The Hunted (28 page)

‘We’re thinking we’re going to stay here.’

‘Yeah? You sure? We could really use you guys.’ Ed looked at Trinity. He was still trying to get his head round the memory of the little guy on their back coming alive.

‘Well, you’ll have to admit we haven’t exactly been a lot of help so far,’ said Trio, and she looked down at her feet embarrassed.

‘You mean Macca?’ Ed asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘To be fair, you
did
try to warn us.’

‘It wasn’t good enough.’

Ed shrugged. He wasn’t going to argue the point.

‘The thing is,’ said Trey. ‘We think we can be more use here. There’s so much Amelia knows, and together with what
we
know about Promithios, and, well, how we
are
and everything.’

‘It’s your decision.’ Ed turned away. He was trying to get the car ready. Packing supplies into the boot. Trinity followed him, walking fast on their two good legs.

‘Amelia’s old,’ said Trey. ‘She might not live much longer. This is our last chance.’

‘Last chance of what?’ Ed asked, hefting a box of beans that Amelia had given him into the back of the car.

‘Of finding a cure,’ said Trio.

‘You really think that’s possible?’ Ed stopped what he was doing.

‘There’s a chance,’ said Trey. ‘A chance we might be able to work out a way to fight this thing. It’s got to be worth it.’

‘You mean it’s more important than chasing off around the countryside looking for Ella?’

‘That’s not what we meant,’ said Trey.

‘It’s true, though.’ Ed held out his hands in a hopeless, empty, gesture. ‘I don’t even really know myself why I’m doing this. So I’m not arguing with you. You’re right. Stay here. Talk to Amelia. Work out a way to kick the disease in the balls. Do it for Macca, and all the other kids who’ve died. Once we’ve found Ella –
if
we find Ella – we’ll come back and pick you up before heading back into town.’

Ed smiled, trying to reassure Trinity. It all seemed so simple and straightforward. But so far one of them had been killed and they hadn’t even begun to look for Sam’s sister.

Trinity hurried back inside, passing Ebenezer, Kyle and Lewis who were bringing more gear out. As Ed was stashing his sword in the boot, Lewis came over and asked if he could take a look at it. Ed shrugged and passed it to him.

‘It’s called a mortuary sword,’ he explained. ‘From the Civil War.’

‘American Civil War?’

‘English.’

‘Never knew we had one.’ Lewis was swinging the sword through the air, feeling its balance and weight.

‘Heavy,’ he said.

Ed couldn’t believe Lewis had never heard of the English Civil War. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘Oliver Cromwell, Roundheads and Cavaliers? Royalists versus Parliamentarians?’

‘Yeah? Take your word for it. Who won?’

‘Cromwell. He beheaded the English king, Charles the First.’

‘Cool. Never was too bothered about history at school. This is a well solid blade, though.’

Ed took it back off him and put it into the boot.

‘It’s almost a club, it’s so heavy,’ he said. ‘It’ll smash through anything. But it takes some lifting and if you get caught up in fighting too long it feels like your arm’s gonna fall off.’

‘I like my spear,’ said Lewis. ‘I’m not so sure about swords. I picked mine up with all this samurai gear back at the museum. You know, the place next door with all the old crap in it. The other museum?’

‘The Victoria and Albert?’

‘Yeah, that’s the joint. I mean, it’s OK, my katana, I thought it was gonna be my piece for life, but I’m more used to a spear. Sword is hard to control, man. Takes some practice. Training. A spear … A spear is a spear.’

‘You need an axe, like good old Brain-biter,’ said Kyle, coming up behind them and doing a demonstration that nearly took Lewis’s head off, like Charles the First all over again.

‘Watch yourself, man,’ said Lewis, backing away, scratching his Afro. ‘You ain’t got no finesse with that thing. It’s a mad weapon.’

‘It’s a great weapon,’ said Kyle and he kissed the blade. ‘Beats a gay sword any day.’

‘How can a sword be gay?’ Ed protested.

‘This is a man’s weapon,’ said Kyle.

‘Still reckon a spear’s the best,’ said Lewis.

‘A throwing spear is best of all,’ said Ebenezer, fixing his own stack of lighter javelins to the roof rack. ‘You won’t let the sickos get close to you with their stink and their germs.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Kyle. ‘We will see.’

‘I hope we won’t,’ said Ed. ‘I hope we won’t have to use any of these weapons again for a long while.’

