‘Come on!’ Ed shouted.
Someone pushed past Frédérique, the big boy, Bam. He took hold of Ed’s arm.
‘Lean out!’
Ed swung out over the road, fingers plucking at the air. Jack roared and threw himself at Ed who somehow managed to get his fingers round his wrist and pull him on to the step.
The three of them collapsed, Jack panting, Ed and Bam giggling hysterically.
‘That was bloody close,’ Greg snarled. ‘If any of you lot mess me about like that again, I will throw you off this bus and not look back. You got it?’
‘You could have waited.’ Jack’s voice was tight with cold fury.
‘You’re not the only people on this bus,’ Greg spat back at him. ‘And don’t you forget that. I don’t mean me. There’s other kids here. You put them all in danger back there. For a cat! A sodding cat!’
‘Nobody was hurt,’ said Ed, trying to calm the situation down. ‘Nobody was in any real danger.’
‘Sit down and shut up,’ said Greg.
Jack insulted Greg under his breath. Greg realized he’d said something but couldn’t tell what.
‘You’ve been on my case ever since you got on this bus,’ he said, changing up a gear. ‘And I am rapidly beginning not to like you, sonny boy. Not one little bit.’
‘The feeling’s mutual,’ Jack muttered, and went to sit further down the bus. Frédérique and Bam followed.
Ed watched them go. When it came down to it – Greg was right. Jack had put them all in danger. Ed was shaking uncontrollably. He’d been absolutely terrified and was still experiencing an adrenalin rush. It had taken every last scrap of courage he possessed to stay on that step as the grown-ups marched steadily nearer.
And when the coach had started to drive off …
He took a deep breath and swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat.
Greg swerved to avoid something in the road and Ed nearly fell over. He looked for somewhere to sit. All the younger kids had moved to the front of the coach and were sitting with Liam, as close to Greg as they could get. Despite all that had happened, they still looked to grown-ups to protect them and they found the big, powerful figure of Greg reassuring.
Arthur and Wiki sat across the aisle from Liam, Zohra and her little brother Froggie sat behind them, and, next to Liam, a good head taller than the rest of them, was Justin the nerd.
The next three rows of seats were filled by mad Matt and Archie Bishop and the other kids from the chapel. Ed settled down behind them, across from Kwanele and Chris Marker.
He smiled to himself.
The thing was, he hadn’t left the step, had he? He hadn’t let Greg close the doors. He’d pulled Jack on to the bus. This time he’d saved his friend.
This time he’d done the right thing.
At the front of the coach Arthur was talking as usual. He seemed to have an endless supply of words inside him, just waiting to come pouring out.
‘I don’t think they would have caught up,’ he was saying. ‘Those zombies were slow, not like the ones earlier, at The Fez – they were like superzombies, they were really quick, I wonder why some are faster than others, maybe the young ones aren’t as badly affected by the disease …’
‘I didn’t think zombies could run fast,’ said Froggie, a look of deep concern on his face.
‘Yes, well, technically they’re not zombies,’ said Justin.
‘What d’you mean?’ Froggie asked.
‘I mean they’re not zombies,’ Justin went on. ‘They’re not the living dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Wiki, ‘but a real zombie isn’t really dead either. Not a proper one. A proper zombie is someone who’s been given a drug to make them appear dead, and then they’re revived by the voodoo priest and they have to do his bidding.’
‘Well, they’re not those type of zombies either, then, are they?’ said Justin.
‘No.’
‘So they’re not any type of zombie.’
‘What should we call them, then?’ Arthur asked. ‘We have to call them something. I mean, most of them are grown-ups, we could call them grown-ups because there aren’t any normal grown-ups left, so we’d always know what we were talking about, or we could just call them mothers and fathers, you see like the Scared Kid did? That’s what I think of them as, mothers and fathers, though not my real mother and father, they weren’t zombies.’
‘These ones aren’t zombies, either,’ Justin insisted. ‘That’s what I’ve just been trying to explain.’
‘We could call them ghouls,’ said Wiki. ‘Or demons.’
‘What about ogres?’ Zohra suggested.
‘Or savages,’ said Froggie.
‘We could call them brutes,’ said Wiki.
‘I like zombies best,’ said Arthur.
‘Me too,’ agreed Froggie.
‘But they’re not zombies!’ Justin was getting quite angry.
‘I know they’re not,’ said Arthur. ‘But they act like zombies, and they walk like zombies, except the ones who can run, the fast ones, and they’re stupid like zombies, and they eat people like zombies.’
‘Are they a sort of vampire?’ said Froggie.
‘In a way,’ said Wiki. ‘They want human flesh, though, not just blood.’
‘Why do you think they do?’ said Froggie, as casually as if he was discussing the eating habits of a pet guinea pig.
‘That’s a very good question,’ said Justin. ‘We should make a proper study of their behaviour. If we can understand them more, we might be able to work out better ways of defending ourselves against them, maybe even defeating them. We’re cleverer than them, so that should give us the edge.’
‘We may be cleverer,’ said Wiki, ‘but they’re stronger.’
