The Hunted (9 page)

They all bundled inside the main barn – it was the first time the other kids had been in here. There was some light from the fire and Ella watched them looking around with feverish, wild eyes. Outside, they could hear the grown-ups moving through the farm.

‘They won’t stop,’ said Louisa. ‘Why would they stop? They’ll carry on going to wherever it is they’re going. They’re not interested in us. Why would they stop?’

‘
Why would they stop?
’ Harry sneered.

‘They’ll stop,’ said Daniel. ‘They always stop.’

‘Why would they, though?’ said Louisa, sounding desperate.

‘Because we’re here,’ said Daniel hopelessly. ‘Because there’s food. I mean, did you see them all, how many there were? It would take a lot of food to feed an army like that. What have they been eating? They’ll stop.’

‘No,’ said Louisa. ‘They won’t.’

‘Just because you say it won’t make it happen,’ said Harry. ‘You are such a
moron
, Louisa.’

‘They won’t stop!’ Louisa shouted and, as if in answer to her, to show her up for being wrong, there was a bang on the metal side of the barn. Then another. And then a third bang as something hit it hard enough to leave a dent.

‘They’ve stopped,’ said Daniel. ‘We are
dead
.’

Scarface went over to a ladder that led up through the opening in the roof. He climbed quickly up it and disappeared from view. Ella had been up there once to have a look. The top of the ladder was tied to a cross-beam and it looked out over the whole farmyard. The roof itself was too rickety to stand on.

‘Sod this,’ said Sonya. ‘I have to see what’s going on.’ And she started to climb up after him.

‘There’s only room for one,’ Ella shouted after her, but Sonya ignored her.

‘They’ll get in here,’ said Daniel, his voice a harsh whisper. ‘And they’ll kill us. There’s too many of them.’

‘
There’s too many of them
.’

‘Admit it, Harry: you’re scared.’

‘Shut up, Daniel,’ said Harry. ‘You’re a real downer, you know.’

Harry was having to speak quite loudly to be heard because there was a banging on the outside of the barn that sounded like rolling thunder as a hundred hands battered the metal sheets. More and more dents were appearing and Ella could hear grown-ups snuffling and sniffing at any gaps or holes. She wished she hadn’t stayed to look at them as they came to the farm. It made them too real. It would have been easier if she had no picture of them and could pretend they weren’t that bad, that they were weak and useless, not scary at all. The banging could be rain or hailstones. The movement outside? The grunts and moans? It could be a herd of escaped cows. Or horses. Or …

Anything other than diseased grown-ups. If they got in they would take her like they’d taken her brother and so
many of her friends. She wished Scarface would come back down. She didn’t feel safe without him. These kids were useless; all they did was argue. Daniel was too scared to do anything. He was walking about in circles, going from one wall to another, listening, looking up at the sky, muttering to himself, crying all the time, and thumping his chest with his fist. Harry was being mean to Louisa, calling her stupid, and she was having a go back. Every now and then Harry would break off the argument and go over to where the banging noise was loudest and smash the wall with his club. Swear at the grown-ups.

It made no difference. Nothing made any difference. The grown-ups kept banging on the walls – so loud that Ella couldn’t think – and pushing against them so that they were getting steadily more and more bent in.

Ella had an image that the barn was her head, and the grown-ups were hammering directly on her skull. She wanted it to stop. She wanted it all to stop.

There was a rattling at the door.

And then Louisa screamed.

One part of the wall had been bent in so far at the bottom that grown-ups were able to get their hands through. Ella could see their fingers scrabbling at the concrete floor and gripping the edge of the bent metal. Harry ran over and started kicking and stamping. Louisa joined him, stabbing with her short spear, cursing the grown-ups. She turned to Daniel, her face pale, eyes wide, mouth wide.

‘Help us, won’t you?’

‘Yeah, yeah, sorry.’ Daniel hurried over to join Harry, stamping on the hands that came under the wall. Despite their efforts, the hole was getting bigger as the grown-ups
clawed at the metal and forced it upwards and inwards. A mother stuck her head under, tongue flicking out and licking the floor, lips pulled back from her teeth, showing purple gums. Harry kicked her in the temple and then kicked her again, and she pulled back out, only to be followed seconds later by two more heads.

As they stamped on the heads, a section of wall right next to them was thumped so hard that a big bit of it was bent in. Ella turned to look at it and then saw with a shock that they weren’t alone. While they’d been distracted by the hole at the bottom of the wall, some grown-ups had got in from somewhere else. She couldn’t tell how many there were in the half-light, but in her panic they appeared to fill the barn. She’d seen them just in time. Her scream alerted the other three who turned round to defend themselves.

That was all they could do, though: hold the invaders off. They were backed up against the wall with no room to use their weapons effectively. Ella hid behind Harry, clutching her club and her shield, hoping nobody expected her to fight. She was aware of a high-pitched wailing and realized it was her. She couldn’t stop screaming.

‘Shut up, why don’t you?’ Harry snapped, and Ella fought to control herself.

But the screams were building inside her, bursting to get out. The stench of the grown-ups was even more awful close up. They were hot and damp and dripping, like old food left too long in a kitchen-waste recycling box.

