The Sacrifice

by Charlie Higson

  One had a gun.

  ‘Stay back!’ he said, and the three trapped children cleared the opening. The boy fired his gun through the bars. There was a loud bang and a gout of stinking smoke puffed into the stairwell. If the bullet hit anything it didn’t show. For a moment, though, the grown-ups stopped in their tracks.

  One of the other boys was fiddling with the padlock. He had a bunch of keys hanging from a chain on his belt.

  ‘I can’t remember which one it is,’ he said.

  ‘Hurry up!’ said Tish.

  The grown-ups were still holding back, trying to make sense of this new development.

  ‘Fear of the cutter!’ The Kid shouted and he darted back at them, hoping to finish off the father whose head he had shredded. He raised his broken blade then chopped once, twice down the man’s face, splitting his nose in two.

  ‘Got it!’ said the boy with the keys.

  ‘Come on!’

  There was a rattling noise as the chain was pulled free of the gate.

  The Kid hacked again and at last the father went over. He tripped and fell backwards down the stairs, trying to stop the rest of his face from falling off with his hands. Encouraged by The Kid’s success Sam stabbed the tall father in the throat. It was enough to stop him and then Sam felt himself being yanked out through the open gate.

  He was dumped in the street. The two boys with spears poked them through the opening to keep the grown-ups back while the one with the keys fought to slide the gates shut, before refastening them with the chain and making the padlock secure.

  Sam noticed that there were four more boys out here, all dressed in variations of army combat clothing. For a moment he allowed himself to feel safe. He couldn’t stop his body from shaking, though, and his stomach was burning with acid. He leant forward and threw up on the pavement.

  The soldier boys formed a protective group around Sam, Tish and The Kid.

  ‘Can you walk?’ said the one with the keys and the gun. He was tall, looked like an athlete.

  Sam nodded and the boy helped him to his feet.

  ‘It’s not far.’

  Sam was too numb to say anything. Tish took his hand and he walked in dazed silence down a paved area between some modern buildings. Ahead of them was the side of St Paul’s Cathedral. A mass of white pillars, arches, statues, windows and carved stonework rising high above the streets to the great black dome at the top.

  ‘They got past the barricades again, Nathan,’ Tish said to the tall boy.

  ‘We’ll sort it.’

  Sam wasn’t really paying attention. He felt sick and numb, the blood pounding in his ears. He looked at the imposing bulk of St Paul’s. It must have seen a lot in the hundreds of years it had stood here – riots, fires, the Blitz – but surely nothing as strange as what had happened in the last few months.

  Sam found it quite reassuring. That it was still here. Whatever happened, whoever lived and died, the cathedral would still be here. The world carried on.

  They turned as they reached the cathedral grounds and walked round the edge. Where exactly were these boys taking him? Sam looked at them properly for the first time. They’d been at the dressing-up box. It was funny what the different groups around London wore. They’d had no uniform in Holloway where Sam had been living. Not like the kids at the Tower with their armour and their swords and their medieval outfits. This lot, whoever they were, obviously preferred the modern army look. Tish fitted in very well with them in her green shirt and trousers.

  She fitted in too well.

  One of them had an identical wound to hers on his forehead.

  Sam almost stopped – it suddenly struck him: she knew them. How else had she known they’d hear her shouts? And she’d used the boy’s name – Nathan – just now, hadn’t she? But this wasn’t Trafalgar Square.

  Sam looked more closely at the boys. What he had thought were army clothes weren’t necessarily that. Some of them were wearing green-dyed trousers and hoodies.

  They came round to the front of St Paul’s and Sam was amazed to see a load more kids there, standing quietly, as if waiting for them. There was something odd, and yet familiar, about them and it was a moment before it hit Sam.

  They were all wearing green.

  Like the soldiers.

  Like Tish.

  He looked up at her and she smiled at him.

  ‘You’ll be all right now,’ she said.

  Why didn’t he believe her?

  The world spun round him.

  If he hadn’t already emptied his guts he’d have done it now.

  Why didn’t he believe anything she had told him?

  20

  Sam and The Kid were hustled up the steps at the front of St Paul’s and in through the great central doors that were standing wide open.

  Sam wasn’t sure if he’d ever been inside the cathedral before. If he had he must have been so little he couldn’t remember anything about it. It was vast in here, like something out of a fantasy computer game; the ceiling looked impossibly high, held up by pillars and arches. Marble statues stood everywhere. Painted scenes, gold and red and blue, covered every surface. You couldn’t take it all in in one go. Sam noticed, though, that there were plants in there. The kids had brought in branches and fixed them round the walls, and there were more things growing in pots, jungly plants with big leaves, climbers, great sprouting things.

  He heard a squawk and something scurried across the aisle in front of him. It was a chicken. He saw now that there were loads of them, wandering around all over the place. Crapping on the tiled floor. Running in between the legs of the children who were sitting on a field of chairs, dressed in green. As Sam went past, they dropped to their knees and stared at the floor. It was freaking him out. This huge open space, large enough to fit twenty houses inside it. The plants. The chickens. The quiet kids falling to the floor …

  All his senses were being bombarded at once. There were fires smouldering in braziers and incense burners hanging everywhere he looked. They filled the cathedral with smoke. It hung up by the ceiling like a cloud and the light streaming in through the high windows caught in the blue haze, so that Sam felt like he was entering heaven.

