The End (40 page)

She and Blue started roaring commands, pulling kids off other parts of the defences, getting those that were resting back on to their feet. They formed their own unit into the tight fighting formation they’d practised so often. Pressing together and protecting the fighter to their left, moving forward slowly but steadily. They had
to contain the sickos where they were and not let them spread out, and they had to close the breach.

Grown-ups were pouring in, though, like water
through a burst dam. Maxie’s unit pushed into them and soon there was a desperate bloody fight on. It started well, the unit was holding, pressing the sickos back to the waterside, but the more they pressed in one section, the more
the sickos burst out in another. There were just too many of them. Maxie was aware of Ollie’s unit off to her left, moving in with spare crowd-control barriers. Using them like bulldozers to force the sickos back. And then she wasn’t aware of anything except the mass of bodies in front of her.

It was dirty, close-up fighting. The kids hacked and cut and pummelled and stabbed and
shoved. The sickos in return fought savagely, clawing at the kids. Those that were armed steamed in, arms pumping, their crude weapons rising and falling. Maxie saw kids going down all around her.

This could break their defence – and the more kids that were drawn here, the more vulnerable the barricades were becoming. She dropped back and glanced over. In several places she could
already see sickos getting over the top of the barricades.

She screamed her anger, ran back in and lashed out at the knot of sickos directly in front of her, ramming her katana into a mother’s mouth, pulling it back, aiming at a father’s gut. Slashing across the neck of another. She formed up with Blue and one of Jordan’s kids. A big guy who was working hard with a heavy sword.
Heavy enough to split a father’s skull and spill his brains on to the blood-wet grass.

He grunted as he swung again, cutting into another father’s upper arm. And then a mother rushed at them and Maxie thrust her katana into her chest.

‘There!’ Blue was pointing to where a father seemed to be leading the attack. He had an arrow in his chest, but it didn’t seem to be affecting
him at all. In fact, it looked old and grubby, like it had been there for some time. He was better armed than the sickos around him, with a machete in each hand. He was whirling them around, cutting any kids who got near.

Maxie wondered if she could get close to him and take him out, whether it would make a difference, but she had to forget about that for the moment as a surge
of new arrivals came through the gap and he was hidden from her.

The day darkened and she looked up to see the sun obscured by a cloud, and she was surprised to see how low it was in the sky. Had they really been at this all day? It would be dark before long. And what then? Would the sickos just keep on coming?

Jordan’s troops had to rest. Without sleep, they’d be useless.

‘Get on it, Maxie!’ Blue was laying into a group of sickos.

‘Sorry.’ Maxie raised her sword and slashed it down diagonally across the chest of a particularly ugly father with growths the size of tennis balls on his naked skin. The sickos were pressing harder and the kids were having to fight back with all their strength. Maxie’s leather jacket was splashed and greasy with
blood. She wondered if she’d ever get it clean. Wondered if she’d live long enough to try.

‘Push them back,’ she yelled and her section barged forward, and then everything changed. It was like a ripple passed through the ranks of the grown-ups. They’d been
fighting as a single beast, purposeful and organized, and now suddenly all order fell away.

She saw the father with the twin
machetes looking confused, alone, the horrible arrow in his chest rising and falling with his breathing.

‘With me!’ she yelled. Blue joined her and Jordan’s guy with the heavy sword. Breaking ranks, but desperate to do something. Something that counted. Something that hurt the sicko army.

‘That one!’ she screamed. ‘Get that one. Ignore the rest.’

The father was aware of
them coming. He focused on them, the machetes slicing through the air. Blue made a feint to distract him, while Maxie lunged, but a lucky swing from one of the machetes – the guy wasn’t even looking at her – knocked the katana from her hand and sent it flying away. She was unarmed. Now Jordan’s guy went in. Maxie didn’t know his name. Wanted to thank him. But, as the boy charged,
the father slipped and dodged the blade and the boy was off balance, trying to bring his heavy sword back round.

Too late. The father cut him once, twice, both blades thwacking into the boy’s neck. He gasped and fell. Breathed out one last time and was still.

Maxie never would know his name.

Blue was in now, trying to stab the father with his spear. With fierce luck, though,
the father was still unhurt. His lips were shrivelled, his yellow teeth exposed so that it looked like he was smiling.

Maxie grabbed the boy’s sword. It was closer than hers. It seemed to weigh a ton, but she saw that Blue was in trouble. The father whirling at him and unstoppable.

Unstoppable?

No. Maxie brought the sword crashing down. It cut through the father’s right
shoulder, his arm spinning off with a machete still clutched in its hand. He turned, that death’s-head grin still on his face, and again Maxie brought the sword down on to him, severing his other arm. Blue stepped in from behind and skewered him. It was over. The father fell face first into the churned-up mud, driving the rest of the arrow right through his body. He gurgled in
a puddle of blood. Bubbles burst the surface, swelled and popped. And then there were no more bubbles.

Maxie felt a tiny stab of hope. Like light coming through the crack under a door. All around her the sickos were fighting each other now, ignoring the kids, and she saw that it wasn’t just the ones who’d broken through. The whole army had collapsed into a seething mass of violence.

The sickos were tearing each other apart.

Fresh energy filled the kids; they swept over the disorganized sickos, driving them back, striking them down, closing the gap. Making the barricades safe.

What had happened?

Maxie saw a knot of kids close to the LookOut compound, Ollie with them, his red hair standing out like a beacon. She went over.

At the centre
of the knot were Fish-Face, the Green Man and Skinner, eyes closed, arms linked. Skinner’s mouth wide as if he was silently shouting.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked Ollie.

‘They’re messing with their minds,’ said Ollie, and he smiled.

