The Dead

Ed tried not to laugh. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said, frowning at the grubby sheaf of papers. ‘What sort of message?’

‘I don’t understand it all,’ said Matt, and he finally let go of Ed so that he could sort through the pages. ‘Not yet, but I’m working on it. I need to study the pages. Look, you see, the meaning has changed … I need to get them in order. Some of the words have been burned away …’

He waved a page at Ed.

‘See this one here … First begotten of the dead. Keeper of the keys of hell and death … no, that’s not the bit I meant, here, yes … Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.” The first angel went and poured out his bowl on the land, and ugly and painful sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image. Do you see? It’s all in here. The disease, everything. It was all meant to be.’ Matt squinted at the lines of print and read out another passage. ‘Men gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.’

‘Yeah, look, Matt, I don’t really get all this stuff. I’m not even sure I know what repenting is.’

‘The dead will rise again, Ed, but only the Lamb can save us.’

‘So you’re saying Jesus will look after us?’

‘No … Not Jesus, the Lamb.’

‘I thought the Lamb was Jesus.’

‘No … The Lamb is something new, a new kind of prophet, or a new God.’

‘You sound a bit confused about this, Matt.’

‘No. I saw him. I saw him clearly.’

‘Yeah? What did he look like, then, this Lamb?’

‘He was one of us … a boy, a child, even younger. With golden hair. A child who isn’t a child. In the vision I saw, he was walking out of the darkness, and all around him was light, and in his shadow walked a demon.’

‘A demon?’

‘Yes, yes … I think so, but he was in darkness.’

‘What sort of demon?’

‘He was in the form of a child as well, but dark-faced where the Lamb was alight. He was in shadow. They’re like two sides of the same coin, heads and tails, yin and yang.’

‘Batman and Robin.’ Ed stood up and brushed his jeans clean.

‘Don’t make a joke of it, Ed, don’t take the piss.’

‘Matt, I can’t take any of this seriously. How can I? People don’t have visions.’

Now Matt stood, confronting Ed, standing too close. ‘We know hardly anything about the world, Ed. Isn’t that clear? Isn’t that really bloody clear now? Six months ago if someone had said to you that everyone over the age of fourteen would either die or turn into a zombie you’d have laughed at them. Wouldn’t you?’

‘Yeah, but …’

‘These are strange new times,’ said Matt. ‘But it was all there, in the pages of the Bible. We just had to be shown it properly. We have to prepare. First there’s the plague, then the fire, then the river of blood, and then –’

‘All right. All right.’ Ed put up his hands in surrender. ‘I won’t laugh at you, Matt. Just’, maybe, keep this to yourself, though, yeah?’

‘No, Ed, no!’ In his excitement Matt was spitting. ‘You have to listen to me. Everyone has to listen to me. We have to go to London! If you aren’t there to welcome the Lamb, you’ll be struck down like the other si

‘Maybe we don’t all want to go to London!’

‘I’m going to London.’ While they’d been arguing Jack had come over and had been listening in on their conversation. Now he stepped in between the two of them, keeping them apart.

‘I’ll go with you, Matt, at least as far as south London.’

‘Jack, we all need to stick together.’ Ed was trying to keep the emotion out of his voice. ‘It’d be crazy to go to London. There’ll be more food and water in the countryside.’

Jack shrugged. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘But there’ll be nothing there, Jack.’

‘I don’t care. I want to see my own home, my old bedroom. Get some of my old things, family photos; all my memories are there. I can’t just let it all go.’

‘Jack, I thought we’d all decided last night,’ Ed pleaded. ‘We have to have a plan. And our plan was to go into the countryside. We have to stick together and we have to have a plan.’

‘I have got a plan,’ said Jack. ‘I’m going home.’

9

Chris Marker opened his book to the page with the corner he’d folded back. He found that he could stop anywhere in a chapter and start up again at the exact same point without ever having to go back and check anything. He never had to remind himself what was going on. It was as if there’d been no break between when he stopped reading and when he started again. In a fu

The kids were all assembled in the church and they were talking, talking, talking. A repeat of last night in the dormitory … ‘we have to stick together, we need to find food and water, we should go to London, we should go into the countryside, we should go to the moon, blah blah blah …’

Just so much talk. What difference did any of it make?

He heard a sniffle and a sob and looked along the pew. The French girl, Frédérique, was sitting there with Joh

There were raised voices and Chris looked to the front. Jack and Ed were arguing with each other again. Chris shook his head. Tried not to smile. He wondered if Jack was ever going to tell Frédérique that he’d nailed a plank of wood to her father’s head.

They were very different, Jack and Ed. Ed, the poster boy for the school. He’d never had to worry about anything much before all this. Now he looked tired and scared all the time. Jack, whose strawberry birthmark had always made him look a bit angry and who now really did seem to be in a permanent bad mood. Shorter than Ed, with darker hair, he had the feel about him of someone who wanted to start a fight.

Look at the two of them. Trying to take charge, to be in control. They were only fourteen years old. They were children. They were all only children. And out there … outside the chapel …

Chris didn’t want to think about that.

Now Anthony Sullivan joined in.

‘How far is it?’ he asked. ‘To London? How long would it take to get there?’

‘About twenty-five miles, I think,’ Jack answered. ‘Same distance as a marathon.’

‘It’s twenty-one miles to Trafalgar Square,’ said Wiki. ‘So at an average human walking speed of three miles an hour, that would be roughly a seven-hour walk, if you did it in one go.’

‘What time is it now?’ Anthony Sullivan asked.

‘Quarter to eleven,’ said Matt. ‘We could be there by six o’clock.’

‘Provided there are no delays,’ Ed butted in. ‘You make it sound like it’s a stroll in the park, lah-di-dah-di-dah, let’s all skip to London and take in the sights from the top of an open-topped bus. We don’t know what’s out there. If you go to London, you might be having to fight every step of the way.’

‘You don’t know it’s going to be any easier going to the countryside,’ said Jack.

‘I’ve never liked London,’ said Bam. ‘I grew up in the country.’

‘You’re a yokel, Bam,’ said his friend Piers, and Bam gri

‘Ooh arr!’ he said, and the little kids laughed.

‘I’m with Bam,’ Piers added. ‘I vote we go to the countryside.’