'Angus Day?' said Jibber-jabber, not sounding convinced. 'Why would he want you to write Angus Day?'
'We don't know why, not yet, but we'll find out,' said Archie. 'It'll be shown to us.'
Matt stood there, struggling to find something good in this. He could see what Archie was doing. He was trying to make the best of it and stop the others from laughing at them. But Matt really wished that Harry hadn't got it so wrong. Not both bloody words.
Angus Day! If Matt wasn't so furious, he would have been laughing too.
One of Jordan's boys came in. He glanced expressionlessly at the banner then looked round at the kids.
'Your mates are back,' he said. 'Nice flag. Who's Angus Day?'
45.
The smell had got worse deeper, thicker, more intense. It was a strange mixture of familiar comforting smells, like bonfires and barbecues and wood-burning stoves, all jumbled up with unpleasant smells that shouldn't go together with them rotting food, chemistry lessons, dust and blocked toilets.
'How come we can smell rotting food and cooking food at the same time?' said Bam, wrinkling his nose as he walked.
'Maybe it's not rotting food,' said Ed. 'Maybe it's chemicals of some sort.'
'Great,' said Bam. 'We're probably being poisoned as we speak.'
'It's the gas from the holders,' said Jack. 'Must be.'
Ed stopped in the road. 'Should we turn back?'
'You can cut out if you want,' said Jack, who carried on walking. 'But I'm not giving up now.'
'Wait, guys, look at that.'
Bam was staring at a big redbrick building that rose up six storeys high.
'That's the main stand of the Oval cricket ground,' said Ed. 'I was there last summer.'
'I know what it is,' said Bam. 'I don't mean the Oval, I mean that ...'
Ed and Jack peered at the building, trying to work out what Bam was going on about.
And then they saw it.
Clustered round the gates to the ground were police cars, military vehicles, crowd control barriers, an outside broadcast van with a TV transmitter on the roof.
People moving about.
'Oh my God,' said Ed, his insides lurching. 'Is that for real?'
'Well, it's not a mirage, is it?' said Jack. 'It's not like we're in the desert or anything. So I'd say, yes, it must be real.'
Ed tried not to get his hopes up. Maybe, though, just maybe, they'd been wrong. Things hadn't fallen completely apart. His heart was racing, thoughts chasing each other round his tired mind.
'Civilization,' said Bam. 'If the police and the army are there, then, I mean, then we're saved. There are people still alive, proper people, adults not affected by the disease. You know what this means, don't you? There might be a cure after all.'
'I don't know,' said Jack. 'I don't know what it means.'
'Well, let's go and find out,' said Bam.
'Be careful,' said Jack. 'I've seen films where the survivors try to get help and the army thinks they're infected and they shoot them.'
'Let's risk it,' said Bam.
They moved out of the road on to the pavement where they hurried along, keeping close to the buildings even though Ed pointed out that there was a greater risk of being ambushed by any sickos who might be hiding in the area.
'Come off it,' said Bam. 'There won't be any sickos within a million miles of here, not with that lot waiting for them over there.'
'Guys?' said Jack, slowing down.
'What?'
'Why are we assuming that the police and the army and whoever are going to be alive?'
'Oh crap,' said Ed, skidding to a halt and ducking behind a parked car. 'Good point.'
'But I can see people moving about,' said Bam.
'What sort of people?' Ed asked.
'A couple of soldiers, a policeman.'
'Are they diseased soldiers, or are they fit and healthy soldiers?'
'It's too far away to tell with my lousy eyesight.'
'Then we should be very, very bloody careful until we can be sure either way,' said Jack.
Now they darted from car to car, trying to keep out of sight as they steadily worked their way closer.
'When I get back to the museum, I'm going to get a pair of binocs,' said Bam.
'I'm going to get a tank,' said Ed. 'Life would be a lot easier in a tank.'
At last they were near enough to see clearly what was going on. They hid behind a big black 44 and peered ahead.
'Bollocks,' Jack hissed.
There were two soldiers and a policeman walking around, but apart from that nothing was moving. It looked like a scene from a DVD on pause. Some big disaster movie. The security forces lined up ready for action ... but staying absolutely still.
There were more soldiers sitting in Jeeps, and policemen in vans, a small crowd pressed up against some barriers, and not one of them stirred.
'They're all dead,' said Bam, deflated. 'Apart from those three, they're all dead.'
Now they became aware of more bodies, scattered everywhere. On the ground, in the vehicles, by the entrance gates to the Oval. It looked as if there had been a battle of some sort. Most of the dead bodies weren't in uniform. They were mothers and fathers, teenagers, many with bullet wounds.
'At least we know now what that smell was,' said Bam, covering his face with his scarf. 'It was two different things. The smell of the fire was masking the smell of dead bodies.'
