The Dead (46 page)

He fiddled with his rifle, pulled back the bolt and managed to shunt a bullet up out of the magazine into the chamber. They had all done CCF at school, the Combined Cadet Force, where they’d learnt the basics of being a soldier, including how to fire rifles. The old Lee-Enfield .303s they were carrying were similar to the .22s they’d trained with, but the reality of using rifles in some sort of combat situation was very different to the calm and ordered atmosphere of a rifle range.

The first thing was to get everyone’s attention.

He aimed at the sky and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked, there was a loud bang and the bullet ripped up into the black smoke cloud that hung over the bridge.

‘Get out of the way,’ he shouted, aiming his rifle at the kids in front of him who had turned round to see what was going on. His boys also levelled their guns, some of which had fixed bayonets, and instantly a pathway cleared.

‘Forward!’ David commanded and his boys marched in formation, the lorry following.

They soon got as far as the stalled cars. There were two gangs of boys fighting around them, other kids shouting from the edges of the scuffle, yet more crammed into the various stalled vehicles. By the side of the road a double-decker bus was on fire, adding to the chaos.

‘Stop what you are doing and move these cars!’ David barked. The boys barely looked at him. Some didn’t even hear him, so once again he fired into the air.

Now they listened.

‘Get these cars out of the way,’ he said firmly, reloading the rifle. ‘You’re blocking the whole bridge.’

‘Shove it up your arse,’ said a stocky kid with a flat, blunt face. His friends laughed. David lowered his gun, aimed it at the boy’s chest and fired.

The boy grunted and fell over backwards. Pod swore, not quite believing what had happened. Everyone else fell into a stunned silence.

David glared at the circle of kids that had formed round him.

‘I said get these cars out of the way.’

Instantly everyone jumped to life, starting engines, releasing brakes, pushing stalled cars, shoving back the crowd. In a minute there was a clear path down the centre of the bridge and David marched on.

Sitting in the driver’s cab Brooke was appalled. She looked down to where the stocky kid was being cradled by two crying girls. He wasn’t moving, but whether he was dead or not it was impossible to tell.

‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘You can’t go around shooting people.’

‘He’s cleared the bridge,’ said Justin.

‘Justin, he
shot
that boy. Just like that.’

‘If we don’t get everyone over the bridge,’ said Justin, ‘a lot more people are going to die.’

‘Yeah, but … I mean, you can’t just shoot people; it ain’t right.’

‘It’s not right, no,’ said Justin. ‘But it’s done.’

‘You listen to me, Justin. Soon as we get across, soon as the road is clear, we got to get away from this nutter. You put your foot down, OK?’

‘What about Ed?’

‘We got to hope he’s with us. I ain’t getting out to look. I doubt we’re the most popular people on this bridge right now.’

Ed stabbed his bayonet into the fat father and twisted. There was a splash of blood and a howl. He jerked the blade free, reversed the rifle and slammed the butt into a mother’s face. He didn’t stop now, but stabbed again, hacking into the sickos, splitting skulls, opening guts, hardly aware of what was going on. The square-headed boy was at his side, swearing with each jab of his fork, thrusting and grunting and kicking. Courtney and Aleisha were also still with him, but he was somehow alone, lost in a world of redness, channelling all his frustration and terror through the rifle into his bayonet.

Pez stared through red sore eyes. Seeing little more than shapes. But he could smell them.

And he could taste them.

His belly hurt, burning with a cold fire. The only thing that would make the fire go away was to take the blood of one of the small ones. He was so hungry. He couldn’t eat any more, though. He tried but he couldn’t chew. His jaws wouldn’t work.

He tilted back his head. Such a pain around his mouth. His tongue felt over his teeth like a feeding parasite looking for scraps of food. There was no food.

He howled in frustration. Why wouldn’t his jaws work? He didn’t know that they were unconnected, that his lower jaw hung uselessly down, the cheeks and tendons gone. All he knew was that he was hungry and he needed to kill.

Aleisha was terrified. This was way worse than yesterday. What was she doing here? She’d gone along with Courtney without really thinking. She’d wanted to be helpful and now here she was in the middle of a full-on freaking battle, surrounded by kids, yelling and screaming as they hit out with fists and feet, bits of wood and garden tools, sports equipment and the odd proper weapon. But the sickos just kept on coming. A mindless wall of them pushing forward, smelling like raw sewage.

She hung back behind Courtney and another big girl, poking her club at any sicko that got close. She might as well not have bothered. She was too small for this, not nearly strong enough and totally unused to fighting. Any minute now she was going to lose it big time.

She looked along the line. Ed was there, his rifle swinging through the air. He had cut himself a wide circle and looked like something out of one of her little brother’s computer games, with the scar down his cheek and the gun in his hands and the blood all over him. He was wild-eyed and unhinged, grunting viciously as he hacked and stabbed at the sickos. The kids around him were keeping well away, obviously as scared of him as they were of the sickos. If she hadn’t known him, she’d have been scared too.

The gap closed up and she lost sight of him. The sickos were advancing. She spotted Pez, wading through the ranks of the adults, spit running down his lower jaw and on to his chest.

And then the line of kids broke and the sickos surged forward.

