The Sacrifice (29 page)

He’d wondered about the kids at the
cathedral, why they put up with Matt’s madness and his rules, his cruelty, his
smoke and his music. Well, this answered all his questions. You’d put up with
anything, you’d believe anything, you’d go along with any rubbish for a
taste of this lot.

There was enough here to last them for
years.

Sam remembered when he’d first gone to
live in Waitrose back in Holloway. A lot of kids had broken in there looking for food.
There had been hardly anything left, just a few boxes of stuff hidden in a storeroom
upstairs. They’d stayed, though. Lived there for a year. Their leader Arran had
looked after them all. It had been good. Until that day
when the
grown-ups had got into the car park and captured him.

He hadn’t seen any of his friends
since.

He missed them. Not just his sister, but
Monkey-Boy, Maxie, Josh, Freak and Deke, Maeve, Achilleus … Arran would be
looking after them, though, wherever they were.

If only they’d found somewhere like
this a year ago their lives would have been so different. So much better.

Maybe, though, it was like this in
Buckingham Palace. Sam pictured them all sitting round a big table having a feast, with
silver goblets and waving big turkey legs. He smiled. The picture gave him some comfort.
Took him away to a good place.

Matt waited in the centre of the warehouse
for the kids to form a wide circle round him. Nathan and the guard unfastened the dog
leads and released Sam and The Kid. They couldn’t run anywhere – they were
surrounded by the ring of children.

‘We have reached the holy
place,’ said Matt. ‘This is the Tree of Life. Which was shown to us by the
Lord, just as was prophesied … ’

He closed his eyes and turned his face up to
the ceiling, began to shout out some lines from his book.

‘The angel showed me the river of the
water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of the Lamb down the middle
of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the Tree of Life,
bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the
tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne
of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his
face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night.’

He paused, looking round at the faces of his
followers.

‘Everything that was told to me,
everything that I tell to you, is the truth. And our Lord watches over those who are
true. So, to give thanks to him, we come here to make our offerings. Today we offer up
our greatest gift. Today we destroy the evil one forever. Today we sacrifice the Goat.
And his blood will water the roots of the tree.’

A murmur passed through the waiting kids and
Matt silenced them by raising his voice.

‘I promised to provide you with
everything you needed. And here it is. I promised to deliver the Lamb and the Goat. And
here they are. But which is which?’

Sam felt suddenly cold, even though it was
no cooler down here than it had been outside. Matt walked over and stared at him and The
Kid.

‘Beneath us lies the Abyss,’ he
said. ‘One of you must go down to meet your fate. Wormwood is there and he will
devour you, and we will all be cleansed. The Lamb will see the light and he will follow
it and take us to victory against the Nephilim. But the Goat is a trickster. He is
playing his games with us, trying to fool us. He is good at hiding. He has had thousands
of years’ practice. So we must decide … Has he disguised himself as the
Lamb and made the Lamb look like the Goat or is that only what he wants us to believe?
He has cast doubt among us. That is his way. So which one of you is pure and which of
you is evil?’

‘Neither of us!’ Sam shouted.
‘Why won’t any of you listen to me?’

Matt ignored him, strode off and started to
walk round and round the circle of kids, shouting into their faces.

‘Which of them must go down into the
Abyss to be
devoured by Wormwood and which of them will remain in
light and live in the clouds of eternal bliss?’

‘By jingo,’ The Kid whispered.
‘This boy spouts more gibberish than me. I ain’t never heard such a crock of
witless drivel.’

‘Two boys!’ Matt shouted,
staring once again at Sam and The Kid. ‘One called Samuel, one called Angus Day.
One dark and one fair. One good and one evil. But which is which? We must not be
deceived. There is only one way to find out the truth. We must ask each in turn who
should be sacrificed today.’

‘Hey,’ said Sam.
‘That’s not right. You can’t make us.’

Matt hurried back to Sam with long strides
and put his hand on his forehead, spreading the fingers wide.

‘Just answer my question,’ he
said, lowering his voice. Sam couldn’t help but stare at the scabby mess in the
centre of Matt’s own forehead. Matt realized what he was looking at.

