The End (29 page)

David was getting sweaty and turning red. Most of the time he behaved like a middle-aged man, but when things got away from him, when he got out of his depth, he’d blush and
lose it and turn into a little kid.

‘You know,’ said John, scratching an armpit. ‘One of the things I used to miss about the way things were, was TV. I used to really miss TV. Watching stuff. Not needing to think. But now I don’t miss it no more. Is like magic. You’ve come up with something much better. This is the coolest show I ever seen. What d’you call it? Mug who talks to
himself? Muppet with a brain spasm?’

Carl sniggered.

‘The Mong Show.’

The focus of their humour was Paul, the messed-up kid from the museum who’d arrived, claiming he could communicate with grown-ups. The Doctor Dolittle of the modern world … ‘I can talk to the strangers.’ Or sickos as he called them. Claimed he had some kind of telepathic link. David, as usual, had
got carried away, jumped the gun, called people in too early. Like a little kid who gets a magic set for Christmas and wants to show off his new trick before he’s properly practised it. ‘Look, look, look, the coin will disappear, no wait, oh sorry, I dropped it …’

Paul was standing there in the middle of the stateroom overlooking the gardens at Buckingham Palace, where the gardeners
were hard at work tending to the crops. It was never-ending work.

Paul was concentrating hard, muttering, his lips barely moving.

And that was it.

David really hadn’t thought this one through. There was nothing to see. Even if Paul could somehow talk to strangers, how could he prove it? David, as ever, wasn’t going to give up, though.

‘You don’t get it, John,’ he
snapped at the squatter chief. ‘He’s communicating with them. He has a telepathic link.’

‘Yeah? And so how do I know he hasn’t just got a telepathic link to my cheesy foot, or a chicken, or a chicken nugget? This is ridiculous, man.’

‘It is beyond stupid,’ said Carl, dressed, as usual, like a wild kind of pirate – with big boots, a bandanna round his head and baggy trousers
cut off just below the knees. John himself was a rare sight. Like he’d been put together from
broken bits and pieces. Ugly and bony, with missing teeth and a nasty, pinched face and small eyes set too close together. He wore an odd selection of clothes – dirty sportswear mostly.

Paul suddenly raised his voice, opened his eyes wide, spoke loud and clear.

‘My name is Paul …’

And then his lips carried on moving, but Jester couldn’t hear any of the words.

John and Carl screamed with laughter, slapping their knees.

‘I didn’t think it could get any better,’ said John. ‘But that is the best. We come all this way to find out this amazing piece of information. His name is Paul! Oh great one, chief Jedi, your majesty Pope Paul, what else can you tell us?
Please enlighten us. What’s your birthday? Can you tell us that?’

But David wasn’t giving up.

‘Have you made contact?’ he said and Paul nodded, staring into the distance, past the palace walls. David looked excited, but John and Carl were just laughing harder.

‘Give us another revelation, oh wise one,’ said Carl. ‘We are waiting for your words, master.’

‘He says his name’s
St George,’ said Paul, who was shivering and shaking now, drops of sweat forming on his forehead. Jester had to admit that a tiny shiver passed through his own body as well, and he felt the hairs stand up along his arms.

St George.

That was Shadowman’s name for the leader of the strangers’ army. But then he too laughed – at himself. It
didn’t mean anything. Paul could
easily have heard about St George. Hell, Jester might even have talked to Paul about the guy.

Paul was looking really stressed now, like he might become a burster. Well, that’d be a grand finale all right, if he did a full body burst and splattered all over the fancy carpet. Covered John and Carl with gunk.

But he didn’t burst. Nothing happened. John got up. ‘This is dumb,’
he said. ‘Me and Carl are going to St James’s.’

Paul broke concentration, gasped and fell to his knees. Carl raised his eyebrows at him.

‘Nice try, Kermit.’

‘Wait,’ said David. ‘Wait. We can prove it …’ He threw a look at Jester.

Jester shrugged. ‘Prove what exactly?’

‘I want to show that Paul can talk to them.’

