The End (50 page)

He had known what he could do.

This was his chance to crush them all. To take the battle to the sickos for a change. To tip the balance. He didn’t
care
about himself. Didn’t care whether he lived or died. He’d become an animal. Killing without thinking. How could he ever go back to being a normal boy? He had taken death into his heart. It would never leave. He was a weapon.

And he would kill. For all those who still lived. Who deserved a future.

He was pressing forward, his mortuary sword doing its deadly work, for Sam and
Ella. For DogNut and Macca and Adele. For Jack and Bam and all his friends from Rowhurst. This was going to be their day.

His sword came crashing down, cutting through a father’s neck, and on down through his shoulder and out at his armpit, cutting his body in two. And Kyle was with him, his axe crushing a mother’s skull. Now Ed drove his sword forward into a father’s belly, twisted,
pulled it out, kicked him to the ground. Trampled over the body and moved on.

And on. He would go on until every last sicko was killed.

77

His people were dying. They were going down all around him. The voices in his head falling silent. His great swarm, this army that he’d put together, was dying. He howled with rage. This was not how it was meant to end. He was supposed to win. He was St George. He was the hero. He was supposed to kill the dragon. He wouldn’t give up. Not yet. He would tear the heart out
of the living. Even if he was the only one left, he would eat the children. He would devour them. The children that had caused all this trouble.

He punched his way to the front, shoving his people out of the way, and came to a small group of children who were cut off under some trees, tore into them, battering them with his bare hands, and picked up an axe.

Yes. A cleaver. He
was a butcher. And he would butcher these bastards. He tried it, swinging at a girl, cutting her head half off. He smiled. The voices in his head had properly gone now. All of them. The children who’d been screaming at him had shut up too.

Everything was clear and bright. He thundered on, his great legs stamping at the ground.

I will kill them
, he thought.
This isn’t over.

Ed looked along the line. They were marching in step – Ebenezer, Kyle, Malik, Maxie, Blue, Jackson, Achilleus, Ryan, Lewis, Ollie, Jordan … and there was Shadowman, joining on the end, his grey cloak flapping behind him.

Nothing could stop them. Nothing could defeat them. They were a team. Working together. Time seemed to slow. Ed was acutely aware of everything around him
– the birds circling in the sky, the trees, the sickos crumbling before them.

The birds circling. The earth turning. Circling the sun. The planets and stars turning in the sky.

Such a long year it had been. Leaving Rowhurst on the coach. Greg driving. Greg the butcher. Greg who had killed Jack and Bam … Driving into London, joining up with Jordan and his guys at the Imperial
War Museum. Helping Jack get home. Watching him and Bam die. And then the fire. It had swept through south London, forcing them all northwards. The battle at the bridge, the mad scramble to get on the boat, drifting down the Thames to the Tower of London. The months there, learning how to get from one day to the next. Turning, turning, turning. Raiding, scavenging, growing food, purifying
water. The daily fight for survival. Turning, turning, turning.

Such a long year.

He tried to look ahead.

After this battle would there be anything left? Nothing he could see. Blackness. No, not even blackness. Whatever the world had been like before he was born and after he was dead. Nothing. Not existing.

All that mattered now was this moment. Making it count.

And
then Ed saw him.

Breaking out of the mass of sickos. A red cross on a white vest. Splattered with gore. A bloody cleaver in his hand.

There was no mistaking that huge head. That face. Greg.

Greg the butcher. Greg who had thought the disease couldn’t get him. Greg who had killed Ed’s best friends. Greg who had given him his scar. Greg who had ruined him.

Could it really
be him?

Could Greg really be St George?

Ed pushed his way over to Shadowman, smashing his sword sideways at a father without even registering he’d done it.

‘Is that
him
?’ he said.

‘That’s St George,’ said Shadowman, and Ed gave a harsh bark of anger.

He’d thought he’d never see Greg again. Thought he must have died months ago. It had never occurred to him for one moment
that the leader of this army could be his own enemy.

‘This one’s mine,’ he said, pushing ahead of the others. ‘Leave him.’

And, as the rest of the line of heroes hammered into Greg’s army, Ed strode towards their leader.

He was alone with St George who was wearing Liam’s glasses. His own son, who he’d suffocated to death on the coach, trying to protect him. Ed had forgotten
what a brute of a creature he was. His thick legs sticking out of baggy shorts. His head bald and covered in boils. His arms like joints of meat.

Ed went to him, lifted his sword, swung it. Greg twisted and caught the blade on his cleaver, deflecting it. Luck? Or skill? Didn’t make any difference, Ed had to try again.
This time he swung low, but a mother came in from the side
and got in the way of the blow, taking it herself. The blade struck her deep and embedded itself in her hip bone. Ed could feel it stuck fast. He jerked it and tugged at it, but it wouldn’t come loose. The mother went down, taking the sword with her. Ed glanced round just in time to see Greg coming at him, his cleaver swinging down from above his head. Ed threw himself forward over the
mother’s body, letting go of his sword and flattening himself on the ground which had been churned up into a foul, sticky mixture of blood and mud and spilt guts. He rolled to the side as Greg swung again.

He was just able to get up and he stumbled head first into a group of sickos. He realized now that he was cut off from the others. Sickos had come in from all around and formed
a protective circle round their leader. Ed felt hands clawing at him. He bit a rotten finger that probed his mouth. Something struck him hard on the side of the head and, with ears ringing, he powered up, straightening his legs and crashing the top of his skull into a father’s jaw. He then turned and barged his way through the ever-thickening crowd of sickos, trying to find open
ground, slipping and sliding in the mud.

