The End (51 page)

He wondered about these ghosts. Wondered what they might be thinking. If anything. They couldn’t talk to him. People thought ghosts were the spirits of dead people. People
who had died long ago and couldn’t bear to leave a place or had unfinished business there.

Chris thought this was wrong. He thought ghosts were from the future. He thought ghosts were the spirits of characters from books yet to be written. One day someone would properly write their stories and they would go into the pages of a book and live there until someone read that book. Then
they would travel into the minds of the readers and live on safely there forever. For now they were just waiting. Waiting for their stories to be written.

He heard a rattling noise and looked over to Lettis. She’d picked up a pencil and a sharpener. She put the pencil in the sharpener and started to turn it. She gave Chris a small smile.

‘Are you back with us?’ Chris asked
and Lettis nodded. ‘Are you going to write with us?’

Lettis nodded again. She put her pencil to the paper and began to write …

My name is Lettis Slingsbury and this is my journal. I am writing these words and I will tell
what happened at the Battle of Hyde Park …

Jordan found Hayden and Partha’s bodies under some trees. Told Bill to add them to the list
of the fallen. Nobody would be forgotten.

The battle had carried on for the rest of the day. It had
been a grinding slog of slowly and methodically hacking at the sickos, cutting them down, herding them together, rounding up the strays, slaughtering them. And when, later in the afternoon, the rest of Ed’s army had arrived on foot from the west, the process had speeded up. Now
the light was failing and Jordan could hardly see anything.

The kids had won, but Jordan felt no sense of triumph. He’d lost so many people. He’d told Achilleus that he didn’t feel anything, that his brain didn’t work that way, but he felt something now. For the first time ever – a sense of loss. A sense of not being able to go back.

These weren’t toy soldiers, chess pieces
to move around a board. They’d been living, breathing children and now they were no more.

He had a duty to them. To make the world a better place. To rebuild. To make a future for the living.

He saluted the dead and moved on.

Archie found Matt standing by the lake. Staring at the water. All around kids were tending to the wounded.

‘You OK?’ said Archie. ‘We won.’

‘I
can’t hear him any more,’ said Matt.

‘Hear who?’

‘God,’ said Matt. ‘He’s abandoned me.’

‘He’s set you free,’ said Archie. ‘You live your life your way now.’

‘It’s so quiet. Empty.’

‘Silence at last,’ said Archie. ‘Isn’t that heaven?’

‘Look at that,’ said Ryan. ‘Would you look at that? I can’t believe it.’ And he swore.

He was holding up his left arm and
his hand was
missing. A kid from the museum was binding a strap tightly round it to stop the bleeding. The weird thing was it didn’t hurt. He guessed his body had gone into massive shock and was flooded with so much adrenalin he was still upright and dealing with it.

‘Bastard cut my hand off.
Bastard
…!
’

It had happened near the end. Ed had gone after St George and
been surrounded by sickos. Ryan had been trying to fight his way through. He liked Ed. First thing that went wrong, a sicko killed his dog. A fat father with a spear he must have taken off a dead kid had stuck the poor bitch. Ryan had killed the father, had gone to pull the spear free, and out of nowhere another father had come at him with a sword. Swung it at Ryan. Cut his hand clean
off at the wrist.

‘Bastard.’ He looked at the museum kid. She was pale and shaking, but she’d managed to stop the bleeding.

‘Am I gonna live?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I think so. I hope so. I don’t know.’

‘You know what they do in movies?’ said Dom, who actually seemed to be enjoying this.

‘What?’ said Ryan, not sure he wanted to hear.

‘They, like, burn the stump.’

‘You ain’t burning me,’ said Ryan. ‘If I ain’t bled to death yet then I’m gonna live. Maybe I’ll get a hook?’

‘That’s good,’ said Dom. ‘Think practically. Look on the bright side.’

They nodded. Ryan still couldn’t believe it, though. The bastard had cut his hand off.

Brooke found Ed sitting by the remains of St George. His sword across his knees. She helped him to his
feet. He looked numb.

