The Fallen

by Charlie Higson

  The actors now pointed at Blue and his friends and started miming laughing and jeering. Meanwhile, with the skilful speed of a magician, TV Boy replaced the hat with a blonde wig, and his voice morphed into that of an Englishwoman.

  ‘We’ve been working with the Inmathger for several weeks now, and we’ve taken DNA samples so that we can establish if they are related to any of the other tribes in the Amazon Basin. As this is their first contact with the outside world, the Inmathger are being quarantined to safeguard them from catching any diseases to which they will obviously have no immunity. Even something we think of as completely harmless, like the common cold, might prove fatal to them.’

  The actors now started coughing and sneezing.

  ‘It is our hope that the tribe will remain undisturbed and be able to continue living where they are, isolated and protected from intrusion. It’s very important that their unique culture is not changed in any way.’

  TV Boy suddenly started moving his head in a very jerky way and speaking in a crazy, speeded up, high-pitched gibberish, giving the effect of a TV programme on fast forward. At the same time he lost the blonde wig and went back to his original TV announcer voice and the three actors scurried to find some seats to watch the rest of the show.

  ‘We go now to the Royal Society, where Professor Ian Livingstone is giving the annual Richard Dimbleby lecture …’ A new pair of glasses, thin and wire-framed, and a new voice, older and posher. Slightly frail.

  ‘Genetically, culturally and linguistically, the Inmathger have no immediate connections to any other tribes in the area. This has made it extremely difficult to decipher their language, which sounds to the untrained ear more like animal and insect noises, or even birdsong, than a human language. It consists of clicks and whistles and grunts and strange guttural sounds. There aren’t direct translations of all their words, and in fact they view the world very differently to how we do. To them, colour and light and sound are very important, and they see themselves as part of the animal kingdom, little removed from the wild creatures whose sounds their language so closely resembles. The closest translation I can offer of their name, Inmathger, is “the Fallen”.

  ‘They believe that they were once shapeless and formless spirits who lived in the sky, among the stars, and fell to earth many centuries ago. Their spirits inhabited first the insects, then the lower animals, and finally took on the human form they now possess. They consider their birth defects to be evidence that they are trying to evolve into a new, higher form. They believe that somewhere in the forest there is a great tree that they will one day climb and return to their homeland in the stars. Until the loggers discovered them they thought that the forest was the entire world and they were the only people in it. Interestingly their word for it is the same as their word for the colour green. And they refer to the world as the green. They believe existence is divided into two realms, the green and the blue. The earth and the sky … Any questions?’

  TV Boy snapped a large pair of black plastic-framed glasses over the wire ones and plopped a baseball cap on top of his head. The cap was studded with badges. Blue spotted a pyramid with an eye hovering above it, and a standard ‘grey’ alien with bulging black eyes. There was a small cheer from the local kids; it was clear that this next character was a favourite of theirs.

  ‘Ah, huh, yes, hi, my name’s Buddy Dumpster and I have a question, sir …’ TV Boy was using a nerdy American voice. ‘Ahm, it is indubitably clear from your, ahm, talk, that the Ingathmer, sorry, Ignumther, in the forest there, the Ingumper, the Forest Gumper, the Nerdy Dumpster, the, ahm, I’ll get it … In-math-ger! There. I got it. It is indubitably clear that they are space aliens from outer space. Indubitably so. Or at least, if they’re not, ahm, extraterrestrials, they are indubitably descended from the same extraterrestrials who built the pyramids of the Incas as well as the ones in Egypt and the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Stonehenge and quite possibly Westfield shopping centre. Indubitably so.’

  Off came the plastic glasses and the cap and TV Boy was back to being Professor Ian Livingstone.

  ‘That’s a lovely notion, Mister Dumpster, but sadly untrue. The Inmathger are the same as you and me. They’re human beings.’

  A voice came from the back of the platform. Blue couldn’t see who it was, but thought it might be one of Trinity.

  ‘Gabba gabba, we accept you, we accept you, one of us.’

  It was joined by another voice. ‘Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.’

  And soon there was a hubbub as all the local kids joined in.