‘Get the royals in,’ said Jester and he helped
Paul to his feet. ‘Can you talk to them again?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good boy.’

‘Not in here!’ David squealed in protest. ‘They’re filthy.’

That was the least of Jester’s problems. He really wished David would stop pushing this. Anything could happen with Paul. He was seriously unstable and was in and out of the sick-bay with nosebleeds, fits and fevers. As far as Jester knew,
he’d gone nuts after a stranger killed his sister, and now for some reason he blamed other kids for what had happened. Jester had been told by one of the girls who worked in the sick-bay that he had a nasty bite on his neck that wasn’t properly healed. He was a tall, thin boy with very pale skin who always wore a greasy black roll-neck jumper – presumably to hide the bite.

OK,
he’d made some kind of link to the royals before. Could he do it again?

‘You sure about this?’ Jester asked David.

‘We’ll carry on the demonstration upstairs.’ David gave Jester a sour look and walked out. The others had no choice but to follow, Paul shuffling along behind in a trance.

When they got out into the hallway, John and Carl peeled off.

‘We’ve seen enough,’
said Carl.

‘For God’s sake!’ David stopped and turned on them angrily. ‘It’ll take five minutes. I mean, what else are you going to do? What else
is
there to do? What have you got in your diary that is so important? What is planned for your busy day? Have you got a three-hour session of sitting around scratching your arse booked in? A talk on nose picking? A seminar on dozing
off?’

Jester could see that John was about to lose his cool.

‘Just think,’ he said, stepping in. ‘If we
could
communicate with the grown-ups. Tell them what to do.’

‘Do what?’ said John. ‘They’re useless.’

‘Help us,’ said David. ‘Ask yourself – what do you want? What do I want? We all want the same thing. We want to deal with those arrogant bastards at the museum,
Justin’s snotty nerds, the Holloway kids … Achilleus.’

‘That bastard,’ said John.

‘You want to be in control of London, yes?’ said David.

‘Sure.’

Like David, John had been humiliated by the Holloway kids. Jester doubted he’d ever forgive Achilleus for defeating him in single combat.

‘Just think,’ said David, back in control, selling his gold-plated bullshit. ‘Our
own army. Isn’t that what we’ve
always wanted? To be strong enough to rule London? To tell everyone else what to do?’

‘Right,’ said Carl, who was brighter than John. John had mean street smarts, but that was about it. Carl understood the world a lot better than him.

‘Let’s pretend for a moment your pet monkey actually
can
talk to the walking pus-bags,’ said Carl. ‘Who’s
to say they’ll do what we want? That don’t follow.’

‘It does,’ said David, beaming at him. ‘What do the strangers want?’

‘Dunno,’ said John. ‘Don’t care.’

‘They want the same as us,’ said David. ‘To destroy the snotty museum kids and that gimp Jordan Hordern from the Tower of London, strolling over here like he owns the place. We can pull them all down and put them in
their place. Because all the strangers have ever wanted to do is kill kids. But if we can make some kind of alliance, some kind of truce with them …’

‘How d’you make a truce with zombies?’ Carl scoffed. ‘They don’t think. They’re nothing.’

‘Not all of them,’ said David. ‘They have a leader – the one Paul’s made contact with – St George.’

So we’re all going along with that, are we?
thought Jester. Contact with the big kahuna. How quickly David could spin things his way.

‘He’s clever, St George. He controls the strangers. If we can make this link with him stronger then …’

‘
If
you can,’ said John and he spat into an ornamental vase on a stand. ‘But there ain’t no proof of it.’ He at least had seen through David’s fog.

‘I’m giving
you proof,’ said David and he grabbed Paul by the shoulders.

‘You’ll do it, won’t you?’ he said, but Paul looked dazed and confused.

‘I am God,’ he said quietly, almost a whisper.

‘He’ll do it,’ said Jester, taking the pressure off Paul before he cracked.

They went up the ornate grand staircase, past the black statue of Perseus holding the severed Medusa’s head. John
and Carl looked around admiringly.