‘That’d just be boring,’ said Kyle.

‘What about what that mad thing on Trinity’s back was babbling about?’ said Lewis. ‘A tidal wave of sickos coming?’

‘We’ve seen them,’ said Ed. ‘Marching into London from all around. Joining up. Shadowman reckons they’re forming an army.’

‘What if there’s more coming?’ said Lewis.

‘I don’t know.’ Ed slammed the boot shut. ‘This has all got way complicated. Did Mister Three mean the sickos already in London, or something else? Or was he just babbling? I asked Trinity – they didn’t know either.’

‘Babbling is right,’ said Kyle. ‘I ain’t gonna listen to no shaved monkey. Now let’s get rocking, shall we? You driving, Lewis? Or do you want me to take over?’

‘I’m driving,’ said Lewis and he settled into the driver’s seat. ‘Where we headed?’

‘From what Amelia said our best bet’s to try Slough.’ Ed climbed in the passenger side and picked up the road atlas where it was lying on the seat. ‘She thinks there’s a settlement of some kind there. Makes sense, it’s a fairly big town. Anyone seen Brooke?’

‘She’s coming,’ said Ebenezer, getting in the back.

Ed looked over to see Brooke walking slowly from the house, deep in thought. She’d been quiet since Macca had died, but after her first breakdown she hadn’t cried again. She looked older somehow, tired. Halfway to the car she tugged off her bandage and chucked it away. The skin on her forehead was pinched and puckered, shiny. She pulled her knitted cap on, not bothering to cover the scar with it. She got in the car and sat in one of the single seats.

Plenty of room now.

‘Where’s Trinity?’ she asked, without looking at anyone.

‘Staying here.’ Ed didn’t feel like going into any long explanations right now, and nobody pressed him.

‘We ready then?’ said Brooke.

‘Yeah.’ Lewis started the engine and eased the car forward, steering it round the gravel area in front of the house and back on to the driveway. With new leaves out on the trees, everywhere looked pretty and peaceful in the bright sunlight. Ed certainly appreciated being in the countryside and realized how much he’d missed it, living in the city for the last year. The only thing was he’d grown used to the city. He understood it. He knew its dangers. The countryside felt different, new. It was too easy to think there was nothing to fear out here. It all looked so nice and green and empty. But what dangers did it hide? He couldn’t read this environment as well as he could the streets of London.

They were soon on the main road and heading through the woods towards Slough. It turned out the town was only a few minutes’ drive away, and before they knew it they were in among houses and shops as they passed
through the village of Burnham, which blurred into Slough itself, with nothing to show where one ended and the other began.

Slough seemed deserted. They found the main road through the town and drove all the way to the other side, looking for signs of life. The road was a long, dreary drag of car showrooms, DIY stores, builders’ merchants, low factory blocks and offices. They briefly passed through a more residential area of small, ugly, red-brick houses before finding themselves back at the M4, at the turn-off they would have taken if they hadn’t found the road blocked by sickos. They had a brief discussion about what to do and then turned round and headed back into town. This time, when they were halfway through, they turned off to the right when they came to the first major road. It was as depressing and deserted as everywhere else, and they were just about to give up when Brooke started pointing and shouting.

‘There, there, there …’

Ed looked round. Just in time to see a kid scarpering off the street and ducking out of sight between two houses.

‘Well, there’s people here then,’ said Kyle who had also spotted it. ‘Not very friendly ones, though.’

Ed banged the windscreen. ‘There’s another one,’ he said as a girl stuck her head round from the back of a lorry and then quickly jerked it back. ‘Carry on up this road, Lewis.’

The houses were thinning out and it looked like they were heading for open country ahead, but there were signs of life at last. Graffiti all over the place, painted on the houses and on the road, on cars and walls, on rotting advertising billboards, covering road signs, pavements,
shopfronts. It was mostly mindless slogans –
‘SLOUGH RULES’, ‘SLOUGH RUDE BOYS’, ‘WINDSOR SCUM KEEP OUT’, ‘ZOMBIE FREE ZONE’, ‘WE WILL KICK YOUR ASS’, ‘MACNAMARA IS CHAMPION KILLER’, ‘WE ARE THE YOUNG’, ‘DIE, SICKBAGS, DIE’, ‘GO BACK TO YOUR SLUM, BRACKNELL’
– plus the usual swear words next to pictures of guns and knives and severed heads and the occasional obscene body part. Here and there was some more imaginative and artistic stuff, fancy tags and decorations, but mostly it was just rubbish.