  ‘We’re beans, I tell you, human beans.’

  ‘What is the law?’

  ‘Are we not men? If you cut us, do we not bleed?’

  ‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape.’

  ‘What is the law?’

  ‘Not to go on all fours, that is the law.’

  ‘Those poor things out there in the jungle. Those animals. They talk!’

  ‘You made us in the house of pain …’

  62

  ‘What are they shouting about up there?’

  Jackson shrugged. She didn’t know any better than Achilleus what was going on. They were downstairs with Paddy and Ebenezer. Ebenezer was quiet and edgy. He hadn’t seemed scared when faced with the sickos outside, but in here, with these weird kids, he wasn’t so sure of himself. Achilleus was winding him up, teasing and joking, Paddy laughing with him. Jackson had wanted to know what the kids upstairs had to say, but she also wanted to stay close to Achilleus and this gave her a very good opportunity to be almost alone with him. Only Achilleus was ignoring her – as usual. She tried to act casual. Just hanging. As if it was no big deal.

  Achilleus was needling Ebenezer.

  ‘You scared you gonna catch something then, Ebenezer? Become like them?’

  ‘I am not scared, Akkie. I just did not want to be up there.’

  ‘With the freaks and weirdos.’

  ‘You shouldn’t call them that,’ said Jackson without thinking. She hadn’t wanted to get on the wrong side of Achilleus. He could be a right dick sometimes, though.

  ‘I can call them what I like,’ he said, without even looking at her. ‘What would you call them?’

  Jackson shrugged. ‘They’re just kids, like us.’

  ‘Like you maybe,’ said Achilleus. ‘Not me, girl.’

  ‘Have you seen yourself lately?’ Jackson had given up trying to be nice; maybe she should treat Achilleus the way he treated everyone else. Maybe he’d respect that.

  ‘You got a problem with how I look?’ Finally Achilleus made eye contact, challenging her.

  ‘It’s only that you look like something a dog chewed up and spat out.’

  ‘And what about you?’ Achilleus was staring hard at her now, daring her to look away, and Jackson tried not to blush.

  ‘What about me?’ she said.

  ‘You look like a boy.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘What’s it take to get you riled?’

  ‘What you want to rile me for?’

  ‘For fun.’

  They heard shouting from upstairs and what sounded like chanting. They looked up, wondering what was going on, and then a boy’s voice floated out of the darkness surrounding them.

  ‘The natives are restless tonight.’

  Ebenezer jumped. Achilleus simply picked up his new spear, his eyes flicking around. Paddy inched closer to him.

  ‘There somebody there?’ said Achilleus.

  ‘Only a freak, a weirdo, a spazzmoid,’ the boy’s voice came back, slightly muffled, as if he was covering his mouth. Jackson peered into the shadows, trying to see where he was.

  ‘You been spying on us?’ said Achilleus. ‘Listening in?’

  ‘All the time,’ said the boy. ‘If I’d wanted to I could of taken the lot of you.’

  ‘You could’ve tried. You gonna come out now?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Too embarrassed to show us what you loo
k like?’

  ‘I don’t want to scare you.’

  ‘Oh, my knees are shaking,’ said Achilleus and he laughed dismissively.

  Jackson could see, though, that Ebenezer and Paddy were nervous and unsure.

  ‘Why you not upstairs with the rest of your dogs?’ Achilleus asked.

  ‘Why aren’t you?’ came the reply.

  ‘I guess I’m sort of keeping guard,’ said Achilleus. ‘Don’t trust no one. How about you?’

  ‘I’ve seen the show too many times. It’s boring. TV Boy just likes to show off. Doing all the voices. He’s a pain in the arse sometimes. Acts like he’s in charge. He’s not in charge. The Warehouse Queen – she’s in charge.’ The boy paused. There was a silence and then he went on, his voice still muffled. ‘It was TV Boy who wrote those messages in the corridors.’

  ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘He said if anybody was going to come in here they had to earn it, show they were clever enough, brave enough, I guess. Tough enough.’

  ‘Why was that important?’

