But it was too late. A third, smaller, group of sickos now appeared from the opposite side of the road. The kids had fallen into a trap. Distracted by the four lone sickos, they’d let themselves get surrounded. There must have been at least twenty-five sickos ringing the group of ten kids. More than two against one. Not the worst odds, particularly as the sickos weren’t armed, but the chances of getting out of this fight unhurt were slim.
DogNut hawked up a big green gob of phlegm and spat it on the ground.
If only he hadn’t hesitated. If only he’d ordered them all to run while there was still time. No chance of that now. Not until they’d broken out of this ring of grown-ups.
‘Stick together,’ he shouted. ‘We need to punch our way through.’
But Robbie’s gang either hadn’t heard or were ignoring him, because they charged forward without waiting for DogNut and the others. They hacked down a couple of fathers but were immediately swamped by half the remaining sickos.
Now was DogNut’s chance. There was a big gap in the ring. He could easily get through.
Only that would mean abandoning Robbie.
No. Not again. Nobody was going to call him a coward. He was a hero, wasn’t he?
‘Help them!’
He ran at the sickos, sword swinging through the air. He took one out, but had to be careful in case he cut any of his friends. Courtney joined him, stabbing at the grown-ups with her spear. Brooke dithered, holding back, her narrow sword limp in her hand.
‘You’re going to have to fight!’ Felix yelled.
‘I don’t know how.’
‘Just kill them.’
Felix didn’t have time to say anything else, because they were on him. Five of them, trying to get in close so that he couldn’t swing his own sword. He was forced to use short, less powerful jabs and slashes, using his elbows and kicking out as well if more than one came at him at once. Marco fought his way to his side and together they managed to turn the fight back against the grown-ups.
Two of Robbie’s gang were down on the ground and bleeding, but Jackson managed to break clear of her attackers, battering them out of her way with her spear, a cold, steely look in her eyes. She had one arm round Robbie whose neck was a bloody mess. She joined up with DogNut and Courtney.
‘He’s hurt,’ she said bluntly.
‘I can’t move my arm,’ Robbie groaned.
‘We have to get back to the museum,’ said Jackson.
DogNut saw Jackson’s two friends lying in the road, unmoving.
‘What about them?’
‘Leave them,’ said Jackson. ‘They’re too badly wounded.’
‘But …’
‘Leave them!’
Jackson powered ahead, not letting any sickos stop her as she ploughed her way through them back towards Green Park, the one remaining uninjured boy from the museum helping her.
‘Stick together!’ Marco yelled. ‘We have to stick together.’
‘We’re trying to stick together, stupid,’ said Felix.
Nobody could follow Jackson, though, as the sickos turned their attentions to DogNut’s gang. Felix and Marco were completely swamped. The boys fought back and in a moment there were three dead gym bunnies at their feet, but that only made it harder for them to move without tripping up. As they fought to get clear of the pack, they kept slipping and stumbling. DogNut and the others couldn’t help them as they were all engaged in a fight of their own. DogNut and Courtney were protecting Brooke who had dropped her sword and was now completely unarmed. She was trying to scream, but the breath caught in her lungs and no sound came out.
Jackson hadn’t deserted them, however. She’d taken Robbie to safety and left her boy watching over him, and she now came belting back down the road to smash into the sickos, freeing Marco and Felix.
‘Run!’ she bellowed.
The kids didn’t need to be told twice. In a moment they were all staggering back down the road the way they’d come, exhausted. The battle had been short but intense, and it had drained their strength. They limped and hobbled, trying to ignore all the cuts and bruises they’d sustained.
The surviving sickos weren’t through yet, though. Nothing would make them give up now. They set off after the kids, bloodied and dribbling, their breath hissing through rotten teeth.
Jackson went to Robbie and got under one arm, her friend propping him up from the other side. The eight of them pushed on. They’d cleared the Ritz and were back by Green Park. A little further along was the entrance to Green Park tube station. A thought flashed through DogNut’s mind that they should steer wide of it. A tube station was the sort of dark subterranean place that sickos liked to hide out.
