The Dead (18 page)

‘All right, Dad, you know best.’

Greg turned and winked at him. ‘Course I do,’ he said. ‘Besides, we need to work out what everyone else wants to do. Much as I love ’em all to pieces I ain’t having them all back to ours. I don’t want to be responsible for nobody but you.’

Greg took a step up the aisle, looking at the rows of faces.

‘I don’t know where you lot want to go,’ he shouted. ‘But this ain’t a regular bus. I ain’t dropping you off all over.’

‘I want to go to the London Eye,’ said Froggie, and Greg laughed.

‘I want to go to the Tower of London,’ said Arthur. ‘I went there with the school, it was really cool, like a proper castle, I reckon you could be safe there, and there are, like, weapons and everything, and you’d be in a commanding location on the river, that’s why William the Conqueror built it there, it’s in a commanding position, you could fish for fish, I’m quite a good fisherman, my dad said so, we went this one time to Ireland and I caught a sea bass, it was quite big but the biggest one was –’

‘Yeah, yeah, put a sock in it, will you, Jibber-jabber?’ said Greg. ‘You’ve not shut up since you got on this bus.’

‘Yeah, Jibber-jabber,’ said Froggie, ‘you talk more than my mum.’

‘My dad said I could talk for England,’ said Arthur, ‘if there was only an Olympic event, like the talking marathon, you know, like talking instead of walking –’

‘Jibber-jabber. Enough!’

‘Sorry.’

Ed had come to the front to see what was going on when Liam had collapsed into the aisle and he was now sitting with the Brains Trust.

‘I’ve always said we should stick together,’ he said. ‘There’s safety in numbers. Maybe we should all go to Islington? I don’t really know the area but maybe there’s somewhere that –’

‘You don’t really know the area?’ Greg interrupted.

‘No.’

‘You don’t really know anything, do you, buster?’

‘What?’ Ed was taken back. He gave a little unconvincing laugh. ‘I know a bit.’

‘No, you don’t,’ Greg sneered. ‘None of you do. I don’t want you with me. You’re a liability.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘
That’s not fair.
’ Greg copied Ed. ‘Look at you with your floppy hair. Your silver spoon ain’t gonna be no use to you now. And what use has all your fancy education been, eh? I’ll tell you. No use at all. All mummy and daddy’s money down the toilet. Is Latin gonna help you now, eh? Tell me that. You can’t, can you? Because you’re stupid. That school of yours ain’t taught you nothing you can use in real life. I bet you can speak about ten languages, can’t you? Maybe play the flute? Toot toot! Well, you’re dealing with a new world now, a new enemy. That lot out there, the sickos, they can’t speak French, or Spanish, or bleeding German, can they? They can’t even speak English no more. All they can do is grunt. You’re dealing with morons, and when you’re dealing with morons education don’t mean nothing. Wake up and smell the blood, Hugh Grant, you can’t just go waltzing into Daddy’s firm in the city. You need real skills now.’

Greg shouted down the length of the coach at the other kids.

‘You wanna come with me? That’s fine. Just so long as you can get it into your pretty little heads that I’m in charge, savvy? Because I’m the only one here who can save you.’ He tapped his head and started to walk down the aisle.

‘Me who left school at sixteen with no qualifications,’ he went on. ‘Because I know about real life. I know how to work with my hands. I know how to kill and gut an animal. Yeah? Could you do that? Any of you? If you had to? Which you might have to. Could any of you skin a cat?’ He stopped and gave a meaningful look to Frédérique, followed by a mocking laugh. ‘There’s no supermarkets now to serve you your nosh all nicely packaged up in cling film with the blood drained out of it. No more Marks and Spencer’s ready meals. You wanna come with me you’re gonna have to learn and learn fast, learn about the real things that matter in life.’

‘We’re not completely useless,’ said Archie Bishop.

‘Yeah? You know how to pluck a chicken? Break a rabbit’s neck?’

‘I do, actually,’ said Bam. ‘I’ve been out shooting loads of times. My rabbit stew’s the best in Kent. I might not have won any awards for my sausages, like you, but I make a mean stew. My barbecued rabbit kebabs aren’t too sloppy, either.’

