The End (48 page)

David broke down completely,
shaking with sobs. Jester put his arms round him and held on to him. Maybe he wouldn’t fight at all. Maybe he’d just let them roll over him and be done with it. The guns were silent, emptied of their bullets. They were being pulled out of the boys’ hands. Jester could hear the screams as the sickos came in. He felt the great crush of them around him – rotten, decaying, falling apart,
clawing at the boys.

‘We’re just kids,’ said David. ‘How could we be expected to make the right decisions?’

Jester closed his eyes and held David tight.

‘It’s all right,’ he whispered in his ear. ‘It’s over now.’

72

For a while there it had looked like they were going to win. Ollie had watched Achilleus’s group attacking from the right and Matt’s group going in from the left. He’d watched Jordan send Jackson out to reinforce Achilleus, pushing hard on the right and forcing the sickos back. And then there had been the explosions, cutting into the rear of St George’s army. This had
encouraged Jordan enough to open the barricades on the left to let more troops out. These new reinforcements hadn’t made it to where Matt’s group was surrounded in the middle of the battlefield, though. They’d got bogged down in the sheer press of sickos and now both groups were marooned and the mob of sickos – stung from the right, blasted from the rear, held down in the centre – had
gone into a sort of stampede and come pushing and crashing and charging right over the reinforcements and into the encampment. Jordan had ordered fires to be lit, burning some of the sickos on the left, but it wasn’t enough. They had got in and were now filling the camp. Even Jordan had been forced to come down off his platform to rally his troops. Stand tall at their centre.

Ollie needed to see what was happening. He climbed on to the roof of the LookOut and scanned the battlefield.
Blu-Tack Bill was up here by himself, absorbed with the lump of Blu-tack he spent all his time moulding into different shapes, ignoring the battle.

Ollie could see that the sickos were crammed into the area inside the barricades. Most of the kids had formed up around Jordan,
but there was a second group of fighters down by the water’s edge, trying to protect the Twisted Kids. Maxie and Blue were with them.

Some of the Twisted Kids were fighting back. Ollie could see Monstar picking sickos up and hurling them away, trying to protect the Warehouse Queen, who was concentrating on sending out her signal to disrupt the attackers. The signal was still
working. Most of the sickos who got too close seemed to get possessed by demons, as if stung by a swarm of bees. They would go berserk, lashing out at anyone or anything around them. The organized attack of yesterday had long ago fallen apart. Sickos were just as likely to be fighting each other as the outnumbered kids who were so desperately clinging on here.

This wasn’t a clear,
ordered battle that you could draw a plan of afterwards, with neat blocks of infantry and cavalry and artillery moving around on the battlefield in the direction of nice bold arrows. It was a chaotic, milling riot. Sickos wandering around, lashing out at whoever was nearest to them, occasionally getting hold of a kid and tearing them to bits. The whole camp was filled. The kids by
the water couldn’t run. The lake was at their backs. The kids who had been ferrying the wounded across the water had taken their boats to the other side and were cowering over there.

Ollie saw Skinner, his mouth open in his silent shout. He seemed to be able to direct the noise at the sickos. But
occasionally it would break through and Ollie would feel as if a power drill was spinning
inside his brain. Luckily this only ever seemed to last for a few moments before Skinner refocused the signal on the sickos. The Twisted Kids were being steadily beaten down, though. They’d made a sort of force field around themselves, but some sickos were still breaking through and tearing at them. And then Skinner was hit by something. A sicko with an iron spike had got in close.
Ollie saw Skinner flinch and felt his cry of pain. It filled every brain in the area, scraping at their nervous system. It was as if Ollie himself had been stabbed. He even had to look to make sure he wasn’t.

He jumped down off the platform, started pulling kids together, creating a small fighting unit. Jordan’s defence was stronger and better organized than the smaller force
of kids by the Serpentine. Jordan could spare the numbers.

‘Come on,’ said Ollie. ‘We’re going to help.’

He picked up a sword that someone had dropped and pushed his way through the scrum of sickos in front of him, hacking to left and right, dodging between bodies. He and his group were fast and determined. They managed to make it down to the lakeside unhurt and cut their
way through the sickos surrounding the Twisted Kids. Maxie saw them arrive and came over.

‘Are you the cavalry?’ she said.

‘I wish,’ said Ollie. ‘You need to come over to the other side and join up with Jordan.’

‘Do you reckon we can make it?’

‘We just did.’

‘OK.’

Maxie and Blue started shouting commands, drawing their kids into a protective semicircle, holding
the sickos
back. Ollie went to the Twisted Kids. As well as Skinner, at least two more of them were down. Ollie could see a kid who looked like Legs being mauled under the feet of a knot of snapping sickos. A determined group of fathers was coming in at Monstar, seemingly aware that if they could get to the Warehouse Queen and silence her their lives would be easier. Ollie and his
team were just able to push back their attack. He could see that Skinner was hurt, bleeding badly, but still alive. TV Boy was holding him in his lap. It was hard to see just how bad Skinner’s wound was as it had got round the side of his breastplate and was hidden by the armour.

