The Hunted (23 page)

Probably.

They came to the junction with the M25, the big motorway that ringed London. Ed glanced at the mil-ometer – nineteen miles gone. He had some idea now just how far twenty miles was. He’d had it in his head that you could walk it in a day. But the thought of walking all this way from the museum was nuts. It would take forever.

Next turn-off, though, they’d leave the motorway, start their search for some local settlements.

‘That was the main reason I came along on this thing.’ Brooke was pressing on. ‘As soon as I saw you turn up with Ed the other day, I thought, well …’

Ed had to hand it to Brooke. She was a pretty good actress.

‘It’s been quite lonely at the museum. You’ve seen what the guys are like there.’

‘Nerds and gays,’ said Macca.

‘Exactly.’

‘Is only …’ Macca was walking blindly into it. ‘I thought you liked Ed. I thought you two had a thing going on.’

‘Ed? You’re joking. God, no.’

Ed tried to hide his smile. Hoping Macca couldn’t see
him. Was he the only person who didn’t know what was going on?

‘Cool,’ said Macca. ‘You know all that stuff I was coming out with? I was just mucking about. Playing with you. That’s how I show I like someone.’

‘Really?’

‘Truly. I mean, you’re not ugly and that.’

‘Do you think I’m pretty?’

‘Well, you know … You’re not ugly.’

‘Guys,’ said Trio quietly. ‘I’ve got a funny feeling.’

But everyone was too caught up in Brooke’s game to pay her any attention.

‘You’re pretty buff yourself, Macca,’ she said, sounding horribly sincere.

Ed was wondering how long Brooke was going to keep this up before she dealt him the killer blow. She was obviously enjoying it too much to stop now. It was cruel really. Macca had no defences against this kind of thing. He needed to be taught a lesson, though; he’d gone too far with Brooke.

Ed kept his head down, pretending to study the map, enjoying the show. Waiting for the drop.

‘Seriously,’ said Trio. ‘We need to stop the car.’

‘What’s up?’ Ed asked, looking back at her, and then he heard Lewis swear and felt the car slowing.

‘What?’ Ed faced front. Lewis didn’t need to answer. The road ahead was thick with sickos. They filled it from left to right and were stumbling along towards them. Lewis brought the car to a stop.

‘What you want me to do?’ he asked, his voice quiet and sleepy, unconcerned, bored even. Like he’d just woken up.

‘Ram them,’ said Kyle.

‘Yeah,’ said Macca. ‘Let’s splatter them morons.’

‘There are too many of them,’ said Ebenezer, leaning forward for a better look. ‘We will just get stuck.’

‘There’s a lot of them,’ said Trio. She and Trey both had their eyes shut. ‘A whole lot of them. We should go back.’

‘Where they going anyway?’ Lewis asked. ‘Where’s the party at?’

‘They’ve got the call,’ said Trey. ‘All they want is to get into town and meet up with the others.’

‘Ram them,’ said Kyle. ‘We go fast enough, they can’t stop us.’

‘No,’ said Trey.

‘A body can do a lot of damage to a car if it’s going fast,’ said Lewis. ‘I saw a kid get run over at the junction near our school this one time. He
bounced
, man. Went flying. Was in hospital for, like, a year or something. Don’t know how he wasn’t killed. But that car,
whoa
, you shoulda seen it. All dented up, crushed, like the geezer had run it into a wall. Nice car and all.’

‘Yeah,’ Ed agreed, twisting round in his seat. ‘We don’t want to wreck the car. Without it our job would be a whole lot harder.’

‘All right. We go slow then,’ said Kyle. ‘Plough through them, like an ice-breaker.’ He mimed the action with the edge of one hand, slicing the air.

Ed looked at Trinity.

‘How many of them, you think? Can we force a way through?’

‘Too many,’ said Trio, pinching her lip nervously. ‘Can’t give you exact numbers. We’re only seeing the front of them.’

‘Give it a go at least,’ said Macca. ‘Even if we only take some of them out it’ll be a few less sickos in the world.’

‘It’s not about taking sickos out.’ Ed was trying not to get wound up. ‘It’s about doing what we’ve come to do and getting safely back to the museum.’

‘Stupid question,’ said Brooke, ‘but can we go round them?’

‘Stupid question,’ said Kyle and he laughed.

‘Another stupid question,’ said Brooke, ‘but how did you get to be such a moron, Kyle?’

‘We can’t go round them,’ Ed butted in, trying to kill the argument. Brooke had stopped Macca from being a pest with her lovey-dovey act and now Kyle was in danger of starting up a whole fresh round of bickering.

‘There’s no way off the motorway here,’ he went on. ‘And they’re filling the whole road. However, there
is
a turn-off to Slough not too far ahead. We could try pushing through them.’

‘We should go the other way, Lewis. Really we should.’ Trio was sounding very anxious.

‘Didn’t we just pass a turn-off?’ Ebenezer asked.

‘That was for the M25,’ Ed explained, and he double-checked his map. ‘If we go that way we have to do a big loop up to the M40 and along before we can get back to where we want to be.’

‘Then I vote we ram them,’ said Kyle. ‘Ten points for each one you splatter, Lewis. This’ll be just like one of them challenges off of
Top Gear
.’

Ed wished Will was here. He’d know what to do. He always thought things through, worked out the consequences.

Will wasn’t here, though, was he? Ed had to make the decision alone. He looked at Lewis.

‘Might as well give it a try, I suppose.’

‘Hold on to your hats,’ Kyle shouted. ‘It’s going to be a bumpy ride!’

Lewis nodded.

