The Sacrifice (25 page)

‘Our first rule is to run,’ he
said. ‘If we can avoid a fight we will. We’re not doing this to kill sickos,
OK?’

‘You might not be, boss, but I
am.’

‘Don’t you dare put any of the
others in danger.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of
it.’

Ed sometimes wondered why Kyle was so loyal
to him. They had nothing in common, came from very different worlds and had very
different views of the world. If everything hadn’t turned upside down they’d
never have been friends, but they’d fought side by side at the battle of Lambeth
Bridge and Kyle had seen something in Ed. Had latched on to him and now treated him as a
brother. Maybe he’d seen that deep down they weren’t really so very
different. Ed had to admit he liked having Kyle around. Most of the time he made Ed
laugh; the rest of the time he appalled
him. In a fight, though, they
acted as one and were a pretty unbeatable force.

In these changed times it was good to have a
wingman like Kyle.

They ran past the old Billingsgate fish
market, a Victorian building with arches ranged along its front and a statue of
Britannia on the roof. The next building along was a modern construction of blue glass
and steel. Any of these places could house a hundred sickos, more, but so far all was
quiet. In Ed’s experience sickos didn’t gather together in big numbers any
more. There wasn’t enough food around to feed large groups. They mostly hunted in
packs of between ten and twenty.

This was the no-go zone, however, and as
he’d tried to get across to the others before they’d set off – the normal
rules didn’t apply here.

The sickos had to eat, though, didn’t
they? They were still human. That couldn’t change. A person was still a person,
even if they might be so badly diseased they acted like some lower species. And as there
were no children around here, no plants, no animals, why would a sicko stay?

Ed was just starting to relax and feel a
little more confident about the day when Kyle shouted out, ‘Hold up!’ and
stopped running. The rest of them fell in beside him.

They’d spotted their first sicko.

It was a father, standing on a walkway that
crossed over the road. He was very still, his arms held out stiffly in front of him, his
head tilted up to the sky, eyes wide open and unblinking. The kids stared at him and
nudged each other.

‘Is he dead, do you think?’
asked Hayden.

‘Dunno.’ Ed shrugged.
‘He’s not moving, that’s for sure.’

‘We could get up there,’ said
Kyle. ‘Sort him out.’

‘For God’s sake, Kyle. Leave
him.’ Ed shook his head. ‘He doesn’t look dangerous. Let’s keep
going, yeah, but we need to be extra careful now.’

They hurried under the walkway and carried
on. There was a church to their left. Ed remembered it from his map – the Church of St
Magnus the Martyr; that meant that the structure spanning the road on the other side of
it was the end of London Bridge. Lower Thames Street dipped slightly as it went under
it.

As they got closer, they spotted another
sicko, a mother this time. Standing by the side of the road in exactly the same position
as the father they’d left behind, still as a statue, with her arms held out in
front of her, as if waiting to embrace someone.

‘This is freaky,’ said
Macca.

‘Freaky, my arse,’ said Kyle.
‘They’re just dumb sickos. And – happy Christmas – there’s another
one.’

He pointed with his axe to where a third
sicko stood frozen a few paces up the side-street to their right.

‘I’m gonna whack that mother for
certain,’ said Kyle. ‘That is easy meat. Too good to leave.’ He took a
few paces, but Ed went after him and held him back.

‘Listen,’ he said.

Kyle stopped and they all listened. They
could hear a distant, rhythmical tapping noise.

‘What is that?’

‘Sounds like builders,’ said
Macca. ‘Or a mad percussionist.’ He mimed a drummer going round his kit with
a pair of drumsticks.

‘What would make a noise like
that?’ Ed asked.

‘A builder in a rock group,’
said Kyle, and Macca laughed; the two of them shared the same sense of humour.

‘Seriously.’

‘Seriously I don’t know,’
said Kyle. ‘And I don’t really want to know neither.’

‘Can you tell where it’s coming
from?’ said Will, squinting as he concentrated.

‘Sounds like it’s coming from
all around,’ said Hayden, an edge of nervousness creeping into her voice. ‘I
reckon we need to keep moving.’

‘Aw, let me fix the sicko,’ Kyle
pleaded.

‘No.’ Ed turned and strode on
towards London Bridge. As he went, the weird clicking sound seemed to swell and grow
louder, closer … 

Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap … 

He shivered.