‘Clever beats strong every time,’ said Justin, pulling a small notebook and a biro out of his pocket. ‘So let’s make a pact. We’ll use our brains to work out the best way to survive. We’ll be a brains trust.’
‘What’s a brains trust?’ asked Froggie.
‘It’s like a think tank.’
‘What’s a think tank?’
‘If we don’t even know what it means,’ said Arthur, ‘I can’t see us being the finest minds in the world.’
‘Well, we’re cleverer than that lot out there,’ said Justin.
‘You mean the zombies?’
‘They are not zombies!’
‘They’re sickos,’ Greg growled from the driver’s seat. ‘That’s what I call them. Sickos.’
‘Yes,’ said Justin, smiling. He wrote the word down in his book and underlined it. ‘Sickos. That’s a very good term for them. From now on they’re officially not zombies, they’re sickos.’
23
Jack felt hot and sweaty. He’d landed badly when Ed and Bam had pulled him on to the bus. He’d scraped his shins on the steps, but couldn’t sense any pain yet. It would come, though. That much he knew. He sat down with Frédérique in the same row of seats as Bam and his injured friend, Piers. Piers had been slipping in and out of consciousness since they’d got on the bus. The piece of material that Bam had wrapped round his head was stained every shade of red from bright scarlet to almost black. It had stopped the bleeding but Piers looked chalk white and his face was streaked with dried blood.
Frédérique didn’t look much better. She was shaking as if someone had stuck electrodes in her and was passing an electric current through her body. Jack realized he was shaking as well and he had a hollow sick feeling inside. He put his head between his knees and took a few deep breaths. He closed his eyes and waited for the pounding in his head to subside.
Once he was feeling halfway human again he straightened up. For a moment he saw dancing coloured spots and blobs in front of his eyes and his brain felt like it had come loose and turned light and fizzy. He had the sensation that he was floating up out of his body. He gripped his armrest and slowly everything settled down and he was back on the bus.
‘You all right?’ Bam was giving J
ack a concerned look.
‘Hard to say.’ Jack rubbed his face. ‘How’s Piers doing?’
Bam made a movement with his hands as if he was weighing something.
‘Could be worse. He’s sleeping now. I got some water inside him and a bit of food. Crisps, mainly, but it’s better than nothing I suppose. The cut’s not too deep, as far as I can tell, but he’s lost quite a lot of blood. It’s going to be hard to get his strength back up.’
‘Have you put anything on the wound? Some antiseptic or anything?’
‘Yeah. Greg has a box of stuff. I squirted some Savlon on, that’s what my mum always used to do if I had a cut. Savlon and soup.’
‘Yuck.’
‘Not together. Savlon on the cut and then a hot bowl of soup. Cream of chicken. That’s if I was badly mashed-up in a match. Which was nearly every week. I’d kill for some chicken soup right now.’
‘Me too.’
‘Piers really needs some proper food, though. He can’t live on crisps. If we could get hold of some of that smoked meat Greg has stashed away in his cool box, that’d sort him out.’
‘You can try,’ said Jack. ‘He doesn’t like me. I doubt it’ll do much good, though. Despite what he says he’s only really looking after himself and Liam.’
‘That his mini-me?’
‘Yeah.’
Jack’s seat jolted forward as someone bashed into the back of it. There was a girlish laugh and he was aware of bodies crowding behind him.
‘Is she your girlfriend?’
It was Brooke and her two mates. Leaning over him, laughing and eyeing Frédérique up and down. Jack wondered why he had ever seen them as a set. They actually looked very different, Courtney big and awkward, Brooke thin and blonde, Aleisha tiny and dark.
‘Is she?’ Brooke repeated.
‘No.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Frédérique. She’s French.’
‘We had enough of the French when we was in Calais,’ said Courtney. ‘France is a dump.’
Jack felt hot anger erupt from his guts. He twisted up out of his seat and confronted the girls, who dropped back in surprise.
‘Why don’t you lot knock it off? Huh? Why don’t you give it a rest? She’s been through a lot. Her dad died this morning. She’s a human being like you. OK?’
Brooke was the first to get her front back in place. She gave a long drawn-out Oooooh, eyebrows raised, mouth in a perfect little circle.
‘Definitely your girlfriend then.’
Aleisha put a hand on her friend’s arm, making a concerned face.
‘He’s right, Brooke,’ she said. ‘Leave it. You don’t have to be a bitch all the time. We all need to be friends.’
Brooke looked taken aback. She wasn’t sure quite where she stood now.
‘I was only joking.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ said Courtney. ‘She looks all right. Are you OK, darling?’
Frédérique nodded without looking round.
Courtney passed her a half-eaten Mars bar.
‘D’you want this? I was saving it, but you can have it if you want.’
Frédérique shook her head.
‘She’ll be OK,’ said Aleisha kindly, and she smiled at Frédérique.
‘Look,’ said Brooke. ‘Touching moment and all that, but just so’s we know where we all stand – is she your girlfriend, or not?’
‘Broo-ooke!’ said Aleisha, jutting her head forward.
‘What?’ said Brooke. ‘We need to know.’
‘Why would you care?’ said Jack. ‘Apparently I don’t count in your world because of my birthmark. I’m just some kind of freak.’
