The Enemy

‘All right,’ said Arran. ‘You’ve made your point. All those in favour of going to the palace with Jester put up your hands.’

Ollie carefully counted the show of hands.

‘And anyone in favour of Maeve’s plan, put your hands up.’

Arran was surprised at the number of hands going up in support of Maeve. Once again Ollie counted. But it wasn’t enough. The vote had gone Arran’s way.

‘That’s it then,’ he said. ‘It’s decided.’ He hauled himself up out of his chair and walked over to Blue.

‘What do you reckon?’ he asked. ‘You coming with us, or do you need to take a vote as well?’

‘We don’t need no vote. We ain’t no democracy, man. I’m in charge. End of.’

‘And?’

Blue stood up and looked Arran in the eye.

‘We’re coming.’

They gripped each other’s hands. It felt good to be doing something for themselves. Then Blue turned to Jester and the light went out of his eyes.

‘If you are lying to us, though, “Magic-Man”, you are dead.’

11

Small Sam wasn’t dead. That thought was firmly lodged in the back of his mind. He wasn’t dead. When they’d put him in the sack he’d thought that that was it. All over. He’d fainted and when he’d woken up he was being jostled along on one of the grown-ups’ shoulders. The grown-up stank, but the sack smelt worse. Of grease and rotting meat and poo. Sam didn’t like it in the sack. He couldn’t see anything. He’d wet himself.

They’d brought him to this place and dumped him on the floor. He had no idea where it was. He was still in the sack. It had taken them about ten minutes to get here. They’d carried him upstairs. Lots of stairs. They must be somewhere high.

At first, whenever he moved, one of the grown-ups would kick him, and if he whimpered they’d kick him again. Then someone had sat on him for a while but once he’d stopped struggling they got off him. He’d lain very still after that, as still as if he’d been dead, and they finally left him alone.

So he was still alive. For now. He knew, though, that unless he was very lucky he probably wouldn’t make it through the night. He had no doubt at all that the grownups were pla

While he’d been lying there in the sack, quiet as a mouse, still as a corpse, he’d heard them eating. They must have caught another kid before him. Luckily the kid was already dead. Sam didn’t think he could have standed to hear the kid talking, crying out for help, screaming…

The sound of them eating the kid was disgusting enough. It was a squishy, tearing noise, and now and then the snap of a bone breaking. And the grown-ups moaned with delight as they fed. Chewing loudly, slurping and belching. Sometimes there was a crunch, or one of them would spit. Once there had been some sort of fight.

Sam was glad that they had something else to eat, but felt awful that it was another kid.

And he was glad, so glad, that he couldn’t see anything. The smell of blood was bad enough. It made him want to throw up.

It was quiet now. He could almost imagine that he was alone.

He’d been so scared, more scared than he’d ever been before in his life, and although his life had so far been quite short there had been a lot of scary moments in it. Like when his mum and dad had left him. It had happened one night. His mum had come into the room he shared with his little sister, Ella. Mum had looked bad. Tired and sweaty and ill, with yellow skin and big black rings under her eyes. Grey lumps around her nose. Spots like a teenager. She had been shaking, her teeth chattering so loudly he could hear them, rattle, rattle, rattle. She’d woken him up and hugged him and he’d felt her tears on his neck. She’d told him that she and Dad were going away. She said there was nothing she could do to help him and his sister and if she stayed it would be dangerous for them.

He remembered how Jea

Mum had told him to look after Ella and he had tried. He had really tried. But he was only small. And now he’d left Ella all alone. She would be sad without him there. He hoped his mum and dad would understand. The thing was, though, he was too small to look after anyone really. He was only nine.

At least he hadn’t seen his mum and dad die. Sometimes, when he felt sad and lonely, he would picture them alive. Happy. He saw them on a su

Deep down, though, he knew that really they would never be coming back. They must have died just like all the other grown-ups. Because if they hadn’t died…

They’d be like the others.

These grown-ups, the ones who had captured him, weren’t people any more. They couldn’t speak, only grunt and hiss at each other. They were mad things. All they thought about was food.

Oh Mum, I wish you were here now…

He wasn’t really scared any more. At first it had been almost too much to bear. He had gone stiff with terror. But it was tiring being scared, and it had slowly worn off, so that now he felt numb. And he was bored.

How long had he been lying here? A tiny bit of light could get in through holes in the sack and he could see enough to know that it was dark now. Grown-ups were too stupid to light fires or use solar lamps or even torches. They had forgotten everything.

He hoped that they were asleep because then maybe he could try to get away. He wasn’t tied up or anything. All he had to do was slip the sack off and make a run for it.

Once he had gone on a school journey to a farm. He had seen sheep and cows and pigs and chickens and he had wondered why they didn’t try to escape. It looked easy. But the thing was, back then the animals were stupid and the humans were clever.

This was different. These grown-ups were stupid and he was clever. Yes, he was only small, but he was cleverer than they were.

He smiled.

He was going to escape.

He would wait a bit longer, though, until he was really sure it was safe.

He started to count, not too fast and not too slow. He reckoned that when he got to a thousand, if he hadn’t heard any movement, he would take the sack off and have a look.

One, two, three, four, five…

Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty…

Counting to a thousand was taking much longer than he had thought, it seemed to go on forever. He got fed up at 420 and stopped.

It had been ages since any of the grown-ups had made any noise. They must be asleep. Or maybe they had gone out hunting again and left him alone?

Slowly, ever so slowly, he started to wriggle out of the sack, trying to make tiny movements. Every few seconds he would stop and listen and once he was sure it was OK he would carry on.

Little by little the sack came off, until it cleared his head. Now he was lying on his side on a sticky, stinking carpet.

He looked around without moving his head. At first it was too dark to see anything properly. He could just make out that he was in a long room with windows all down one side. They were a pale stripe of bluish grey against the black.