The Enemy

‘Hold the line,’ Arran shouted, and the fighters got into position, spears bristling.

Nothing was going to stop the grown-ups, they waddled and limped and scurried onwards. The kids watched them getting closer. A hideous row of smashed and diseased faces.

Arran stood fast, Achilleus on one side, Blue on the other, more fighters spread out across the road. Behind them in a shorter line were Ollie and the skirmishers. Silent. Waiting.

19

Closer and closer the grown-ups came until at last Arran gave the order.

‘Fire!’

A hail of pellets, stones and javelins flew at the grownups, and as they went down Arran moved the fighters forward. The first wave of attackers was almost immediately smashed to the ground and this hampered the rest from getting forward.

Arran spotted St George, clambering over a body. He took a swing at him but the fat father ducked just in time.

‘Maxie!’ Arran shouted. ‘We need support!’

Even as he said it, Arran looked round to see Maxie arriving with her flanking squad. Their eyes met. They must have both been thinking the same thing at the same time. They were linked. For a moment it was as if nobody else existed. Arran was so proud of her. She was brave and strong and clever. She smiled at him and he smiled back. He knew at last. He knew that she felt the same way about him as he did about her. He just knew. He couldn’t say how. And she understood. He felt a great force of happiness well up inside him. He was ten feet tall. Knowing that somebody cared about him made all the difference. It gave him fresh strength. He could cope with anything now.

He turned and slammed his club into the face of a father who had managed to get past the fallen bodies.

With Whitney and Maeve’s help Lewis’s team had managed to take control of the little kids. They had herded them off to the side where a paved pathway ran above the Regent’s Canal. It looked easy to defend. There were tall flats on one side and railings on the other. Past the railings was a four-metre drop to the canal towpath. The older kids had to push and shove and yell at the younger ones to stop them from ru

While the main group of grown-ups had been waiting, a splinter group had come round the side, trying to get at the smaller, weaker kids. A gang of them blundered across the road towards the pathway and a father charged, breaking through the bigger kids at the end and taking hold of a screaming girl. His face was so swollen with boils he looked like some ghastly sea creature, a puffer fish.

‘No, you don’t!’ Whitney bellowed and she punched him so hard that his boils exploded and half his face fell away as he let go of the girl and flipped over backwards.

Maeve, Ben and Whitney picked up the stu

‘Stay back.’

The grown-ups froze.

Lewis would keep them away for as long as he could. He prayed that the main fighting force was holding out, or the chances of any of them getting to the palace alive were very, very slim.

Maxie was next to Arran now, fighting almost back to back. The kids kept in a tight pack and it was hard for the mostly unarmed grown-ups to get at them. Some were breaking through, though. Arran saw two of his fighters go down, swamped by numbers. Then one of the Morrisons crew screamed as three big mothers grabbed hold of him and dragged him off. The grown-ups were chipping away at them. At this rate it wouldn’t be long before they were overwhelmed.

Arran looked round. Jester was nowhere to be seen. And where the hell was Blue? When the fighting kicked off he’d disappeared.

Had he run or had he been taken out?

Arran hated grown-ups.

His neck was throbbing and it reminded him of what they had done to him. Anger bubbled up inside, almost like a physical thing, something hot and writhing, waking up and struggling to get out. His blood sang in his ears and boiled in his veins. He wasn’t going to let any more kids die.

He gripped his club tightly in his hands, swatted a mother out of his way and stepped forward.

‘We’ve got to break them,’ he shouted. ‘Take the fight to them!’

‘I’m with you, boss,’ said Josh, ‘they don’t scare me!’

One by one the other fighters joined him, hacking through the massed ranks of the grown-ups.

Ollie was still behind the fighters. Loosing off a shot whenever he got the chance. He had lost track of the other skirmishers, who had either picked up fallen weapons and joined the fighters or dropped back to the rear. The only one of them still with him was the Morrisons kid who had laughed at him earlier for worrying too much. Ollie couldn’t even remember his name. The two of them were firing off shot after shot, but the other kid was ru

Arran and the others had moved forward, but Ollie could see that they’d got bogged down. The grown-ups would soon have them surrounded. There wasn’t much more Ollie could do to help. He was doing his best, but it was like throwing pebbles into a raging river.

He wondered if this was the end. If they were all going to die here.

And then there was a roar and a BMW thundered round the corner from Royal College Street. It ploughed into the grown-ups, knocking them flying.

Ollie saw Blue at the wheel, gri

‘Let them go,’ he yelled, but the Morrisons kid was wound up for a fight. He grabbed a spear off the ground and waded into the stampede, stabbing at them. A short, stocky father with one eye was obviously also still up for a fight, though. He hit the kid hard with a lump of concrete. Ollie watched him fall and get trampled by the retreating grown-ups. He put a steel shot into his sling and kept an eye on the father. He picked his moment and the shot hit the father in the back of the neck. He too fell, and he too was trampled.

Lewis had been joined by the remnants of the skirmisher team and Jester. Jester had immediately ducked down the pathway to join the smaller kids. Lewis figured that was how he’d stayed alive when all his mates had died on the way up from the palace.

Lewis didn’t blame him. Not all kids could fight. Sometimes hiding was a better option. The skirmishers were armed with an odd assortment of weapons, but it was enough to keep the grown-ups away. Lewis just had to hold out long enough for the front-rank fighters to come back and help.

If they lost the main battle, though, then all Lewis and the little ones could do was run.

A flood of grown-ups came down the road from the front. On the run. Maybe the tide had turned. Lewis pulled the rest of his fighters back into the pathway. It was more important to stay alive now than to kill the enemy.

He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.

He hadn’t lost a single kid.

Blue kept in low gear, his foot hard on the accelerator, carving up the grown-ups but careful to keep well clear of any kids.

He saw the girl, Maxie, working hard with her spear. She looked like some kind of warrior queen. He steered the car towards her, clearing the attackers out of the way. And there was Arran. That boy was tough. He was badly wounded but nothing could stop him. Blue smiled. He wished he had teamed up with the Waitrose kids before.