The End (36 page)

50

‘You’ve got to come! Before it’s too late, it’s too late! You’ve got to come fast. You’ve got to help us. We’re in terrible danger. You have to get here as soon as you can. They’re being killed. Sam! They’re after Sam. Help him. Help the boy. They’ve killed the boy. You have to help us! They’ve killed the boy. Come now! Please come now! We need you … Mister Three? You’ve
got to hear me. Mister Three, wake up! Anybody! Can you hear me? They’ve killed the boy!’

Skinner was in a panic. And it was Fish-Face who’d done it to him when she’d gone into meltdown – twittering, flapping her arms, filling his head with her noise. He knew that she was attempting to communicate with the others. With the Warehouse Queen, and with Trinity who’d gone west
with Ed. He knew she was only trying to help, but he could feel her panic in his mind, and her message was getting distorted, tangled, garbled, swirling and whirling and painful. He wanted to keep her out. To shut her up. Even though he knew that it was important she tried to contact the others. There was a danger, though, that her tangled broadcast would just confuse them. It was so strong
and insistent. No avoiding the main point of the message. That was coming through loud and clear …

HELP!

It was the details that were in danger of getting muddled.

It was like a repeated SOS from a downed aeroplane or something, sending out its distress signal over and over again.

Skinner felt awful. Twisted up inside. He and Fish-Face had been in the main hall when
Whitney had gone charging past, shouting, ‘Help him! Help the boy! They’re after Sam – we have to help him.’

They’d followed her outside and witnessed the fight in the street. It was then that Fish-Face had started broadcasting her manic message, channelling what Whitney had shouted and adding stuff of her own. Doing it automatically, without even thinking. The words had smashed
into Skinner’s consciousness, making it hard to think, and they were still there, like moths batting at a bright window.

Skinner had gone over to the fence and seen the last of the smaller kids come stumbling back to safety. Watched as the sickos crowded along the railings and the museum kids stabbed at them and pushed them back. Watched in panic as some of the sickos tried to
climb the railings and were killed. And all the while Fish-Face was broadcasting her SOS – ‘They’re after Sam. Help him. They’re being massacred.’ Panicked thoughts and confused words, round and round.

And they’d seen the bodies lying in the street.

Skinner had been desperately sad. He’d liked Whitney. She was funny and tough. And, when he found out that Paddy was among the
dead, he was even sadder. Paddy had been so full of life. And of course that had set Fish-Face off worse, adding Paddy into her distress signal.

‘They’ve killed the boy. They’ve killed the boy.’

A new message, round and round. Fish-Face wasn’t thinking about what she was saying. It was straight from her heart, her raw emotions spilling out on to the wind, like seed pollen.
In the end Skinner had taken hold of her and brought her back inside. Taken her to the birds gallery where they lived. Tried to calm her down. Hoping she wasn’t going to crack up. She’d always been quite delicate, hysterical sometimes, and it hurt – having her pain jammed into his head.

She was like a frightened bird and here in the gallery, surrounded by the crazy forms of
all those real stuffed birds, it felt like madness.

‘Fish-Face,’ he said, holding her. ‘Come on. Calm down. You need to do this properly, to concentrate. Please. It’s all right, Sam’s safe. It’s all right …’

Her father came in. Wormwood the Green Man. He’d have heard her as well, felt her inside his mind. He put his long arms round her.

‘You have to stop,’ he said. ‘You
have to stop this now. If you send out these crazy messages they won’t know what you mean.’

‘They have to come,’ said Fish-Face. ‘They have to come and help. We need all the help we can get.’

‘I know that,’ said Wormwood. ‘But you must be calm.’

Skinner studied him. He was looking more and more like an ordinary man every day. Whatever drug, whatever cure, whatever antidote
Einstein was giving him, it was working. If they just had more time they might be able to beat the disease. It all depended now on what was happening with Jordan’s army, so close and yet so far away in Hyde Park. Did they have any hope of holding back the sickos? Of killing enough of them to win the day?

