The Hunted (32 page)

Lewis stared at the fence. Ed swore. No way through here.

Kyle took a swing at the fence with his axe, which sparked and bounced off harmlessly.

‘Huh!’ he said, turning to grin at the others. ‘Did you see that? Cool.’

Nobody else laughed.

No way through at all.

‘We’ll have to work our way round to the gate.’ Ed’s voice was harsh and croaky. ‘There must be a way in. Stay together, we’re doing well. Keep it up. We’ll get in there.’

‘Did you see my axe spark like that?’ said Kyle.

‘Shut up, Kyle.’ Ed strode back out into the open. Lewis followed. There was a line of grown-ups advancing towards them, strung out all the way across the field. Stumbling, moronic, relentless, only one thing on their minds. No way of reasoning with them. No way of stopping them. Ed was good, but he couldn’t kill them all.

And there was nowhere to run. Wherever they turned there would be more of them. It was like every grown-up in the world had come out tonight, under the blood-red moon.

Lewis saw a mother who seemed to be leading them. She was very tall, with long, straight, black hair that hung
down to her waist. She tottered on, slightly ahead of the rest, arms straight and stiff at her sides. Her face narrow, nose like a great fin, eyes bulging and dark. They locked on Lewis and he felt a weird shiver of nausea pass through him. For a moment his fingers went all tingly and his brain buzzed. He thought he was going to faint, or throw up, or freeze …

He wasn’t there any more.

He was just watching a film of all this.

Not real.

The tall woman came on.

She was on a screen.

‘Lewis!’ A shout from Kyle brought him crashing back to reality. He’d been left behind by the others. He swore and ran to catch up. They were hurrying alongside the line of trees. Lewis could see the end maybe thirty metres ahead. A corner. But what was around the corner?

More bloody grown-ups no doubt. What else?

And the ones in the field were moving towards the corner as well, to cut them off. They weren’t running, but they were seething across the open ground from every direction.

And when Lewis rounded the corner all he saw was pretty much what he’d been expecting – more of them. Only closer. And once again the kids had a fight on their hands. Lewis’s arm was sore. The blade wasn’t heavy, but he had to keep working it, using both hands mostly on the long handle. Right, left, right again and stab. Twist and out and start again. The blade was horribly sharp and seemed to be able to cut through anything without much problem. Clothing, skin, muscle, sinews, bone. He swung and slashed and stabbed and swung again, slicing a father’s
hand clean off. He kicked another in the guts, elbowed a third.

‘I can’t keep this up,’ he heard Brooke gasp. Tried to see where she was. Saw her surrounded by a gang of mothers and fathers, poking at them with her sword. Ebenezer had seen it too and the two of them steamed in, pulling bodies away, chopping at them, until they’d got Brooke clear. And there were Ed and Kyle, tirelessly harvesting the bastards. Lewis looked around. All he could see were grown-ups, plodding towards them. The kids were stuck here now, unable to move in any direction, and no closer to finding a way into the buildings.

He had a sickening urge to just drop his sword and give up. Stop fighting. Let it be. How were things ever going to be any different? Even if they somehow got away from this lot there would be others. And others. More and more of them, too many to kill. But then he saw Ebenezer get in trouble and he was running towards him, sword at the ready. He cut Ebenezer clear. And now Brooke was surrounded again.

There was going to be no end to this.

And then he saw bodies falling, out in the fields, as if they were tripping over some hidden wire. Or puppets having their strings cut. Grown-ups were going down all around them. He heard hard thwacking sounds, like someone beating a leather sofa with a belt. Missiles were streaking through the air.

Someone was shooting at them. He saw an arrow whizz across the field and embed itself in a mother’s chest. Then another hit her as she fell.

More and more of them were falling and Lewis saw figures advancing from the left. An organized fighting
unit. Must be other kids. Orders were being shouted. More grown-ups going down, the rest of them milling in confusion, not knowing which kids to attack.

Lewis smiled for the first time that night.

Maybe they were going to make it after all.

Ed was in a killing frenzy. He’d shut down his conscious brain, withdrawn into the dark space where he let his animal side loose. He was aware, though, that something was going on. The rhythm of the fight had changed. The sickos were losing. Ed was being helped. There were arrows in the air.

He turned to look where they were coming from.

