The Hunted (2 page)

His teeth sank into the boy’s neck and he felt a warm spurt of blood fill his mouth. A deep calm came over him. The chattering in his head fell silent. The fidgeting and twitching in his arms and legs stopped. The deep itch dulled. He felt like he was plugged into the universe, or as if the universe was plugged into him. As he drank, he looked up at the stars. They seemed to spell out a message for him, if only he could read it. He squinted and strained, his brain throbbing in his hot head. What were they trying to tell him? No good. No good. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the blood. It tasted like life, clearing out all the poison inside him, cleaning his tubes and guts, lighting up a million stars within his brain. He shuddered with pleasure.

The boy was still moving, feebly trying to break away from his grip, but St George was holding him tight. When he’d drunk his fill, he’d give him to the others. They were sitting in a circle around him, waiting. The closest were the ones who’d been with him from the start. His lieutenants. And behind them, in circle after circle, the others, spreading out, filling the park. Sitting there, quietly waiting, their faces lit by moonlight. And out past them, all around, working their way through the city streets … his
army was hunting. Maybe that’s what the stars were showing him. The sky was a map and each star was one of his people. He was at the centre, the brightest star of all. And they were all connected, in a circle of light, so that he was out there hunting with his people, and they were feeding with him now.

They’d only found this one child so far tonight, but there would be more. Each night it took longer as they emptied the nearby streets, and had to search further and wider.

He was always the first to feed. Sometimes only drinking the blood; sometimes tearing off the flesh. The blood was the best part. The blood was electricity, driving his brain and body, blowing away the darkness and the fog. And with the blood came the memories. Flooding into his thoughts. His life up there in the stars, and in the jungle, travelling across the sea, searching for a new home and finding it inside this body.

This body.

This man.

Greg … Greg Thorne. Of Greg’s Organic Gaff.

Meat is life.

He was Greg. He had to hold on to the memory. It was like waking from a beautiful dream and feeling it slip away from you. He’d been a butcher. With a son. A boy. His own boy.
What was his name
…
?

His boy?

No good. Not coming.

He was Greg, though. He remembered that. He’d worked with animals. Cutting them up, chopping through the fat and the muscle, the tendons, skinning and deboning.
Eviscerating
. Yes, he remembered it well. Pictured the
carcasses hanging from the hooks in the cold store at the back of his shop. Cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, children. Animals and children … Was that right? Had he always butchered children? Or had life been different then? That was the problem with the blood. For a few brief moments everything would be clear, lit up, written in the stars. He could read the messages. And then the clouds would come down, the mist and fog and shadows, and he would be so bloody hungry and the rage would take him. There could never be enough children to feed his hunger.

Already the images were fading. He’d known his name. He’d remembered a place. Knives and hooks and skin …

Cold. A cold place.

His head ached with the thinking. What was he to do?

He loosened his bite and looked down at the boy in his arms. The boy looked back at him. His eyes were sad. Blinking. His body trembled. Like a little bird. A chicken before you break its neck.

‘Liam?’

Greg smiled at him.

‘We should get home,’ he said. ‘Or we’ll miss the game. The Arsenal are playing.’

He closed his eyes. He could hear the cheering. The hard, tight thud of boot on ball. The half-time whistle …

His team was going to win. It was an away game next. They would have to travel. Meet the opposition. He was captain. He was general. He was king. He was a saint. St George and he would slay the dragon.

First he needed his army. He had to wait. There were more of them coming, more of the others, more glinting stars, a universe of them, all moving towards him. He could hear them out there, calling to him, telling him to
wait. From everywhere they came, and when they’d all arrived, when he was strong enough, when he was unstoppable, he would move on.

Move on to where
they
were. The enemy. The fast ones. The young ones. They had to be herded up like sheep, penned in like chickens. And when they were ready they would take his sickness from him; the host would move on and live inside them.

He felt the boy struggle and he opened his eyes.

Until the time was right, they were just like this boy. Just meat.

He snapped his neck and threw him to the others, who leapt up and tore into him.

The boy was nothing, but there were others who were dangerous, and those they had to kill. The shining ones. The ones who wouldn’t take the sickness, the ones whose blood was strong. And, strongest of all, the bright little one, the little twinkling star. Twinkle, twinkle …

He had the power of light, that one did. He was made of light. He had to be destroyed. And all the others like him. Not as powerful as him, but dangerous all the same.

The stars had told St George this.

That was their true message.

He knew what he had to do.

To make the ripest children ready to take the host.