Fish-Face was right. The kids needed all the help they could get. Skinner
wondered if he should go and join the fight. Pick up a sword or a spear and help. Would he actually
be
any help, though? He’d never really been in a fight, let alone a full-scale battle.

He didn’t need a sword or a spear, though, did he? Skinner’s best weapon was his ability to give the shout – the shout inside. The shout that silenced all thought. The shout that could short-circuit
someone’s brainwaves enough to paralyse them for a moment.

What good was that, though? Really? It was like a freeze-attack, a magic upgrade in one of the tower defence games he used to love playing on his laptop before the electricity went off.

It was useful in a tower defence game, but was it useful in real life?

Strange how the Twisted Kids had developed different strengths.
Like the way Fish-Face and the Warehouse Queen could communicate over huge distances, Mister Three as well, when he was awake, like a human telephone. And there was Monstar, stronger than any man …

Skinner felt a stab of longing. He missed his friends.

Fish-Face had calmed down now, her signal just a soft murmur instead of a shriek. She was nodding as Wormwood whispered comforting
words into her ear.

‘We should go and see how they are,’ said Skinner. ‘We should make sure Sam’s all right. If he gets hurt, if he gets killed, then this will have all been for nothing.’

As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t because it set Fish-Face off into another panic, yelling out her crazy SOS.

‘They’re after Sam. They’re after Sam. You have to help
us. They’ve
killed the boy. They’ve killed the boy. They’ve killed the boy …’

‘Please,’ said Skinner. ‘Try to stay calm. I’m going to see Sam. Send a more controlled message.’

He left the birds gallery and walked down to the main hall. There was a cluster of kids by the diplodocus. Skinner could see Sam and The Kid. They looked OK. They were talking quickly, trying to explain to the small
crowd what had happened. Some of the kids were crying, hugging each other. Whitney had been really popular, and Paddy and the five other smaller kids who’d been killed had many friends here. The two older kids as well.

Now the big front doors opened and Jackson came striding in. Everyone turned to her. She looked angry at first, and then relieved when she too saw that Sam was
unhurt. Sam repeated what he had just told everyone else. Explaining what had happened in the fight, who’d got hurt, who’d been killed, who wasn’t coming back.

‘Has anyone told Achilleus yet?’ Jackson asked. No one said anything. They stared at the floor. Some shook their heads. Nobody had dared.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Jackson.

‘I’m coming with you,’ said Skinner. Skinner
liked Achilleus. Achilleus had been part of the team that had made its way out to Heathrow and found the Twisted Kids at the warehouse. Achilleus had fought bravely and brought Skinner and Fish-Face and Trinity safely into town. He teased Skinner, but in a funny way they had a bond. Skinner felt that Achilleus was an outsider as well.

‘I’m coming too,’ said Sam. ‘He’ll be upset.’

And of course where Sam went The Kid went. So the four of them walked upstairs and round to the front of
the building where Achilleus was holed up. With every step, Skinner grew more nervous and unsure. How was Achilleus going to react? Should he have left Jackson to it?

Well, there was no turning back now. He’d look bad.

He swallowed.

Jackson knocked. There was no response.

Skinner hoped someone would say – ‘OK, let’s come back later …’

But Jackson knocked again.

51

Skinner stood back as Jackson gave a third knock. Harder this time. And she carried on knocking until there was a grunt from the other side.

‘I need to talk to you,’ said Jackson loudly, putting her face close to the door.

‘Go away,’ said Achilleus. ‘I’m not in the talking mood.’

‘Something’s happened,’ said Jackson. ‘I seriously need to talk to you about it.’

‘I said go away,’ said Achilleus.

‘Something’s happened to Paddy,’ said Jackson.

For a moment there was silence from the other side, and then a rattle and Achilleus pulled the door open. Skinner saw his ugly, scarred and battered face. And, for the first time ever, he saw worry in the boy’s eyes.

‘What you mean?’ he said. ‘Where is he?’

