‘You tell him to behave himself,’ said Brooke. ‘He’s being a prick.’
‘Takes one to know one,’ said Macca.
There were three of them squashed on the back seat. Macca, Brooke and Ebenezer. Ebenezer was trying to keep out of it, but he would occasionally snap and weigh in with some unhelpful remark. None of it was clever, and most of it didn’t really make any sense. It was incredibly tiring, though, having to listen to it.
Brooke was quite thin, to tell the truth. They’d all lost a lot of weight since the disease struck. There was never enough food. But she was lean and muscular rather than anorexic. And it had to be said that Macca was a bit of a mess, and hygiene had never been his strong point. He was almost proud of it. He had several layers of clothing on, and Ed had never known him change them. In the cramped confines of the car he was giving off a warm, ripe aroma. He never cut his hair either, kept it tied back in a loose ponytail, with bits sticking out all over the place, and that was causing Brooke problems. She kept leaning away and trying to keep it off her.
‘I thought the biggest problem on this trip was going to be sickos,’ she said. ‘Not Mister Stink here.’
‘What’s your plan then?’ said Macca. ‘You gonna bore them sickos to death, or scare them to death with your supernatural ugliness?’
‘I am so far out of your league you can’t even see me, you dirty tramp,’ said Brooke.
‘Who said that?’ Macca laughed and shook his hair at her.
‘Get your DNA out of my face,’ Brooke shrieked and shoved him away.
Ed couldn’t be bothered to tell them to shut up again. He had a bad headache and it was making his scar throb and itch horribly. Too many mixed-up memories were coming back to him, of trips in the Rowhurst School minibus to play cricket or football at another school. Trips to Sevenoaks and Tonbridge and Rochester. The other boys on the bus making too much noise, farting as if it was an Olympic skill, teasing each other, telling filthy jokes, telling filthy lies, boasting about things they’d never done with girls. And another bus trip – a year ago. When Greg the butcher had picked up him and his friends after they’d escaped from Rowhurst. Brooke had already been on it, with her two friends, Courtney and Aleisha. The three of them sitting at the back, teasing the boys, winding him up. Seemed like a million years ago. How many of them on that bus had died? Jack and Bam and Piers; Courtney, Aleisha; Greg’s son, Liam; the French girl with the cat, Frédérique …
Ghosts.
All those friends of his from school he’d never see again. Some hadn’t even got as far as the coach. He’d lost one of his best friends, Malik, walking out of town. Bang. Just like that. One moment they’d been talking and the next …
Gone.
He sighed. Brooke had changed a lot since then. Grown up. Chilled out. Something had come over her since she’d joined this expedition, though. She was in the back row of the bus again, being mouthy. He couldn’t blame her. Macca was an arsehole at the best of times. It was crazy, though, crazy and stupid. Here they were, driving off into God knows what – probably a world of pain and terror if the past was anything to go by – and the two of them were behaving like a couple of ten-year-olds. Getting on each other’s nerves. Oblivious to what was outside the car.
Maybe that’s why they did it. So as not to think about where they were going. Also he knew Brooke was uncomfortable. Unsure of herself among these kids, half of whom she didn’t really know. She’d always held to the philosophy that attack was the best form of defence.
And Macca? He was one of those boys who was unsure of himself around girls and the only way he knew to flirt with them was to be rude.
Ed smiled to himself. God help Macca if he secretly fancied Brooke.
Lewis was driving at a calm, steady speed, showing nothing, eyes on the road, half closed, but not missing a thing. Cool. Not even listening to the chaos in the back. Behind them were the middle seats, like two big armchairs. Kyle and Trinity had these, as they were the biggest. Kyle wasn’t helping. Every now and then he’d lob a comment back like a grenade and enjoy the reaction. Brooke and Macca yelling. Ebenezer getting angry and righteous.
For the fiftieth time Ed looked at his big road map, trying to shut out the noise, pretending to read it, but not able to concentrate. He hardly needed it any more. They’d eventually made it on to the motorway after a few detours. There was one tricky bit that Ebenezer had warned them about where the whole elevated section that carried the road had collapsed. So they’d had to avoid that. But Lewis had kept his cool and Ed had consulted his maps and between them they’d managed to get on to the M4 further along, and now it was easy going. Ed was keeping an eye on the milometer; as soon as it showed that they’d gone twenty miles, they were going to leave the motorway. That was when it was going to get interesting. That was when they had to seriously start looking for Ella and Maeve and the others.
