'Why is this happening, Ed?'
'Don't think about that,' Ed whispered into his ear. 'I've found some food, mate.'
Jack feebly pushed him away, nodded, smiled. Ed slotted a peach slice between his lips, and Jack's whole face lit up like a little kid given ice cream. He worked his jaws, dripping juice and bits of peach down his front.
'I feel like someone in a cartoon,' he said. 'You know when they've been shot and they drink a glass of water and it all spurts out of little holes all over them.'
He tried to laugh, but it hurt him too much and Ed helped him back to the sofa.
'I need to look at you again,' he said. 'I need to sort out whatever Greg did to you and put some clean bandages on.'
'Where's Bam?'
Ed didn't know what to say, whether he should protect his friend. He felt numb and blank.
In the end he simply said, 'Bam's dead.'
Jack just said, 'Oh,' and closed his eyes. The conversation had worn him out and his brief rally was over.
Ed lifted his shirt, dreading what he would find. It was awful. Greg's cleaver had sliced through the original bandages just below Jack's ribs. It was impossible to tell how deep the wound was without prodding and probing and risking making it worse. Instead he set to with antiseptic and did what he could with the bandages, but he was no nurse.
When he was done, he gave Jack some water and some more peaches. It seemed to revive him a little and he summoned the strength to speak. Although it was only one word.
'Bedroom.'
'Come on then.'
Ed once again took Jack on his aching shoulder and they stumbled awkwardly across the room, back out into the hallway and over to the foot of the stairs.
'D'you think you can make it up?' Ed asked. Jack nodded and took hold of the banister.
Up they went, step by agonizing step, Jack growing weaker all the way. They made it eventually, though. How long had it taken? Half an hour? An hour? Ed had no real sense of time any more. It was still light outside, though, so it couldn't be that late.
When they reached the landing, Jack was almost passed out again and Ed had to look around for any clues as to which might be the door to his room. One of them had a 'KEEP OUT' sign on it with a skull and crossbones dripping blood. How old had Jack been when he'd put it there, he wondered. For it must surely be Jack's room. It wasn't the sort of sign girls put up. He must have been maybe ten, younger even. Parents liked to hang on to ancient things.
They groped their way along to the door and Ed pushed it open. A thin layer of dust covered everything but otherwise the room looked untouched.
There was a narrow single bed along one wall, with a dark blue duvet on it. Above the bed was an old poster for Casino Royale; one corner had come away and was hanging down, a flattened lump of Blu-Tack stuck to it. Ed lowered Jack on to the bed and without thinking pushed the corner of the poster back up so that it stuck to the wall.
He sat next to Jack and took in the rest of the room. It was a typical boy's bedroom. There was a little desk, and a bookshelf. Old books mostly. Jack had been away from home at boarding school for the last couple of years. There was Harry Potter, Alex Rider, Melvin Burgess, Robert Muchamore. A stack of comics sat on the floor, a 'Marvel Zombies' on the top. Ed recognized the Kev Walker cover. He'd read that one. Enjoyed it. On either side of the door were a poster of Lady Gaga and a framed print of a piece of Banksy graffiti the two guys from Pulp Fiction with bananas instead of guns. There was another shelf of trophies near the window, for football and cricket and swimming, even one for trampolining. And there Ed's heart snagged against his ribs a photograph of the two of them, Jack and Ed, taken after the school team won a football tournament in Holland. Ed stood up and went over to take a closer look. He remembered when it had been taken so well. It was two years ago; they would both have been twelve. They looked so young, another lifetime. Ed had long hair back then. Jack looked happy and relaxed. The two of them stood with their arms round each other's shoulders, smiling straight at the camera, not a worry in the world.
As Ed was studying the photograph, he caught sight of a face reflected in the glass of the frame and he spun round in fright, thinking he'd seen the face of a sicko.
Idiot. Jumpy idiot. Not a sicko.
There was a wardrobe across the room with a mirror in the door. He went to it, hardly daring to look.
No wonder he'd mistaken himself for a sicko.
