The Dead (28 page)

‘I agree,’ said Aleisha. ‘We ain’t gonna find nothing.’

Then Jack’s voice caused them all to turn round. ‘There’s a lorry in that alleyway.’

‘What?’ Ed frowned at him.

‘I said there’s a lorry in that alleyway.’

‘So what?’

‘So I think it’s a Tesco delivery truck. We should check it out.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Ed put his hands up, palms towards Jack. ‘Call me a coward if you want, but I don’t think that’s a great idea.’

‘Why?’ said Jack. ‘What’s going to happen?’

‘It was like this when we were ambushed at The Fez.’

‘There’s no one around, Ed.’

‘That’s what it was like then. They came from nowhere. They were waiting for us. That lorry could be a trap.’

Jack laughed. ‘What bloody sickos are going to be able to drive a lorry up an alley and hide it?’

‘So why’s it there, then?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ said Jack. ‘I’m just saying we should have a look.’

‘You weren’t there in Rowhurst,’ Ed pleaded. ‘You don’t know what it was like …’

But Jack was already walking over to the alleyway.

Ed called after him, ‘Jack!’

The others could do nothing but follow. The alley was just wide enough to fit the width of the lorry that was about ten metres down. It sat there in the darkness, a solid, menacing shape, blocking the way like some great beast in a lair ready to dash out and catch its prey. Before he was halfway there Jack wished he hadn’t been so hasty. Ed was right – it would be too easy to get trapped in the narrow space. Then he heard his friends behind him and it gave him the confidence to carry on.

The lorry had a streamlined hood on the top of the square blunt cab that clearly said Tesco and there was a manufacturer’s logo in the middle of the black radiator grille – ‘MAN’. Jack smiled to himself. It was like a sign. It’d be funny if there actually
was
a man sitting there inside the cab like a neatly labelled exhibit, but it was too dark to see.

The lorry was jammed in, making it impossible to open the doors. The radiator grille, however, was made up of three bars, like the rungs of a ladder. Well, that was an invitation if ever Jack’d seen one. He reached for the wipers to get a grip and hoiked himself up.

There
was
a man sitting there, in the driver’s seat, and Jack didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

He was dead, his skin bloated and puffy, covered with a layer of white mould that gave it a soft, fluffy look. His eyes were sunk into his swollen face like two little black holes. He reminded Jack of something.

A snowman.

It was quite uncanny. The resemblance was made even stronger by the fact that the driver had a vivid red nose, lumpy and crusted with blisters like a carrot that had been left too long in the bottom of the fridge.

Hell, he was even wearing a little hat and a scarf.

Now Jack started laughing and had to let go and jump back down.

‘What is it?’ said Bam, the first to join him by the lorry.

‘Look in there,’ said Jack, snorting with laughter. ‘There’s a bloody snowman!’

Bam climbed up and a moment later he was standing next to Jack, doubled over and barking.

‘You are
sick
,’ he managed to gasp between laughs.

‘Is that, like, a dead body in there?’ said Courtney, too squeamish to look.

‘Sure is,’ said Bam. ‘As dead as they come.’

‘Well, let’s get out of here then. That’s creepy.’

‘We need the lorry, Courtney,’ said Jack.

‘What for?’

‘What do you think? Can’t you read?’

‘Yeah, I can read.’

‘And what does that say?’

‘Tesco.’

‘Exactly. It’s a Tesco delivery lorry. It could be full of food.’

Courtney stared at the cab and wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘I can’t see
him
driving it very far.’

‘I’m gonna check out the back,’ said Jack, and, using the bumper, the grille and the wing mirrors he scrambled up on to the roof of the cab. Behind the cab was what looked like a long blue container. He climbed over the sloping hood and hopped up on to it. It was made of thin metal that banged and clanged beneath his feet as he made his way to the rear.

