The Dead

‘You sure you know what you doing, man?’ DogNut had followed Ed up from the lower level, his small head bobbing on his ski

Ed took him into the front entrance area.

‘We can’t keep her locked up in there like an animal,’ he said quietly and urgently. ‘She’ll only get worse. If I let her out, she can at least try and look after herself.’

‘So you don’t have to deal with her?’

‘No. Maybe. Yeah.’

‘But if you let her out, Ed …’

‘She’s a friend.’

‘She’s a sicko now,’ said DogNut. ‘That’s the word you lot like to use, i

‘But she was …’ said Ed. ‘She was my friend. She’ll just die in there.’

‘True that.’ DogNut pointed through the doors at the gardens. ‘And out there she’s free to attack any kid she wants.’

‘So?’ Ed shouted angrily. ‘What do you want me to do? Shoot her? Stick my bayonet into her guts?’

‘I du

‘Well, neither do I. So I’m going to let her out. Open the doors. And be careful – she got out of the handcuffs.’

‘How the hell she do that?’

‘She bit her thumb off.’

‘Holy Jesus …’

DogNut didn’t argue any more. He opened the front doors and then formed the kids into a gauntlet as Ed went back for Frédérique.

The boys stood there in two long lines, each bristling with sticks and bayonets, swords and clubs. They waited, some laughing and making sharp remarks, others quiet and thoughtful, like kids organized into a game whose rules they didn’t really know.

After a while Frédérique emerged, blinking and confused, covering her eyes with her good hand, the cuffs rattling.

She flinched from the weapons as she shuffled between the lines. A group of Jordan’s boys sniggered at her, and a couple made crude comments. Then she brought up her injured hand and they shut up.

Ed followed, his rifle ready in case Frédérique tried to turn and run back.

She didn’t. She just kept slowly walking towards the main entrance. When she got there she halted. Cringing away from the sunlight, hunched over. Ed came up behind her.

‘You have to go,’ he said.

She turned and gulped at him. She looked so sad suddenly, so normal, just a frightened little girl. She shook her head.

Ed turned his rifle round and prodded her with the butt.

‘Please, Frédérique. Just go.’

There were blood-stained tears ru

‘Ed,’ she said.

‘Just go!’ Ed snapped, and shoved her so that she went sprawling on to the front steps.

DogNut swung the doors shut.

Frédérique got up, came over to the glass and pawed at it. DogNut winced when he saw the ragged tear where her thumb had been. She was pleading in French and sobbing.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ed, and Frédérique threw herself at the window, slobbering against it, smearing it with filth. An animal again.

Ed didn’t want to see. He turned away and left her there, thumping and mewling and clawing at the glass. He couldn’t believe how quickly she’d got sick, how fast she’d changed, fallen apart.

Would it be worse now that she was outside in the light? Quicker? He didn’t know how the disease worked, but he’d seen enough to know that sunlight accelerated it.

He tried to shut her out of his mind. Walked away between the lines of silent boys.

DogNut stayed where he was. Not looking at the girl, but up, at the sky.

He felt a cold hard lump in his guts.

63

Jordan Hordern was sitting at his desk. He had taken over the director-general’s office in the corner of the museum on the first floor. He had a bed against one wall and spent a lot of time in here reading and pla

David King was sitting opposite Jordan at the desk, his legs neatly crossed, listening as Jordan explained the rules. They were no different for David than they were for the coach party. If he and his boys could feed themselves, they were welcome to stay.

‘We might not want to stay.’

‘That’s your decision.’

‘You said yourself we can’t have two people in charge,’ David went on. ‘I think I know best, and I don’t want to be told what to do by anyone else.’

‘Fair enough, soldier. Where were you heading anyway, before you found Ed?’

‘Somewhere central. Somewhere with a good supply of food and water. Somewhere safe. Somewhere like this, really.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m afraid we got here first.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why London, though?’ Jordan asked. ‘Wouldn’t you have been better off in the countryside?’

‘For the next few years we are going to be a scavenger society,’ said David. ‘Living off what the adults have left behind. This place, for instance, is full of weapons that we couldn’t hope to make ourselves. Not until we learn the skills.’

‘True.’

‘So London is the obvious place to come. The countryside will be fine when it’s safer, when the Strangers have all died off, when we can learn how to grow our own food. But at the moment it’s pretty terrible out there. Fu

‘You’ll find somewhere else to hole up,’ said Jordan.

‘I doubt we’ll find somewhere else with as good a supply of weapons, though.’

‘OK,’ said Jordan. ‘That’s what this is all about, then? Weapons?’

‘You’ve surely got more than you can use.’

‘Not necessarily. Who knows how things are going to go? Who knows what we might need in the future?’

‘Twenty rifles,’ said David. ‘That’s all I’m asking for. Give me twenty rifles. You must have hundreds here.’

‘What about bullets?’ said Jordan.

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Most of these guns are useless. There’s no ammo for them. We did find some others in the armoury, and some bullets, but I ain’t Father Christmas.’

‘Well, then, if some of the guns aren’t any use to you,’ said David, ‘why not give them to us and let us worry about ammunition?’

‘If I give you guns, will you move on?’ Jordan asked, but David wasn’t listening. He had his head cocked to one side.

‘Can you hear that?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Sounds like shouting.’

64

A huge argument was raging in the atrium. David’s boys against Jordan’s. It seemed that with their leaders not around both crews had lost all their discipline. There was a lot of childish name-calling going on. David’s boys were from a privileged public school; Jordan’s boys were mostly from the local estates. No one was quite sure what had started it, but there was now a fierce slanging match going on with both sides insulting the other in the crudest possible way.

David and Jordan came down the stairs shouting and trying to restore some sense of order. But the argument had been allowed to get out of hand and there was no easy way of stopping it. The two sides were acting like rival football teams who had got into a fight on the pitch and were using Jordan and David like referees. And the coach-party kids were acting as spectators, nudging each other and pointing, enjoying the spectacle.

It looked like there were going to be a few red cards today. The big rugby player, Pod, was particularly angry.

‘You have to get them to apologize, David,’ he kept saying, and David kept ignoring him.