The boy who stood looking back at him was in a right state. Covered in blood, his face pale and plastered with soot and ash. Most of the tissue paper had fallen off his cheek, but a few crusty black scraps remained, stuck to a long gash that was mostly scabbed over, but still bled in a couple of spots. His left eye was bruised and swollen shut. His right eye was ringed with dark purple.
The young fresh-faced boy in the photo might have been a different person.
He went back over to Jack, who was lying on his back, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. Already the duvet was darkening around him where his blood was soaking into it. He was shivering.
And then Ed remembered something.
There was a toy box in the corner. He lifted the lid and rifled through it. It was full of Lego, and old Action Men with no heads and arms. There were also bits of Bionicle and some half-painted Warhammer figures. Nearer the bottom were some plastic zoo animals. But no stuffed toys.
He closed the lid and looked around the room. A battered cardboard box sat on top of the wardrobe. He pulled it down, his shoulders screaming.
It was full of cuddly toys a duck, a cow, three teddies, a snake and there ... a dog, with long floppy ears and a silly smile. One of the ears was worn away almost to nothing.
Floppy Dog.
He took it over to Jack and put it in his hands. Immediately Jack's fingers found the frayed ear and started to rub at it.
Ed lay down next to his friend and put his arm round him. Jack felt very cold and still.
'Are you awake?'
'Yes,' Jack whispered, barely making a sound.
'You're home, mate,' said Ed. 'In your own bed.'
'I know. It's good. There's nothing like your own bed, is there? It doesn't hurt any more, you know. I think I'm getting better.'
'Yeah.'
'When I was little ... I wish I was little again ...' Jack was finding it hard to speak. 'At primary school. Nothing seemed to matter then. Everything was easy. There was nothing to worry about. Except when I had to cram to do the entrance exams for Rowhurst, but even that ... It seems, as you get older, there's just more and more to worry about. I wish I was at home with Mum.'
'You are home, Jack.'
'Oh yes ...' Jack opened his eyes and looked at his old toy. 'Yay, Floppy Dog,' he said, then closed his eyes again. 'Is it all over now, Ed? Is it safe?'
'Yeah. It's safe, mate. We'll be safe now. In the morning we'll get up and have some breakfast, then go down the shops maybe they'll be open again. And then ...'
'It's all right, Ed. You don't have to.'
'OK.'
'You know, Ed, I'm sorry I ever called you a coward. You're not a coward. You're brave. You're really brave. You got me home. You didn't leave me. You're my best friend, Ed.'
'And you're my best friend, Jack, you always will be.'
'Thanks.'
Neither of them said anything else. They didn't need to. There was nothing more to say. Ed watched the square of sky at the window as it faded to pink, then grey, then dark blue, then black. There was no moon tonight but the sky was splashed with millions of bright stars, more than Ed had ever seen before. He pictured himself flying up out of the little room, up on into the night sky, and then out into the solar system, past the planets and out into the endless reaches of space. The two of them lying here, alone in the empty house, didn't mean so much really, did they?
55.
Brooke, Courtney and Aleisha lay squashed together on a couple of mattresses in the 1940s house. They could hear Froggie whimpering. Luckily Frederique's teeth hadn't broken through the sleeve of his jumper and drawn blood, but he had a nasty purple bruise in the perfect shape of her jaws, as if he'd been bitten by a miniature shark, and he was really upset by the incident. It was the shock more than the pain that was making him cry now. For a little while they'd all felt safe. Happy. Not any more. They knew that an attack could come from anywhere at any time.
The girls couldn't get the image out of their minds, Frederique, with her teeth clamped on the little boy's arm not letting go, her long hair falling about her face. The other kids milling about shrieking and yelling, nobody knowing what to do. In the end Jordan Hordern had rescued Froggie. He'd come down from the upper floor, calmly walked over to Frederique and chopped her in the side of the neck with his hand.
DogNut and Jordan had then taken her limp body away.
'Is that gonna happen to the rest of us?' Aleisha asked, staring at the flickering night-light, glad of the warmth of her two friends on either side of her.
'Don't think about it,' said Brooke. 'Get some sleep.'
'I can't. Whenever I close my eyes, all I can, like, see is her, coming at me, like a witch, saying all this, like, French stuff, like bonjour, mercy, Moulin Rouge ...'
