The Dead

‘They’ve forgotten about us,’ Kwanele wailed.

‘Shut up and keep going,’ Ed grunted. ‘We can’t just leave him.’

There was a noise behind them. Greg was up again. Trying to work out where everyone had gone.

He spotted the boys.

‘Forget it,’ said Kwanele. ‘I’m out of here.’

He dropped Piers. Ed screamed at him but he bolted off the bus and ran after the others.

Ed was left holding Piers’ arm. ‘Piers,’ he sobbed. ‘Come on, Piers, help me … Help me …’

But Piers was dead to the world.

Greg was moving slowly towards them. He looked cross-eyed, more confused than ever, his face a mask of blood and pus. Liquid was gurgling in his throat. His breath was rasping and harsh.

With a superhuman effort Ed got Piers as far as the doors, but then he wouldn’t budge any further. Ed tugged at him, and tugged at him, but it made no difference. In his panic he couldn’t work out what had happened. He hadn’t spotted that Piers’ jacket had caught on a handle.

‘Piers,’ he shouted. ‘Piers, come on. Wake up!’

Greg was getting nearer by the second, his lips curled back from his bloody teeth. He reached out with his good hand towards Ed and seemed to smile.

Ed looked out. Three big sickos were approaching the doorway. In another moment his way out would be blocked altogether. There was no sign of his friends.

‘Piers,’ he yelled, uselessly jerking the boy’s body. Ed was crying in desperation. Greg was so close now he could smell him.

Ed let go.

‘Sorry,’ he said, relieved that Piers was unconscious and would have no idea what was going on.

He jumped off the bus, shoved past the sickos in the street and ran for it. Behind him he could hear Greg raging and roaring, fighting the other adults over Piers’ body.

Ed kept moving, all the while glancing wildly around for a glimpse of the others. There was a bang and he turned towards the sound. The kids were a little way along the road. Most of them were scrambling over a fence beside a tall white gatepost, while Bam and Jack fought off a second, smaller band of sickos. The noise had been Bam shooting at one of them.

‘Hey!’ Ed shouted. ‘Wait for me.’

They either didn’t hear him or they ignored him.

Ed sprinted to catch up, feeling sick that he’d abandoned Piers. Bam and Jack were frantically trying to keep the sickos back. There were about six of them, clawing at the boys, snapping their yellow teeth. They were too close for Bam to fire the gun again and he was using it as a club.

With a yell Ed piled into them, scattering them and knocking two of them over. Bam saw his chance and shot another one.

‘Get over the fence,’ Jack shouted. ‘They can’t follow us.’

Ed vaulted the fence into the small park on the other side. Ahead of him were two massive grey naval guns that must each have been a good six metres long. They stood in front of a building, making it look like some weird stranded battleship. The building was grand and classical in design, with six pillars across the front and a very tall, narrow green dome jutting straight up at the top.

With a shock of recognition Ed realized he’d been here before with his prep school. It was the Imperial War Museum.

Jack and Bam followed him over the fence. Bam reloaded and turned to fire a last shot at the sickos on the other side. Not that it mattered. They didn’t have the sense to work out how to get over.

The three boys ran along the path towards where their friends were waiting for them by the naval guns, lungs burning, rain stinging their faces, their feet slapping on the wet paving stones. Jack and Ed ran side by side, Bam slightly behind.

‘What happened to Piers?’ Jack panted.

‘You didn’t wait,’ Ed replied.

‘You left him?’

‘Kwanele ran off. I couldn’t do it by myself. You should have stayed.’

‘I was helping the others.’

‘You should have stayed.’ Ed arrived at the steps to the museum and stopped, doubled over, resting his hands on his knees. The rest of the kids were hammering on the doors. Kwanele was with them, looking sheepish, his suitcase at his side.

Ed gave him a dirty look. ‘Thanks for your help, Kwanele.’

‘What difference would it have made?’ Kwanele protested. ‘Even if we had got him off the bus? We could not have got away.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘The point is we are both still alive.’

‘Which is more than can be said for Piers.’

By now Bam had registered that Piers was missing. ‘Where is he?’ he asked accusingly.

‘We had to leave him on the bus,’ Ed explained. ‘We couldn’t move him.’

Before Bam could say anything else there was a cheer. Someone inside the building had opened the doors. The kids bundled noisily inside.

Ed hung back for a while, regaining his breath, pulling himself together, not wanting to have to face Bam and Jack. Then walked slowly into the museum past two boys in old army uniforms who were holding the doors open.

Inside he crossed a small entrance area, up some more steps and came out into the main atrium. There were planes dangling from the ceiling. Jack recognized a Spitfire among them. The white-tiled floor was littered with tanks, vehicles and artillery pieces of all shapes and sizes.

The rest of the kids from the coach were gazing around in open-mouthed awe. A small group of boys were staring sullenly at them from one side. Like the two boys who had let them in, they were dressed in military uniforms that they’d obviously ‘borrowed’ from an exhibit, and they were heavily armed.

‘Who is it?’ came a voice from behind one of the tanks.

‘Du

Brooke walked round the tank, followed by the rest of the coach party.

Three boys of about thirteen were sitting cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in blankets and duvets. They looked like village elders around a campfire. All three of them were equipped with rulers, dice and notebooks, and spread out around them on the gleaming tiles were hundreds of miniature metal soldiers and an odd assortment of bits and pieces that were being used to represent landscape – trees and buildings and roads. They were evidently in the middle of an elaborate war game.

One was a chubby kid wearing a First World War German helmet, with a spike in the top. Next to him sat a black kid wearing plastic-framed glasses held together at the nose with Elastoplast. He stared, unblinking, at the intruders. The glasses made his eyes look massive, as if they could look right through you. He had a serious expression, verging on blank, and there was a stillness about him. The third boy couldn’t have been more different. He was pale, wiry, fidgety, animated, like a pot on the boil. He scratched his armpit, picked his nose and gri

‘Fresh meat,’ he said. ‘Yum yum! Groovalicious.’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Brooke with all her usual sarcasm. ‘Very fu

‘I like to think so,’ said the ski

‘I doubt you ever had it,’ said Brooke.

The ski

‘I’m DogNut,’ he said. ‘But you can call me “babe”.’

Brooke shook her head and moved away from him.

‘Watch where you’re walking,’ said the black kid in the glasses.

‘Ooh, we don’t want to mess up your toys, do we?’ said Brooke.

‘No,’ said the boy matter-of-factly, but combined with his cold hard stare it came across as strangely menacing. Brooke faltered, unsure whether to push it any further. There was something about the boy that told her to be careful, an air of authority and quiet power.

‘Listen to what the bad man says,’ said DogNut. ‘Believe me, you don’t never want to get on the bad side of Jordan Hordern.’

‘That your name?’ said Brooke. ‘Jordan Hordern.’

‘Yes,’ said the black kid. ‘What of it?’