‘It’s over,’ she said.

‘This part is, yes,’ he said. ‘The rest is going to be hard.’

‘But you don’t have to do it by yourself.’

Ed smiled, the scarred half of his face twisting into a painful-looking shape. He touched Brooke’s scar.

‘Will you help me?’ he said.

‘We’ll help each other,’ said Brooke.

Malik came over. His chewed-up face the
worst of them all. With him were Trinity and another Twisted Kid, limping and wriggling on disjointed limbs.

‘He’s alive,’ said Malik.

Brooke felt a wash of acid in her stomach. She’d seen what had happened with St George and for moment she thought Malik was talking about him.

‘Sam,’ he explained. ‘As far as they know, he’s safe back at the museum. They kept him out
of the fight. It was another kid in Trinity’s message. Another kid that died …’

‘Oh thank God,’ said Brooke, and instantly felt ashamed that she’d been pleased by the death of another boy.

‘You coming with me?’ Malik asked, and Ed looked blank.

‘Coming where?’

‘What’s this all been about?’ said Malik. ‘Reuniting a little boy with his sister. Those two, they’ve shown
us how to be. As long as there’s people like them in the world, we’re gonna be OK.’

‘You’re not so bad yourself, man.’ Ed’s face twisted into a horrible smile.

‘We’ve all done bad things,’ said Malik. ‘Terrible things. You think we’ll ever forget?’

Ed shook his head. ‘We’ll take our memories with us when we die. But we did what we did, and we fought here
today so that those
that come after us will have a good world, and no nightmares at night, and no terrible thoughts to haunt them.’

‘You know before?’ said Malik. ‘Before all this, the disease and everything, I used to think that life was boring. Boring and hard. Everything seemed like such hard work. I was weary. But, you know, my only worry was getting a good score on Call of Duty, yet everyone was
moaning and saying what an awful place the world was, what awful things we were doing to it. Everyone was saying we were all going to hell. But, like, we had
peace
and we had no real worries, no real enemies. We just didn’t know what we had. We didn’t know that hell was coming – but not the hell everyone thought. The bad things that happen are never the bad things we’re all warned
about, so there’s no use worrying about them. I wish I could go back and say to people – look at what you got! You got life, you got freedom – make the most of it.’

He stopped and looked out across the battlefield. ‘And if I could show them
this
.
This
is hell.’ And then he pointed to his ravaged face. ‘And
this
. Yeah … Enjoy what you got while you got it. Now – let’s find
that little boy. Make it right.’

Maxie and Blue were lying on the ground, looking up at the sky. They’d walked as far away from the battle as they could, to the other end of the park. It was quiet here. Apart from a faint smell of smoke in the air you’d never have known what had just gone down.

‘We won’t get up until at least the afternoon,’ Blue was saying. ‘And we’ll just,
like,
stroll
down to the beach and these, like, waiters will bring us cocktails.’

‘Cocktails?’ said Maxie. ‘For breakfast?’

‘Why not? And we go swimming, and the water will be bright blue and sparkling, and we’ll dive under, like scuba-diving, yeah? And see sharks … But nice sharks, yeah? Cool ones. And in the evening there’ll be, like, a barbecue.
Ribs
. You like ribs?’

‘I like ribs,’ said Maxie. ‘Maybe some fish as well, though, yeah?’

‘Fish?’ said Blue. ‘Whoever had a fantasy about eating fish?’

‘Me,’ Maxie protested. ‘I love fish.’

‘So much to learn about you, girl.’

‘Nothing to learn about you,’ said Maxie. ‘I could have guessed you’d liked barbecued ribs. All boys do.’

‘And at night we’ll dance,’ Blue went on. ‘There’ll
be some banging beats. Like the old days. We’ll dance until we can’t dance no more and the sun will come up and then we’ll go back to bed. And nothing will ever hurt us again.’

