‘We’ve closed down the red zone and the orange zone, so this part of the museum’s sealed off from the rest, but it’s still pretty big. There’s the whole of the blue zone and the green zone. We’ll need one group to go upstairs, two more to search this floor, taking one zone each, and another group to go down and lock the lower-level doors. That’ll be the hardest bit. Don’t know what to expect down there.’
Blue stepped forward.
‘I’ll go down,’ he said, ‘but someone’s gonna have to show us the way.’
Jackson put her hand on the shoulder of the boy next to her.
‘Boggle,’ she said, ‘you go with him. You know the lower level best.’
The boy they called Boggle nodded. Maxie did a quick check of who was left.
‘Big Mick,’ she said. ‘You and me are going to take one squad and cover the left side of this floor.’
‘That’s the blue zone,’ Jackson explained.
‘OK.’ Maxie was working now, all tiredness forgotten. ‘Lewis,’ she said, ‘you take the other side, the green zone. Jackson, we’ll need some of your guys to help us.’
‘Take as many as you want.’
‘What about me?’ said Achilleus.
‘Escort Brooke and Whitney and the rest to the safe area,’ said Maxie. ‘Then carry on up to the top, work your way down from there and join up with us when it’s all clear.’
‘Is gonna be bare quiet up there,’ Achilleus protested.
‘That’s the point. You’re hurt, Akkie.’
‘It ain’t so bad.’
‘Even so. You’ve done enough fighting for one night.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Jackson said to Achilleus.
Achilleus looked her up and down, getting the measure of her, and then slowly nodded his head.
‘Cool,’ he said.
‘We need to get the main doors shut,’ said Ollie. ‘Stop any more from getting in.’
‘Let’s chuck these bodies out first,’ said Maxie. ‘If you’re sure none of them are yours, Jackson.’
‘Get rid of them,’ said Jackson.
‘I’m on it,’ said Ollie and his team immediately went to work dragging bodies across the black and white tiled floor towards the doors.
Blue came over to Maxie.
‘So you in charge now, are you, girl?’ he said, half smiling.
‘You gotta keep up,’ said Maxie. ‘You’re just too lazy. You keep slacking like this, we’ll have to put you back to bed.’
‘We’ll see.’ Blue shot her a look and walked over to Jackson.
‘What’s the name of this kid who’s taking us down?’ he asked.
‘Boggle,’ said Jackson, and when she clocked Blue’s mystified expression she explained. ‘He’s got a Polish name, something unpronounceable with loads of consonants and no vowels. Justin nicknamed him Boggle, after the word game.’
‘Don’t know it,’ said Blue. ‘But he’s OK, yeah?’
‘Sure.’
Blue strode over and clapped Boggle on the shoulder. He was a big, chunky kid with stubbly hair so pale you couldn’t tell where his skin ended and his hairline began. He was armed with a thin sword covered in fancy inlaid decoration. The end had snapped off.
‘You do much damage with that toy of yours?’ Blue asked.
‘Is better than nothing.’
‘Maybes. You ready for this?’
Boggle shrugged.
‘Good. Let’s go then, hench. Get this party over.’
3
Boggle led the way to the back of the hall, past the giant diplodocus, its immense long neck stretching out above them, and through an archway that supported one side of the main staircase. A smaller area here had served as one of the museum cafés; there were still tables and chairs laid out. Boggle went over to an ordinary-looking door that opened into an equally ordinary corridor, obviously part of the museum that had been closed to the public. He took a torch out of his pocket and switched it on. Blue did likewise.
‘The lower level was for museum staff only,’ Boggle explained as they walked down the corridor. ‘It was used for storage and that. It’s not all underground, there’s windows in some walls.’
They reached another door. Boggle went to open it and stopped. His hand was shaking where it rested against the scratched paintwork. He was steeling himself to carry on.