The reality of it was only now just hitting him. The realization of just what a huge area they had to cover. Having the car was a bonus, but still, when it came down to it, this was a fairly hopeless mission. Living in London, hemmed in by buildings on all sides, you lost the sense of how big the world was. How much there was of it. Driving out of London along the M4, Ed had watched the world unfold and open out. First houses and office blocks and factories had whizzed past, then they’d started to see trees and greenery, grass and bushes, the beginnings of the countryside, and then wide-open spaces.
And all along the way they’d seen sickos – sentinels – standing in the road, eyes closed, arms raised, faces turned up to the sky, skin burnt and blistered.
‘Why they doing that?’ Lewis asked as he drove round one standing in the middle of the motorway.
‘They’re carrying the signal,’ said Trey. ‘Like telephone poles.’
‘What signal?’ said Lewis. ‘What they saying?’
‘It’s not words,’ said Trey. ‘It’s more like a hum, a buzz, a homing signal.’
‘Who’s it for?’
‘They’re gathering, I reckon,’ said Trio.
‘I don’t like them,’ said Ebenezer. ‘I hate them.’
‘We should run them down,’ said Kyle.
‘Yeah,’ Macca joined in. ‘We should go GTA on them.’
‘We’ve got to keep moving,’ Ed protested. ‘Not waste time. If we stop to deal with every stray sicko we see we’ll never get anywhere.’
Indeed, there seemed to be sentinels every few hundred metres, even out here on the motorway – mothers, fathers, teenagers … Ed calculated that if they were like this on all the roads leading out of London there must be thousands of them. And how many more were they calling in?
He remembered the conversation he’d had with Shadowman when he’d gone to get the alcohol off him.
‘You really gonna head out west and look for this girl?’ he’d said, incredulous.
‘I owe it to Sam.’
‘If it was me I’d either tell him to shut it or I’d lie to him,’ said Shadowman. ‘Pretend I’d looked. Give it a day or two then go back and get on with your lives.’
‘Well, you’re not me,’ said Ed.
‘No,’ said Shadowman. ‘I’m not. You’re like a dad, Ed. You think you need to look after everyone and keep them safe. But you can’t look after everyone. You’ll end up going crazy. And, besides, we need you here.’
Shadowman had told him all about the sickos’ general he called St George, who seemed to be gathering all the grown-ups in London.
‘They’re massing, Ed,’ he’d said. ‘Something big is going down. Sooner or later they’re gonna make their way into the centre of town. And then it gets serious. We need to be ready for them. I can’t do it alone. The kids in London, they’re all in their own camps, their own little worlds, and they fight and argue and compete with each other. I’ve seen what they’re like. We need to unite, we need to join together and deal with this, or it’s going to be beyond bad.’
Shadowman knew more about sickos than anyon
e else around. He’d made a study of them. ‘You’ve seen it yourself, Ed,’ he’d said when Ed had questioned him over whether he really thought they could get organized. ‘The change in them. The way they’re wandering in from all over the place, as if something was calling them. And it’s St George who’s doing the calling.’
‘So what are they waiting for? Why don’t they attack?’
Shadowman didn’t know the answer to that one. He wanted to find out, though. He wanted to be back out on the streets watching them. And as soon as his sprained ankle was better – a couple more days he reckoned – that was where he was going.
‘Maybe they’re just waiting for more to arrive,’ Shadowman had said as Ed was leaving. ‘The call’s gone out. The London sickos have gathered. What if they’ve put out a shout? A big shout out to the rest of the country. What if there’s more coming from all over? From out where you’re going.’
‘You know what?’ Ed had grinned at Shadowman, trying to appear more unconcerned than he was. ‘Don’t worry about shit until it happens.’
‘But it does happen,’ said Shadowman. ‘Shit always happens.’