His heart was pounding, as much with hope as with fear. If the container was intact, it might be filled with food. A very valuable load. Why else would the snowman have driven in here if not to escape looters, or hijackers? He’d probably been on his way to Tesco and had come down here to hide, and then tried to sit it out. He could have starved to death, or he could have been taken by the disease. It was impossible to tell.

Well. He might have escaped the marauding sickos, but in the end he hadn’t been able to escape death.

Jack got to the end and dropped on to his belly. He peered over the edge, hardly daring to look. The back of the lorry appeared to be untouched. Unopened.

He grinned from ear to ear.

He heard a clatter behind him and twisted round to see Ed and Bam climbing up on to the container.

‘Well?’ Bam called out to him. ‘Don’t keep us in suspense.’

Jack sat up, too excited to speak. He gave them a double thumbs up.

‘You think there might be food in here?’ Bam asked, smiling too.

Jack nodded his head as Ed ran over to take a look.

‘We need to check inside,’ he said. ‘It could be empty, or all rotted.’

‘Now who’s the pessimist?’ said Jack.

‘I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up and then find it’s a lorry-load of shampoo or something.’

‘We have to get into the cab,’ said Bam.

‘What for?’ Ed frowned at him.

‘Think about it. The snowman – he drove in here and you can’t open the doors of the cab, right?’

‘Right.’

‘That means he must still have the keys with him. We can use them to open the back, and if it
is
food we could just ditch the snowman and drive the whole bloody rig back to the museum and unload it back there.’

‘You know how to drive a lorry?’

‘Nope. But since things all went pear-shaped I’ve learnt a lot of new skills. I’d be happy to add lorry driver to my list.’

They returned to the front of the lorry and climbed down. The other kids were waiting for them in the alley.

‘OK. We need to get the keys out of there,’ said Bam. ‘Any volunteers?’

Unsurprisingly there were none.

‘Didn’t think so.’

‘I’ll help,’ said Ed.

‘Help who?’ said Bam.

‘Help you,’ said Ed. ‘It was your idea.’

‘Oh, cheers.’

‘There’s a little sort of skylight thing in the roof of the cab,’ said Jack. ‘You know, like a sunroof? If you could get it open you could get in that way.’

Ed and Bam climbed back up and using Ed’s bayonet and DogNut’s club they managed to batter and bend and lever the sunroof up until it came away, leaving a rectangular hole in the top of the cab. Instantly a foul stench of putrefaction wafted out, accompanied by a squadron of flies. The boys dropped back, groaning and gagging, their eyes watering.

‘I will
never
get used to that smell,’ said Bam. ‘That is
rank
. I really don’t think I can go in there, Ed.’

Ed took a deep breath. ‘I’ll do it.’

He eased himself through the narrow hole, feeling for the passenger seat with his feet. Then dropped down.

It was even worse inside the cramped cab. There were flies everywhere and the air was foul. Ed kept one hand clamped over his mouth and nose and tried not to look at the snowman, who was clutching the wheel with rotten hands. He got a brief glimpse of his face. There were maggots around his nostrils and lips. Ed leant over him and fumbled around the steering column and dashboard, feeling for the keys. He had to press his body against the corpse. It felt soft and cold.

He tried to shut his mind down and just think about the keys, but it was hard. He could see the other kids outside staring up at him, and somehow that made it worse, seeing their looks of horror and disgust. He felt like a contestant on
I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
inside a glass box doing a bush-tucker trial.

Your challenge, Ed, is to go in there with a dead man and several buckets of maggots and find the keys. Your reward will be meals for the whole camp for the next six months.

‘I can’t find anything,’ he called up to Bam.

‘Try his pockets.’

Oh, Jesus
.

Ed steeled himself and patted the snowman’s pockets, still trying not to look. First the jacket and then the trousers.

‘There’s something in there,’ he said.

‘Keys?’ Bam sounded excited.

‘Could be.’

‘Get them out.’

‘I am
not
sticking my hand in there. It’s all … wet.’

‘You’re gonna have to, Ed.’