And then they came to a school, the sign too defaced to be able to read its name. It was modern-looking, made of a central, taller, ring-shaped building with other wings coming off it in a sort of star shape. There was a fence around the grounds that had been reinforced, and someone had built a rather rickety look-out tower by the main gates. Two kids watched them from the platform at the top and others were clustered at the gates, safely on the other side.

‘Looks like they heard us coming,’ said Kyle. ‘Hope they’ve baked a cake.’

‘What you want me to do?’ Lewis asked.

Ed thought about it. ‘Stop here. I’ll go over to the gates and talk to them.’

‘What if they try and attack us?’ Kyle said.

‘Why would they do that?’ said Ed.

‘From their graffiti, they don’t seem too welcoming.’

‘From their graffiti, they seem like a bunch of halfwits.’

Ed got out of the car.

Got his sword from the boot.

Walked to the fence.

The kids by the gate were a mixed bunch. All ages. There were a few very small, grubby-faced ones, a larger group of eleven- and twelve-year-olds, and also some older, tougher-looking ones.

None of them was smiling. All of them were armed.

‘Where you from?’ a little girl shouted at Ed as he got close.

‘London.’

‘What you doing here then? You get lost or something?’

‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Girl called Ella.’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘She was with some other kids. Maeve, Robbie …’

‘Never heard of them. What you really doing here?’

‘Who’s in charge? Not you, I imagine.’

Another voice cut in … ‘No,
I
am. At least until Josa gets back.’

Ed looked over to where a tall boy with a shaved head was approaching the gates. He was carrying a shotgun and had a sleeveless denim jacket and badly done home-made tattoos up his arms and over his face.

‘Why don’t you drive inside the gates where it’s safe?’
he said, trying to appear friendly, which was difficult with his tattooed face. ‘Then we can talk properly. I can tell you everything that’s going on around here if you in’t local.’

‘You sure?’

‘Wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t. If you want some help we can give it you, but I ain’t shouting through the gate, and you’ll be a lot safer on this side.’ The boy sounded reasonable, even if he didn’t look it. Ed returned to the car.

‘Not sure we’re in luck with Ella,’ he said through Lewis’s open window. ‘But they said we should drive in at least. What d’you reckon?’ He aimed this last question at Lewis who, along with Brooke, seemed the most sensible of the kids.

‘Gotta be better than staying out on the street,’ said Lewis.

Ed switched his attention to Brooke. ‘You OK with that?’

‘Guess so. Even if Ella’s not here,’ said Brooke, ‘we can find out more about where to look. They got to be more clued up than Amelia and her lot. The crinklies ain’t had no dealings with the outside world for months.’

‘Good point.’ Ed got back in the car and Lewis eased it forward as the local kids opened the gates.

‘Go careful, driver,’ said Kyle, with a smirk. ‘We wouldn’t want to run any of them over when they been so nice and friendly.’

The kids formed two lines on either side of the gate, watching in silence as the car drove in. The tattooed boy showed them where to stop, in a car park at the front of the school. There were a few cars parked there and Ed spotted others that had been moved to the fence and turned on their sides to reinforce the barricades.

He wondered why these few had been left. Maybe they had petrol in them.

Tattoo boy walked over to them as Ed and Kyle got out. He sized Kyle up. Swinging his shotgun around like it was nothing. Not bothered about any threat. Several of the larger boys had formed up in a wide circle, two of them carrying crossbows.

‘So you’re the head teacher, are you?’ asked Kyle, glancing over at the school building.

‘Deputy head,’ the boy replied with a grin. ‘Girl called Josa runs the joint, but she’s out hunting right now. When she gets back, we’ll have a talk, yeah?’

‘You can’t talk now?’ Kyle asked.

‘Can’t do nothing without Josa’s say-so.’

‘We’ll come inside then.’

‘Nah,’ said the boy. ‘Best you stay out here till we know what Josa wants to do.’

‘How long’s that gonna be?’

‘As long as it takes.’

‘You got a name?’ Kyle asked.

‘Kenton.’