  The smoke stung his eyes, though, and they were already watering so badly that he had to wipe away tears. His dry throat was further irritated. He was soon coughing and spluttering. The sickly scent of the incense mixed with a woody smell from the braziers and the occasional waft of something harsh and bitter.

  Then there was the noise. A group of kids was playing musical instruments and their din filled the cathedral like the smoke, adding to Sam’s confusion. Some of the musicians were banging percussion instruments – bongos, cymbals, drums, cowbells, tambourines – hammering out a rhythm in exactly the same way as the grown-ups outside.

  What had The Kid called them? The Clickee Cult.

  Others were playing violins and guitars, saxophones, flutes and trumpets, anything they could get their hands on. Those who didn’t have an instrument were singing, or rather chanting, wordless ums and ahs. They were like some deranged school band. There didn’t seem to be a tune or even any kind of set pattern. They were all just blowing and scraping and banging, setting up a hypnotic drone. Most of the time it made a horrible discord, but every now and then the different sounds came together and a melody of sorts would rise up and open out and fly, only to collapse and return to the chaotic musical stew.

  Sam’s whole body was throbbing and tingling. Waves of pain pulsed through him. There was a growing ache behind his eyes. He was suddenly hungry and thirsty and tired …

  A few minutes ago he’d been in a blind panic, trapped in the dark tunnels, the worst place on earth, and now he was here. It was a weird dream whose parts didn’t fit together. Just as the music kept drifting between beautiful and ugly, between order and chaos, his own mood kept swinging – between relief that he had got away and fear of what was going on now, between happiness and confusion …

  ‘Be
tween the devil and the deep blue sea,’ said The Kid, almost as if he had been reading Sam’s thoughts.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Sam.

  ‘Beats me with a stick,’ said The Kid.

  Sam asked the same question, louder, to one of the boys who were escorting them. The boy said nothing. Made a point of ignoring Sam. Wouldn’t look at him. Kept marching forward.

  They came to two rows of carved wooden seats facing each other across the narrower end of the cathedral. In the past, when there had been services, the choir would have sat here. Now it was where most of the musicians were sitting. They didn’t stop playing as Sam passed, but lowered their eyes so that they weren’t looking directly at him. Some muttered a word, the same word as far as he could tell – Sam couldn’t make it out over the din of their music.

  The musicians looked glassy-eyed, drunk, dazed, almost like diseased adults themselves. They had played themselves into a trance.

  The smoke haze was thickest around the altar, at the very end of the cathedral, an elaborate construction of twisting pillars, shiny marble and gold leaf. Sam could just make out a group of six boys standing here, waiting for him to arrive. As Sam got closer, he saw that they were wearing some kind of religious robes, and they too had been dyed green.

  There was a boy at the centre of the six, watching Sam as he was led down the aisle. He was the only kid in the whole cathedral who looked at Sam.

  Slowly he swam into focus out of the smoke haze, a sharp, hard object, as if carved from stone like one of the white marble statues.

  He was smiling.

  He looked to be about fifteen. Quite short, though there was something about him, a stillness, a confidence that made him seem taller than he was. He was skinny, almost like a skeleton, with a narrow, bony face. His head was shaved and his skin was so pale it was almost transparent. Sam could see blue veins beneath it. His eyes were sunk deep in purple sockets above his long straight nose and looked dreamy, shining.

  He had a black scab on his forehead, crusty and oozing pus from one infected spot.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said, dropping to his knees, but keeping his eyes fixed on Sam the whole time. He then raised his hands up towards Sam, as if begging.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said again. ‘We’ve been waiting for you. My name is Matt and it is my honour to welcome the Lamb to his Temple.’

  21

  Shadowman couldn’t sleep. He’d been trying to match his own rhythms exactly to The Fear, but he still found it hard when he was exposed and couldn’t do anything to block out the sun. He was in the cab of a lorry that was parked opposite a small tyre centre on the edge of an industrial estate in Kilburn. The tyre centre sat behind a large forecourt. It had an open-fronted area where cars would have been fitted with new tyres, and behind that was a warehouse piled high with tyres and car parts. That was where The Fear were sleeping. Shadowman could picture them, all crowded in there, pressed up against each other.

  He’d nearly been caught out in the open by a small raiding party yesterday and had just managed to duck into the lorry before he was seen. He’d waited ages for them to go away and in the end had decided he might as well stay in here. With the doors locked, there was no danger of any strangers getting at him and he was high enough to get a good view of the tyre centre.

  Beyond the warehouse were railway tracks running up from West Hampstead station. A wall and a high barbedwire fence blocked access to the tracks, so there was no danger of the horde going out that way and giving him the slip when it got dark. St George had been leading his army through the local housing estates, working his way from street to street. They hadn’t found any kids since they’d left the school the other night. And Shadowman was happy for it to stay that way. However, while the lack of fresh food was making the horde sluggish, it also made them angry and unpredictable. There were a lot of them to feed. They occasionally found scraps in the houses they raided, but it was clear that what they really craved was children.

