The Dead

He tore a handful of pages from the cookbook, screwed them up and put them under Jack’s bed. Then he packed in anything else he could find that would burn – more books, comics, teddies, clothes – and set light to it all with a couple of matches. In a few moments there was a blaze going and the room was filling with smoke.

‘See you, Jack,’ he said, tucked Floppy Dog into his friend’s arms, kissed him on the forehead and went out.

He ran down the stairs, stuffed as much food as he could carry into his pack, shoved his pistol into its holster, grabbed the bike from the hallway, then opened the front door and went out into the street. He looked up at the house. Already Jack’s bedroom was filled with flames and smoke was pouring out of the open window.

At least Jack wouldn’t be found by any scavengers.

Ed turned away, got on the bike and started pedalling.

57

Frédérique was humming softly to herself. A familiar tune but she couldn’t remember the name of it, or the words. Papa used to sing it to her when she was a little girl. She felt calmer now, out of the light. She was wrapped in darkness and it meant she could think clearly. The light punched your brain. It hurt. The darkness was kind and gentle, like …

She moaned and pushed her fingers through her hair. All across her scalp there were lumps and bumps. It was as if her brain was expanding, forcing these new growths out of her head. If she concentrated really hard as she ran her fingertips over them, she could read them like Braille, all the thoughts coming out of her head …

She would think of a way to escape from where they had trapped her. She would get away and she would punish them for what they had done to her.

The first thing she had to do was work out how to get her hands free of these things they’d clamped round them, these bracelets, these menottes.

She’d figure it out.

She was clever now.

Cleverer than them …

58

Ed couldn’t get the reek of smoke out of his nostrils. It was everywhere, blown on a hot wind. It stung his eyes so that he wept as he cycled. He felt itchy under his skin. On edge. There was a weird, tense atmosphere to the day as if the world had been screwed up tight. Everything felt wrong. It was dark when it should have been light, so that it was somehow day and night at the same time.

The wind tugged at him, like an a

His last friends.

It looked like today wasn’t going to be any easier. The empty street he’d seen from Jack’s window had given him a false hope. There were more sickos out on the streets than he’d ever seen before. They were everywhere, spooked by the approaching fire just as badly as he was. He expected any minute to be attacked again.

He had an awful feeling of hopeless doom he’d never known before. The dark sky seemed to press down on him with an awful heaviness. It was a lid, slowly closing, suffocating the world, trapping the smoke and the fire and wind. He was reminded of all those myths and legends where the sky was a solid thing that had to be held up. There was a giant, wasn’t there, who lifted it on his shoulders?

Atlas. That was it. Atlas holding the sky up.

Well, it felt like Atlas had fallen.

He cycled as fast as he could, but it wasn’t easy. The roads were blocked everywhere by abandoned vehicles, so that he had to keep swerving round them. It hadn’t been so noticeable yesterday when they were walking, but riding a bike was different. You were aware of every bump and hole and obstruction. Driving a car would have been nearly impossible.

In fact, every now and then he would come to a car that had been set on fire, and was reduced to a pile of twisted metal and plastic. There was other debris as well, strewn everywhere, rubbish and bins and dead bodies, occasionally a burnt-out run of buildings that had collapsed. He longed for an open stretch, but he had resigned himself to the fact that it wasn’t going to happen.

He had already had to change the route he’d pla

The sickos didn’t help either. There seemed to be gangs of them whichever way he went, standing in the road looking up at the sky, or just wandering aimlessly. Once he had to make a detour round a small group of them who were fighting like drunks, the sort of addled street people you used to see in the cities, arguing with each other and throwing clumsy punches.

He kept moving, though, and in his roundabout way he was getting gradually closer to the museum and safety. He just wished his heart wasn’t beating so hard against his ribs and his breathing wasn’t so quick and painful.

As he rode, images flashed through his mind, switching backwards and forwards. Jack and Bam, alive and laughing. Bam doing his Maori war dance. And then Bam lying in the gutter, cold and still, and Jack in his bed holding Floppy Dog. The living and the dead.

The dead.

All those bodies at the Oval. The red fountain of flesh rising over them when the first canister went off. He wondered how many other sites there were around London like that, stacked with corpses. He knew a lot of people had left the city when the disease had started killing people. He’d seen it on the news – traffic jams miles and miles long. Those were some of the last images they showed on television before it went off air. It had all happened so fast.

Ed tried to picture the rest of the world like this, falling into chaos and ruin. The numberless dead bodies everywhere. And, worse, the living. Zombies. Stranded between life and death. He remembered the sensation of being pressed up against Greg. The stink of him, the heat and the damp. The craziness in his eyes. Struggling over the meat cleaver …

And Greg was still out there somewhere.

With poor little Liam.

He told himself to just concentrate on the road and not dwell on anything else. But try as he might he couldn’t get those images out of his head.

What was it about Greg?

There was something more. Something worse.

When Ed had looked into his eyes, seen the madness there, he’d recognized something and now he understood what it was. They were the same, the two of them; they’d both been helpless in the grip of a killing frenzy. When Ed had found his courage yesterday, he’d lost something precious in the bargain. He’d lost part of what made him human.

He was a different person now, and not a better one. Oh, yeah, he could fight, he could swat sickos like flies, he was a bloody hero, wasn’t he? He was death himself. Riding a bike. But in the end all he was doing was adding to the score of the dead.

Was that all a hero was, then? A killing machine without a heart?

Stop it, Ed. Stop thinking. Keep pedalling, keep those wheels turning. Get back to the museum. See the others. His new friends.

That would help fight the sadness and blow away the darkness inside him that was spreading, suffocating him like the black clouds in the sky.