mighty
rule of three
.’

‘I won’t be the only one to make up a religion,’ said Trey. ‘You’ll see. There’ll be three of us. Always comes in threes.’

‘He’s just saying that, you know,’ said Trio. ‘He’s got no actual proof.’

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Trey protested. ‘It’s the God’s own. I’ve observed it, and
you
will too. Everything works in threes. One-two-three O’Leary. So today is your lucky day. Three is your magic number. Three times you fell into the fire and three times you were rescued from the flames.
So, because you’ve nearly died three times, it can’t happen again.’

‘Yeah,’ said Trio. ‘Next time you’ll actually die.’

‘Cheers, that’s a nice thought,’ said Ollie.

‘Oh my gosh. This is awkward. That came out all wrong. I am
blushing
,’ said Trio. ‘Didn’t mean that. Sounded harsh.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Ollie. ‘We all do it. Make dark jokes. It’s that or flip out.’

‘Don’t you flip out on us,’ said Trey. ‘You are supposed to be taking us to a better place.’

‘I’ll do my best. But I’m not looking forward to trying to go to sleep tonight. I know when I close my eyes …’

‘We’ve all got bad films in our heads,’ said Trio. ‘Don’t think about it.’

‘I’m trying. So tell me, how does it work then?’ Ollie asked Trey. ‘Your rule of three?’

‘There’s three of everything in the world,’ said Trey. ‘Like the three of us.’