But the sickos were behind them, weren’t they, and, besides, he was too tired to say anything. Jackson was first past the entrance, carrying Robbie, then Courtney, but as Felix and Marco came level with the steps leading down to the station there was a shriek and a mother wearing sunglasses came flying out, knife in hand, which she brought slicing down across Felix’s face.
He yelped and the next thing they knew, several more sickos, bigger, harder and less diseased than the rest, followed the mother out.
Jackson froze in her tracks. ‘Hang on!’ she shouted.
‘No! Keep going!’ DogNut shouted back at her. ‘Get Robbie to safety! We’ll catch you up …’
There was a scream from behind and DogNut spun round to see Brooke being wrestled to the ground by two of the faster sickos from the pursuing pack. He and Courtney ran to her and laid into them, dragging them off Brooke and hacking at them. But the delay had given the other grown-ups from the first attack time to catch up and DogNut and Courtney were soon in the thick of it again. DogNut’s sword arm ached, his knees were trembling, his lungs on fire, as he cut down as many sickos as he could. Courtney was gasping for breath, she wouldn’t let up. She stood over Brooke, protecting her from any attack.
They’d had to leave Felix, though, and, blinded by the knife wound, he was defenceless. A mother fell on him and knocked him sideways, so that he collapsed over a dead body. This was all the other sickos had been waiting for: five of them dropped on to his back, clawing at him with their fingers and ripping at him with their teeth.
‘Get off ! Get off me,’ Felix sobbed, sounding like a little kid. Marco kicked at the sickos, slashing with his knife. It was no good, though – there were just too many of them – and he himself toppled over, landing on his friend and smothering him.
‘It’s all right, Felix,’ he said. ‘I’m with you. It’s all right. You’re not alone.’ He felt for Felix’s hand and held it tight, as more gym bunnies blocked out the light, swamping them.
Brooke got to her feet, trembling uncontrollably, and stood behind DogNut and Courtney.
‘We’re going to be overwhelmed,’ Courtney said as more and more sickos arrived from every direction. Everything she had ever feared was coming true. A young mother slashed at her with long nails, raking down the side of her cheek, and Courtney retaliated by clubbing her full in the face with the shaft of her spear. The mother’s face split open and she collapsed.
But it was only one. How many more of them were there?
Overwhelmed. She’d always thought it was a stupid word, and the more she used it the more stupid it seemed, like it shouldn’t have been a real word.
‘It ain’t going to happen, babes,’ said DogNut. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but we ain’t gonna be overwhelmed. We can do this.’
‘No, we can’t.’
‘Yes, we can.’ DogNut kissed her fiercely, the briefest of kisses, and then he raised his sword above his head. ‘Let’s do this. You and me, girl, let’s take it to them! DogNut and Courtney against the world!’
‘Yeah …’
Side by side, they charged at the sickos, weapons a blur, hacking to left and right. For a few seconds it looked like they might do it. Sickos fell wounded around them. It couldn’t last, though. Courtney was right. There were too many.
&n
bsp; Brooke stood there, too terrified to move, watching in frozen panic as sickos converged on her friends.
Two fathers got close to Courtney and clung on to her spear, dragging it down. She snatched her knife from her belt and lashed out at them with her free hand, but the bigger of the two deflected her blow and the blade cut deep into her own arm. She hissed with pain and let go of the spear. She was filled with a terrible rage and gouged great chunks out of the fathers before they dropped dying at her feet. Before she could recover, however, she was jumped from behind by two more of them.
DogNut meanwhile was too hemmed in to do much more than barge sickos out of his way. A searing pain in his ankle stopped him dead, and he looked down to see that a fallen mother had got hold of his leg and sunk her teeth into him. He stamped on her with his other foot and stabbed down, taking her in the neck.
‘Courtney!’ he shouted, but didn’t know if she could hear him.
Where was she?
‘Courtney!’
There. He forced his way over to her and pulled the sickos from her back. She was bleeding from small cuts all over her, and her right arm was red from shoulder to fingertips, but she was still battling with her knife. DogNut took hold of her and started to drag her away, ignoring the sickos that grabbed at him from all sides. All his energy was ebbing away. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up.
