The Dead

‘I don’t know what to what to do I don’t know they’ve killed Da

That’s the freakiest bit, the bit that sticks in people’s minds, that he calls them mothers and fathers.

‘They came to the house and they killed they killed Da

Then he picks up the web cam and turns it to point out of the window. It veers all over, lights smearing the screen. Now you can see the street. It’s night-time. The picture’s awful but you can just see these four people under the street lights – three mothers and a father – three women and a man, and near to them what looks like a dead body. The body of a child.

There’s something not right about the people. They don’t look like actors. The way they’re standing. And when one of them looks up at the camera it’s the most awful thing … a dead-eyed look, like an animal. Are they actors? The picture’s so bad it’s hard to tell.

Then the Scared Kid’s voice again.

‘Can you see them? They’ve gone crazy – three mothers and a father – they’ve been trying to get back in into the house but Da

The camera moves again. You can hear crashing and smashing in the background. Shouting. Now the kid’s back at his desk, staring into the lens, like he’s staring into the grave. Even more terrified than before. Shaking. Shaking.

‘I’m going to post the video – Da

And that’s the end of it.

Some other kids do impressions of him, and post them. There’s a remix of the kid done to a death metal soundtrack. But the thing is – the video is scary because it seems so real. People watch it over and over, trying to understand it. And when adults start dying, when it becomes clear that some terrible new disease is striking everybody over the age of fourteen, the Scared Kid begins to look like some kind of prophet.

Within a very short time ‘Scared Kid’ becomes the most watched YouTube clip ever. After a month it’s taken down. There’s a message saying it’s been removed. The day after that the whole YouTube site is taken down without any explanation.

And the day after that the Internet stops working.

It just disappears.

That’s when people finally realize that something serious is happening.

THE ACTION IN THIS BOOK

BEGINS JUST OVER A YEAR

BEFORE THE INCIDENTS

DESCRIBED IN THE ENEMY.

1

Mr Hewitt was crawling through the broken window. Sliding over the ledge on his belly. Hands groping at the air, fingers clenching and unclenching, arms waving as if he was trying to swim breaststroke. In the half-light Jack could just make out the look on his pale yellowing face. A stupid look. No longer human. Eyes wide and staring. Tears of blood dribbling from under his eyelids. Tongue lolling out from between cracked and swollen lips. Skin covered with boils and sores.

Jack stood there frozen, the cricket bat held tight in sweating hands. He knew he should step forward and whack Mr Hewitt as hard as he could in the head, but his right arm ached all the way down. He’d been swinging the bat all night and the last teacher he’d hit had jarred his shoulder. Now it hurt just to hold the bat, which felt like a lead weight in his hands.

He knew that wasn’t the real reason, though. When it came down to it, he couldn’t bring himself to hit Mr Hewitt. He’d always liked him. He’d been Jack’s English teacher for the last year. He was one of the youngest and most popular teachers in the school, always talking to the boys about films and TV and console games, not in a creepy way, not to get in with the kids, simply because he was genuinely interested in the same things that they were. When the disease hit, when everything started to go wrong, Mr Hewitt had done everything he could to help the boys. Trying to contact parents and make arrangements, keeping their spirits up, comforting them, reassuring them, always searching for food and water, making the buildings safe …

And when it had got really bad, when those adults who’d got sick but hadn’t died had started to turn on the kids, attacking them like wild animals, Mr Hewitt had helped fight them off.

He’d been tireless and it had looked like he might escape the sickness.

He’d been a hero.

And now here he was, crawling slowly, slowly, slowly into the lower common room like some huge clumsy lizard. He raised his head, stretching his neck, and wheezed at Jack, bloody saliva bubbling between his teeth. Jack could see two more teachers behind him, attempting in their own mindless way to get to the window.

Jack swallowed. It hurt his throat. He hadn’t had anything to drink all day. They were ru

Mr Hewitt was real, though, something out of a waking nightmare, slithering in, inch by inch.

The last hour had been a chaotic panicked scramble of ru

And there was Mr Hewitt.

Jack couldn’t do this alone. He looked for Ed and saw him crouched down behind an overturned table, his grey face poking over the top, eyes white-rimmed and staring. Ed, his best mate. Ed who everyone thought was cool. Clever without being cocky or a suck-up. Good-looking Ed who all the girls went for. Ed who beat him at te

Last year the school had produced a glossy booklet advertising itself to new parents, and there on the front cover was Ed – the boy most likely to succeed. The happy, smiling, confident face of Rowhurst.

Well, this was the new face of the school, hiding behind a table, scared halfway to death, while the teachers crawled in through a broken window.