  ‘It’s dangerous around here. Lots of sickbags. We can’t stay in here forever, though, and just rot. TV Boy said that if anyone was going to help us they had to prove how good they were. He’s always making traps and tricks and crap.’

  ‘You saying you were waiting for someone to ride in to your rescue?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Jackson had worked out that the boy was hiding behind a nearby stack of boxes; he’d been moving about at first to confuse them, but he’d stopped still now and she could just make out a shape crouching in the dark. The light was fading fast outside, the skylights only showing a soft blue glow against the black of the roof.

  ‘Come out,’ she said. ‘We can’t talk to you lurking about behind there.’

  ‘Achilleus was right,’ said the boy, who must have been listening for some time. ‘I’m embarrassed. I’d forgotten what normal children looked like. I’ve been here too long. Got used to it. Forgotten what creeps we are.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Jackson. ‘We won’t laugh or anything.’

  ‘I might,’ said Achilleus and he grinned.

  ‘Shut up, Akkie,’ said Jackson and he made a face at her. Jackson turned back towards where the boy was hiding. ‘Are you going to come out?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘Skinner.’

  ‘Is that your surname or a nickname?’

  ‘It’s my name. My only name.’

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  ‘We don’t deserve real names. We were unwanted. Ugly. Shut away. We were a dirty secret.’

  ‘Yeah, but you had names, right?’

  ‘I told you. I’m called Skinner.’

  ‘Are you not going to tell me?’

  ‘It’s Skinner.’

  ‘What?’ said Achilleus. ‘You skinny then, are you?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Let’s see it.’

  ‘You can laugh if you want.’

  ‘Thanks. I might.’

  There was a movement and Ebenezer stretched the elastic on his slingshot, although Jackson didn’t think the boy in the shadows had any intention of attacking them. There was a shuffling and scraping as he moved along behind the shelves and then a very thin cat appeared, smoky grey and short-haired. It looked at Jackson and the others and then sat down and began to clean itself.

  A moment later a boy rounded the end of the shelves.

  63

  The cat got up and started to rub against the legs of the boy. He was only about five foot tall, slightly hunched. Jackson tried not to show in her face what she was feeling. The boy looked awful, as if he’d once been much bigger and had suddenly shrunk leaving his stretched skin hanging in loose sheets. There were great folds and ridges of it around his eyes and mouth and it was rucked up around his neck, and piled on his shoulders. More folds hung out of the bottom of his sleeves, half covering his hands. He was walking with some difficulty, and his eyes, where she could see them, looked sad and ashamed.

  ‘That is so cool!’ said Achilleus. ‘Let me look at you, Skinboy. How the hell did you end up looking like that?’

  ‘I didn’t end up like this,’ said the boy, ‘I started out like this.’

  ‘You were born that way?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So is there, like, a proper medical term for it?’

  ‘Nope. Nobody else has ever been like this. All of us, we’re all different.’

  ‘Are you, like, experiments, or something?’

  ‘In a way, but not the way you mean. No person made us like this. It wasn’t a mad scientist, or an evil Nazi doctor. A disease did it.’

  ‘The disease? I thought kids couldn’t catch it.’

  ‘Sort of. It’s connected. Hard to explain. Our parents all worked for Promithios.’ Jackson could see that the boy had some trouble speaking as the folds of skin hung down over and around his mouth, giving it the muffled sound she’d noticed before. She also saw that he had no teeth.

  ‘Our mums all got sick, though they didn’t know it until a long time later. They went to the rainforest to work with this lost tribe. And they were really careful not to pass on any germs and diseases to the natives there. They knew they’d have no immunity. The tribe was fine. They didn’t get sick. But instead they passed on a disease to our parents. Our parents had no idea. It wasn’t any disease they knew about. It showed no symptoms. Except one. Us. We were the first symptom.’

  ‘You?’ Jackson was trying to make sense of this information.

  ‘Yes,’ said Skinner, forcing the folds of his skin into a sort of smile. ‘We got the disease in the womb. We were born like this.’

  ‘That’s harsh,’ said Achilleus.

  ‘It’s all we’re used to.’