He had to get his sword. It was his only hope.

Greg was snarling and hissing, trying to get to Ed, cutting down any sickos that got between them. Ed saw the mother lying face down, his sword handle pointing up at the sky, the point stuck in the ground, the side of the blade jammed in her hip. He ducked under another wild swing from Greg
and, as Greg was turned away, off balance, Ed spun round at him and smashed an elbow into his face, knocking him back. Greg staggered on stiff legs, trying to
stay upright, and then shook his head. He glared at Ed. The sickos fell back, clearing a path between the two of them. Ed was bleeding from where he’d been hit in the head. The blood was getting into his eye, blinding him.
He wiped it away, but only succeeded in smearing mud across both eyes. He spat and swore, blinking away gritty tears.

Greg rolled his great fat head on his neck, closed his eyes and squeezed his lips together, like someone enjoying a delicious mouthful of food. A juicy, bloody steak …

And then he opened his eyes and locked them on Ed, started advancing, the cleaver swishing
from side to side.

Ed put his hand to the sword hilt and gripped as tight as he could, simultaneously pulling it and kicking at the mother’s body, trying to break the bones and loosen their grip on the steel.

His eyes stayed fixed on Greg.

And Greg was running.

He came at Ed, roaring, swinging his cleaver, his powerful legs working like pistons. A mad bull.

Ed stood there.
Facing him. His chest exposed. Kicking, tugging, kicking.

He felt something give. A bone snap.

Greg was on him, cleaver raised in triumph, ready to bring it crashing down.

Ed stepped aside to the left, twisted his whole upper body round with a burst of power, transferring the energy to his arm, and the sword came loose, and up, and the blade sliced clean through Greg’s fat
neck, sending his head flying.

It was done.

‘Yes!’ Shadowman had broken through the ring of sickos moments before Ed killed St George, and watching his
great head spring loose from his body made Shadowman shout with joy.

The other kids came in behind Shadowman, but already it was clear that the battle was over. In cutting off St George’s head, Ed had cut off the head of the
army. The sickos fell into utter disorder and confusion and the army of children swept over them.

‘Don’t leave a single one alive,’ Jordan shouted. ‘We kill them now. And we stop the disease.’

Shadowman held back. He wasn’t needed any more. He watched Ed sit on the grass and put down his sword. The huge, heavy mortuary sword he’d found at the Tower of London. Very few kids
would have been able to use that weapon.

Kyle went over to Ed and sat next to him, draped an arm across his shoulders. Ed was lost in his own thoughts and memories and Shadowman left them to it.

He looked over at St George’s headless body, lying behind Ed and Kyle. Blood was oozing from the neck, and that vile grey living jelly. It looked like his whole body was filled with
it. And, as Shadowman watched, the body twitched, shuddered, pushed up on its elbows, up on to its knees, stood up, still clutching the axe in its hand, raised the axe above Ed’s head.

Shadowman froze.

They’d never called the adults zombies. Not properly. They weren’t the living dead from horror films. At least they hadn’t been up until now. Shadowman had never seen anything
like this before.

St George’s body moved to swing the cleaver and Shadowman moved too. His crossbow came up, he pulled the trigger and a bolt slammed into Greg’s chest. It was like
bursting a balloon. Greg’s body exploded, showering grey gunk all around. The jelly formed into clumps, wriggling and writhing. There seemed to be half-formed insect parts in it, claws and feelers
and eyes, wing casings.

‘Peak!’ said Kyle, who had turned to see what Shadowman was firing at. He waggled a hand in appreciation. ‘That would’ve gone mental on YouTube.’

‘We have to burn them,’ said Ed, standing up and coming back to life. ‘We build a pyre of the dead and burn them all.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Kyle, but Shadowman wasn’t really listening. He was looking
at St George’s head.

The eyes were bulging out of it, further and further, the mouth moving into a smile, the tongue wagging. And then the eyes burst from their sockets and insect legs protruded. Others poked out from the nose, the ears, the severed neck. They tried to get a grip, but were weak and deformed, not ready to emerge. Kyle walked over with his great battleaxe and split
the skull in two and then crushed the pieces.

‘That’s enough for one day,’ he said.

78

Chris Marker was sitting at the big table in the library with his team around him, his writers, the boys and girls whose job it was to record everything in the history books they were writing –
The Chronicles of Survival
. They all had big books open in front of them, old ledgers they’d found in a storeroom at the museum. The pages were blank. Their pens and pencils sat
on the table ready to be used, but for now they waited in silence.

Lettis was with them. She’d always been one of the more enthusiastic writers. But ever since she’d nearly died in a sicko attack out near Heathrow she’d fallen silent and not been able to write. She carried her own journal with her all the time, like a precious doll, never letting anyone else see it.

She sat
there now. Still and quiet. Chris had given her a ledger to write in, but all the while she just stared into the distance at horrors only she could see, out of the library, out of the museum, out of London, west towards Heathrow …

Chris looked around the room. What he saw was also invisible to the others and he never talked about it. The room was full of ghosts. The Grey Lady
who’d travelled with him here from the Imperial War Museum and others that he’d met when he arrived. They were always with
him. Waiting there. Not frightening – comforting, really, to know that he was never alone.