'What d'you think was going on here?' said Ed.
'No idea,' said Jack.
'It looks like they were guarding something,' Ed suggested.
'The Oval?' said Jack. 'Why would the army want to guard a cricket ground? What were they scared the public was going to break in and carry off the stumps?'
'You got a better suggestion?'
'Maybe there's something else inside,' said Bam. 'Maybe the government was stockpiling supplies, or weapons, or the crown jewels, or something?'
'We should take a look,' said Jack.
'What?' Ed spluttered. 'No way. We get well away from here. This is nothing to do with us.'
'There's only three of them moving about,' said Jack. 'We could take them easy.'
'But why bother?'
'Whatever's in there,' said Jack, 'it was obviously valuable enough for people to try and break in.'
'Sick people probably,' said Ed. 'Sick idiots who don't know anything.'
Jack sat in the road, his back against the car. 'It's definitely worth taking a look,' he said as the others squatted down next to him. 'What if it's like Bam says? A huge emergency food supply? We'd be set up for life. It'd make that lorry look like chicken feed.'
Ed had his hand clamped over his mouth and nose, trying to keep the stench out.
'Jack,' he said. 'I thought all you wanted was to get home.'
'I know ... I do ... I really do. But we should still look. If we can get rid of those three mugs, we can find some more guns. There have to be guns there. Proper modern working guns. And then we'll be invincible.'
Ed ground his teeth in frustration. 'Why don't we just go to yours?' he said. 'Do whatever it is you need to do, then get back to the museum before dark? We could come back here in the morning with some of the guys, DogNut and the others, a proper fighting unit.'
'You're such a coward, Ed,' said Jack. 'We'll be all right. Just think what might be inside there waiting for us. The place is huge. I mean it's the size of, well, the size of a cricket pitch, for God's sake. There might be food. There might be weapons. There might even be medicine. All three!'
'Come on, Ed,' said Bam. 'We're here now. Let's just find out what's in there, or we won't be able to think about anything else.'
'All right, all right.' Ed realized he was beaten. 'We'll look inside. But let's see if there's any guns first, like Jack said.'
They stood up and gave each other a high five, though Ed's slap was pretty half-hearted. Then they carried on towards the Oval, staying low and using cars for cover.
Finally they sneaked across the road to the line of security vehicles.
They checked whether there were any more sickos moving about. As far as they could see, though, there were just the two soldiers and the policeman.
One of the soldiers had a small machine gun hanging over his shoulder on a strap, but now they were closer they realized he was pretty far gone, slow and clumsy, his face eaten away by disease. The other soldier was equally wrecked. In the boys' experience the sicker the adults were the less likely they were to remember how to use any tools or weapons, and usually attacked with just their bare hands. The policeman was a complete mess, with one ear dangling down by his chin and his features replaced with a cluster of glistening blisters.
'I'll take the soldiers,' Bam whispered, checking his shotgun. 'You two go for the policeman.'
'I can't do it,' said Ed. 'I can't just kill them.'
'Come on,' said Bam. 'Look at them. We'll be doing them a favour, putting them out of their misery.'
'No.' Ed squatted down behind a police van, covering his face with his hands.
'You do it. I can't.'
Jack tutted and drew his sword from its scabbard.
'Wait here.'
'All right.'
Ed couldn't watch. He crouched there, hands over his face. He heard his friends' footsteps. There was a moment's silence then there came two loud blasts, followed by the sounds of a scuffle and a body hitting the ground.
'You can come out now,' Jack called to Ed in a slightly sing-song way, as if talking to a toddler. 'It's all safe.'
Ed stood up, still not wanting to look. He walked round the van and over to where Bam and Jack were waiting for him. He was aware of the dark shapes of bodies on the ground.
He told himself that it didn't make any difference. That these were just three more bodies to add to the piles of corpses that were already here. He forced his eyes round. He had to accept the way things were now. Somehow he had to become as hardened as Jack and Bam.
Jack was wiping his sword clean on the dead policeman's jacket. Bam was pulling the machine gun off the soldier.
'You want this?' he said, offering it to Jack. 'I'm sticking with my shottie.'
'I sure do.'
'Do you know how to use that?' Ed asked as Jack started turning the gun in his hands.
'No but I can find out.'
Parked on the other side of the outer wall that surrounded the grounds were four open-backed lorries. The sort builders used to remove rubble from building sites. They were piled high with corpses. Next to them was a fleet of ambulances, their back doors hanging open, paramedics lying by the wheels.
Whenever he'd watched the news he'd never imagined that one day he'd be part of a story. But now the news had come to town in a big way and there was no one left to record it. The corpses by the TV cameras were blind and deaf. There were no zombified news reporters standing there giving the viewers the statistics.
'The whole population of London has been wiped out ...'