‘You see, when we first arrived here?’ he said. ‘The whole place was crawling with sickos. Reckon most of them were people who used to work here. We couldn’t clean half of them out. The place is too big. Is like a maze of corridors and hidden rooms down there. So we left them to it. Made all the galleries safe and locked the doors so that they couldn’t get up here where we were.’
‘You’ve been living with them underneath you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How’d they get in and out?’ Blue asked.
‘Through the windows mostly. We do what we can, try and block any holes from the outside during the day, but they still get in.’
‘OK, open up,’ said Blue. ‘Let’s see what you got down there.’
Boggle did as he was told and the kids nervously headed into the stairwell.
Jackson, meanwhile, was leading her party up the main stairs, past the white marble statue of Charles Darwin sitting happily in his stone chair, oblivious to what was going on around him. Achilleus stayed next to her. He had a round shield slung across his back and carried a sharpened metal spike for a spear. The end had been broken and the shaft was scraped and dented. It looked like he’d recently been in a fight. He was as bashed about as his spear. His chin was cut and bruised, one ear bandaged, and there were spots of blood across the front of the old T-shirt he was wearing. It had a logo on it for the Sarajevo Olympics. He moved with some difficulty and was obviously in some pain. Despite his injuries, he carried himself with a certain confident swagger. He had a razor-cut pattern in his hair and was pretty well a textbook bad boy, the sort Jackson’s mother had always warned her about.
The sort she’d always liked.
They walked along the upper balcony, where the stuffed apes were. She expected some of the younger kids to say something, to make a joke, but she figured they were probably pretty spooked by the turn the night had taken. Only one of them spoke up, the little guy who was lugging the golf-bag full of weapons and who stuck close to Achilleus like a dog.
‘I never been here before,’ he said in a broad Irish accent. ‘I like animals.’
‘You come in here, they’d have to put you on show in a case, Paddy,’ said Achilleus. ‘With all the other monkeys.’
The little boy laughed.
‘That’s right. You said it.’
They soon reached the iron gates at the end of the balcony that closed off the minerals gallery. They were firmly closed and there were pale faces pressed up against the metalwork, fingers gripping the bars.
‘What’s going on?’ said a voice.
‘We come to rescue you,’ said Achilleus. ‘Open up.’
‘We’re not unlocking these gates,’ said another voice.
‘Do as he says,’ said Jackson wearily. ‘They’re friends.’
She heard a rattle of keys, a clank, and the gates swung open. The big girl, Whitney, took most of the kids inside and Jackson was left with Achilleus, Paddy and seven of her team.
‘We climbing,’ said Achilleus, and he looked up towards the roof.
Maxie was helping Ollie’s team drag the last of the dead grown-ups out through the front doors. There was a dark smear across the tiles. She took the body to the wide, shallow steps at the front and hauled it down, its head bumping as they went. She was too pumped up to feel frightened. She had a job to do and that was all. She knew she’d pay for it in the morning. She’d be exhausted and moody and short-tempered, but if they could clear the museum tonight then she could sleep all week if she wanted. Hell, she had no right to be tired. She’d spent most of the last day lying in bed. She supposed it was the stress that took it out
of you, though.
She dumped the body with the others at the bottom of the steps and went back inside where she helped one of the museum kids secure the doors.
‘So we’ve got the blue zone, yeah?’ she said to him. ‘Talk me through it.’
‘It’s about ten rooms. Half of them are locked, though, so we shouldn’t need to check them.’
‘OK. And the others?’
‘Two main corridors. And the mammals gallery, human body and dinosaurs.’
Oh great. Just great …
Blue’s party had already met two grown-ups halfway down the stairs to the lower level, wandering, confused. They didn’t look too dangerous, more scared than anything, pale and thin and weak. They’d somehow got through the doors and now didn’t really know what to do. Blue wasn’t in the mood to show them any mercy, though. He wanted this night over. He wanted to sleep in peace.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said, holding Boggle back, and clubbed the grown-ups to the floor. Then smashed their skulls against the steps.