To kill the rest.

To kill the bright little star.

He’d seen him that time. At the Arsenal. The stars hadn’t given him his orders then, though. He’d let him slip away. If only he’d known the small boy was a nasty little dragon.

It wouldn’t happen again. He was St George and he
would slay the dragon. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? He knew the story. He was a hero, a patron saint. He was England. This country was his. His people were marching towards him from all corners. He would take his throne.

But first he had to destroy the dragon.

He would butcher him like a piece of meat; a long pig, that’s all he was: cutlets, chops, ribs and chitterlings. He would make sausages out of him, ha, because in the end he was nothing more than a side of pork …

No, smaller than that.

He was just a lamb.

A leg of lamb.

Yes.

He would slaughter the lamb.

Everyone at the Natural History Museum was gathered in the Hall of Gods, an area that had big white statues ranked down both sides and an escalator at the back rising up through a weird, rusted metal globe. Ed had hoped that the meeting would be somewhere quiet and he could have talked to just one or two key people. Instead he had to face rows and rows of them, all sitting there, staring up at him and picking their noses like he was giving a talk at a school assembly.

That was how it was with Justin, though. He was in charge here and had his way of doing things, and you couldn’t argue him out of it. Ed supposed there was a reason behind it all. These kids, like all kids, were bored most of the time. There was work to be done growing food, or scavenging for it; you could read books, or talk to your mates, but that was about it. No football, no computer games, no TV or music. Meetings like this gave the kids something to occupy their minds and fill up their conversations.

Ed had known Justin at school. A few of the boys from Rowhurst had ended up at the museum. Chris Marker and Kwanele, Wiki and Jibber-jabber. And it was Justin who had got them all safely there. He’d been pretty
unmemorable before, a nerdy wimp, not the type of boy Ed used to hang out with. Ed had been into sport mostly. But it turned out there was a lot more to Justin than Ed had ever imagined. He’d learnt a hell of a lot since the disease had hit. Like how you needed all sorts of skills to survive. Brains being a very important one.

Justin was still fussy and nerdy, but he had authority. The kids respected him and he seemed to be able to control them. Something that Ed was utterly failing to do. Even the more streetwise kids from Holloway had sat there obediently through Justin’s bit. He’d gone through some tedious stuff about tasks for the next day and food rotas and menus and cleaning duties, and there’d been hardly a squeak out of them.

Even a scarred troublemaker called Achilleus had stayed fairly quiet, only occasionally whispering something to the two boys who sat giggling on either side of him. One younger kid and one of the Twisted Kids, as they called themselves. Ed had thought that Wormwood, the intelligent adult he’d brought here with him, was strange, but the Twisted Kids were off the scale. This one’s name was Skinner, which was appropriate, as he had folds of loose skin all over his body.

As soon as Ed had opened his mouth, though, everything had fallen apart. Achilleus kept making sarky comments and he was now lounging in his seat yawning theatrically. The other kids had just started talking to each other, not loudly, but they were making enough noise to set up a steady, distracting buzz, so that Ed had lost all confidence in his speech – if you could call it a speech, which, unfortunately Justin had done when he’d introduced him.

Ed hadn’t been ready for this and had stumbled along, talking about how Sam was searching for his sister, Ella. How Ella had left that morning and Sam had missed her by only a few hours and how Ed needed to go after her. He’d rambled on for about five minutes before he’d run out of things to say. What was there to say? He needed their help on a dangerous and probably pointless expedition. He hardly believed in it himself, so how could he make anyone else buy into it? If he’d been in the audience, he’d have ignored his stupid speech as well.

It was time to finish up. He’d done his best.

‘So anyway …’ he said, looking out across the rows of kids, some looking at him, some chatting with their friends, some bored, some staring at the ceiling. ‘That’s it really. I’m going off to find Ella – you know, tell her that Sam’s alive, and hopefully bring her back. And if anyone wants to come along and help me then, er, I guess, see me afterwards …’

See me afterwards
…? Had he really said
see me afterwards
? That’s what teachers used to say. ‘If you want to come on the school trip to the theatre
see me afterwards
…’

‘What if she don’t wanna come back?’ said a hefty black girl, who Ed thought was one of the kids who had recently arrived from Holloway with Ella.

‘She’ll want to see Sam,’ Ed replied. ‘I mean, wasn’t that the main reason she left? Because there was nothing here for her except bad memories?’

‘Whitney’s right,’ said another of the Holloway crew. ‘What if Ella got a better thing going on out there?’