‘You having a laugh, Lord Snooty?’

‘Not me,’ said Bam. ‘I’m a bloody good shot if I say so myself. I grew up in the country, you see, always out yomping round the fields. Plus, last summer I went on an SAS survival course in the holidays. I can build a shelter, set animal traps, net fish … I could live off the land if I had to.’

‘I’d like to see you try.’

‘No, seriously, I could.’

Greg strode to the front and pulled the door open.

‘Go on, then,’ he shouted, nodding towards the exit. ‘I believe you was on your way to the countryside when I picked you up. Why don’t you walk all the way back there and start netting fish, Boris?’

‘Change of plan since then,’ said Bam. ‘Looks like it’s the city life for me in the foreseeable. Not sure if there are any rabbits in London, but I know there’s foxes. I’m sure I could bag one of them. Can you eat a fox? I suppose in the end you can eat anything if you’re hungry enough.’

‘You getting out or staying?’ Greg asked.

‘Staying, thanks,’ said Bam cheerfully. ‘All for one and one for all and all that. You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid, Greg.’

‘Yeah, well as I said, just you remember who’s in charge and don’t get cheeky or I’ll give you a slap. This is
my
coach.
My
rules.’

Nobody said anything.

‘All right.’ Greg coughed. ‘Get some sleep. We’ll push on in the morning. I’ll take you all as far as Islington. After that you’re on your own.’

It was dark on the coach, very dark and very quiet. Except for when the silence was interrupted by distant shouts, or the sound of something smashing. And then there were the other noises, harder to identify, that could have been made by animals or by humans.

Hell, thought Ed, some of the sounds were so weird they could have been made by aliens. That wouldn’t have surprised him one bit. Nothing could surprise him any more. If strange green lights appeared in the sky and the next thing bug-eyed freaks with ray guns strolled down the street he wouldn’t think twice about it. For all he knew the sickness had come from outer space. It was the first wave of an attack by an alien assault force. Soften everyone up, remove the military threat and enslave the remaining young population.

It made about as much sense as Matt’s ideas about the Holy Lamb.

Ed was walking slowly down the aisle checking everyone was all right. It was the least he could do. He still felt guilty that he had escaped from the attack at The Fez and that good friends had been left behind.

Jack was sitting midway down the coach.

‘It’s rubbish,’ he said when Ed drew level with him.

‘What is?’

‘What Greg was saying. About survival. Just total bullshit.’

‘How d’you mean? In what way?’

‘Well, it’s random, isn’t it? Really? Who lives and who dies.’

‘Is it?’ Ed checked to make sure there was no way that Greg could listen in on their conversation and sat down next to Jack.

‘Of course it is,’ said Jack. ‘It’s luck, that’s all. Makes no difference one way or the other what skills you’ve got, what training you’ve had, what school you went to. It’s like in the First World War, when the soldiers were ordered to go over the top and march towards the German trenches – what difference did their training make? Would a professional soldier with ten years’ experience be any less likely to be shot than someone whose first day it was at the front? No. It was pure chance whether you got killed or not. When a bomb goes off, it doesn’t choose who it blows up. Do you think any of the survivors thought, yeah, look at me, I’m great, I’ve survived because I was better than the man standing next to me? I don’t know, some of them probably thought God had played a part in it, but from what I’ve read in history most of the soldiers felt terrible; they felt they didn’t deserve to live while so many of their friends had died.’

‘That’s how I feel,’ said Ed. ‘Guilty.’

Jack turned away. ‘I didn’t mean anything by what I was saying, Ed.’

‘I know you think I’ve been a coward, and maybe I have but …’

‘I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I didn’t mean it.’

‘Yes, you did. And I understand why you said it. But … I can’t fight, Jack. I can do everything else but I can’t fight. In a way Greg’s right. Nothing in my life has made me ready for all this.’