The more sentinels he saw on the road, the more Ed thought Shadowman was right. Something big was going to happen. Something big and something bad. He hoped they’d find Ella soon and not waste days searching for her. His place was back at the Tower with his people. He needed to tell general Jordan Hordern everything he’d talked about with Shadowman. Everyone had to join up, work together.
So what was he doing here, miles out of London?
This was all because of Sam, that stubborn, extraordinary little boy.
‘Lord preserve us,’ said Ebenezer and Ed turned to see him crossing himself.
‘What is it?’ he asked. Ebenezer pointed to their left.
‘It was in there,’ he said. ‘The church where the little ones died. It was horrible. We left them alone and they were slaughtered. That is a bad place. A place of death. I pray for them every night. I hope they have gone to a better place.’
‘You want me to stop?’ Lewis asked, slowing down.
‘No way,’ said Ebenezer. ‘Not here. There is nothing here anyway. We burned the church down. We set it on fire to destroy the bodies of the fallen.’
‘Suit yourself. We go on.’
‘We go on.’ Ed stared out of his window, trying to see through the trees, feeling ghoulishly curious.
‘Three churches,’ said Trey.
‘What’s that?’ Ed asked.
‘Rule of three,’ said Trey. ‘There will be three churches. Everything comes in threes. Way of the world.’
‘Don’t start on that,’ said Trio. ‘We don’t want to hear your stupid theories about …’
‘You said something before,’ Brooke butted in from the back of the car. ‘When Ed first arrived at the museum. I heard you. You said something about three scarred faces. I didn’t understand at the time …’
‘Yeah,’ said Trey. ‘I remember that. I remember thinking there’s Brooke, and now there’s Ed, and there’ll be a third. Can’t wait to see what that looks like.’
Ed was about to protest, more for Brooke’s sake than his own, that he hadn’t chosen to look this way, that it wasn’t remotely fun, that he wasn’t part of a fairground freak show, when it struck him that if anyone in the car looked like a freak it was Trinity. He guessed that gave them the right to comment on how other people looked.
‘Yeah,’ said Macca and he giggled. ‘But I doubt you’ll find anyone more messed-up-looking than Miss Brookie Zipface.’
Brooke gasped.
The car fell quiet.
Macca realized he’d gone too far.
That was wrong. No two ways about it. Macca didn’t have the right to say anything about Brooke’s disfigurement. After a few moments’ stunned silence everyone started shouting Macca down until he made a sort of half-sarcastic apology, laughing as if to show he wasn’t that bothered.
Nobody said anything for a while after that. They left the church behind and passed Heathrow Airport, heading further west, and now they came to a small cluster of sentinels standing in the last Heathrow turn-off. In a clump, still as statues.
‘Hey, look, Brooke,’ said Macca. ‘Your family’s come out to wish you luck.’
Ed swore inwardly. Macca just wasn’t going to give up.
‘Macca?’ said Brooke. ‘Can we call a truce, yeah? It’s getting to me a bit. You’ve been quite hurtful as it goes. Please. Just lay off me, yeah? I can’t take any more of it.’
‘You surrender to my greater wit and general awesomeness then, yeah?’ said Macca triumphantly. ‘I knew you were weak. A weak girl.’
‘Seriously, yeah?’ said Brooke. ‘I’m quite scared actually.’
‘I knew it.’
‘And the thing is, to tell you the truth, Macca, I quite like you really. I quite fancy you.’
‘I knew it!’
Ed had to suppress a snort of laughter. Poor old Macca. He was walking into a trap. He wasn’t the brightest kid on the chopping block. Brooke was way out of his league. He was a dick, but did he deserve what was going to happen?
Probably.
They came to the junction with the M25, the big motorway that ringed London. Ed glanced at the mil-ometer – nineteen miles gone. He had some idea now just how far twenty miles was. He’d had it in his head that you could walk it in a day. But the thought of walking all this way from the museum was nuts. It would take forever.
Next turn-off, though, they’d leave the motorway, start their search for some local settlements.
‘That was the main reason I came along on this thing.’ Brooke was pressing on. ‘As soon as I saw you turn up with Ed the other day, I thought, well …’
Ed had to hand it to Brooke. She was a pretty good actress.
