The Fear

It was a tool, and tools were what had given mankind dominance over every other living thing on the planet. Just holding the knife had cleared her head and boosted the intelligence that made her the natural leader of the pack. And the powerful electric force that flowed through her from the cold, hard handle of the weapon brought back memories. Memories of all the things that she had lost. A glimpse into the perfect golden world she had lived in before the sickness had wormed its way inside her, wriggling and burrowing through her flesh. It had taken root in her just as the knife was doing now. She could see writhing tendrils snake out of the handle and dig into her flesh, joining with her veins and arteries. The power of the knife would banish the disease. She could see black lines on her skin. Was it a picture, perhaps? A picture of the disease?

She smiled.

See.

She was growing clever again. The knife was the key. The rest of the pack, they were too stupid to understand these things; all they could do was follow. Like animals. Hunting together.

Soon they’d go back underground to their new den by the tube tracks. They could only take the brightness for a little while. They’d rest, strengthened by this tiny meal, drink the water that rose up through the ground. And tomorrow they’d be strong enough to risk attacking any children who came past. As long as it was a small enough group. She would fall on them and she would gut them like she had gutted the rat thing.

She chuckled, blood dribbling from between her teeth.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow they would eat properly.

They’d found some children in the night, hiding in a building. The children had tried to use fire to drive them away. But the fire had turned on them, and they’d burned up. She dribbled as she remembered the smell of roasting meat, a pool of spit forming at her feet.

The children were in the kitchen, cooking.

When they’d finally got to them there was nothing left, just charred bones. So she’d brought the pack out to hunt in the daylight. She had to help them.

She was their mother … Was that right? Where had that thought come from? Was she the mother of the children who’d been cooking in the house? Or was she the mother of the pack? Was she the mother of them all?

Mother. Definitely a mother.

Before the worms had got into her body she had had real children. Not roasted ones. Babies of her own. Delicious babies. No, not delicious. That came later …

She snarled. Shook her head, trying to pin down her thoughts. They were tangled up, the threads of disease inside her, the roots of the knife inside her, the black lines on her skin, twisting and knotting, one thing leading to another …

Concentrate.

Where were her babies now? Where had she left them? She had no idea what had happened to them. The hard bright light bounced off the blade and drove deep into her brain. She moaned and her mind emptied. For a while no thoughts troubled her. No memories bubbled to the surface. She saw no pictures except the confusing black scrawl on her wrist. Then the blade turned, the light switched off and her mind flowered back into life. Thoughts came crowding in. She wasn’t looking at a picture of the disease, or roots from the knife, the black lines on her wrist were a tattoo. A Celtic tribal knot. Her boyfriend had one the same round his wrist …

What had happened to him? She had an image of a body covered in boils. The smell of decay. A man screaming as his face split down the middle. She pushed the memory aside and searched for happier ones. A hospital bed. A baby in a cot. A home. Polished wooden floors the colour of honey. A television. A ru

That was the most powerful image – the gym and all its machines. All working away together, parts of one giant machine. And there she was, watching the TV as she ran. And ran and ran and ran. Pictures on the TV now, of hospitals and doctors in white coats, talking. Not the same hospital. Not the one where she had had her baby. That was a different memory. She snarled again. No matter how hard she tried to hold on to the good memories, the bad ones were stronger. Sickness. Death. Pictures on the TV of the disease spreading. Ambulances. Hospitals overflowing with patients. Men in white coats talking …

That was all they’d ever done. Just talked. They hadn’t found a cure. There hadn’t been time …

The light stabbed at her eyes again and her memories twisted away from her, as if someone had pressed the delete button. Her screen was blank. All her memories were gone and she was back, tangled in the lines on her wrist.

Dirty. She tried to rub them off, and realized she was holding something in her other hand.

A knife.

Yes.

She had to hold on to it. Never let it go. It was power. Power over the children and power over her pack. She sniffed the air. Watched the dancing sunlight on her blade. She’d been thinking about something. What was it? Why couldn’t she fix her mind on one thing? She took in a long shuddering breath. Her lungs burned, scarred by illness. Her skin itched. Her eyes were raw; they felt like they’d been peeled. Her brain was too big for her head; the pressure gave her a permanent headache. Only one thing made the pain go away, made her thoughts slow down, only one thing gave her calm.

The blood that ran in the little ones’ veins. The flesh that wrapped their small thin bones. The life they held inside. A shame the ones in the house had got burned up, a terrible shame. It had forced her out in the daylight.

Well, from now on she was going to walk in the light. She had feared it for too long. If they hadn’t been disturbed by the hunters, forced from their den, maybe they’d never have learned.

It hurt. It confused them. But if they were careful they could survive it.

It wouldn’t be easy.

Small steps.

An hour a day. No matter how much it hurt.

Like going to the gym.

Enough. Time to go back into the darkness. She hissed to the pack and led them out of the park. As they walked down the street, shrinking from the sun’s rays, she saw something glinting. Something she needed. She walked closer.

It was a shop, and lined up in the broken window were glasses, and there, at one end, was a model head wearing sunglasses. She laughed.

Clever.

Use tools.

That was how it worked. That was what would make her strong. The mother of the pack. The rest of them were useless. They had no idea that they had once used tools, driven cars, worked in offices; their hands hadn’t just been for stuffing their stupid faces.

‘You’re fired,’ she grunted – the first words she had spoken for as long as she could remember – as she reached in for the sunglasses. Ignoring the broken glass that gashed her arm.

She lifted the glasses off the dummy. Raised them to her face. As she put them on, she started to laugh.

She had been queen of the night, now she would be queen of the day too. Tomorrow she would catch some children.

She turned her face up to the sky and screamed at the sun.

‘You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired …’

53

Shadowman was lying on his belly, looking out through the bottom of a floor-to-ceiling picture window. The rest of the glass was filthy with dust and grime, but he’d cleared a patch just big enough to give him a good view of the outside world without being spotted.

He was four floors up in a flat opposite the smouldering Arsenal stadium. It had been a mad scramble getting away, battling through the slow and confused strangers who lived in there. His gang of four had given chase, but he’d been too fast for them. They may have been cleverer and less diseased than most of their kind, but they were still clumsy and uncoordinated. The worst part had been when he’d gone through to the back of the stands and down the access stairs to try to find a street exit. He’d ended up ru