‘Can we come in?’ asked
Jackson. Achilleus stared at the four of them. What must they look like? Jackson, big and tough, with a razor-cut pattern in her cropped hair just like Achilleus. She’d done it herself in the end and it was a bit rubbish. Then there was Skinner with his folds of skin. Finally the two little boys, Sam serious and worried-looking, The Kid wearing his usual dress over his trousers, his
wild hair sticking up in all directions.

Was this really the best way to tell someone their friend had died?

Well, there wasn’t any other way.

Achilleus retreated into the darkness of the room and the four of them went in. This used to be an office and then it had been Justin’s room. Achilleus had kicked Justin out and made it his own. But it was still bare and cold.

Achilleus stared at Jackson, waiting for her to speak.

‘I’m sorry. It’s not good,’ said Jackson. ‘Paddy went out. He left the museum. He wanted to join the fight. He wanted to be you. A hero. He took your Nike top, and your spear, the one he gave that weird Irish name to …’

‘The Gay Bulge,’ said Achilleus flatly.

‘Yeah. That.’ Jackson dried up. Didn’t know how to carry
on.

‘He had your helmet as well,’ said Sam. ‘It fell off …’

‘What happened to him?’ said Achilleus. ‘Tell me.’

‘They killed him,’ said Sam. ‘Grown-ups. They ambushed us. I tried to stop him. I tried to get him to go back. He wanted to show everyone what he was made of. Whitney got killed. And Froggie. Paddy went back to try and save him. He
was
a hero. He died a hero.’

‘A hero?’ Achilleus was staring at Sam, like he didn’t know who Sam was, like he couldn’t understand the language, like Sam was a foreigner or something. You could see that Achilleus couldn’t take it in. And then he did something that Skinner never expected. Had never seen him do before. Never imagined he ever would see. Achilleus started to cry.

‘He was just a little boy,’
he said. ‘He wasn’t a soldier. He would never have been a warrior. I would never have let him. He was just a little boy.’

Jackson went and put her arms round him and he collapsed against her, his whole body shaking with sobs. And she helped him on to a pile of cushions and he slumped into them, boneless and shaking. Jackson cradled his head in her strong arms.

‘He was a good
kid,’ said Achilleus, his voice muffled and thick. ‘I used to tease him. Never told him what I really thought. There was always time. Thought we’d have plenty of time. Thought we’d have years. He was my friend. I never told him. Never will.’

Skinner was embarrassed. He didn’t know where to look, what to say or what to do. Sam and The Kid went over and they put their arms round
Achilleus too. Skinner joined them. And they stayed like that for a long time. There was nothing more to say. There was nothing anyone could do. You couldn’t bring a dead person back to life.

At last Skinner felt Achilleus stop shaking. He sniffed, stood up and moved away from the others towards the windows. He wiped his face and smashed his fist against the wall, letting out a
harsh bark of anger and a string of swear words.

And then suddenly there was a commotion at the door and people burst into the room.

It was Einstein, with a couple of his science kids from the pod. Einstein looked furious. He yelled at Achilleus.

‘See what you’ve done! See what’s happened now. They went out there because of you. The sickos could’ve killed Sam. They might
kill all of us. And what do you do? How do you help by sulking in here like a baby girl?’

Achilleus stared at him with his hurt eyes, and again he had that look of incomprehension. Like he didn’t know what Einstein was saying.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ said Einstein.

‘Go away,’ said Achilleus, his voice dull and cold. ‘I don’t wanna talk to you.’

‘Yeah,’ said
Jackson. ‘Not now, Einstein.’

Einstein ignored her. He strode over to Achilleus and stuck a finger in his face.

‘You’re supposed to be a great fighter,’ he said, spraying Achilleus with spit. ‘I can’t see any evidence of that right now. You let that little boy go out there and do your fighting for you. You let him get killed. And they could’ve killed Sam. What if that had
happened? I mean, God, we’re lucky it was only Paddy …’