‘It’s been quite lonely at the museum. You’ve seen what the guys are like there.’
‘Nerds and gays,’ said Macca.
‘Exactly.’
‘Is only …’ Macca was walking blindly into it. ‘I thought you liked Ed. I thought you two had a thing going on.’
‘Ed? You’re joking. God, no.’
Ed tried to hide his smile. Hoping Macca couldn’t see him. Was he the only person who didn’t know what was going on?
‘Cool,’ said Macca. ‘You know all that stuff I was coming out with? I was just mucking about. Playing with you. That’s how I show I like someone.’
‘Really?’
‘Truly. I mean, you’re not ugly and that.’
‘Do you think I’m pretty?’
‘Well, you know … You’re not ugly.’
‘Guys,’ said Trio quietly. ‘I’ve got a funny feeling.’
But everyone was too caught up in Brooke’s game to pay her any attention.
‘You’re pretty buff yourself, Macca,’ she said, sounding horribly sincere.
Ed was wondering how long Brooke was going to keep this up before she dealt him the killer blow. She was obviously enjoying it too much to stop now. It was cruel really. Macca had no defences against this kind of thing. He needed to be taught a lesson, though; he’d gone too far with Brooke.
Ed kept his head down, pretending to study the map, enjoying the show. Waiting for the drop.
‘Seriously,’ said Trio. ‘We need to stop the car.’
‘What’s up?’ Ed asked, looking back at her, and then he heard Lewis swear and felt the car slowing.
‘What?’ Ed faced front. Lewis didn’t need to answer. The road ahead was thick with sickos. They filled it from left to right and were stumbling along towards them. Lewis brought the car to a stop.
‘What you want me to do?’ he asked, his voice quiet and sleepy, unconcerned, bored even. Like he’d just woken up.
‘Ram them,’ said Kyle.
‘Yeah,’ said Macca. ‘Let’s splatter them morons.’
‘There are too many of them,’ said Ebenezer, leaning forward for a better look. ‘We will just get stuck.’
‘There’s a lot of them,’ said Trio. She and Trey both had their eyes shut. ‘A whole lot of them. We should go back.’
‘Where they going anyway?’ Lewis asked. ‘Where’s the party at?’
‘They’ve got the call,’ said Trey. ‘All they want is to get into town and meet up with the others.’
‘Ram them,’ said Kyle. ‘We go fast enough, they can’t stop us.’
‘No,’ said Trey.
‘A body can do a lot of damage to a car if it’s going fast,’ said Lewis. ‘I saw a kid get run over at the junction near our school this one time. He bounced, man. Went flying. Was in hospital for, like, a year or something. Don’t know how he wasn’t killed. But that car, whoa, you shoulda seen it. All dented up, crushed, like the geezer had run it into a wall. Nice car and all.’
‘Yeah,’ Ed agreed, twisting round in his seat. ‘We don’t want to wreck the car. Without it our job would be a whole lot harder.’
‘All right. We go slow then,’ said Kyle. ‘Plough through them, like an ice-breaker.’ He mimed the action with the edge of one hand, slicing the air.
Ed looked at Trinity.
‘How many of them, you think? Can we force a way through?’
‘Too many,’ said Trio, pinching her lip nervously. ‘Can’t give you exact numbers. We’re only seeing the front of them.’
‘Give it a go at least,’ said Macca. ‘Even if we only take some of them out it’ll be a few less sickos in the world.’
‘It’s not about taking sickos out.’ Ed was trying not to get wound up. ‘It’s about doing what we’ve come to do and getting safely back to the museum.’
‘Stupid question,’ said Brooke, ‘but can we go round them?’
‘Stupid question,’ said Kyle and he laughed.
‘Another stupid question,’ said Brooke, ‘but how did you get to be such a moron, Kyle?’
‘We can’t go round them,’ Ed butted in, trying to kill the argument. Brooke had stopped Macca from being a pest with her lovey-dovey act and now Kyle was in danger of starting up a whole fresh round of bickering.
‘There’s no way off the motorway here,’ he went on. ‘And they’re filling the whole road. However, there is a turn-off to Slough not too far ahead. We could try pushing through them.’