As soon as Ed cut one sicko down, another took its place. It was like trying to empty an ocean with a bucket. He was plastered with blood and pus that stiffened as it dried. His arms ached from the wrists to the shoulders; the rifle felt as heavy as a telegraph pole. All around him the road was littered with bits of bodies and his feet kept slipping in puddles of blood. Wounded sickos crawled away or sat there stunned among the shapeless lumps of their dead companions.

The kids were completely boxed in now, crushed up against the front line of the sickos. They’d been reduced to just pushing and shoving in a great heaving mass of bodies. Ed stopped a beat too long and even he was swamped. One moment there was still room to swing his rifle, the next he was wrestling with a sweaty policeman who seemed to be trying to speak.

‘Hold them,’ Ed croaked. ‘We’ve got to try and hold them!’

But then something gave way behind them. The crowd of waiting kids moved and Ed found himself staggering backwards. He stumbled over a corpse, got his footing back, and then tripped again as three mothers charged at him.

He went down heavily, jarring his spine. A knee got him in the face and for a moment he was dazed. He was in a tangle of legs, like when you fell over in a rugby scrum.

Another boy had fallen near him and was being dragged away by a group of fathers as he twisted and squirmed in their hands and tried to pull free.

There was another scuffle going on to his left. Sickos had got to a girl. He could only see her lower half. A young mother had hold of her club, another was tugging at her sleeves and the girl had nothing to fight back with.

She was pulled to the ground and Ed realized to his horror that it was Aleisha. Even if he could get back on to his feet there were too many people between the two of them to get to her in time.

He watched helplessly as a teenage girl with long hair flapping in her face lunged down at Aleisha. Aleisha struggled, but the other girl took hold of her and sank her teeth into her forearm. Aleisha screamed and hit out at her attacker with her free hand. The long-haired teenager ignored the feeble blows and dragged Aleisha deeper into the ranks of the sickos.

Ed remembered his pistol. He forced himself into a kneeling position, wrenched the gun from its holster and aimed.

For a second the crush of bodies parted and he had a clear shot.

The girl with the long hair turned. Her hair whipped back and Ed could clearly see her face. She stared at Ed and suddenly the wildness drained out of her features.

It was Frédérique.

She frowned and smiled sadly at Ed. Then she held out her hands towards him like someone begging for money.

Ed pulled the trigger.

One moment Fred was there, the next she was gone.

And then Ed was knocked over again. His face hit the tarmac and he saw stars. Somehow he managed to wriggle on to his back, spitting and half blinded, only to find himself looking up into the gaping, dripping, wet face of Pez, his lower jaw swinging like a pendulum.

Ed tried to bring the gun round but he could barely move. His body seemed to be working in slow motion. Pez dropped on top of him, trapping his arm against his chest. The stink coming out of the red hole of his throat made Ed retch. He thought he was about to throw up. Pez pressed his mouth against Ed’s face, but he couldn’t bite. Ed felt his tongue slithering over his skin, saw his mad, pink eyes. Felt his fingers clawing at him.

He groaned.

And then there was a movement. Ed was dimly aware of someone plunging a weapon into the sicko. Pez flopped to the side, wriggled horribly, his feet drumming on the ground, and then fell still. Whoever had attacked him put a foot to the dead body.

It was the square-headed boy.

‘Filthy bloody animal,’ he said, pulling the tines of his fork out of Pez’s chest. And then he reached down and hauled Ed to his feet.

Ed filled his burning lungs with oxygen and his head began to clear. He glanced around. Matt and his bunch were in the middle of the church gardens waving their banner. They appeared to be singing and chanting. Other kids were regrouping around them. Ed and the boy with the fork cut their way over to them, picking up Courtney as they went. She had Aleisha with her, thank God. She looked terrible, though, bleeding badly and trembling, her face tight with shock.

When they got to the gardens, there was some degree of protection from the railings that surrounded them and Ed quickly took in their situation. There was progress on the bridge finally. Kids were pouring across it. The lorry was more than halfway over. But Ed’s war party had become separated from the main group, and the way back to them was cut off by sickos.

To make matters worse, the fire had finally reached them and was rampaging through Lambeth Palace and the apartment block on either side of the road. It wouldn’t be long before it reached the small church.

Ed had a strong urge to give up again, but then he realized the boy with the fork was grinning at him.

‘This is fun, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Dunno about that.’ Ed shook his head. ‘But thanks for saving my arse. What’s your name, by the way? I’m Ed.’

‘Kyle,’ said the boy.

‘Well, Kyle.’ Ed pointed towards the bridge. ‘We’re gonna have to get over there somehow, or we’re gonna be stuck here.’

‘OK.’ Kyle’s grin widened. ‘I’m with you, mate.’

Ed smiled. Somehow the boy’s insane enthusiasm had got to him. Maybe it wasn’t impossible. The two of them formed the remaining kids into a tight unit, with the best fighters along the outer edge, ready to battle their way through the sickos.

‘Make some noise!’ Ed yelled when they were ready and then they charged out of the gardens, roaring a battle cry.

It was hopeless, though, a case of two steps forward, three steps back. There were just too damned many sickos blocking their way. Instead of moving towards the bridge the kids were being forced off to the right, on to the road that ran eastwards alongside the river. The bridge was getting further away. Ed looked for the lorry but couldn’t see it any more. He hoped that the other kids at least were going to get to safety.

Zohra was sitting at the back of the lorry pointing out at the London skyline.