The Dead

Behind them would come the ones who were nearly dead.

And behind them the flames.

Already the younger boys and girls in the road around them were screaming and climbing over each other as they tried to get away. Ed pulled a little girl to her feet and passed her to her friends to look after.

‘We’ve got to stop them panicking,’ he called out to his gang. ‘We’ve got to hold the sickos back.’

He pushed through the crowd, grabbing anyone who carried a weapon of some kind, or who looked bigger or tougher or less afraid.

‘Come with me!’ he yelled at them. ‘We have to hold them off. We can do it, come on!’

Most of the kids pulled away and swore at him or barged past towards the bridge, but a few understood what he was trying to do and joined him.

When they got to the edge of the crowd they could see the sickos more clearly. They were pouring in from every direction, some of them covered in blood, some of them blackened by soot. Their fear had turned them completely crazy. They snarled and bared their teeth and shook their arms.

Ed saw a girl who looked about ten ru

Ed drew his pistol, fumbled with the safety catch and fired into the wall of rotting bodies. He had no idea if he hit anything but the noise was enough to draw everyone’s attention to him, kids and adults alike.

For a second it was as if time froze. Ed stepped forward out of the ranks of children.

‘We have to fight them off!’ he bellowed, his voice hoarse. ‘All of us. Together. Turn round and stand your ground!’

He reholstered his gun. It would be a pointless waste of bullets to shoot anything else into that near-solid mass.

‘Anyone with a weapon come to me,’ he said, holding his rifle above his head with one hand.

‘The Lamb will protect you!’ Matt shouted, lifting his ba

Now they charged forward to reinforce the smaller group by the church garden. They managed to beat the first wave of sickos back and form a line. Ed found himself with Courtney and Aleisha on his left and a big square-headed boy armed with a garden fork on his right. The boy was swearing under his breath and grinding his teeth.

‘Come on, come on, you sick bastards, come and get it …’

After briefly dropping back the sickos came forward again. And they were soon close enough for Ed to pick out individuals. A mother with no lips; a teenager with a broken arm, the bones sticking through the skin; a fat father with bulging eyes whipping his head from side to side. And there …

Pez.

His lower jaw flapping at his chest.

Ed sensed the blood fever coming on again. He could feel that weird out-of-body calmness settling over him and, behind it, something wild and furious and out of control like a crazed beast rushing out of the darkness.

It was as if he was splitting into two people.

‘Take it to them!’

72

David was on the bridge with his boys, pushing steadily forward, the lorry inching along behind them. The crush of kids around them was getting worse and they were in danger of being totally overwhelmed. He was aware that something was going on to the rear – there had been shouts and screams, and then a gunshot. This had thrown the kids on the bridge into even more confusion and David was nearly knocked off his feet. The gunshot had given him an idea, though.

He fiddled with his rifle, pulled back the bolt and managed to shunt a bullet up out of the magazine into the chamber. They had all done CCF at school, the Combined Cadet Force, where they’d learnt the basics of being a soldier, including how to fire rifles. The old Lee-Enfield .303s they were carrying were similar to the .22s they’d trained with, but the reality of using rifles in some sort of combat situation was very different to the calm and ordered atmosphere of a rifle range.

The first thing was to get everyone’s attention.

He aimed at the sky and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked, there was a loud bang and the bullet ripped up into the black smoke cloud that hung over the bridge.

‘Get out of the way,’ he shouted, aiming his rifle at the kids in front of him who had turned round to see what was going on. His boys also levelled their guns, some of which had fixed bayonets, and instantly a pathway cleared.

‘Forward!’ David commanded and his boys marched in formation, the lorry following.

They soon got as far as the stalled cars. There were two gangs of boys fighting around them, other kids shouting from the edges of the scuffle, yet more crammed into the various stalled vehicles. By the side of the road a double-decker bus was on fire, adding to the chaos.

‘Stop what you are doing and move these cars!’ David barked. The boys barely looked at him. Some didn’t even hear him, so once again he fired into the air.

Now they listened.

‘Get these cars out of the way,’ he said firmly, reloading the rifle. ‘You’re blocking the whole bridge.’

‘Shove it up your arse,’ said a stocky kid with a flat, blunt face. His friends laughed. David lowered his gun, aimed it at the boy’s chest and fired.

The boy grunted and fell over backwards. Pod swore, not quite believing what had happened. Everyone else fell into a stu

David glared at the circle of kids that had formed round him.

‘I said get these cars out of the way.’

Instantly everyone jumped to life, starting engines, releasing brakes, pushing stalled cars, shoving back the crowd. In a minute there was a clear path down the centre of the bridge and David marched on.

Sitting in the driver’s cab Brooke was appalled. She looked down to where the stocky kid was being cradled by two crying girls. He wasn’t moving, but whether he was dead or not it was impossible to tell.

‘You can’t do that,’ she said. ‘You can’t go around shooting people.’

‘He’s cleared the bridge,’ said Justin.

‘Justin, he shot that boy. Just like that.’

‘If we don’t get everyone over the bridge,’ said Justin, ‘a lot more people are going to die.’

‘Yeah, but … I mean, you can’t just shoot people; it ain’t right.’

‘It’s not right, no,’ said Justin. ‘But it’s done.’

‘You listen to me, Justin. Soon as we get across, soon as the road is clear, we got to get away from this nutter. You put your foot down, OK?’

‘What about Ed?’

‘We got to hope he’s with us. I ain’t getting out to look. I doubt we’re the most popular people on this bridge right now.’

Ed stabbed his bayonet into the fat father and twisted. There was a splash of blood and a howl. He jerked the blade free, reversed the rifle and slammed the butt into a mother’s face. He didn’t stop now, but stabbed again, hacking into the sickos, splitting skulls, opening guts, hardly aware of what was going on. The square-headed boy was at his side, swearing with each jab of his fork, thrusting and grunting and kicking. Courtney and Aleisha were also still with him, but he was somehow alone, lost in a world of redness, cha