A group of archers was coming towards them, with smaller, more agile girls and boys running ahead of them, darting in and out of the sickos, picking up arrows from the ground, and plucking them from fallen bodies.

‘This way! Over here!’ A girl wearing a leather jacket shouted at them. She was tall and slim, with long dark hair and pale skin, and appeared to be in charge. Ed moved mechanically in her direction.

‘Go to them!’ he shouted to his team, his voice painful and hoarse in his dry throat. And they were running again, smashing sickos out of the way. Ed didn’t check whether the others were with him. He just had to trust that they were. At least Kyle was at his side, keeping up. Always wanted to be at the front.

‘Looks like not all the local kids are arseholes,’ he shouted and Ed didn’t reply. He didn’t want to speak. He
didn’t care. The blood moon was in the sky and in his heart.

There were maybe twenty-five kids there, not counting the younger ones who were still haring around, picking up arrows, too swift for the sickos to catch. And the archers were keeping up a steady rain of arrows.

‘Get in behind us,’ the girl in charge yelled and Ed did as he was told, finally checking that all four of his crew were safe. There was Kyle, then Brooke, Ebenezer and Lewis, bringing up the rear. Alive and alert, wild-eyed, laughing manically.

Saved.

Ed wished he felt something more than emptiness.

‘When I say run, we run,’ the girl commanded.

‘Where to?’ asked Brooke, bent double and gasping for breath.

‘Just follow us,’ said the girl. ‘This is the rear of the grown-ups’ army. If we head in the right direction we can get away from them. You ready?’

‘Do it,’ Ed grunted.

‘Now!’ the girl shouted. ‘Run.’

And the archers turned and started running, around to the back of the buildings, through an open gate into another field, where there were only a few scattered sickos. One or two standing like sentinels. The kids pounded through the long grass and weeds. Ed’s lot were worn out, but something kept them going and they managed to keep up at the front of the pack. The archers crossed the field on to a lane. They seemed to know where they were going. And once on the lane they could go even faster.

Ed felt the blood on his skin drying from the heat of his
body. It was itchy and uncomfortable. It caked his clothing.

After running down the lane for what felt like fifteen, twenty minutes the archers veered off into a field through a farm gate and up the side of a low hill. They hadn’t seen any sickos for some time and Ed could see that the hill would give them a good view of the surrounding countryside. There was also a clump of trees up here and, as soon as they arrived, three of the archers threw down their bows and started climbing to get a better view. The rest of the group slumped down on to the ground to rest and Ed gratefully joined them. The girl in charge stayed standing, peering out across the darkened landscape.

Ed looked in the direction they’d come from. He could just make out the roofs of the factory buildings. And there was a black stain across the land that could have been the sickos or just the shadows of clouds across the moon, which was still a diseased red colour.

Ed was fully aware of his body now. His heart was racing. His head ached. His arms ached. His legs ached. His chest ached, rising and falling quickly, his lungs burning with lactic acid. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t got any fresh wounds. They’d been lucky. If these archers hadn’t shown up they could all well be dead. They couldn’t have held out much longer.

He looked at the rest of his little gang, sprawled out on the ground, exhausted. Brooke looked pale and haunted. Ebenezer was muttering to himself and had his hand round a cross on a chain. Kyle had a big drunken grin on his face. Somehow Lewis had managed to put his cool back on. He sat there, leaning back against a tree trunk, eyes half closed, just hanging.

Ed struggled to his feet and walked stiffly over to the tall pale girl, who had a pair of binoculars out now and was scanning the land to the east.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘That’s OK. It was pure luck we came across you.’ She had a polite, middle-class accent. Similar background to him probably.

‘What were you doing out there?’ he asked.

‘Scavenging. We’d been out all day and on the way back we got caught up with that lot.’ She waved her arm vaguely in the direction of the factory buildings. ‘God knows where they all came from or where they’re going. We’ve been trying to get round them for hours. It’s going to be a long march home from here.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Ascot. You?’

‘London.’

‘London? You’re a bit far off your turf, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, we’re looking for someone.’

‘Well, good luck with that,’ she said with a touch of sarcasm.

Ed was going to question her further when Brooke called to him. He went over and dropped down next to her. She put an arm round him and held him tight. She was shaking.