‘Cool.’

He’d got away with it so far. They hadn’t called him out on his driving. He’d only driven a real car a couple of times before. He’d picked up most of his driving skills from his PlayStation. He loved driving games. Used to have a state-of-the-art steering-wheel controller. Man, he missed that PlayStation.

The two times he’d driven a real car it had been totally illegal. He’d had a mate called Altan who’d been obsessed with cars, kept nicking them, and twice he’d let Lewis have a go. Only up the street and back. Altan had got himself killed riding a stolen scooter one night and after that Lewis went off the idea.

He hoped the others hadn’t noticed what a crap driver he was. They hadn’t said anything, too focused on other things. At least he hadn’t crashed.

‘Look at the bastards,’ said Kyle, leaning forward between the front seats.

‘Sickos?’ said Lewis. ‘Is what you call ’em, yeah?’

‘That’s what they are,’ said Kyle. ‘Not human no more, just bags of pus and bad blood.’

‘Sickos. Yeah … I get that.’

It was a good name for them. Felt right.

And now Lewis had to steer into them.

Driving into a mob of people. That was something else. Wasn’t sure if he could pull this off. He’d give it a go, though. Never let anyone know you had any doubts. That was the game. Stay cool.

He looked in the rear-view mirror. Trey and Trio had their hands clamped over their ears and were rocking in their seats, muttering to themselves. They’d tried to warn him. Maybe Lewis should have listened to them.

Ed was giving him instructions, and he was only half listening.

‘Not so fast that you lose control and damage the car … Not so slow that they can crowd in on us …’

Lewis’s throat felt dry. He needed something to get him through this. And then he remembered the CDs he’d brought along. Had kept them all these months in his backpack, in case he ever got the opportunity to hear them again. He jabbed the power button on the radio. There was a hiss of static, then he dug a CD out of his pocket, snapped the case open and slotted the disc into the little slit. After a quiet start ‘Crank That’ by Soulja Boy Tell ’Em started to blast out and the car was magically filled with noise.

He heard Ed tut, but the other kids cheered.

Lewis was ready.

Stay cool.

‘Let’s go,’ he said and pressed his foot down on the accelerator.

The mothers and fathers ahead had seen the car, but hardly reacted to it. They knew where they were going and nothing would tell them otherwise. They were staying cool
too. Focused. Marching forward, following the call, whatever heavy bass throb was drawing them in. It was pretty clear, as the car got nearer to them, that they were not getting out of the way.

Lewis had seen a video on YouTube once of these crabs migrating on some island somewhere. They were all red and there were millions of them. Crazy. They just set off and crawled from one side of the island to the other, across roads, through gardens, schoolyards, fields and forests. Nothing could stop them, and so cars would drive over them, crushing them under the wheels. And still those crabs kept going. Off to spawn.

These grown-ups, these
sickos
, were no different.

Closer and closer the car got and Lewis was holding his breath. Should he go faster or slower? The grown-ups were pretty tightly packed.

‘I’m gonna need more speed,’ he said.

‘Go for it.’ Ed sounded wound up tight.

‘You’re the boss. This is your gig.’

A little faster. More pressure on the pedal. Just a little …

‘There’s too many!’ Trio shouted.

‘We need to clear them out the way,’ said Kyle.

‘Is my plan,’ said Lewis and he pressed harder. The car sped up and …

Thump
. They hit their first one. A father. He was batted off to the side. Kyle cheered. And then they were in among them. Grown-ups were smacked off left and right. Behind the first row were some teenagers,
thump
,
thump
,
thump
. The car forced its way through them. Then a mother went down and there was a lurch and a bump as the wheels went over her. Kyle cheered again. Macca joined him.

‘Nuts,’ said Lewis. ‘They won’t move for us.’

The car was surrounded by grown-ups now. Lewis finally had their attention. They saw the car as a threat and started to crowd in on it, pawing at the windows. Shutting out the light.

‘Faster, Lewis.’ That was Ebenezer in the back. He was a tough kid, not much fazed him, but he sounded worried, scared even.

‘Can’t go no faster,’ said Lewis. ‘Is like driving through heavy mud, man. Like driving through trees.’

‘This is stupid,’ said Brooke, and Lewis looked at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘We need to get out of this.’

You’re telling me
, thought Lewis. Trying to speed up didn’t make any difference. There were just too many of them. A mother was right up on the bonnet, squatting there, legs bare and scabby, and she was beating on the windscreen with her fists.

More grown-ups climbed up next to her. Lewis turned to his side window. It was jammed with faces, pressing against the glass, gums exposed, smearing their head juices everywhere.

And then the car started to sway from side to side.

Lewis remembered the riots. Watching TV footage of police vans being rocked. Tipped over.

‘Go back!’ Brooke shouted. ‘Lewis, go back. Get it in reverse. We can’t drive through this. This is crazy.’

Lewis didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled the gear lever back, finding reverse. Trying the accelerator. Nothing much happening.

Nobody was talking inside the car now. Everyone was feeling the tension, worried that they’d be trapped. Lewis turned the volume up on the sound system to drown out
the thunder of beating fists and skulls and boots and whatever else the sickos were slamming against the car.

The engine whined as the car slowly eased its way backwards. There were more bumps underneath as they went over fallen grown-ups.

Stay cool.

He could see nothing out of the rear window. It was black with bodies. The three kids on the back seat were twisted round, hoping to see daylight, a break in the wall of flesh.

‘Sod this!’ Kyle shouted, and before anyone could stop him he wrenched his door open and was jumping out of the car, clutching the big battleaxe he’d had between his knees.