The Enemy

He was itching to be off.

Ella was in tears. She pushed her way through the big kids to Arran.

‘I want to stay,’ she said.

‘What? You can’t, Ella.’ Arran got down on his haunches so that he was at her level.

‘I have to.’

‘Why? What’s the matter, darling?’

‘It’s Sam,’ Ella sobbed. ‘What if he comes back and I’m not here?’

Arran put his arms around the little girl and gave her a hug.

‘Oh, Ella,’ he said. ‘He won’t be coming back, I’m afraid. He’s gone forever. You have to accept that.’

‘No,’ said Ella angrily. ‘He’s not dead. He’ll come back to me. He’s my brother, and I just know it.’

‘Ella, if I thought for one moment that Sam was coming back I’d wait here for him. We’d all wait. You know that. But he’s gone. Like all the other kids we’ve lost. We have to think about ourselves now. Think about the future. Sam would want you to be happy, wouldn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’d want you to be safe?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, for his sake we have to go. All right?’

Ella sniffed and nodded.

‘You’ll look after me, won’t you?’ she said.

‘Course I will. Tonight you’ll be safe in the palace, like a princess.’

Arran stood up, then closed his eyes as a fresh knot of sickness worked its way through his guts. He had wanted to get away hours ago. They had pla

Now it looked like they were at last ready to get moving.

They were going to follow the main road down to Camden, cut through Regent’s Park to the Marylebone Road and then cross over to Portland Place. Portland Place would take them to Oxford Circus, from where they would head down Regent’s Street to Piccadilly Circus and cut through to St James’s Park. From there it was a straight run along the Mall to the Palace. Walking fast they could do it in two hours. But the little kids would slow them down, and if they came across any grown-ups, which they were bound to do, that would slow them down further. They should still make it before the end of the day, though. So there was no panic. It had taken Jester and his friends much longer to get up here, as they had made the mistake of taking back roads and side-streets, assuming they would be safer. They had wasted a great deal of time dodging grownups, ru

Arran hoped that the sheer force of their numbers today would deter any grown-ups from attacking. And if they did attack, well, then – they were ready for them.

They were an army.

He watched the kids as they got into formation. There was an excited, slightly dizzy atmosphere, like at the start of a school journey. The little kids in particular were in very high spirits. They hated being cooped up indoors all day and were happily getting to know each other. The older kids were a little more wary. Some of them had fought each other in the past. Arran and Blue had been working hard to make sure nobody started fighting again. A shared goal and a shared enemy was helping and the mood was positive for the time being, but Arran knew that if anything went wrong it would quickly lead to arguments and infighting.

‘Come on then,’ he said, throwing one last quick glance back towards Waitrose. ‘Let’s go.’

He raised an arm, held it above his head until he was sure that everyone had seen it, and then let it drop towards the centre of town.

A cheer went up. Arran started walking. The rest of the kids fell in behind him.

They were marching to a new life.

13

Small Sam was curled up in a ball. He had made himself as titchy as he could. He was inside an empty water tank in the loft of a house somewhere near Finsbury Park. He was sharing the space with several dead and rotting pigeons. They gave off a choking smell that caught in his throat and made his eyes sting, but he hoped the smell would hide his own smell. Hoped it would keep the grown-ups away. So far it was working. He had been here all night. Waiting. Listening. It was almost like being back in the sack again.

The last few hours had been a blur and he was exhausted. He’d been chased down the stairs at the stadium by three grown-ups. Two of them had been on fire. They hadn’t made it to the bottom of the stairs and Sam had managed to lose the third one in the maze of concrete corridors and walkways behind the stands. But he had also got lost himself. At one point he found himself ru

Eventually, though, he had found a way out and as he ran off he’d looked back to see the whole of the top of the stadium on fire. A tower of flames reached up into the night sky.

He wondered how many of the grown-ups would burn, and it made him happy. His happiness had been short-lived, however, because he realized that he didn’t really know where he was or how to get back to the Holloway Road. He had wandered the streets for ages and had somehow ended up in Finsbury Park. He had heard the older kids talking about Finsbury Park. They never came up this way. It was too dangerous. There were too many grown-ups and lots of the buildings had been damaged by fire. He had an idea that the Seven Sisters Road would take him back to Holloway, but he wasn’t sure which way he should go.

While he had been standing there, trying to decide, he’d been ambushed by another bunch of grown-ups. Luckily he heard them coming as they stumbled about clumsily in the dark and he’d got away, ducking and scurrying and crawling through derelict gardens. At one point one of them grabbed hold of him in the dark but he stabbed the butterfly pin hard into its hand and it dropped him like a burning coal. In the end, tired of ru

As he lay there through the long hours of darkness, he cheered himself up by imagining what the others would say when he got back to Waitrose.

‘Sam, you’re alive!’

‘Nobody’s ever done that before.’

‘You’re a hero!’

‘Tell us all about it!’

‘How many did you kill?’

He pictured them all crowded round him, asking questions, patting him on the back, smiling. The kids at the supermarket were his new family now. The biggest family a boy could hope for. Maybe they would even break out some of the sweets they kept for emergencies, as a special treat. Sam loved sweets. They were the thing he missed most in the whole world.

So he had drifted in and out of sleep and in and out of dreams, curled up on the bottom of the water tank, surrounded by dead pigeons.

It was light now. It had been light for some time. He had watched the bright sun wake up and peep through the cracks in the roof where the tiles were missing or broken. Somewhere nearby a live pigeon was cooing and he found the sound comforting.

But he was hungry and he was thirsty and he longed to be safely back at Waitrose.

He uncurled himself and shifted into a crouch, his leg muscles shaking and weak. His knees and back stiff.

He peered over the edge of the tank, not knowing what he might see.

Just a loft. Full of dust and cobwebs and a few sagging cardboard boxes.

No grown-ups.

It was safe to leave. He would have to check every step of the way from now on, though. He couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes. He’d been lucky to get away twice. He doubted that his luck would hold out much longer. And it was easier at night. There would be more grown-ups about now that it was daytime.