59

It was as if a shockwave had passed through St George’s army, and David’s head was suddenly filled with a screaming white noise, all his thoughts obliterated. He clung on to the strut of the speaker tower. Saw that the grown-ups below had lost all sense of order and purpose. They’d broken into mad, scrabbling groups, fighting amongst themselves, clawing and biting and
thrashing each other with their crude weapons.

This was a disaster. As soon as the pain had passed, he started to climb down. Somehow he made it safely, his head still throbbing and ringing, and he struggled over to where Paul was clutching his head. Jester was with him, looking worried.

‘What’s happening?’

Paul said nothing. David shook Jester.

‘Jester? What’s happening?’

Jester shook his head. He couldn’t speak. Now David shook Paul.

‘What have you done?’

‘It’s not me – it’s not me,’ said Paul. He looked in pain. ‘Something happened. Voices in my head. Like a jamming signal …’

‘We need to think,’ said David. ‘We need a plan.’

‘I can’t think,’ Jester growled, his hands furiously rubbing his temples.

‘We must!’ David shouted.
‘We need a new plan. We need to stop this fight and get the children to do what we want. Help me, Jester.’

St George roared his frustration. It had all been going so well and now it was falling apart. He’d been in charge. Lifted up by the voice of God. He’d felt proud. His chest swelling. He was a holy warrior doing God’s will. But now he had doubts. Something told him you couldn’t
always trust the voices in your head.

Was it God? Or was it the devil? Had he been tricked? Good men were always tempted. Bad people tried to lead them away from the righteous path.

The only person he could trust was himself.

His army had lost its shape, had lost its common aim. Order had turned into confusion because the gods were arguing among themselves. The other
voices had come in and they were screaming at him, screaming at his troops, causing fear and violence. He tried to scream back, but he didn’t have the skills.

There was someone who did. Where was she? The tall woman who had come in with the new troops. He pushed through his mob, pulling men and women aside, flinging them to the ground, snarling and grunting and biting until
he saw the woman’s head, taller than the ones around her.

He went up to her, grabbed her. She turned and looked at him. He tried to speak, forgetting that he couldn’t. What came out of his mouth weren’t proper words. He just hoped that she could read his mind.

God! A nightmare. A woman who can read your mind.

But this one could. And, what’s more, he could read hers.
He felt her worry. She turned and walked away, pulling him with her as if she had a fish hook in his brain. She dragged him nearer to the front, where a rise in the land allowed them to see the child demons more clearly. St George could make out the building with the platform on the roof, where the demon general sat.

The woman was pointing to something. Three figures. He couldn’t
make sense of them. A man with green skin, two children who looked like freaks – true demons. It was them. They were the false gods. They were the ones disrupting his army. He howled. They had to be stopped.

Now he felt the tall woman’s voice inside him, loud and strong. And for a time St George was blind. A blankness filled his head. He was among the stars, in the emptiness of
the universe, and all there was were the voices, arguing, the woman and the demons. She was sending her shout back at them. He forced his eyes to see. Looked at her, her long hair hiding her face.

He should never have listened to her. To God. To anyone. He didn’t need the voices. He was his own general. She was taking his glory away from him. Bloody women. Nag, nag, nag.

He
was a butcher.

His world was simple.

He turned to the tall woman, struck her down with the back of his hand. She lay here, looking up at him like a frightened animal. That was how it should be.

And she had shut up as well.

Good.

Blessed silence.

Everything was as it should be.

It had stopped. The sickos were falling back. Leaving the barricades.

‘I don’t believe
it,’ said Blue. ‘They’re retreating.’

Maxie didn’t allow too much hope to creep in under the door. In her experience hope usually led to disappointment.

Indeed, a space opened up and David appeared with his gang. He was brave enough to come closer now that he knew that Jordan’s troops had used all their missiles.

‘You giving up?’ Jordan called over to him.

‘We haven’t
even started,’ David shouted back. ‘You haven’t seen anything yet. But you’ve seen enough to know that you can’t win this. Seriously, I don’t want you all to die. And you don’t have to. Simply surrender. I’m giving you till the morning. Think about my offer. Think about it all night as you try to sleep. Think about what will happen tomorrow now that you’ve seen what happened today.
How many we are. When I come back in the morning, I want an answer. Do you let me take full command or do you let Jordan carry on leading your army into defeat?’

The guy was good, Maxie had to admit. He was using psychological tactics. He knew how terrified the kids would get in the night and how their terror would grow towards the morning. They’d suffered quite a few casualties,
mostly from when the sickos had broken through. Maxie had seen many dead bodies of children being taken away with the injured. Jordan was quick to make sure they weren’t left for others to see. But the kids would talk. Talk about their losses, and talk about the losses they would
suffer tomorrow. Talk about the fact that, despite killing a lot of the sickos, they really hadn’t made
any difference at all.

How many of the other kids would desert in the night? How many would go and plead with him, try to get him to change his mind? What would Jordan do? Somehow he had to inspire his army. Give them fresh bravery and morale.

Maxie sat down. Blue came and sat next to her, his arm round her shoulders.

‘That guy David is a jerk,’ he said.

‘He’s
just trying to freak us out,’ said Maxie. ‘Get us to give up.’

‘Yeah, but why did he stop?’ Blue asked. ‘He could’ve just gone on fighting all night. Them sickos don’t give up. They prefer to do their killing at night. They can smell us; they don’t need to see us. So why did he stop?’

Maxie shrugged.

‘Because he needs to rethink,’ said Blue. ‘With the Green Man and the
Twisted Kids in the fight, things have changed. He wants it to look like he’s on top, but he ain’t. Or he wouldn’t have stopped.’