‘When you gonna invite us to come and live here in comfort?’ said John.

‘I thought you preferred your camp,’ said David.

‘Yeah, but you got some nice stuff here. Ain’t it nice, Carl?’

‘It’s nice.’

At the top they made their way up a second, less elaborate staircase to the royal apartments, the smell of the royal family getting
stronger with every step. Even John and Carl, who, quite frankly, stank, wrinkled their noses and made crude jokes about farting and worse.

As ever, there was a boy guarding the door to the royals’ bedroom. He looked bored and sleepy. David said a few words to him while John and Carl pointed at a painting of two nude women and sniggered.

The boy opened the door and the stench hit
them like a physical wave. John groaned. The royals were a terrible sight. There were only five of them left, their clothes hanging off them in rags. An older woman, a younger woman and three younger men. They were the healthiest of the ones they’d found hiding here when they’d arrived. Very minor royals. Jester had long ago forgotten who they were exactly. They had so many sores
and boils on their faces they didn’t even look human. Jester no longer
felt disgusted or disturbed by them, and they certainly couldn’t scare him. They were too feeble and degenerate.

They lived like animals in a zoo, crapping on the floor and eating scraps from tin bowls.

The four boys stepped carefully into the room, careful of what they might tread in.

‘OK,’ said John,
sneering at Paul, who looked paler and more feverish than ever. ‘It’s show time.’

Paul sighed, took a deep breath and fixed his eyes on the royals. ‘What do you want them to do?’ he asked.

‘Anything!’ David shouted. ‘Do anything! Do something! Show us.’

‘He can’t do nothing,’ said John. ‘He’s just a nutter. This is a big waste of time.’

But before he’d finished speaking
the royals dropped to the floor, like puppets with their strings cut, and John’s eyes went wide. Paul’s own eyes had rolled back in their sockets and he was shaking and muttering, jerking about like he was possessed.

The royals groaned. One of the younger ones held his head in his hands and rocked from side to side on the carpet. And then they all fell still.

‘That wasn’t
him,’ said John. ‘A fluke.’

One by one the royals slowly raised their ruined faces to look at John and Carl. And then they started shuffling on their bellies towards the two boys, drooling brown spit over their swollen lower lips on to the carpet.

‘OK,’ said John. ‘You can stop ’em now.’

Jester was impressed because, for the first time ever, John was impressed. More
than impressed. He actually looked scared.

‘You can call ’em off now, brother.’

The royals kept on coming, wriggling and sliding on their bellies. John and Carl stepped back and now the royals got up on to their knees, bowing down to them, pressing their foreheads to the floor. The older woman, whose lidless eyes were surely blind, raised one hand towards Carl, opened what
was left of her mouth and a sound came out, something like speech, something like a sick animal, something horrible. Then she turned one hand round. It was twisted and gnarled, the joints swollen, her little finger missing.

‘What’s she doing?’ said John.

Slowly the woman made a fist and then painfully extended her middle finger.

Jester was laughing. John wasn’t. He’d gone
white.

‘She’s saluting you, John,’ said Jester, and he clapped Paul on the back. ‘She’s giving you the finger.’

41

Shadowman was up in the tower at the old cinema again. Watching the sicko army. He felt at home. This was what he did best. Watching. Waiting. Following. Alone. No one else to get hurt. No one else to slow him down and put him in danger.

Always best to be alone.

He had his pack. His food. His water. His weapons. And from here he could see almost the full extent of
St George’s army. Now maybe twice as big as it had been. More sickos had arrived from all points of the compass, trudging in on that awful morning. Reports had come in from the east, from the Tower of London – Jordan Hordern had a very efficient communication system. And, earlier today, Shadowman had managed to get up to see Saif. Saif had confirmed that more sickos had come in from
the north. Shadowman had seen for himself the ones coming over the bridges from the south. Most, though, the largest group, had come from the west. And that had been the group who had taken Yo-Yo. No chance that she might still be alive. He hadn’t tried to lie to himself about that.