The Dead

‘You’re joking,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve not got it wrong, have I? Matt’ll kill me. We spent ages working on this.’

‘You’re not even close,’ said Wiki.

‘Bollocks, I knew I should have got Matt to write it down for me.’

‘Write what down?’ said Matt, walking in with Archie Bishop and the other acolytes.

‘The name of your new god,’ said Wiki.

‘Why? What’s he done?’ Matt read the ba

‘Bit of a boring name for a new god, Matt,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘Angus can’t really compete with Thor or Zeus or Buddha.’

‘Yeah,’ said Wiki, joining in the fun. ‘Jehovah, Hades, Baal, Osiris, they sound really exciting, but Angus Day sounds more like a newsreader.’

‘Maybe it’s on purpose,’ said Archie seriously, and everyone turned to look at him, including Matt, who was red-faced with anger and embarrassment.

‘I didn’t do it on purpose!’ Harry protested. ‘I was doing my best. I really was. I thought I’d got it right.’

‘Exactly,’ said Archie. ‘So maybe the Lamb was working through you. It’s like the pages, and Matt’s visions – we don’t choose any of it. Everything has been shown to us by the Lamb. Isn’t that right, Matt?’

‘Er, yeah, that’s right,’ said Matt, backing Archie up but not really sure where this was going.

‘So the Lamb must have been working through Harry,’ Archie went on. ‘Showing him something that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. He made Harry put the wrong words on there. Except they’re not wrong, they’re right, you see? They’re what he was supposed to paint on there all along.’

‘Angus Day?’ said Jibber-jabber, not sounding convinced. ‘Why would he want you to write Angus Day?’

‘We don’t know why, not yet, but we’ll find out,’ said Archie. ‘It’ll be shown to us.’

Matt stood there, struggling to find something good in this. He could see what Archie was doing. He was trying to make the best of it and stop the others from laughing at them. But Matt really wished that Harry hadn’t got it so wrong. Not both bloody words.

Angus Day! If Matt wasn’t so furious, he would have been laughing too.

One of Jordan’s boys came in. He glanced expressionlessly at the ba

‘Your mates are back,’ he said. ‘Nice flag. Who’s Angus Day?’

45

The smell had got worse – deeper, thicker, more intense. It was a strange mixture of familiar comforting smells, like bonfires and barbecues and wood-burning stoves, all jumbled up with unpleasant smells that shouldn’t go together with them – rotting food, chemistry lessons, dust and blocked toilets.

‘How come we can smell rotting food and cooking food at the same time?’ said Bam, wrinkling his nose as he walked.

‘Maybe it’s not rotting food,’ said Ed. ‘Maybe it’s chemicals of some sort.’

‘Great,’ said Bam. ‘We’re probably being poisoned as we speak.’

‘It’s the gas from the holders,’ said Jack. ‘Must be.’

Ed stopped in the road. ‘Should we turn back?’

‘You can cut out if you want,’ said Jack, who carried on walking. ‘But I’m not giving up now.’

‘Wait, guys, look at that.’

Bam was staring at a big redbrick building that rose up six storeys high.

‘That’s the main stand of the Oval cricket ground,’ said Ed. ‘I was there last summer.’

‘I know what it is,’ said Bam. ‘I don’t mean the Oval, I mean that …’

Ed and Jack peered at the building, trying to work out what Bam was going on about.

And then they saw it.

Clustered round the gates to the ground were police cars, military vehicles, crowd control barriers, an outside broadcast van with a TV transmitter on the roof.

People moving about.

‘Oh my God,’ said Ed, his insides lurching. ‘Is that for real?’

‘Well, it’s not a mirage, is it?’ said Jack. ‘It’s not like we’re in the desert or anything. So I’d say, yes, it must be real.’

Ed tried not to get his hopes up. Maybe, though, just maybe, they’d been wrong. Things hadn’t fallen completely apart. His heart was racing, thoughts chasing each other round his tired mind.

‘Civilization,’ said Bam. ‘If the police and the army are there, then, I mean, then we’re saved. There are people still alive, proper people, adults not affected by the disease. You know what this means, don’t you? There might be a cure after all.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

‘Well, let’s go and find out,’ said Bam.

‘Be careful,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve seen films where the survivors try to get help and the army thinks they’re infected and they shoot them.’

‘Let’s risk it,’ said Bam.

They moved out of the road on to the pavement where they hurried along, keeping close to the buildings even though Ed pointed out that there was a greater risk of being ambushed by any sickos who might be hiding in the area.

‘Come off it,’ said Bam. ‘There won’t be any sickos within a million miles of here, not with that lot waiting for them over there.’

‘Guys?’ said Jack, slowing down.

‘What?’

‘Why are we assuming that the police and the army and whoever are going to be alive?’

‘Oh crap,’ said Ed, skidding to a halt and ducking behind a parked car. ‘Good point.’

‘But I can see people moving about,’ said Bam.

‘What sort of people?’ Ed asked.

‘A couple of soldiers, a policeman.’

‘Are they diseased soldiers, or are they fit and healthy soldiers?’

‘It’s too far away to tell with my lousy eyesight.’

‘Then we should be very, very bloody careful until we can be sure either way,’ said Jack.

Now they darted from car to car, trying to keep out of sight as they steadily worked their way closer.

‘When I get back to the museum, I’m going to get a pair of binocs,’ said Bam.

‘I’m going to get a tank,’ said Ed. ‘Life would be a lot easier in a tank.’

At last they were near enough to see clearly what was going on. They hid behind a big black 4×4 and peered ahead.

‘Bollocks,’ Jack hissed.

There were two soldiers and a policeman walking around, but apart from that nothing was moving. It looked like a scene from a DVD on pause. Some big disaster movie. The security forces lined up ready for action … but staying absolutely still.

There were more soldiers sitting in Jeeps, and policemen in vans, a small crowd pressed up against some barriers, and not one of them stirred.

‘They’re all dead,’ said Bam, deflated. ‘Apart from those three, they’re all dead.’

Now they became aware of more bodies, scattered everywhere. On the ground, in the vehicles, by the entrance gates to the Oval. It looked as if there had been a battle of some sort. Most of the dead bodies weren’t in uniform. They were mothers and fathers, teenagers, many with bullet wounds.

‘At least we know now what that smell was,’ said Bam, covering his face with his scarf. ‘It was two different things. The smell of the fire was masking the smell of dead bodies.’

‘What d’you think was going on here?’ said Ed.

‘No idea,’ said Jack.

‘It looks like they were guarding something,’ Ed suggested.

‘The Oval?’ said Jack. ‘Why would the army want to guard a cricket ground? What were they – scared the public was going to break in and carry off the stumps?’

‘You got a better suggestion?’

‘Maybe there’s something else inside,’ said Bam. ‘Maybe the government was stockpiling supplies, or weapons, or the crown jewels, or something?’

‘We should take a look,’ said Jack.

‘What?’ Ed spluttered. ‘No way. We get well away from here. This is nothing to do with us.’