  ‘You’re like the X-Men,’ said Paddy. ‘You’re mutants who’ve teamed up. Do you have any special powers?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Achilleus. ‘He has the power to frighten kids at Halloween without wearing a mask …’

  Paddy started to laugh, but then stopped suddenly as Skinner opened his mouth wide. Jackson clamped her hands to her ears and screamed. Skinner was shrieking, a terrible high-pitched siren sound. Jackson didn’t so much hear it as feel it, right inside her brain like a dentist’s drill tearing into her head. She fell to her knees. Saw that the others were also collapsing in pain. And then Skinner closed his mouth and the sound stopped. The cat, seemingly not bothered by the noise, jumped into his arms.

  ‘We do have some talents,’ Skinner said quietly, stroking the cat. ‘We haven’t lived this long by being defenceless.’

  Jackson stood up, rubbing her temples. She looked at Skinner with a new respect. The others looked shaken and wary.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, man,’ said Achilleus, and Skinner shrugged.

  ‘We’ve been too long alone together, here in our warped little world, living on top of each other,’ he said. ‘We don’t really have any perspective. Life’s become a sick joke. We talk and we talk and we tease each other and play tricks and we shuffle about the place, living off drugs and medicine. We make up jokes and songs, and TV Boy does his shows, and we laugh at what’s going on out there. We laugh at ordinary kids like you. We need to get out of here. We need to get some fresh air. We need to mix with other people. I don’t know if we can, if it’s too late, if it’s been too long, though. I’m scared it’s going to be too hard, too painful. There’s a lot of hurt out there. We’ve gone sour, shut away here with our games and our stories. We’ve got snotty and arrogant and turned in on ourselves.’

  ‘Do you really want to risk it?’ said Jackson, getting shakily back up on to her feet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Skinner. ‘All I want, all I really want … is for you to take me away from here. I’ve had enough of this place. We all know, though, that we co
uldn’t make it on our own. Not out there. I’m not scared any more. Whatever happens. Just as long as I get out.’

  ‘It’s cool,’ said Achilleus, massaging his jaw, as if he’d been punched. ‘We can do that. You are one ugly little bastard, Skinner, and I don’t know what you just did to us, but you’re on my team now.’

  64

  There was a mob of grown-ups outside the reception area now, growing bigger by the minute. Pressing themselves against the glass walls, pawing at the doors, smearing the windows with their pus and snot and dribble and blood. The dirty bastards. It was disgusting what could come out of a human body. This was one badly diseased bunch of meat-bags. Some looked barely human, just a mess of growths and swellings and open, gaping wounds, like extra mouths. And they were falling apart. There wasn’t one of them that didn’t have some part missing – eyes, ears, noses, lips, arms, legs. One mother’s arm was hanging half off and she was holding it with her other arm. The father next to her looked like he’d been skinned alive. Something from a medical exhibition. Just raw muscle and flesh. Wet. Dripping. Sick …

  ‘They’re gonna get in,’ said Kamahl. ‘I know it, they’re gonna get in and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  He was sitting on one of the benches, side on to the doors. Not wanting to look. Holding his spear between his knees, his head hanging down.

  ‘Well, they’re not in yet.’ Brandon was standing near the doors, looking at the stinking wall of flesh outside. He had Kyle’s club in his hands. Ready and waiting. If the grown-ups did manage to burst in he was going to take down as many of them as he could.

  Yeah, right.

  He knew full well that if the adults did get in then he and Kamahl were dead meat. He’d seen what had happened to Mick and Jake outside. Jake dragged off, Mick wounded, limping after him. Brandon had to accept that they’d probably seen the last of them. Seemed impossible. Not Jake – that had always been on the cards. He’d always been a bit reckless, wading into fights he couldn’t win. Brandon was amazed he’d got this far, coasting on luck, scraping by. But Mick – Mick was different. Mick had been so big, so tough, so unafraid. He’d been such a good fighter. The best in their crew. And now he was gone. While Brandon had stayed inside. Done nothing. Told himself they were trapped. No way of helping Mick with all the grown-ups round the door …