Ed held his breath again and slowly, slowly slipped his fingers inside the pocket.

‘God … It’s disgusting. Oh, God.’

‘Are the keys there?’

‘There’s something … Yes! Gottit!’

He jerked out his hand and proudly waved a chunky set of keys on a fob up at Bam. Then he looked at his fingers. They were covered in slimy green and yellow paste.

‘Yaaaaah!’ He dropped the keys as if they were red hot and frantically flicked his fingers, then he wiped them on the passenger seat.

Bam was laughing.

‘Good work, Ed! You’re a star!’

Ed found a rag among the rubbish inside the cab and cleaned the keys, then he tossed them up to Bam, stood on the seatback, grabbed the rim of the sunroof and hauled himself out.

The kids below cheered as Bam helped Ed to his feet, and then the two of them raced along the top of the lorry and climbed down the far end.

There was a sort of big steel shutter in the back that rolled up into the roof of the container. Ed tried the most likely-looking key and slotted it into the lock at the bottom. Right first time. There was a satisfying clunk as the shutter popped open.

‘Yes!’ Ed cried, and the two of them slid the door up.

The lorry was filled almost to the door with rows of tall wire cages on wheels, held in place by red webbing straps. There must have been nearly fifty of them in all, and they were piled high with produce.

Canned fruit and vegetables, beans, cereal, toilet paper, fruit juice and soya milk, chocolate, peanut butter, jam, yoghurt, crisps and nuts. It was like someone had taken a small supermarket and packed everything from it into the back of this one lorry.

Ed and Bam grabbed each other by the forearms and yelled incoherently as they danced around in a circle.

‘This’ll last us weeks,’ said Bam when they’d calmed down a little. ‘And look! You’re in luck. There
is
shampoo! We’ll show that Jordan bloody Hordern. He’ll be on his knees begging us for some of this lot.’

‘We’ve still got to get it back to the museum, though,’ said Ed.

‘We’ve got the keys. We’ve got the muscle. We’re on a roll. Let’s rock! The good times are here to stay. I feel good about today, Ed. No, I don’t feel good. I feel bloody great!’

When Ed and Bam came back to tell the others the good news, they found DogNut and Jack lifting the driver out through the sunroof, pulling him up by his jacket. They both had scarves wrapped round their faces, but the smell alone was enough to make you retch.

‘We figured from all that shouting there was food in the back,’ said Jack, his voice muffled.

‘Tons of it,’ said Bam. ‘If we can get the lorry back to the museum, we’ve got it made.’

Jack looked round at Ed. ‘Still think we shouldn’t have come and taken a look, you wimp?’ he said.

‘It was a good call, Jack.’

‘Yeah. Now give us a hand here.’

Ed took a deep breath and took hold of the body. Once it was clear of the opening they tipped it over the front of the cab. It rolled down the windscreen and flopped to the ground with a wet slap, spilling a small puddle of thin brown liquid.

The kids waiting below jumped back in alarm and swore at the boys on the roof who jeered at them.

‘Make yourselves useful,’ Jack said. ‘Drag him away from here where we can’t smell him. We’ve got to work out how to get this lorry moving.’

‘I might be able to drive it,’ said Justin.

‘You?’ Jack scoffed. ‘What gives you that idea?’

‘I used to play a computer game called
European Truck Simulator
.’

‘I’ll bet you did,’ Jack laughed. ‘I expect you played
Starship Commander
as well – doesn’t mean you could fly a real rocket.’

‘A lorry’s a bit easier than a rocket,’ said Justin, trying not to get cross. ‘The principle’s roughly the same as a car.’

‘Yeah? And can you drive a car, in principle?’

‘Yes I can, actually. My dad gave me lessons on an old airfield near where we live. He was mad about cars. Me too. Though I’m more interested in trucks and lorries, really. Dad didn’t have a lorry to teach me in, though.’

‘You really think you can drive this?’ Ed asked, slithering down.