Like someone tapping on your coffin
lid … 

That was a phrase his granny used to say.
He’d never really understood it until today.

Tap-tap-tap
 … 

‘Slow as ever,’ said Kyle as he
pushed past him. Then came Hayden, trying to outrun them all. Soon all six of them were
speeding up, sprinting into the underpass. Like a herd of deer spooked by a hunter.

And then Hayden yelped, staggered to a halt.
Deep in the shadows beneath the bridge, standing close to the wall at the side, was
another sicko.

‘Jesus,’ Hayden said accusingly
as if she was blaming the others. ‘I nearly ran into him.’

It was a father. He could have been a
waxwork, he was so still. Kyle crept closer and waved his hand in front of his eyes. No
response. Not even a flicker.

‘He’s an ugly bastard,’
said Kyle and nobody argued. The father’s skin was a deep, ripe purple and was
split all over,
bright pink flesh poking out of the slits. A run of
livid yellow boils studded his forehead, and his eyes and tongue were bulging out of his
head. Both his ears were missing, rotted away, leaving a pulped, scabby, pus-oozing mess
on either side of his skull.

‘You are one krutters piece of
roadkill,’ said Kyle, and he gagged on the stench of the man. An unholy perfume of
faeces, urine, sweat and decay with a sickly smear of sweetness over the top.

‘I am definitely taking this one
down,’ said Kyle, spinning his axe in his hands. Macca giggled.

‘Leave him,’ said Will, sensible
as ever.

‘I’ll leave him,’ said
Kyle. ‘I’ll leave him for dead.’

‘What’s the point?’

‘It’s fun, Will, and Brain-biter
is thirsty for blood.’

‘It’s not a game,
Kyle.’

‘Will’s right,’ said Ed.
‘We’re wasting time.’

As Ed spoke, the father moved or at least
his eyes did; they seemed to pulse as if something was pushing them from the back. They
bulged out further from his head for a moment, then sank back.

‘Holy crap,’ said Kyle.
‘Did you see that? He’s got rats in his brain.’

The eyes pulsed again, followed by a thin
dribble of brown liquid that trickled from his tear ducts.

‘Gross,’ said Kyle.

Adele came and joined him, peering at the
father and turning her head to the side.

‘You hear that?’ she said.

‘No? What? You mean the
clicking?’ Kyle frowned at her.

‘No, listen.’

Ed strained to hear, but apart from the
distant
tap-tap-tap
he had no idea what Adele might be talking about.

‘What are we listening for?’

‘Like a sort of whining
sound.’

‘No.’

‘Yeah, I can hear something,’
said Hayden and she came over to stand next to Adele and Kyle.

‘There’s a really high-pitched
sound,’ she said. ‘Like a radio signal or something.’

‘I can’t hear nothing,’
said Macca. He looked to Ed, who shook his head.

Then Kyle and the two girls jumped back as
the father’s whole body pulsed. A ripple passed through it, starting in his
stomach and rising to his head, as his eyes almost popped completely out of his skull.
The after-effect was pretty revolting as the father belched then puked up a sticky wash
of yellow bile that forced its way past his swollen tongue and spattered on to the
floor, causing the kids to jump back.

Through all of this the father had remained
standing upright, his arms stiffly extended.

‘I am going to finish this rude boy
before he bursts on us,’ said Kyle. ‘Stand back!’

‘I’m not staying for this, you
dickhead,’ said Will and he marched out into the sunlight on the other side of the
underpass.

‘Wimp,’ said Kyle and he swung
his axe in a clean, powerful sweep. From hours of practice at the Tower his aim was
good. The blade sliced cleanly through the father’s neck and his head flew off,
bounced against the wall and hit the tarmac with a crunch.

Macca cheered as the body crumpled and fell.
Kyle gave
a whoop of delight and kicked the head to the other side of
the road. The girls swore at him.

‘You’d better come and look at
this … ’ Will’s voice echoed under the bridge. He had retreated
back into the shadows and was looking up at something.

‘What is it?’ Ed and the others
hurried over; as they got closer, Will indicated that they should go carefully, then
pointed upwards.

Ed sneaked out so that he could see what was
going on up on the bridge.