  Shadowman tried to straighten out and groaned, rubbing a stiff muscle in his neck. He’d been trying to sleep across the front seats. Unfortunately the lorry wasn’t big enough to have its own bed in the cab. It was squashed and uncomfortable in here and the low afternoon sun was now shining directly in through the windscreen.

  He sat up and looked out. All quiet. A flat, dead, dull street. He picked up his binoculars from the dashboard and trained them on the tyre warehouse. Nothing moved. It would be at least another hour before it was dark and they would stir.

  He thought he might risk getting out and stretching his legs. He didn’t want to get cramp. He took the plastic bottle out of his pack and drank a little water. Broke his rules and ate a hard, dry biscuit he’d found in a sealed tin in someone’s kitchen the day before. He was trying to save the biscuits and only eat them at mealtimes, but he was feeling at a low ebb. The sugar hit him and he felt a fizz of dizzy light-headedness. He mashed the biscuit against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, turning it into a paste so that it would last longer.

  He took a last look around, then popped the lock on the passenger door and swung it open. He climbed down the steps and carefully closed the door, trying not to make any sound.

  He sniffed the air. If any strangers were close he’d detect them. He was becoming more like them every day, relying on his animal senses. He thought he could vaguely sense the bulk of them, over the road in the warehouse, detect a warm, rotten smell wafting in the afternoon air. He was probably imagining it. They were all inside. It was unlikely their stink would reach him here.

  He pulled his home-made camouflage cloak round his body and set off to explore. The Fear had stopped abruptly last night before he’d had a chance to scope the area out properly.

  He moved quickly and silently around the nearby streets, getting his bearings, learning the lie of the land. It was important to know your territory. Plus, it was possible The Fear might use the tyre warehouse as a base for a while, so he needed to find a better place to sleep. Just in case.

  Be prepared.

  He selected a three-storey block of flats not far from the lorry. It was easy enough to break in with the tools he always carried with him and he made his way to the top front corner flat. The windows here would offer the best view of the tyre centre.

  There was a musty, mouldy smell in the airless flat. It had been left too long with the doors and windows sealed. He waited a good minute before going in, letting out any noxious fumes and allowing the fresh air in.

  Then he took a deep breath and stepped in through the door, his knife held tight in his hand.

  You never knew what you’d find when you entered a flat like this.

  The first thing he saw were two corpses sitting side by side on the sofa. They were holding hands. Rats and maggots and bacteria had long since eaten their flesh away, leaving only the bones, leathery patches of skin and the ragged hair on the top of their skulls.

  There were the remains of a meal laid out on the low table in front of them. Plates with dark smears of something, inedible bits and pieces.

  Once Shadowman might have been panicked by something like this – panicked, revolted and scared – but he’d got used to all sorts of sights in the last year.

  You didn’t need to be scared of dead things.

  He nodded to the corpses and said, ‘Afternoon.’

  What really would have panicked him was if one of the corpses had replied.

  Well, thankfully a lot of weird stuff had gone down in the last year, but, as far as he knew, people didn’t come back from the dead. Some people called the strangers zombies, but they weren’t the walking dead and if you killed one it didn’t get up again.

  He wondered how long it would be before the scales tipped and all the strangers were wiped out, from their disease, from hunger or from being killed by children. At the moment they might just have the upper hand; kids lived in constant fear. It couldn’t last forever, though, could it?

  Unless … Unless … Unless
…

  St George’s mob were showing worrying signs of …

  What was it?

  Organization?

  Intelligence?

  Motivation?

  The scariest thing was that they were changing. Was the disease entering a new phase? That’s why Shadowman had to keep on their tail. Learn as much about them as he could. Start planning how to stop them.

  He went over to the window and checked the view.

  There was the warehouse. Good. He had clear sight of the forecourt and into the workshop area. This was perfect. A shame he hadn’t had time to come here the night before. He had an uninterrupted view both ways along the street. He could see the top of the lorry, the railway tracks, what looked like a shopping centre some distance off to the right. And there …

  Something moving.

  He checked the sky. Still too light for the strangers to be up and about. He lifted his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the streets.

  Where was it? Had he imagined it?

  He was pretty sure he had spotted a movement and he was pretty sure it had been a person.

  Now there was nothing.

  He moved the glasses slowly, methodically …

  Yes. There. He could see a human shape. Someone was squatting down. Hiding behind a garden wall in the shadow of a big tree.

  Strangers didn’t hide. Not like that.

  A kid then?

  If it was kids he’d have to warn them not to go blundering about and wake the adults. He couldn’t shout out a warning for the same reason. St George’s troops could be up and on the move surprisingly quickly if they scented prey.

  Shadowman stared at the spot where he’d seen the person, but whoever it was had shrunk back further behind the wall and now he could see nothing.

  He swore. He would have to go down and find them, although that held dangers of its own. If it was a hunting party of kids, patrolling their streets, they would be ready for the attack. They might go for him before they knew who he was. It was safer to strike first than risk being attacked by a stranger.