‘Come on, Courtney,’ he said. ‘Don’t give up. You and me, girl. You and me.’
‘You and me, Dog,’ said Courtney.
‘Love you, girl …’
‘Love you, too …’
As Brooke stood watching helplessly, she spotted the lead mother moving in fast towards the two of them, holding the knife. She was a horrible sight, with her sunglasses and her mad grin.
Brooke sobbed. It wasn’t right. Sickos didn’t carry weapons. They were too stupid. And this mother was smiling.
‘Look out!’
It was no good. The mother came up behind DogNut and plunged the knife deep into his side between his breastplate and his backpack. He howled and the mother laughed.
DogNut fell to his knees.
Overwhelmed, he thought. Courtney was right after all. Overwhelmed. He couldn’t get a fix on what was happening. One moment he was in the pit at the bank, with sucking mouths fixing on to him, the next he was back at school, playing football, now he was in class, struggling to make sense of algebra, then he was with his mum, arguing about something …
Don’t argue, Mum, he thought. Can’t we just be friends? We don’t have long.
Why don’t we have long, darling?
Because I’m dying, Mum. Can’t you see? I’m in the pit at the bank and sinking under all these mouths. Sickos, Mum, too many of them, so don’t argue.
But you have to do your homework.
It’s algebra, Mum. You know I can’t do algebra.
You have to try.
What’s the point, Mum? I’ll never need to use it in my life.
Well, you might one day …
Might I? I ain’t needed it so far and it looks like I ain’t going to be around for much longer. I don’t think algebra would’ve saved me today.
Saved you from what, darling?
Don’t you ever listen, Mum? I told you: I’m dying. There’s sickos, Mum. I’ve been overwhelmed. This time I’m not going to get out. They’re going to drag me down, down in their rotten flesh.
Are you by yourself, darling? I can’t bear the thought of you dying alone.
No, Mum, I’m with my friend. I’m with Courtney …
Courtney …
He called out her name.
‘Courtney,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry …’
But Courtney was already dead. She’d gone down hard and cracked her skull on the edge of the pedestrian island in the middle of the road. Already sickos were tearing at her body.
Brooke could stand it no longer. She wasn’t going to watch her friends die and do nothing. Screaming, she ran towards DogNut, shoving sickos aside. They dropped back, startled by her fury. She made it to DogNut and put her arms around him. He was still alive.
‘Can you stand up?’
‘What?’
Brooke grabbed DogNut’s sword. It was sticky with blood. With her other hand she pulled DogNut to his feet and then circled her arm round him, holding him up. Three mothers came at her, sticking their spotty faces right in hers, like mocking kids in a playground, salivating, their eyes somehow dull and mad at the same time.
‘Get away from me, you ugly bitches!’ Brooke screamed, and sliced the sword across their throats in one hard determined thrust. Blood spattered her front and the mothers staggered back, clutching at their wounds with twitching hands.
I did it, she thought. I got them. I can do it.
She wasn’t sure she could do it again, however. She’d been lucky. Now the sword felt unbelievably heavy. She waved it uselessly at the ring of sickos that had formed around her.
It was only her left now.
Let them come. Let the gym bunnies kill her. She couldn’t take any more of this. She looked at the bodies of Felix and Marco and Courtney.
And then she felt DogNut stir and moan.
No. She thought. I will not let it end like this. She wasn’t ready to die yet. As long as she had a breath left in her she would protect DogNut. She had to survive. Otherwise who would ever know what had happened here? Who would tell the story of the death of heroes?
She became aware of the lead mother smiling. She looked like she might have been quite beautiful once, with a good body, fit. Now she was just this ugly thing, with boils and spots across her face, eating away at her. Her teeth black. She knew she was the winner today. Brooke cursed her.
She darted in and Brooke swiped at her. Missed. Felt a blow to her face. A cold, dazzling band of pain across her forehead. Blood gushed down and she couldn’t see anything.
Oh no …
DogNut’s hand felt for hers, took the sword from her. She felt him moving, swinging the blade. Felt his body red hot against hers. In this moment she loved him more than anything in the world, more than anyone.