Sickos. A whole mob of them, slowly
shuffling along from the south, moving silently and purposefully. Ed hadn’t been
worried about sickos coming from that direction. The far side of the Thames was filled
with blackened ruins from when a huge fire had nearly destroyed London a year ago.

What were they doing? What had brought
them here and where had they come from?

Ed withdrew under the bridge. Shushed the
others as they all fired questions at him in urgent whispers.

‘There’s an army of sickos up
there,’ he explained quietly. ‘But they can’t get down here.
We’re OK for now.’ He quickly scanned Lower Thames Street in both
directions. Apart from the sicko Kyle had killed, he could see no more on their
level.

‘We go fast,’ he said,
‘and hope they don’t spot us. God knows what they’re up to, but I
don’t reckon they’re after us. Not yet at least.’

Macca tried to say something, but Ed stared
him down and he fell silent.

‘On my count,’ he said.
‘One, two, three, go, go, go!’

As they ran, none of them saw what was
happening to
the severed head in the underpass. Even though it had
been separated from the father’s body, the eyes were still pulsing, the tongue
still moving, as if the dead man was trying to speak. Then slowly, slowly, slowly, the
eyes bulged, forcing their way out between the tight, boil-encrusted eyelids. Further
and further they came, smeared with pus from the bursting boils, until, with a soft,
breathy hiss, they plopped free and rolled out of the skull, followed by a writhing mass
of something grey and jelly-like.

‘Mate, I didn’t know.
They’re nutters. I didn’t know. Sorry.’

Brendan was standing by the cage talking to
Sam and The Kid. Talking quietly so as not to attract any attention. He had no idea what
all the rules were yet here at the cathedral, couldn’t keep up with them, but he
was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be talking to the prisoners.

‘It’s not your fault,’
said Sam.

‘They didn’t say,’ Brendan
went on, desperate to explain to the two little boys. ‘If I’d’ve known
what they were planning to do … Ah, Sam, I’m so sorry, mate. This is
well wrong.’

Sam was too miserable to say anything much,
just let Brendan talk.

Brendan leant closer, leaning his forehead
on the bars and looking at the floor. ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘I was well
vexed when I got here. My head was all over the shop. Being kicked out of the Tower like
that. Jordan threatening to execute me. Losing all my mates. I was mucked up. And it was
mad out there, man. You saw what it’s like, with them sickos on the streets
everywhere. I was chased all the way here – thought I was gonna be massacred. Some of
their guys found me trying to climb over this big wall they’ve
built. Whoa, that felt good, I’m telling you, being rescued like that. I was on
a high when they brought me in.

‘So there’s all these things
going nuts in my head – I was mad and I was mad, you know, like angry and crazy and
relieved to be alive all at the same time. Matt was good to me. Said I was safe here,
gave me anything I wanted. You see, like, they’ve got all this food? And bottles
of water. I thought, OK, Bren, things ain’t gonna be so bad as I thought. And Matt
wanted to talk to me. Said nobody’d ever come here from the east. He knew Jordan
from, like, back in the day and he wanted to know all about what he was up to now. I was
happy to tell him what a bastard he is and everything that had happened there. Told him
about you two as well. Big mistake. You should’ve seen him. Like he was on fire.
Mad eyes he has. I didn’t know what it meant, about all that Lamb and Goat crap.
Didn’t know what it was all about. If I had … ’

‘It’s all right, Brendan,’
said Sam. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘If there was anything I could do. Any
way I could help you. But they’re freaky here, they give me the creeps, never take
their eyes off of you. I don’t know what they’d do to me if I helped you
escape. Matt’s as bad as Jordan; the two of them, they’re the same, crazy
and cold. I want to get away from here. But they watch you all the time … and
out there.’ Brendan swallowed, remembering his journey here. ‘I’m not
sure I could do that again. That was the scariest half hour of my life. I was a wreck,
man, run out, rinsed.’

He stopped talking and looked up at the
boys; they were huddled together; The Kid had his arm round Sam. He couldn’t bear
to see them like this.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Maybe it’s not so bad, maybe it’s
all a big bluff,
yeah? You see, like Jordan? I mean, they can’t seriously be thinking of killing
you. I mean, human sacrifice? Come on, it’s nuts.’

‘It’s the blimp, Frank,
it’s the blimp,’ said The Kid in a spooky, high-pitched voice.