'They won't be any trouble. They'll do whatever I tell them.'

David shouted some orders and the boys began to take off their packs and find places to sit.

'You got 'em well drilled,' said Jordan as he led David back upstairs.

'Without discipline we would all be dead,' said David. 'Wasn't it the explorer Roald Amundsen who said "adventure is just bad planning"?'

'Was it?'

'I think it was.'

'You remind me a lot of me,' said Jordan. 'And that is not necessarily a good thing. There's not room here for two generals.'

'I appreciate that,' said David. 'But I'm sure we can come to some arrangement.'

Jordan laughed briefly. 'We'll see about that,' he said.

DogNut put a hand on Ed's shoulder.

'I'm sorry about Jack and Bam,' he said. 'They was good people.'

'Yeah,' said Ed. 'The best. We should never have gone. Just three of us.' He looked towards the cafe. Brooke had disappeared. 'Is everyone all right here?'

'Need to talk to you about that, blood.'

'What?' Ed looked at DogNut. He'd been assuming that the rest of the coach party were safe.

'It's the French girl,' said DogNut.

'Frederique? What's happened to her?'

'You better come see for yourself. Don't sweat, everyone else is fine. Is just her.'

'Where is she? Is she hurt?'

'We had to lock her up in the Blitz Experience,' said DogNut, leading Ed to the back of the atrium. 'To keep it safe.'

The Blitz Experience was a mock-up of a wartime air-raid shelter and part of a bombed-out London street. Ed had visited it once a couple of years ago. He remembered sound effects of planes going over and air-raid sirens and falling bombs and explosions, with radio announcements and cheesy recorded cockney voices taking you through it all. None of that would be working now. It would be dark and silent in there with no power for its lights and sounds.

DogNut fetched a candle and a rifle with a fixed bayonet and gave them to Ed, then, as they went down to the next level, he briefly explained what had happened.

'D'you want me to come in with you?' he asked as he unlocked the doors. 'Just in case?'

'I don't know.' Ed waited by the entrance. 'Is she dangerous?'

'She's locked up. Handcuffed to a chain. But don't get too close.'

'I'll see her alone.' Ed stepped through into the darkness. 'She knows me. She might be better with just one other person.'

'All right. Good luck, brother.' DogNut closed the door behind him.

61.

The way in was through the fake air-raid shelter, little more than a concrete box with benches down the sides and reproductions of old wartime propaganda posters. Ed walked to the far end and went through to the main exhibit. There was a ruined street here with views across a miniature London skyline towards a cut-out of St Paul's. He saw Frederique at the far end by a bomb-damaged shop, sitting on an old wooden chair. She was hunched over, hugging herself, her arms tight over her stomach. She was bundled up in a big puffy jacket and a long skirt. A loop of chain snaked out from under her chair to an iron railing that was part of the set. There was a plate of untouched food next to her, a plastic bottle of water and a bucket that she hadn't used. Lying on the floor next to the plate was what looked like a small, half-eaten chicken leg.

'Frederique ...?'

As Ed approached her, she raised one hand to cover her eyes and gave a little gasp. Ed shielded the flame.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Is that better?'

'It's too bright,' said Frederique.

Ed wondered whether to blow the candle out it was clearly distressing her. Instead he took it to the far end of the exhibit and put it behind the flat frontage of the London skyline. The flickering light gave a feeble impression of the old flame effect they'd used to bring the blitzed cityscape alive. He left the rifle down here as well, so as not to frighten Frederique.

As he made his way back to her she watched him intently with staring eyes, her pupils so wide they looked like great black holes in her head.

Ed sat down on a piece of scenery.

'Is that better?'

Frederique sniffed the air. 'Oui.'

Ed's eyes were slowly growing used to the dark. He could see that there was moisture glistening around Frederique's nose and mouth and a run of spots in the shadow beneath her chin.

'How are you doing?' he asked gently.

'It is better in here.' Frederique's voice sounded low and dull. 'Outside it was too bright. The sun was too hot. I couldn't think right. You know? In here it is more quiet. The voices in my head are asleep. Where is Jack?'

