The Fear

Then he was aware of a fresh light and he looked up. Someone was shining a torch down at him.

‘Let me in!’

He heard voices, but couldn’t tell what they were saying. Filled with a mad fury he slammed an approaching father against the glass, and then kicked another in the guts. Jabbing left and right with his elbows he backed away from the windows, all the while yelling for help. He broke free of the huddle around him and was on the move again, darting madly to avoid a larger group of grown-ups who were trying to close in on him. The torch beam zigzagged across the road, like a spotlight in a prison-escape movie.

What were they doing up there? Were they going to help him or not?

‘Please! Help me!’ he wailed, his voice thin and weedy like a baby’s. He tore himself out of the grip of a very determined father and ran back towards the shop. He couldn’t get there, though. The strangers were going berserk. Half were attacking him, half seemed to be trying to break into the shop. The father was on him again and Jester managed to hurl him at a group of grown-ups who slammed into the glass. Shouting, screaming, punching and kicking, Jester fought his way back into the open and started ru

And then the faces of the strangers around him were suddenly lit red and orange, like spectators at a firework display. A flaming torch was sailing through the night sky, bright against the clouds. It landed with an explosion of sparks, scattering the strangers. Jester heard kids shouting a war cry.

He clamped his hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying.

It looked like he was going to be rescued.

Maybe there was a God after all.

50

Shadowman was in some kind of tu

There were noises from the depths of the tu

His four strangers lurked silently in the gloom. Waiting for something. He had made up nicknames for them. It made them somehow less threatening. The one with the earpiece he had named Bluetooth. The one in the football shirt was Man U. The half-naked father with the missing limb was the One-Armed Bandit. The fourth member of their group was a rather ordinary-looking father. If you could describe someone as ordinary when their skin was blistered and peeling off, and their hair was falling out. It was just that compared to the other three he had no obvious distinguishing features.

The thing about strangers, grown-ups, mothers and fathers – call them whatever you liked – was they all looked the same after a while. Diseased.

These four seemed quite patient. They squatted down, leaning against the far wall, now and then standing up and going over to peer out of the end of the tu

Otherwise they seemed happy to wait.

Shadowman was happy to wait too, because with every passing second he grew stronger. When the time came to fight and hopefully run, he was determined to be ready.

There was a hiss and snarl from the tu

When they dragged him out of the end of the tu

It was a football stadium. Overhead was a wide expanse of open sky and all around were ranks of seats. He tried to think which stadium it might be. If he was in north London, it had to be either the Spurs ground or the Arsenal. It was big enough and modern enough to be the new Arsenal stadium and that would make sense as it was the nearest one to King’s Cross.

The father he had seen silhouetted in the tu

Shadowman had never seen this level of organization among grown-ups before. The idea that they might have a leader, that they might work together, was something new to him. Most of the grown-ups had been driven out of the area around Buckingham Palace, so Shadowman hadn’t been able to observe how they behaved, but obviously those that had survived the year since the disease first struck were changing, developing, growing. Unless it was only the cleverer ones that had survived this long. If they started to properly work together they would become truly dangerous. He was appalled, scared, and yet fascinated by what he was seeing.

He noticed that there were more strangers in the stadium seating, as if watching the spectacle that was unfolding on the pitch. Like some sort of gladiatorial games.

Or a human sacrifice.

How many were there?

Shadowman realized he had withdrawn from what was going on. He was watching all this as if it was happening to someone else. He’d always been the type to stand back and observe – now he was spying on his own death.