The Dead

‘Should we try and block the door somehow?’ said Ed, making an attempt to look like he was in control again.

‘What with?’ said Jack. ‘Let’s just get back upstairs to the others, yeah?’

‘What about the teachers?’ said Ed, looking fearfully at the door.

‘There’s nothing we can do, Ed. Maybe the rest of them will be distracted by Mr Hewitt. I don’t know. Maybe they’ll stop to eat him. That’s all they’re looking for, isn’t it, food? You’ve seen them.’

Ed let out a mad laugh. ‘Listen to you,’ he said. ‘Listen to what you’re saying, Jack. This is nuts. Talking about people eating each other. It’s unreal.’

But Ed had seen them. A pack of teachers ripping a dead body to pieces and shoving the bloody parts into their mouths.

No. He had to try not to think about these things and concentrate on the moment. On staying alive from one second to the next.

‘All right,’ he said, his voice more steady now. ‘Let’s get back to the others. Make sure they’re all OK. We’ve got to stick together.’

‘Yeah.’

Ed took hold of Jack’s arm.

‘Promise me, Jack, won’t you?’

‘What?’

‘That whatever happens we’ll stick together.’

‘Of course.’

Ed smiled.

‘Let’s go,’ said Jack, dragging his torch from his pocket and shining it up and down the corridor. There were heavy fire doors at either end that the kids kept shut to slow down any intruders. This part of the corridor was empty. They had to keep moving, though. They had no idea how long the other teachers would be delayed in the common room.

Ed suddenly felt more tired than he’d ever felt in his life. He wasn’t sure he had the energy just to put one foot in front of the other. He knew Jack felt the same.

Then one of the fire doors banged open and Ed was ru

A teacher had lurched through. Monsieur Morel, from the French department. He’d always been a big, jolly man, with dark, wavy hair and an untidy beard; now he looked like some sort of mad bear, made worse by the fact that he seemed to have found a woman’s fur coat somewhere. It was way too small for him and matted with dried blood. He advanced stiff-legged down the corridor towards the boys, arms windmilling.

The boys didn’t wait for him; they flung themselves into the fire door at the opposite end but as they crashed through they collided with another teacher on the other side. He staggered back against the wall. Without thinking, Jack lashed out with the bat, getting him with a backhander to the side of the head that left him stu

Jack and Ed came to a dead stop. This part of the corridor was thick with teachers. God knows how many of them there were, or how they’d got in. Even though they were packed in here, there was an eerie silence, broken only by a cough and a noise like someone trying to clear their throat.

Ed flashed his torch wildly around, and almost as one the teachers turned towards him. The beam whipped across a range of twisted, diseased faces, dripping with snot, teeth bared, eyes staring, with peeling skin, open wounds and horrible grey-green blisters.

They were unarmed and weakened by the sickness, but they were still larger and on the whole more powerful than the boys, and in a big group like this they were deadly. The boys had fortified one of the dormitories on the top floor where they were living, but there was no way Jack and Ed could make it to the stairs past this lot.

They couldn’t go back and try another way, though, because Monsieur Morel was even now pushing through the fire door, and behind him was a small group of female teachers.

‘Coming through!’

There was a loud shout and Ed was dimly aware of bodies being knocked down, then Morel was shunted aside as a group of boys charged him from behind. At their head was Harry ‘Bam’ Bamford, champion prop forward for the school, and bunched next to him in a pack were four of his friends from the rugby team, armed with hockey sticks. They yelled at Jack and Ed to follow them and cleared a path between the startled teachers who dropped back to either side. The seven boys had the muscle now to power down the corridor and into the empty entrance hallway at the end. They kept moving, Ed ru

They soon reached the top floor and hammered on the dormitory door.

‘Open up! It’s us!’ Bam yelled. Below them the teachers were starting to make their way on to the stairs.

There were muffled voices from the dorm and sounds of activity.

‘Come on,’ Jack shouted. ‘Hurry up.’

Monsieur Morel was coming up more quickly than the other adults, his big feet crashing into each step as his long, muscular legs worked like pistons, eating up the distance.

At last the boys could hear the barricade being removed from the other side of the door. They knew how long it took, though, to move the heavy wardrobe to the side, shunting it across the bare wooden floorboards.

There had to be a better system than this.

Jack turned. Morel was nearly up.

‘Get a move on.’ Ed pounded his fists on the door, which finally opened a crack. The boy on the other side put an eye to the gap, checking to see who was out there.

‘Just open the bloody door,’ Bam roared.

Morel reached the top of the staircase and Jack kicked him hard in the chest with the heel of his shoe. The big man fell backwards with a small, high-pitched cry, toppling down the stairs and taking out a group of teachers on the lower steps.

The door swung inwards. The seven boys made it through to safety.

4

The adults were scraping the dormitory wall with their fingers and battering at the door. Now and then there would be a break, a few seconds’ silence, and the boys would hear one of them sniffing at the crack down the side of the door like a dog. Then the mindless frenzy of banging and scratching would begin all over again.

‘Do you think they’ll give up and go away?’ Joh

‘What do you reckon?’ said Jack, with more than a hint of scorn in his voice.

‘No.’

‘Exactly. So why ask such a stupid question?’

‘Hey, hey, hey, no need to start getting at each other,’ said Bam, stepping over to put an arm round his friend’s shoulder. ‘Joh

‘Yeah, I know, I’m sorry,’ said Jack, slumping down on to a bed and ru

‘It’s the adrenalin,’ came a high-pitched, squeaky voice from the other side of the room. ‘The fight or flight chemical.’

‘What are you on about now, Wiki?’ said Bam, with a look of amusement on his broad, flat face. Wiki’s real name was Thomas. He was a ski

‘Adrenalin, although you should properly call it epinephrine,’ he said in his strong Manchester accent. ‘It’s a hormone your body makes when you’re in danger. It makes your heart beat faster and your blood vessels sort of open up so that you’re ready to either fight off the danger or run away from it. You get a big burst of energy, but afterwards you can feel quite run down. It’s made by your adrenal glands from tyrosine and phenylalanine, which are amino acids.’

‘Thanks, Wiki,’ said Bam, trying not to laugh. ‘What would we do without you?’