‘It is the mark of the Lamb,’ he
said. ‘A holy blessing, a stigmata that proves I am a true believer, a righteous
follower.’

‘A dickhead,’ said The Kid, but
Matt ignored him.

‘So, Sam?’ he said. ‘Which
of you should we sacrifice today?’

‘Me,’ said Sam quietly and full
of misery. ‘Sacrifice me. I can’t let you hurt The Kid any more.’

Matt released Sam and strode over to The
Kid, but when he put his hand on his forehead, the little boy suddenly started to shake
and shudder. Tears rolled down his cheeks, he sniffed, threw his arms round Matt.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Not
me. Don’t do it to me. Do it to Sam. Please. Please not me.’

Sam swallowed hard. Tried to be brave. His own
face was wet with tears now.

‘It is decided then,’ said Matt.
‘The Lamb has shown us the truth and the Goat has tried to hide behind a lie. We
know for certain which one is which.’ He paused, like a judge on a TV talent show,
looking from one boy to the other, building up the tension, making them wait and
enjoying the power he held right then.

All his kids were standing silently,
watching him. Gripped. Trying to guess what he was going to say. Finally Matt fixed his
eyes on the snivelling Kid.

‘You,’ he said, drawing out the
pause. ‘Angus Day, you … are the Goat! And you must die
today.’

‘What? No!’ Sam threw himself at
Matt, beating him with his fists.

Matt held him still.

‘You are the Lamb,’ he said.
‘Only one as brave and pure and true as the Lamb would sacrifice himself for a
friend. Now!’ He turned to the musicians. ‘Drive the darkness out with your
music!’

Clutching Sam to his chest and muffling his
protests, Matt bowed his head and all the kids in the circle copied him except for the
musicians who started playing again. Sam wrenched his head round and looked at The Kid
who winked at him and mouthed one word.

‘
Morons
.’

Matt let go of Sam who ran over to The Kid
before anyone could stop him. Gave him a hug.

‘I tried. I did try.’

‘Not hard enough, buster,’ said
The Kid. ‘I outfoxed you with my acting skills.’

‘How did you know what Matt was going
to do?’

‘Their twisted logic is wastepaper
thin,’ said The Kid. ‘I’ve seen enough daft films to know how this was
going to play out. Lemons all round. Farewell, brave companion.’

Matt pulled Sam away and Nathan and the
guard got hold of The Kid. He didn’t struggle, just raised his head and smiled at
the circle of children.

‘Remember this day,’ he said.
‘Remember what you did to me. Now so long, suckers!’

Sam watched as his best friend ever in the
world was taken away, looking tiny between the two big boys. He couldn’t believe
that he would never see him again. Couldn’t let himself believe it.

‘We’ll find a way, small
fry,’ The Kid shouted, his croaky voice getting lost in the vastness of the
warehouse.

‘Talk all you want, demon,’ Matt
shouted back. ‘There’s nobody can save you now.’

Ed grunted as he swung his sword, bringing
it down hard at the place where the father’s neck joined his shoulder. Blood
exploded from the severed artery and the father seemed to split open, as if he was an
overstuffed suitcase being unzipped. His skin separated and a foul mess bubbled out from
inside. A mixture of pink flesh, bright red blood and a shiny grey jelly-like substance
that Ed had never seen before today. The father fell to his knees, his head flopping to
one side, his bones coming apart. He had become a shapeless sack that was slowly melting
into the road. Guts and hideously swollen internal organs spilt out of him until he was
just a stinking heap of offal.

It wasn’t over yet, though; there was
another father behind him and another. They’d come from nowhere and Ed’s
group was surrounded.

It had all been going so well. They’d
made good progress along the beach at the side of the Thames, but the rising tide had
forced them back up on to the road at Victoria Embankment. It had been quieter now that
they’d got clear of the zone. They’d ignored the few lone sickos who were
wandering around, and the three frozen ones, standing stiff and vacant, like shop-window
dummies with nothing to sell. They’d hurried past them,
anxious
to press on, knowing that the frozen ones weren’t a threat. Even Kyle seemed to
have had his fill of killing. Their last brutal fight back at Steelyard Passage had been
enough for him.