Wormwood was up on the roof with his daughter, his Fish-Face, his Fiona. They were just sitting there, arms round each other. Not speaking. At peace.
I am Wormwood
, he thought.
Mark Wormold. And I am probably the last adult left in London.

Jackson stood there, tears on her cheeks, not knowing what to say. Sometimes it was best to say nothing.

Skinner was dying. Achilleus knelt by his side, holding his hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Achilleus. ‘If you’d stayed at home. If you’d stayed back at your warehouse this wouldn’t have happened.’

‘If I’d stayed at the warehouse you’d
all have been killed,’ said Skinner. ‘We made a difference, didn’t we?’

Achilleus squeezed his hand. ‘You made a difference, cuz.’

‘And I
lived
,’ said Skinner. ‘For a while I lived. I saw the world. I lived among normal children, and I was normal.’

‘You’ve always been normal,’ said Achilleus. ‘And I’m glad to have known you.’

‘You’ll look after my cat for me, won’t
you?’ said Skinner. ‘You’ll look after Mrs Jones …’

‘Course,’ said Achilleus. ‘Even if she is riddled with toxoplasmosis.’

Skinner laughed painfully. ‘I wouldn’t have changed anything,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in the book, won’t I? In Chris Marker’s history?’

‘Yeah,’ said Achilleus. ‘You sure will. You’ll have your own chapter. We won here today. We stopped the sickos. We
stopped their disease – at least here. And now we can work on the cure in peace. We saved the museum, we saved Sam. And we couldn’t never of done it without you. You a hero …’

Achilleus let Skinner’s hand go. Jackson didn’t know how much Skinner had heard of the last bit, because the light had gone out in him. Achilleus stood up. Saw Jackson. Hugged her. Broke away.

‘Let’s get
to work,’ he said. ‘We got to start clearing up this mess. There is gonna be one big bonfire tonight.’

And he walked away. Alone.

Jackson watched him go. Walking with his head held high. His spear in his hand. And as she watched she saw a boy join him. It was Will from the Tower. Achilleus stopped to say something to him and then the two of
them walked on, and Will put his hand
lightly on Achilleus’s shoulder.

Ella was sitting in the back of the people carrier. A small group of fighters had stayed with her to make sure she was all right, but no sicko had come near the car. She had hidden on the floor, squashed down between the seats, her hands pressed to her ears. Too small to fight, but big enough to be terrified. She’d done so much, had such an adventure,
survived so many awful things, that to come back to this battle was not how she wanted her story to end. She hated that all the good people might die. But the good people hadn’t died. Sometimes stories really did have happy endings. She was watching her friends walk across the grass towards her. Ed and Brooke and Lewis and Kyle and Ebenezer, and with them her best friend in
all the world.

Scarface. Malik. He was handsome to her. Like someone from a fairy story. The Beast.

She sobbed. Happy and sad and still frightened all at the same time.

What about Sam?

What about her brother? What had happened to him?

79

Small Sam was standing on the steps at the front of the museum when he saw his sister. He’d been with some of the little kids – Wiki and Jibber-jabber and The Kid and a couple more, just sitting there, talking quietly, wondering about the future, playing with Godzilla – when he’d spotted her walking along the road past the railings, with Ed and Brooke and a boy with a
horribly scarred face.

Sam hadn’t recognized her at first. It was only a few weeks since they’d been separated, but so much had happened that it felt like years. Felt like they were both different people.

Ella looked older, taller than he remembered. Thinner definitely. More grown-up. For a little while he could look at her without her seeing him. She was staring down at her
feet as she walked. And then she glanced over through the railings at him and his group. There was no sign on her face that she’d recognized him. Maybe, like her, Sam had changed too much. Or maybe she just hadn’t picked him out from the crowd.

He didn’t know what to do. All he’d thought about since the mother snatched him from the Waitrose car park was seeing Ella again, being
together again. He’d pictured the two of them laughing and happy, and people slapping
them on the back. A party. Introducing her to all his friends, to The Kid and Wiki and Jibber-jabber. And now he felt awkward and embarrassed. He couldn’t move.