‘But that’s exactly what I’m saying.’ Jack was trying not to raise his voice. ‘Nothing you did
could
have prepared you for this. You could have left school at sixteen like Greg did and trained as an, I don’t know, a plumber, or an electrician, what difference would it have made? Look at the Sullivan brothers – they were big tough guys. They were both boxers. They both did a shed-load of sports and now they’re both dead. But two little wimps like Wiki and Jibber-jabber both made it through. What skills do they have that the Sullivans didn’t? None. They were just luckier. That’s all.’

At the front of the bus Greg was struggling into his coat. He zipped it up, pulled a torch from the pocket and went over to Liam, who was sitting with the Brains Trust.

‘I’m just going outside to have a fag and give the bus a once-over. Check the tyres and that.’

‘Dad …’

‘It’s all right, Liam.’ Greg smiled. ‘Nothing’s gonna happen.’

He winked at Liam and climbed down off the bus into the rain.

‘He’s wrong, you know,’ Justin the nerd said to Liam and the other younger kids when Greg was gone. He’d obviously come to the same conclusion as Jack. ‘It’s not all about trapping rabbits and skinning cats. You don’t just need fighters. You need people like us, people who know things, people who know about chemistry and biology and all that kind of thing, people who can make machines work.’

‘But we
do
still need fighters,’ said Froggie.

‘Yes, of course we do,’ Justin went on. ‘But you can’t just have a society of warriors. What are they going to eat? Where are they going to live? What clothes are they going to wear? You need some fighters for protection, yes, but it’ll be like any functioning society, you’ll also need farmers to grow food, scientists and engineers and doctors to make things and to keep you healthy, you’re going to need artists, musicians and actors to entertain people.’

‘Jugglers,’ said Jibber-jabber.

‘Jugglers? We won’t need jugglers.’

‘But
they’re
entertaining. I like jugglers.’

‘Well, learn to juggle, then,’ said Justin, ‘and you can entertain us all.’

‘Maybe I will.’

‘What about clowns?’ said Froggie. ‘Will we need clowns?’

‘We’ll certainly need people to make us laugh,’ said Justin. ‘Now more than ever. But the thing is, we need lots of different people with lots of different skills. That’s how we can survive, and why we’ll defeat the sickos, because we’re cleverer than they are, and we can build a society, but they can’t. They will eventually die out. They must, because they can never be anything more than dumb animals. That’s mankind’s greatest weapon – our brains. There are cannibal tribes – there
were
cannibal tribes – that believed that if you ate the brains of your enemy you’d gain their wisdom and power.’

‘Lots of cannibals in Papua New Guinea were wiped out by eating human brains,’ said Wiki. ‘They all caught mad cow disease, well, the human form, CJD.’

Liam was staring at Wiki with wide eyes. ‘Is it safe to eat other bits of humans?’ he asked quietly.

‘Well, it’s not a very good idea,’ said Wiki. ‘We’re full of diseases. Most farm animals are given injections and drugs and they’re specially bred to be healthy. Most humans are really unhealthy. We’re walking bags of disease and germs. Compared to the average cow, anyway.’

‘But could you die if you ate someone?’

‘Probably not. I don’t really know. You’d have to avoid the brains to be sure.’

‘The sickos eat people,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘And look at them. They’re in a terrible state.’

‘But they were in a terrible state already,’ said Justin. ‘They were already sick, that’s why they eat people, not the other way round.’

‘Why are you so interested, anyway?’ Jibber-jabber asked Liam. ‘Are you thinking of eating someone?’

‘No. I never would. That’s why …’

‘That’s why what?’

‘Nothing. But, Dad, you see … I don’t know for sure … But the smoked meat …’

‘Are you trying to say your dad’s eaten someone?’ said Jibber-jabber in a whisper. ‘That’s gross.’

‘No. I don’t know. I hope not. But … The adults and the older kids, on the farm, they all got sick … but Little Paul, he …’

Liam stopped as Greg got back on to the bus and took off his soggy coat. They could feel heat radiating off him, and he smelt ripe and meaty. They none of them smelt great, but Greg was the worst. He put the coat on the back of his seat and joined the boys. He seemed to fill all the space around them, a featureless black shape.