‘So you want us to hang here for a bit, do you, Kenton?’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

Kenton checked out the car. Brooke was sitting staring out of the window. Behind her Ebenezer was tapping out a rhythm on the back of the seat, ignoring them. Lewis looked like he was nodding off. His eyes were half shut and he was zoned out, miles away. They hardly looked like the most dangerous gang in town. Kenton obviously wasn’t taking any chances, though. He was going to keep them isolated.

‘We’ll see you later then.’ Ed walked back to the car and
got in. No point in arguing. Kyle followed and Kenton went back to his mates, had a conversation with them, turning now and then to check out the car and its passengers.

‘They don’t seem quite so friendly now they’ve got us in here,’ Ed explained. ‘Looks like we’re sitting it out until the girl in charge gets back.’

‘And then what?’ Brooke asked.

‘And then we don’t know what. I’m hoping they’re going to have some useful info for us, though.’

‘Ella and her friends are either here or they’re not,’ said Ebenezer. ‘We are wasting time. Can’t one of these boys tell us what is what? Why do we need to wait?’

‘Because it’s what they want.’

‘What else do they want?’

‘We’ll find out sooner or later.’ Ed slid down in his seat and closed his eyes. Thought he might try to sleep, like Lewis.

‘This is boring,’ said Brooke. She was sitting with her feet up on the back of the seat in front of her. ‘They really gonna keep us here all day? Why won’t they at least let us into the building?’

‘We’re all right out here,’ said Kyle. ‘We got a good line of sight. Anything dodgy we just …’

‘Just what?’ Brooke interrupted.

‘Smash our way out through the gate like in films.’

‘You reckon we can?’

‘Dunno.’

‘I was asking Lewis, not you, Kyle.’

‘Dunno,’ said Lewis. Not asleep after all, taking it all in. ‘Wouldn’t want to risk it, though. We damage the car, we’re stuck.’

‘Does
anyone
have an exit plan?’ Brooke looked around the car.

Only Ed replied.

‘We wait,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

‘I’m thinking about it.’

‘Well, while you’re thinking, I’d like to talk.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ said Kyle. ‘Typical girl. What you want to talk about? Fashion and that? Shoes? Boy bands? Make-up tips. You got any make-up tips, Ebenezer?’

‘Shut up, Kyle,’ Ebenezer snapped. ‘I am a man.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Kyle. ‘I know, let’s talk about feelings. How are we all feeling? How are you feeling, Ebenezer?’

‘Oh, I am
so
laughing out loud,’ said Brooke. ‘Actually I want to talk about what the old folks told you. What Amelia knows. About the disease. What did you find out?’

‘Dunno,’ said Kyle. ‘Wasn’t really listening.’

‘Wasn’t asking you,’ said Brooke. ‘I was asking Ed.’

‘You want the short version?’ said Lewis.

‘I want any version.’

‘It’s bugs. Parasites. They’ve got in the adults and they’re controlling them. Plus, they can communicate with each other. It’s a hive mind deal. They’re all on the same network. The word has gone out on Facebook, and they’re all meeting up for one monster party.’

‘I’d rather talk about shoes and boy bands, to tell you the truth,’ said Kyle, and Ebenezer laughed.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Brooke, ignoring them. ‘How do they do that? How do they communicate? Telepathy?’

‘Amelia reckons it’s probably, like, an ultrasound thing,’ said Lewis. ‘Insect noises we can’t hear. That’s what the
sentinels are for, to amplify the signal and pass it along. Come join the fun.’

‘But what are they massing for?’ Brooke asked.

‘They getting together for the big pop,’ said Lewis. ‘The next infestation. Happens every fifteen years when their spores are ripe. They planning to get inside anyone who wasn’t around the first time. Namely us.’

‘Nice,’ said Brooke. ‘They’re gonna shoot their germs into the air and try to infect us all?’

‘Something like that.’

‘So, if it’s going to happen every fifteen years or whatever, that means this goes on forever. Each new generation getting infected. If we ever had kids, they’d have to go through what we’re going through now … God. I was hoping that learning about this stuff would make it less scary. It’s the opposite …’

‘I ain’t having no kids,’ said Kyle. ‘No way, man.’

‘Oh, I am so disappointed,’ said Brooke. ‘I wanted you to be my baby-father.’

‘You’re funny,’ said Kyle, and he actually laughed, a genuine laugh. ‘I like you.’

‘That’s really made my week,’ said Brooke. She was silent for a minute. Then she said, ‘Seriously, though – we’ve got to stop them. Otherwise, us kids – we’re never going to survive this, are we?’