‘We’ll collect the bodies later. Try and remember where they’re lying.’
At the bottom of the stairs they found three more grown-ups, but these ones were already dead. There was the body of a young girl lying with them; they’d obviously dragged her down here before they killed her.
Blue shone his torch both ways down a long straight corridor. Pipework, wiring and strip lighting ran along the ceiling; ancient filing cabinets, piles of boxes and junk lined the walls.
‘How far to the doors we need to lock?’ Blue asked.
‘There’s a sort of crossroads to the right,’ said Boggle. ‘A door there.’
‘And the other way?’
‘About the same distance that way. There’s a T-junction. Another door.’
Boggle’s voice sounded hoarse, and there was a catch in it. Blue shone his torch in his face. Boggle was crying.
‘You all right?’
‘Not really, no.’ Boggle looked at the dead girl. ‘She was called Emma. She was a friend of mine.’
‘Sorry. You cool to carry on?’
‘Yeah. Don’t want anyone else to get hurt. We need to fix this up.’
‘Good man.’ Blue held out his hand and locked wrists with Boggle. Boggle took a deep breath and swallowed hard.
‘I’m with you, mate,’ said Blue and they crept down the corridor side by side, Blue’s troops sticking close behind them. After about thirty metres they came to where another identical corridor branched off to the right.
They found two lads of about thirteen crouching there in the dark. They were staring off along the corridor towards an open door and nearly jumped as high as the ceiling when Blue’s team stumbled on them.
Once they’d got over their shock they looked hugely relieved to see Boggle.
‘What’s happening?’ Boggle asked.
‘There’s loads of them down there,’ said one of the boys, who was clutching a short ornamental sword like Boggle’s. It was splashed with blood. ‘We don’t dare go any further.’
‘We got to lock that door,’ said Boggle.
‘We ain’t going no further. No way, Boggle.’
‘Any idea what happened tonight?’ Boggle asked the boys.
‘Don’t know. We checked all the doors earlier. They was fine. But maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we mucked up. Maybe it’s our fault. That’s why we came down here. And then our candle burned out and we were stuck in the dark.’
‘We checked them all at nine o’clock,’ said the other boy. ‘Just like always. Even though Robbie’s not around. They was all locked. We’re sure of it.’
‘We found Jason,’ said the first boy.
‘Who’s Jason?’ asked Blue.
‘He’s on one of the other security teams,’ said the boy. ‘He also checks the doors. We found his body, what was left of it, half eaten. God knows how, but all the doors are open …’
Blue looked at the frightened faces of the boys. Somebody here had either been careless or crazy, but finding out the answer to that would have to wait till later; right now they had to deal with the grown-ups.
‘Looks like you got a war on your hands,’ said Blue.
‘Don’t I know it,’ said Boggle.
‘So come on,’ said Blue. ‘Let’s win it …’
Achilleus was staring at a cross section of a giant sequoia tree that was fixed to the wall at the very top of the museum. It must have been five or six metres wide. The sign next to it said it was thirteen hundred years old when it was cut down. Thirteen hundred years was a very long time. Like Paddy, Achilleus had never been to the museum before, would have sneered at the idea, but since the disease, since everything had changed, he’d found himself thinking about the world a lot more than he ever used to. Thinking about life and death and time and history. His dad had loved history. Was obsessed by the History channel. And here was this tree that had lived through it all. The Middle Ages, the discovery of America, the Napoleonic Wars, both world wars …
‘There’s nothing up here,’ said Jackson.
‘’Cept this tree,’ said Achilleus and Jackson laughed.
‘Don’t think that’s going to attack us,’ she said.
Achilleus turned to her and smiled. ‘Could fall off the wall and merkolate us.’
‘Could do.’
‘We ought to check the opposite side from where we came up, I guess,’ said Achilleus.
‘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 o
f 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.