Finally she could stand it no longer; she opened her mouth wide to scream, but the noise was drowned out by an almighty bang and there was a flash in the darkness.

Scarface had come back down the ladder and let off a blast from his shotgun. Sonya was with him, and they were attacking the grown-ups from the side. Scarface emptied his other barrel and as he reloaded Sonya laid about her with her spear. Soon they’d cleared a path to Ella’s group and together they forced the grown-ups back the way they’d come.

‘I’ll deal with these ones,’ Daniel shouted, returning to the hole under the wall, where three grown-ups had managed to get their upper bodies through.

‘Kill them, Dan,’ Sonya yelled. ‘Their dead bodies will block the entrance.’ Ella watched as Daniel picked up a spear and started to stab them, crying out with every thrust.

Scarface and the three other kids managed to clear most of the barn, working their way over to a side door that had been forced open. The clasp that held the padlocked bolt in place had been bent right off the wall. Scarface pushed his way to the front and fired two shots into the open doorway, and for a blessed moment there were no grown-ups there, just empty space.

‘Give me a hand!’ Sonya ran to the door and tried to close it, but already there were more grown-ups trying to
get in. Harry battered them, knocking back any hands or arms that came through.

What’s the point?
thought Ella. There were too many. They would just keep on coming. Somehow, though, Sonya got the door closed and then Scarface jammed an iron bar under the broken handle, wedging it against the concrete floor. Harry stayed there, leaning all his weight on the bar. He looked very tired. His jacket with the painted slogans was ripped.

But they hadn’t completely cleared the barn. A laughing mother, who now had blood pouring out of her mouth and nose, rushed at Ella, fingers spread wide, like she was drying her nails. Before Ella could do anything Louisa charged at the mother and shoved her into the fire, sending up a firework spray of sparks. The mother shrieked and jerked about before she managed to roll out and Sonya stepped forward to stab her with her spear.

‘Where have you been?’ gasped Louisa, exhausted from the fight.

‘Trying to see what’s going on,’ Sonya replied.

‘How bad is it?’ Daniel asked.

‘The whole yard’s filling up with them,’ said Sonya. ‘Some are moving on, but most are trying to get in here.’

‘It’s stupid,’ said Daniel. ‘We’re trapped. It’s just stupid.’

Harry copied him. ‘
It’s just stupid.
’

‘I hope they get you, Harry,’ said Daniel. ‘I hope they rip you to pieces and use your stupid bloody head as a football. I hope you die painfully.’

‘I hope
you
die painfully,’ said Harry.

‘Please, both of you, stop it,’ said Louisa.

‘
Stop it
,’ said Harry, and then he shouted as Sonya pushed past him, nearly knocking him over. He didn’t
have a go at her, though, because he could see that she had gone over to the hole where the dead bodies had been pulled away and more grown-ups were coming through.

And all the while the hammering went on, all around, on every wall,
bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

Scarface seemed to be completely ignoring what was happening. He’d gone over to where there was an old bit of machinery with pumps and pipes sticking out of it. He was fiddling with something, turning a wheel. Ella didn’t know how long it went on like that, the kids trying to stop the adults from getting in, the adults beating on the walls, the kids bickering with each other whenever there was a moment’s quiet, Scarface fiddling. And no matter how often they blocked up a hole, or a gap in the walls where they’d been bent, another one would open up, and another.

The kids were moving like grown-ups themselves now, slow and automatic and stiff. Zombies. There were dead bodies on the floor from when the grown-ups had got in before and Ella tried not to look at them. Every now and then her eyes would play tricks on her, caused by the dim light and her own tiredness, and she’d think one of the bodies was moving. And she’d scream and run from it, and the others would curse her when there was nothing there. Nothing had moved. No corpse was going to rise from the dead.

When Ella did it for the fifth time, Harry completely lost it and started yelling at her, shoving her around, calling her all sorts of names. He only stopped when Scarface slapped him round the face. For a second Harry was so surprised and upset he looked like he might burst into tears. And then he turned all his anger and frustration on Scarface.

‘That’s right, go on, hit me, attack me, why don’t you? You know you want to, because you’re a bloody grown-up like them, aren’t you? Why are we even in here with you? It’s crazy. You should be out there with your own kind. You bloody grown-up scum. You scum, you bloody scum.’

Harry spat at Scarface, who didn’t respond in any way other than to wipe his face. And then a new gap opened up and they were all smashing at it with clubs and spears, and the banging noise was louder than ever, and this time they had to move a big cupboard over the gap. As they were sliding it up against the wall, Daniel got his hand caught behind it and he yelled.

‘You’ve broken my bloody fingers.’

And Harry copied him.

‘
You’ve broken my bloody fingers.
’

And Louisa laughed at him until Daniel hit her and then Sonya hit Daniel and Daniel flipped.

‘I’m not staying here,’ he croaked, his voice almost gone. ‘I’m not staying here to die. We’re like sardines in a can. We should never have come here.’

And then, before anyone could stop him, he pushed Harry aside and sprinted across the barn to the side door.