‘You all right?’ he asked unnecessarily.

‘I never want to do that again.’

‘Hopefully you won’t have to.’

‘They’re all going towards London, Ed.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You know it. You’ve seen it before, you told me. All the sickos you saw going past St Paul’s. They’re massing in
London. So I
will
have to do that again. We have to get back there, Ed. They’re an army.’

‘We will get home.’ Ed folded both arms round her. ‘Just not tonight.’

He was covering her in blood from his sodden clothing. At least it wasn’t his own. He was numb and confused. Couldn’t work out a plan. Couldn’t think more than ten seconds ahead.

In the end a plan was made for him.

‘OK,’ shouted the girl in charge. ‘It’s all clear ahead and it’s safe to go. We have to keep moving. We’ve a lot of ground to cover.’

It had taken a long time for Lewis to realize that he knew the girl in the leather jacket. Trying to put the pieces together. Watching her with Ed. And then it had come to him.

They were covering the ground at a fast walk, sticking to roads so the going was easy. Lewis had settled into a loping rhythm, his long legs eating up the miles. He felt like he could keep this up all night if needed. He worked his way up through the ranks of kids. Nobody was talking much, saving their energy. All you could hear was the slap-scrape-thud of their boots.

He got to the front of the column. Fell in beside the girl. He could hear her leather jacket creaking as she walked. It was the jacket that had done it.

‘Hello, Sophie,’ he said and she turned to look at him, surprised and more than a little curious.

She frowned, trying to place him.

‘Do I know you?’

‘I’m
hurt
you don’t remember me, girl.’

‘Remind me.’

‘Camden Road, Regent’s Park, Buckingham Palace …’

‘Oh my God, you’re one of the Holloway kids.’

Sophie’s face lit up in a smile and then instantly went sour.

‘You’re not … You weren’t a friend of …’

‘Of Arran? No. I was with the other camp. One of Blue’s crew. You disappeared when we got to the palace.’

‘I didn’t feel welcome there. Not by David and not by Maxie and her people. Not after what happened with Arran.’

‘Was an accident,’ said Lewis. ‘We all knew that. Weren’t your fault. He was dying anyways, I reckon, seeing what’s gone down with other kids as got bit. You did him a favour.’

‘I still felt awful. Shooting him like that. Tell you the truth, we wanted to get out of town as well; it had always been our plan. We came out west. Been moving around ever since. A little while at Windsor to start with, but the set-up there reminded me too much of David at Buckingham Palace. Too many rules. Obnoxious bastards in charge: the Golden Twins, they call themselves. A pair of right pains. We were in Bracknell for a bit, but then we linked up with a gang of archers from Ascot. It was a better fit. Been there a couple of weeks now. It’s OK there. Some of the kids are a bit weird, but we get along OK. They’re organized at least. Might move on in the summer, though.’

Sophie paused. Smiled again. ‘It’s Lewis, isn’t it? I remember now. The hair.’

‘You
do
remember me. Cool.’

‘I didn’t really clock you all in the dark. You’re not all from Holloway, are you?’

‘No. We a mix. Ebenezer come out of Holloway, but we’ve left the palace and moved to the Natural History Museum. We was like you, couldn’t stick that David dickhead. See the girl there, with the scar?’

‘Yeah? Was she from Holloway?’

‘No. You remember, just before we got to the palace we found some kids being massacred close by Green Park tube station?’

‘Yeah. It was pretty horrible.’

‘She was the one we rescued.’

‘No way! You’re kidding.’

‘Straight up. You got to meet her, girl. She’s way cool.’

‘I will. God, this is so freaky. Your guy said you were looking for someone?’

‘Yeah.’

And so Lewis explained about Ella and Sam and Maeve and Robbie and Monkey-Boy. And Sophie thought maybe she remembered Ella. Although Lewis thought she probably didn’t. One thing was certain, though: Ella wasn’t at Ascot, and Sophie hadn’t heard anyone talking about a gang of kids coming out of London.

So they walked on through the night, and it felt good to talk, to remember all they’d been through since leaving Holloway.

At last Sophie said they were getting close to Ascot and Lewis wondered what turn their lives was going to take now.

‘What we gonna find when we get there?’ he asked Sophie.

‘The races, Lewis. It’s gonna be the races …’