‘So, she is your girlfriend then.’
‘Oh, forget it.’ Jack slumped back into his seat and the girls returned to their camp at the back of the bus arguing loudly with each other.
Frédérique was shaking worse than ever and Jack was about to put his arm round her to reassure her when he realized she was laughing. He couldn’t help but join in. This whole situation was so ridiculous. The world was falling apart and people couldn’t see outside the little boxes they’d lived in all their lives.
An image of Frédérique’s father trying to stand up with a plank of wood nailed to his head came to him and he laughed even harder.
The world didn’t make much sense any more.
He leant across Frédérique and drew a smiley face on the window.
24
Chris Marker reached up to the luggage rack to get his bag of books down. He’d finished Fever Crumb and needed to start something new. He always felt a bit deflated finishing a book. He’d race to get to the end and then wonder why he hadn’t taken it more slowly to make the enjoyment last longer. Of course he could always just turn back to page one and start all over again at the beginning, as he sometimes did. But right now he wanted something new. He searched through the books and chose one he’d grabbed at random in the library because it looked long. It was a heavy fat paperback called The Gormenghast Trilogy. Three books in one: Titus Groan, Gormenghast and Titus Alone. That should keep him busy for a while.
He sat back down and Kwanele looked over to see what he’d chosen.
‘I’ve not read that,’ he said.
Chris grunted. As far as he could tell Kwanele had never read any book, unless perhaps it was a history of fashion. Magazines were a different story. Kwanele must have read every fashion magazine ever published in the history of the world. And watched every programme about fashion on the TV. He’d already summed up everyone on board based on their clothing.
The three noisy girls at the back were ‘an unholy mix of TopShop, Juicy Couture, JD Sports, Accessorize and Willesden market’.
Zohra and Froggie were ‘classic Boden’, whatever that was.
Greg and Liam were Next, plus ‘inevitably more JD Sports’.
Frédérique, though, apparently ‘had style’.
‘That coat’s an Agnès B,’ Kwanele had said approvingly.
He’d been quiet since lunch, drifting in and out of sleep, and Chris had taken the opportunity to tune in to the conversation that Matt and Archie Bishop were having about their new religion in the seats in front. His book was a prop a lot of the time, so that Chris could spy on people without them realizing.
Matt and Archie seemed to be making it up as they went along, but they were still deadly serious about their religion, discussing each point at great length.
Matt was reading something out from one of his rescued scraps of Bible.
‘And he carried me away … and showed me the Holy City … It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. What’s a jasper?’
‘A type of jewel I suppose,’ said Archie.
‘I think it’s significant,’ said Matt. ‘Why choose a jasper, and not, say, a ruby or an emerald or one of the better-known jewels? It’s a code of some sort, I reckon. Maybe we need to look out for a boy called Jasper.’
‘Maybe,’ said Archie, though he didn’t sound convinced.
Matt carried on reading aloud. ‘It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates … There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west … And look, here … The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper! Jasper again. I told you it was significant.’
‘What else does it say?’ Archie asked.
‘Erm … the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald.’
‘There you are, then,’ said Archie. ‘He says emerald.’
‘Yeah, but listen to these others – I’ve never heard of them – the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.’
‘I’ve heard of amethyst.’
‘What colour is it?’
‘Dunno. Red, maybe?’
‘The twelve gates are important,’ said Matt. ‘Doesn’t London have twelve gates? The old city of London.’
‘Don’t know. Does it?’
‘Yes. I used to know them all. There’s Ludgate … erm, Old Gate, Newgate, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate … I don’t remember the rest, but there’s definitely twelve.’
Chris shook his head. There were seven gates in London, not twelve. Matt was a fool.
‘It’s all in here, Archie,’ Matt was saying, his voice growing louder as he got more excited. ‘London, the Lamb, the plague, my vision.’
‘I wish I’d had a vision,’ said one of the acolytes. ‘I’d like to see what the Lamb looks like.’
‘He’s beautiful and frightening at the same time,’ said Matt, and he stood up. ‘He’s going to save us all!’ he cried out.
‘Sit down, Matt,’ said Ed, who was sitting across the way from Chris.
‘I won’t sit down. You all need to accept the Lamb if you want to be saved. The golden child, who is more than a child. I’ve seen him, walking out of the darkness, and all around him is light, and in his shadow walks a demon.’
‘Sit down, Matt.’
Matt left his seat and went over to Ed.
‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘You’ll see that I’m right. It’s all in the pages, and if you can’t see that then you’re blind. We’re being tested. That’s what all this is about, the disease, the dead, don’t you see? God has sent a plague to wipe out the sinners, to kill the evil-doers. We have to found a new Jerusalem, in London, and welcome the Lamb who will come to save us.’
‘And just how do we welcome him?’ Ed asked.
‘We have to make a sacrifice.’
‘A sacrifice?’ Ed looked amazed.
‘Yes,’ said Matt. ‘The Lamb is ready for sacrifice, but we don’t sacrifice the Lamb, you see, we sacrifice the demon, the beast who walks at his side in the darkness, and then once he’s been cast out, the Lamb will be free and we can all rise into God’s kingdom here on earth.’