‘You all right, Skinny?’ Ollie asked him and Skinner gave a small, tight nod. He was obviously more
hurt than he wanted to let on.

‘We need to get you to safety,’ said Ollie. ‘We gotta move. Can you make it?’

Skinner nodded again. Monstar had heard their conversation and he started to organize the Twisted Kids.

Ollie became aware of a deep bass rumble, a roaring and whining, as if the combined mass of the sickos were growling in their throats. He wondered what fresh horror
this might be.

‘All of you!’ he yelled. ‘We have to join up with Jordan’s group and form a defence around the LookOut. We need to get together, stay together and fight together. Follow me and Maxie and Blue. Protect your friends. Don’t think about it, just go.’

He moved forward, pleased to see that all the others came with him. They reformed into a wedge, weapons bristling on
either side, pushing through the sickos. Maxie encouraging them, Blue yelling at them, more terrifying
than the enemy, Ollie bringing up the rear, moving backwards, the way he preferred to fight. The Twisted Kids were being kept safe in the centre, the stronger ones carrying the less able, all the while sending out their mental disruption field.

Step after step. Cut after cut.
Blow after blow.

Ollie became aware of that ominous rumble again and tried to shut it out of his mind. All he needed to do now was concentrate on the sickos in front of him. Try not to get killed. Join up with Jordan. Create a much stronger unit. Shut out the fear. Keep moving. Keep fighting. Stay alive. Even if it was for only one more precious minute …

73

John’s squatters were running wild in the palace, beating up Franny’s friends, pushing over statues, slashing paintings, smashing ornate plates, breaking windows and mirrors.

The palace kids could do nothing but try to keep out of the way, run and hide. Franny had gone out into the garden. She was horrified to find a group of boys pulling up plants, kicking the beds.

‘No,’ she screamed at them. ‘What are you doing? That’s our food, our only way of surviving. Do anything, but leave the food, leave our crops.’

The squatters had just turned and laughed at her. She’d fallen to her knees, seen that her dress was spattered with Pod’s blood.

She was filled with a cold fury. This was so senseless. She wasn’t going to let them destroy everything
she’d spent a year building up. She strode round towards the shed where they kept the tools, pushing squatters out of the way. Some of her gardeners saw where she was going and came with her. They got into the shed and grabbed tools – axes, spades, tree saws …

Franny had a big garden fork. She came striding out. Back round the side of the buildings. Saw John standing
by the doors,
looking out over the garden, laughing and cheering his people on. She walked towards him, broke into a run. Faster and faster. At the last moment he turned, but it was too late. She rammed the fork into his chest, just as he had rammed his spear into Pod. He made no noise. Said nothing. He was killed instantly. He fell down, Franny’s fork still sticking out of him. Franny stood there,
looking around, unable to believe what she had just done. Everyone had frozen. Her friends, the squatters, all staring at her …

What would happen now? There was no going back. What would they do to her?

And then she heard a sound. One she didn’t expect to hear. Nothing about this day made any sense. She didn’t believe any of it.

It was the sound of laughter.

The squatters
were laughing.

74

Shadowman had watched from the tree as David’s small force was overwhelmed by sickos. Nothing left of them now. David gone. Jester gone. Shadowman didn’t know what to think. Jester had been his friend once.

And now he was dead. Like so many others.

Jester hadn’t run. He’d died bravely. Shadowman felt tears running down his face. He wiped them away.

For now, he
had to shut down his emotions. There was work to be done. The sickos hadn’t been defeated.

The rage of the battle had sucked the sickos out of the entertainments area and back into the open ground around Jordan’s encampment. Shadowman climbed down out of his tree and moved in closer, crossing the patch where he’d seen Jester die. Nothing was left of David and his kids except
for scraps of red blazer and shredded pieces of unidentifiable flesh and bone. Shadowman worked his way across and climbed a speaker tower that gave him a good view of the wider battlefield.

Could one person really make a difference? Ben and Bernie. There were only two of them, but they’d taken out half of St George’s troops. What could Shadowman do to match that?

He had a bolt
already fitted in his crossbow and wanted
to make sure he used it well. He couldn’t get to St George, who was protected right at the heart of his army. But there was clearly more than one mind at work here, directing the sicko army.

While the order of the attack had been disrupted, there were still parts of the army that functioned better than others. From down below it had
looked like chaos, but from high up here Shadowman could make out an underlying shape to the battle. A purpose.

He had seen over and over how St George used his more intelligent lieutenants to organize his troops. Man U and Bluetooth, the One-Armed Bandit and Spike. He was pretty sure they were all dead now, but someone was still down there, getting inside the sickos’ minds.