'French is a stupid language,' said Courtney, 'and France is a dump.'
'Don't be scared of her,' said Brooke. 'She's locked up. She can't hurt you now.'
'What if she gets out, comes creeping through the museum? I don't like it here.'
'I always found her creepy,' said Courtney. 'I never trusted her. I had, like, a what you call it, sick sense.'
'You was just jealous,' said Brooke.
'Wha-aat?'
'Yeah, because she's, like, thin, and you're, like, fat.'
'Bro-ooke!' said Aleisha, appalled. 'What you saying? You didn't ought to say things like that.'
'Yeah,' said Courtney. 'I ain't fat. I'm big.'
'Yeah, big and fat.' Brooke gave a snort of laughter. 'I don't know how you do it, girl, with what we get to eat. You're like that fat guy in Lost, Hurley. Crashes a plane on a, like, desert island, where there's no McDonald's or nothing, and doesn't get any thinner after, like, weeks.'
'I ain't fat, Brooke!'
Brooke laughed and leant over Aleisha to give Courtney a little squeeze.
'I don't love you any less because you're XL, girl. You are who you are. My mate. I don't care what you look like. I'm just saying you didn't like Lady Ooh-La-La because she's skinny. Ain't that right?'
'No,' said Courtney. 'I don't like Frederique because she's a sicko who tried to eat Froggie.'
'Can we talk about something else?' said Aleisha. 'It's freaking me out. I don't feel safe no more. The sooner the boys get back the better.'
56.
When Ed woke, there was light in the sky. For a long while he didn't move. His whole body was stiff and chilly, gripped by a knotted web of aches and pains. At last he gently untangled his arm out from under Jack's head and then very carefully closed his eyelids. Jack's skin was completely cold now, except for the strip along his side where Ed's body had been pressed against him.
'Goodbye, mate,' said Ed, but he had no more tears inside him.
At least Jack had died happy, at home, in his own bed, among his old familiar things. He looked very peaceful, lying there with his old dog for company.
Ed levered himself up off the mattress and stood on the carpet, trying to stretch some of the stiffness away. When he felt strong enough, he went down into the kitchen and looked out at the garden. The plants were shaking and bending in a strong wind. Shrubs and nettles and brambles and weeds were being tossed about as if some giant hand was stirring them.
It was morning, but still gloomy. The dark smoke cloud now filled most of the sky and there was the red glow of fire nearby. He could smell the smoke. It reminded him of when they'd broken into the church and found Mad Matt and the others passed out.
How long ago was that? It felt like weeks. But it wasn't, was it? It had only been three days.
He coughed. He would have to hurry. The fire was obviously blowing closer. There was a row of books on a dresser. He scanned the titles. They were cookbooks mostly but he was searching for something that you could be pretty sure of finding in every house in London. An A to Z.
There!
He pulled it out. It was filled with maps of all the streets in London. He looked up Jack's address and followed the route back to the War Museum with his finger. He checked it and rechecked it, memorizing street names. Once he was sure what he was doing he slipped the A to Z into his back pocket and then went over to one of the drawers he'd looked through last night and fished out a box of matches. Finally he grabbed a cookbook at random then went back upstairs.
He opened Jack's bedroom window and looked out into the road. The wind was blowing rubbish along but there was no sign of any people out and about. Before he'd finally fallen asleep last night he'd heard them, the sickos who came out after dark, wandering the streets, fighting, looking for food, but none had come near the house.
He tore a handful of pages from the cookbook, screwed them up and put them under Jack's bed. Then he packed in anything else he could find that would burn more books, comics, teddies, clothes and set light to it all with a couple of matches. In a few moments there was a blaze going and the room was filling with smoke.
'See you, Jack,' he said, tucked Floppy Dog into his friend's arms, kissed him on the forehead and went out.
He ran down the stairs, stuffed as much food as he could carry into his pack, shoved his pistol into its holster, grabbed the bike from the hallway, then opened the front door and went out into the street. He looked up at the house. Already Jack's bedroom was filled with flames and smoke was pouring out of the open window.
At least Jack wouldn't be found by any scavengers.
Ed turned away, got on the bike and started pedalling.
57.