The Dead

He sat back down and Kwanele looked over to see what he’d chosen.

‘I’ve not read that,’ he said.

Chris grunted. As far as he could tell Kwanele had never read any book, unless perhaps it was a history of fashion. Magazines were a different story. Kwanele must have read every fashion magazine ever published in the history of the world. And watched every programme about fashion on the TV. He’d already summed up everyone on board based on their clothing.

The three noisy girls at the back were ‘an unholy mix of TopShop, Juicy Couture, JD Sports, Accessorize and Willesden market’.

Zohra and Froggie were ‘classic Boden’, whatever that was.

Greg and Liam were Next, plus ‘inevitably more JD Sports’.

Frédérique, though, apparently ‘had style’.

‘That coat’s an Agnès B,’ Kwanele had said approvingly.

He’d been quiet since lunch, drifting in and out of sleep, and Chris had taken the opportunity to tune in to the conversation that Matt and Archie Bishop were having about their new religion in the seats in front. His book was a prop a lot of the time, so that Chris could spy on people without them realizing.

Matt and Archie seemed to be making it up as they went along, but they were still deadly serious about their religion, discussing each point at great length.

Matt was reading something out from one of his rescued scraps of Bible.

‘And he carried me away … and showed me the Holy City … It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. What’s a jasper?’

‘A type of jewel I suppose,’ said Archie.

‘I think it’s significant,’ said Matt. ‘Why choose a jasper, and not, say, a ruby or an emerald or one of the better-known jewels? It’s a code of some sort, I reckon. Maybe we need to look out for a boy called Jasper.’

‘Maybe,’ said Archie, though he didn’t sound convinced.

Matt carried on reading aloud. ‘It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates … There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west … And look, here … The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper! Jasper again. I told you it was significant.’

‘What else does it say?’ Archie asked.

‘Erm … the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Archie. ‘He says emerald.’

‘Yeah, but listen to these others – I’ve never heard of them – the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.’

‘I’ve heard of amethyst.’

‘What colour is it?’

‘Du

‘The twelve gates are important,’ said Matt. ‘Doesn’t London have twelve gates? The old city of London.’

‘Don’t know. Does it?’

‘Yes. I used to know them all. There’s Ludgate … erm, Old Gate, Newgate, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate … I don’t remember the rest, but there’s definitely twelve.’

Chris shook his head. There were seven gates in London, not twelve. Matt was a fool.

‘It’s all in here, Archie,’ Matt was saying, his voice growing louder as he got more excited. ‘London, the Lamb, the plague, my vision.’

‘I wish I’d had a vision,’ said one of the acolytes. ‘I’d like to see what the Lamb looks like.’

‘He’s beautiful and frightening at the same time,’ said Matt, and he stood up. ‘He’s going to save us all!’ he cried out.

‘Sit down, Matt,’ said Ed, who was sitting across the way from Chris.

‘I won’t sit down. You all need to accept the Lamb if you want to be saved. The golden child, who is more than a child. I’ve seen him, walking out of the darkness, and all around him is light, and in his shadow walks a demon.’

‘Sit down, Matt.’

Matt left his seat and went over to Ed.

‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘You’ll see that I’m right. It’s all in the pages, and if you can’t see that then you’re blind. We’re being tested. That’s what all this is about, the disease, the dead, don’t you see? God has sent a plague to wipe out the si

‘And just how do we welcome him?’ Ed asked.

‘We have to make a sacrifice.’

‘A sacrifice?’ Ed looked amazed.

‘Yes,’ said Matt. ‘The Lamb is ready for sacrifice, but we don’t sacrifice the Lamb, you see, we sacrifice the demon, the beast who walks at his side in the darkness, and then once he’s been cast out, the Lamb will be free and we can all rise into God’s kingdom here on earth.’

This was all too much for Ed, he started to laugh. Matt stood there for a moment, his bony shoulders rising and falling heavily, then he turned away and stalked back to his friends.

Chris was secretly smiling. He didn’t think Matt’s new religion would catch on. After all, he was just a kid.

What did kids know about anything?

He focused his attention back on to his book. He knew the others thought he was weird. Always reading. But the thing was, books were the future now. They held what was left of the world’s knowledge. All the adults were either dead or sick. All those teachers with their knowledge, all those parents, scientists, historians, gone.

There were no more computers now, and wouldn’t be again until the electricity came back on. And how long would that take? What did kids know about generating electricity? Well, if they wanted to find out they were going to have to read books.

First read the books, then build the generators, then switch the computers back on. Probably wouldn’t work after all that time. So they’d have to build new computers, which would mean reading more books …

And in the meantime, all the gigabytes, zigabytes, mega-ziga-gigabytes of information that had once been stored in all the computers of the world would have vanished.

All that knowledge lost forever. They were back to square one. Well, perhaps not square one. More like the Middle Ages. Before electricity, before the Industrial Revolution, before cars and machines.

When there was just books.

If Chris knew one thing, it was that knowledge is power. And where was all the knowledge in the world right now? In books. So that meant that books were the most powerful objects in the world.

And he was going to use that power. He was going to keep on reading. He had to start collecting encyclopaedias, science books, history, geography, books of facts and figures. He had to start pla

The scenery rolled past as the afternoon wore on, growing greyer and greyer. The drizzle never let up and their progress was painfully slow. Roads were blocked everywhere and whenever the rain picked up Greg had to slow down to a crawl because of the missing wipers.

Several times they had to stop altogether and the bigger boys would have to get down and physically move cars out of the way while Greg watched out for sickos with his shotgun. Some of the cars still had keys in the ignition, but most didn’t. The boys smashed the side windows and then it was Greg who showed them how to disable the steering lock by jamming a screwdriver in behind the steering column. They didn’t bother trying to hotwire them, but simply put the cars in neutral and pushed them out of the way.

It was not quick work, though.

The sky steadily darkened as they crisscrossed the dreary streets on the fringes of south London trying to find a way in. Despite the rain there were fires smouldering everywhere, filling the air with smoke that made their going even more difficult.

One by one everyone on the bus fell silent, retreating into their thoughts. Even the three girls at the back piped down. The only voice was Greg’s as he muttered under his breath, cursing and swearing.