They’d felt relatively safe walking
along the Victoria Embankment. It was a wide, tree-lined road with the river on the left
and a string of public gardens and big, old office buildings set back behind spiked iron
railings on the right. Ed felt like they’d definitely left the zone behind and
were in the more secure area they’d been hoping to find on the other side.

But then, as they’d headed up towards
Trafalgar Square, they’d run straight into a gang of sickos. After a
moment’s panic Ed had switched direction, with similar results. Whatever route he
picked seemed to be blocked by sickos plodding doggedly along.

This behaviour was totally unexpected. Ed
had never seen anything like it before. The whole day had gone wrong. He’d watched
sickos pouring over the bridges all morning. And now there were more of them, wandering
the streets of London in greater numbers than he’d seen since the first days of
the disaster.

Where were they all coming
from?

There had been no time to fuss over these
questions. Ed had to get his group away from danger. In the end he’d taken them
back to the Embankment where he’d hoped to outflank the sickos, but then, not far
from the Houses of Parliament, they’d been ambushed.

Thirty, maybe forty sickos had come
streaming out of a side-street, fast and determined. Now Ed’s group were once more
fighting for their lives. As fast as they cut one sicko down, another took its place. Ed
would have ordered
the kids to run if there had been anywhere to run
to, but they’d used up all their options. Their only hope was to kill every one of
the sickos in this attack party.

And that was just what Ed was trying to do.
He’d gone beyond all rational thought and was like some unstoppable killer robot,
cutting, hacking, slashing, stabbing, moving on. Some of those he whacked just fell
dead; others, though, split open and erupted from their skins. The bursters made the
surface of the road dangerously slippery. Ed was literally up to his ankles in human
remains.

He was dimly aware that he was tired. His
arm ached. His shoulder was crying out in pain. This was just information, though. It
didn’t affect him. It was happening to someone else.

More information ticked over in a corner of
his brain. Kyle was at his side, as always, working away mercilessly with his axe. Of
the others he had no information at this moment. The conscious, rational part of his
brain, shut away behind a closed door in a dark corner, hoped that they were holding up.
Hoped he hadn’t lost anyone.

The killing part of him didn’t
care.

‘There’s more of them,
boss,’ Kyle shouted.

Ed flicked his eyes to the side – saw
another gang of grown-ups approaching. This was rapidly becoming a big hungry mob. He
summoned up a fresh burst of energy, went into overdrive, sped up the rate of his sword
strikes, washing himself in the blood of the sickos he cut down. There were too many,
though, even for Ed and Kyle to deal with. Slowly they were being forced back. Ed
couldn’t keep it up: his arm was growing numb; his body was covered in scratches,
cuts and bruises. As he turned to swipe at a father who was trying to get past him, he
saw
the rest of his group had formed into a tight huddle. They looked
terrified.

‘We’re totally
outnumbered,’ Macca screamed. ‘What are we going to do?’

Ed wanted to snarl at him
We’re
going to die
, but he couldn’t speak. Nothing would come out. Instead he
turned back to the advancing sickos and waded into them. It was all he knew right now.
The blood was singing in his head.

And then Ed became aware of a new sound. A
crazy roaring, yelping din. A ripple passed through the attacking sickos. They too were
aware that something had changed. Their attack seemed to lose energy. Ed hissed between
his clenched teeth and laid into them with a final, desperate fury, Kyle matching him
stroke for stroke.

And then the sickos’ attack completely
fell apart. The mob broke up, started trying to get away, and Ed saw a gang of kids with
big fighting dogs attacking them from their rear, driving a wedge through their ranks
towards Ed and Kyle.

‘The helicopters have arrived!’
Kyle yelled. ‘Come on, let’s show them what we can do!’ With a high,
ululating war-cry, he swung his axe around his head and plunged into the nearest knot of
confused sickos. Ed was with him, hardly aware of what he was doing, lost in a red mist,
animated only by his killing frenzy.