Ed noticed a commotion near the front and then saw Sam jumping up out of his chair.

He didn’t need this now.

‘What do you mean, “bring her back” here to me?’ Sam shouted. ‘I’m going with you.’

‘I’ll talk to you afterwards, Sam. Not now, OK?’

‘There’s nothing to talk about. I’m going with you.’

‘No you’re not.’ Ed tried to sound firm, like there was no argument. ‘Too dangerous,’ he added. ‘What if we got attacked on the way and you got killed? What then? This whole thing would have been a big waste of time.’

‘You’re totally selling this, Two-Face,’ said Achilleus. ‘Sounds like a real picnic. I’ll bring the cupcakes.’

‘Yeah, and maybe some macaroons,’ said the small boy next to him, who had a strong Irish accent.

‘I never said it was going to be easy,’ Ed protested, holding Achilleus’s stare. ‘That’s why I need fighters, and only fighters. If we’re a small but solid team we’ll be fine. I mean, I’m told you’re the best fighter here.’

‘Yeah,’ Achilleus nodded. ‘You heard right. No one can touch me.’

‘You’d be really useful, mate.’

‘I ain’t your mate.’

‘No.’

‘I saved this place,’ said Achilleus. ‘I saved everyone’s arses. Is what I do. Only I don’t never seem to get no reward for it. So I’m sitting tight, thanks all the same.’

‘We been out there once already,’ said the little Irish kid.

‘Yeah,’ said Achilleus. ‘And I ain’t going again, “
mate
”. Not on a suicide mission. I mean, you don’t even know where she’s gone, do you?’

‘I’ll find her.’

‘You’ll probably find her body, yeah. It’s sicko central out there. They probably already eating her.’

‘Achilleus!’ A girl in a leather jacket had stood up and
was yelling at him. This was Maxie, one of the leaders of the Holloway crew.

‘Ella’s one of us,’ she said. Achilleus just smirked. ‘
Sam
is one of us. You keep your thoughts to yourself from now on. Have some respect.’

‘Whatever.’

‘What about you?’ Ed said to Maxie.

‘What about me?’

‘As you say, Ella was one of yours. You gonna come with me?’

‘No way,’ said the hard-looking black kid next to her. He was the other leader of the Holloway kids, Blue. ‘I done my bit out that way and me and Max is sticking together from now on. We need to be here with our people.’

‘I don’t get it.’ Ed put out his hands in a hopeless gesture. ‘Is anybody going to help me, or what?’

‘Why should we listen to you?’ called out a girl Ed didn’t recognize. ‘You’re the one who brought a sicko here. Brought a grown-up into our home. Made him a nice comfy room. When we’d just spent ages clearing them all out. Why should we trust you?’

There were shouts of agreement from around the room. And then someone stood up. Ed was pleased to see a familiar face. A friend’s face. It was Finn, a big lad from the Tower, the only survivor from DogNut’s expedition.

‘Ed’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’d trust him more than any other kid I know.’

‘You going with him then?’ said Achilleus, and he sniggered.

‘You know I’m not,’ said Finn, and he raised his right arm, which had a bandage around it. ‘I can’t do anything until my arm’s properly healed.’

‘Yeah, good excuse.’

‘It’s not an excuse.’

‘It’s all right,’ Ed shouted. ‘Leave it.’

Finn had already come to see him and explained that the wound in his arm was still causing him problems. A shame. Finn had been one of the best fighters at the Tower.

‘As I say,’ Ed went on limply, ‘anyone wants to help, come and find me. It’s gonna take me a few days to get everything ready.’

He stepped down off the speaking platform, glad it was over. As he tried to get away, Sam came running over and tugged at his sleeve.

‘I
am
coming, Ed,’ he said, almost shouting. ‘She’s my sister.’

‘You are not,’ Ed snapped. ‘And if you say one more thing about it to me I’m not going either. OK?’ He had lost it and come across much heavier than he’d intended, but it did the trick. Sam let go of him. Shut his mouth and looked at the floor. His weird little friend, The Kid, came over to him.

‘I told you,’ The Kid said to Sam. ‘Don’t push your luck up a hill. It might roll down the other side. We made it here against the odds and ends. Let’s count our blessings and our blisters. Leave the hard stuff to the experts now, eh?’

Sam looked at Ed, tears in his eyes.

‘She’s not dead, is she?’

‘No.’

‘And you
will
find her?’

‘I will.’

Ed hoped he sounded more certain to Sam than he actually felt.