‘You’re still in with a chance,’ she whispered.
‘I knew it …’ he croaked.
Brooke wiped the blood out of her eyes.
The mother was standing there. Eyes hidden behind the sunglasses. Showing her black teeth in a sick grin. The girl was hers now. She looked at her knife, hardly able to believe that she could control it. She licked her lips. The other sickos, the ones who weren’t already ripping into the dead bodies, were holding off, waiting for her to move in for the final kill.
She raised the knife and stepped forward, and at the same moment something distracted the rest of them. They turned as one and charged off across the road.
The mother grinned wider, lifted her knife higher, drunk with its bloody power. Brooke held her gaze. Clutching DogNut tight. With one last desperate effort DogNut swung the sword. It flapped feebly at the mother’s face, doing nothing more than knock the sunglasses off.
The mother paused. Brooke looked into her eyes. Saw some last glimmer of humanity there.
And then an extraordinary thing happened.
The mother grunted as an arrow struck her in the right eye. She tilted her face upwards, wailed and toppled over backwards. The next moment another group of the bunnies went down beneath a swarm of arrows and other missiles. There was movement off to Brooke’s left. A group of kids was approaching from the north. They looked street tough and hardened, working together like a smooth killing machine – a well-drilled unit. There were archers out on the flanks and several kids with slingshots. A boy at the front with a spear was moving expertly, a deadly killing machine. Brooke picked up silly details like the shaved patterns in his hair.
Another boy, with flame-red hair and a slingshot, ran over.
She was being rescued. Maybe there was some hope left in the world after all. A muscular-looking black kid with a club smashed two sickos
aside. There was a girl alongside him, with short scrappy hair, wearing a leather jacket. In her bewildered delirium, Brooke thought that the girl could make more of herself.
Maybe she could show her how.
In a few seconds all the gym bunnies were dead. Battered to the ground or pierced by arrows. If Brooke hadn’t seen it for herself, she wouldn’t have believed it. Wouldn’t have believed that a bunch of kids could destroy sickos so easily. It was the most efficient and deadly attack she had ever witnessed.
She realized that she had slipped to the ground and was holding DogNut in her lap, her bloody hand gripping his jacket tightly.
The muscly kid came over to her, said something. She couldn’t understand the words. Her head was filled with a ringing sound. She tried to speak, but she didn’t think that anything came out.
The boy said something else and she thought that maybe he was saying that she was all right now, safe …
Safe …
A shadow fell across her and she heard another voice. Struggled to see who was speaking. She was feeling faint and distant, as if she was watching all this in a film about someone else. Shock was setting in. Turning her to stone. There was blood pouring down her face. She didn’t have the energy to wipe it away. The day was growing dark.
Another girl appeared, took some stuff out of a first-aid kit, said something to her, might as well have been speaking Chinese.
Chinese …
Brooke laughed.
Someone was easing DogNut out of her arms. She wanted to tell them not to hurt him. Then the flame-haired boy was back with some other people, so many of them … Who were they all?
They put her on to a kind of stretcher. Where had they got that from? She tried to thank them, but the words only seemed to form in her head.
As she was carried across the road towards the park, she looked for her friends. There was no sign of them or the dead bodies of the sickos. The road was clear. She must have dreamt it all. There hadn’t been a fight here …
That couldn’t be.
Her head hurt.
So much blood.
She closed her eyes and gave in to the darkness.
61
David was waiting in his office at the palace. It was a grand room with a marble fireplace, oil paintings on the walls and a large dark wooden table in the centre that David kept polished to a glass-like shine. Tall windows looked out over the gardens where children were busy working in the vegetable plots and he often stood gazing out at the activity, secretly smiling at how well he had done for himself. Here he was, in the queen of England’s old home. And everything he could see out there belonged to him. The lake full of fresh water, the food growing in the rich soil, the children themselves. When the disease had struck, it had felt like it was the end of the world, most children had fallen into a paralysing despair, many had been killed, or had died of disease and neglect and starvation. But not David. He had seen the whole thing as a massive opportunity. Here was a new world that he could take control over.