‘No, Daniel …’ Sonya screamed after him, but it was no good.

Daniel pulled the bar free, then wrenched the door open and stumbled out into the night.

‘Stop him,’ said Louisa. ‘We have to stop him.’

‘It’s too late,’ said Sonya. ‘He’s gone.’

Grown-ups were coming through the door. Scarface fired off two shots at them. He looked to Harry to help him and Ella saw Harry still lying where he’d been pushed over.

‘That bloody idiot has done it now,’ Harry moaned. Ella could see that he was hurt. He’d fallen against some concrete blocks and his trousers were torn. His leg was glistening with blood. He started swearing and calling Daniel worse names than he’d called Ella. She put her hand over her ears. Grown-ups were streaming through the open door, and more were coming in the other side under the bent wall. The kids were being forced into the centre of the barn. Scarface was blasting away with his shotgun, two shots at a time, each one sending a wide spray of pellets into the advancing grown-ups, and then he had to break it to reload. Sonya and Louisa were jabbing with their spears and using them to hold the grown-ups at bay. Harry had managed to get to his feet and, limping and clutching his side with one hand, he was swinging a spear with the other.

‘We can’t hold them back,’ said Louisa.

‘
We can’t hold them back
,’ said Harry automatically, not even bothering to sound nasty.

The whole barn seemed to be filled with a grunting, hissing, shuffling crowd of them. Everywhere Ella looked there they were. A father got close to Scarface before he could reload and he had to use the butt of his gun as a club. He rammed it into the father’s face and he went down, spitting out teeth.

And then Harry went down. Three of them had got in close and he hadn’t been strong enough to hold them back.

‘Harry,’ Sonya yelled.

‘
Harry
,’ he replied, still copying her.

Scarface battered the grown-ups off Harry and then pulled all the kids into a tight circle around him. He snatched a bundle of tied-up sticks from the fire. Ella saw
that he’d made them into a flaming torch. He hurled the burning brand towards the open doorway. It turned in the air, end over end, and landed just outside. Instantly there was a
WHUMP
and a bright flare of flame. The sudden burst of light lit the barn as bright as day. Ella could clearly see the blood everywhere, the pale, filthy faces of the kids, the rotten, lumpy faces of the grown-ups. Through the gaps in the walls she could see flames circling the barn. Smoke was pouring in and the stink of rotting grown-ups was replaced by the worse stink of burning clothes and skin and hair. A burning mother stumbled into the barn and collapsed. The grown-ups who had got into the barn had frozen, startled and confused by this new threat.

But as quickly as it had flared up the fire outside died down. Although Ella was upset that their ring of fire was no more, she was happy that she couldn’t clearly see the horror in the barn any more.

The open door was still clear of people. Now might be their chance to run like Daniel had done. She’d seen a look of doubt on the girls’ faces. They were all thinking about it.

‘I can’t move,’ said Harry. Ella looked at him. The grown-ups had made an awful mess of his legs. One of them looked like it had been chewed half off. Blood covered one side of his face from the wound in his scalp.

‘It’s gone quiet,’ said Sonya. Was she prepared to leave Harry behind?

‘Should we …?’ said Louisa, but her words were cut off as something was thrown into the barn. It hit the concrete floor and bounced, then rolled towards the fire.

‘Oh no,’ said Sonya. ‘No.’

It was a head. A boy’s head. Daniel’s head. One ear bitten off. An expression of surprise on his face.

This seemed to act like a signal to the grown-ups in the barn. They snapped back to life. They weren’t alone. Scarface went into action. He grabbed Ella, dragged her over to the chemical toilet, opened the door and shoved her inside. She clumsily fiddled and fumbled with the lock until she at last got it shut and then flopped down on to the seat. The stink of chemicals in there made her nose burn. Maybe, though, it would mask her own smell. Maybe that was why Scarface had put her in here. For her protection. And that meant one thing. That he was scared. That the battle was nearly lost.

Ella sat there on the toilet, shivering. She could hear the sounds of the fight, shouting, hissing, scraping, thudding, and now and then an explosion from Scarface’s gun.

She wanted to know what was happening. It was almost scarier being shut in here, blind and helpless. Almost. She had hated it out there. Hated the grown-ups. Hated the blood and the fear and the stink. She had to look, though. She went over to the door, trying to find a spyhole of some sort. There was a tiny spot of light coming through part of the handle. There was a gap there. She put her eye to it, but then almost immediately jumped back as the point of a spear suddenly punched through the heavy plastic of the door, missing her face by centimetres. The spear was pulled free. She waited a moment, and then put her eye to the new hole, praying that another spear thrust wouldn’t blind her.

She could hear the cries of the children, but all she could see was the glow of the fire, dark bodies going past it. She sat back on the toilet. Put the beads of her necklace
into her mouth and closed her eyes. She clamped her hands over her ears again, rocking backwards and forwards. Rocking and rocking until she was too tired to carry on and she leant against the wall. In the end her tiredness was stronger than her fear and she drifted off into a sleep where her nightmares were no more frightening, strange or confused than her waking life had been.