'He's ... He's OK. He wanted to stay longer at his house.' Ed couldn't bear to tell her the truth. 'There were things he wanted to do,' he added lamely.

'I would like to see him. To talk to him.'

'You can talk to me.'

'All right.'

But Ed didn't know what to say to her. How to approach what had happened. And it was obvious what that was. He sat there for a long while just looking at her while she stared into the distance, hardly moving, leaning forward, folded in her arms.

In the end Ed realized there was no easy way to ask what he wanted to ask, so he just came straight out with it.

'Frederique?'

'Oui?'

'How old are you?'

Frederique sighed. She closed her eyes. Her head dropped so that she was curled into a ball on her seat.

'Fifteen,' she said quietly. 'Nearly sixteen.'

'Right ...' Everything became very clear to Ed. It had been staring them in the face all along, but they'd misread all the signs. 'That's what you were scared of, wasn't it?' he said. 'Not the adults. The disease.'

'Yes. I thought that maybe when Greg was not sick there was some hope for me. But then ... even he ... I am very hungry, Ed.'

'There's food here. They've given you food.'

'I can't eat this. I need ... Oh ... I did not used to eat meat. Now ... All I want ... I don't know what I want ... what I don't want.'

'I'm so sorry, Fred.'

'I'm going to die, aren't I?'

'Not necessarily, I mean, not everyone ...'

Frederique gave a short bitter laugh. 'No,' she said. 'You are right. Not everyone dies. You think that will be good, yes? To be like them. I have seen them. I don't want to be like them. They are ... red.' Again Frederique sniffed.

'Red?'

'The word, I don't know, the English word ... red ... rouge ... sang ... Oh ...'

Frederique mumbled something in French that Ed didn't understand.

'How bad is it?' he asked.

Snot ran out of Frederique's nose and she snorted it back in.

'I have a, what you call, un mal de tete?' she said.

'A headache?'

'Yes. And my stomach is bad. It is alive. My skin itch. I want to scratch all the time. Scratch-scratch. In the light I can't think. In here I am safe. But I don't know how long ...'

She raised her head and looked at Ed with her wide black eyes, the whites tinged with pink. Her nostrils widened and she sucked in air through her nose. It bubbled and rattled in her throat.

She sighed, licked her dry lips, then pulled her long hair back from one ear.

'Look.'

Ed leant closer. There was a growth of ugly fat boils, full of pus. They clustered around her ear and inside it, blocking the hole. From there they ranged down her neck and under her chin, getting smaller as they went.

'That is not the worst,' she said. 'My body is the worst. Oh, Ed, I do not want to be sick. I do not want the red to have a baby.'

'Sorry? What? I don't get it.'

'I didn't mean to say that. I ... I want to say ... I don't know. I need to eat. But I am so dry. Do you have some water, please?'

'There's a bottle there,' said Ed. 'Do you want me to open it for you?'

'Thank you, you are very kind, a kind of mechant.'

'What's that?' Ed asked, picking up the bottle. 'Is that a French word?'

'I don't know. Why is it so dark?'

'You said the light hurts your eyes,' said Ed, unscrewing the lid.

'What?'

'You asked me why '

'I didn't say anything.'

'Here. Drink some of this.' Ed kept his distance and stretched the bottle out towards her. Even from here he could smell a wet-dog stench coming off her.

She made no move to take the bottle and he shuffled closer. She was a pathetic figure. He felt sorry for her, not scared. Then he heard a drip and looked down to see that there was a puddle of blood beneath her chair.

There was something wrong about this.

He looked at the bottle, the plate of food, the scrap of raw chicken on the floor. The skin white. Raw.

No. That didn't make sense.

Why would they give her raw chicken?

She wasn't an animal.

And that wasn't chicken.

He looked again.

It was a human thumb. With a bloody flap of skin around the base and the white stub of a broken bone sticking out.

Ed swallowed. His mouth was dry as dust.

Whose thumb was it?

It must be hers.

But why would she tear off her own thumb?