The Fear

by Charlie Higson

  ‘What’s he want? Does he want to get in, or not?’

  ‘I don’t think he knows.’

  The boys following him were two more of David’s boys from the palace, their red blazers looking grey in the half-light. They’d been sent out here by Pod as part of the increased security that had been put in place since DogNut and his crew had got out over the wall. The security had been bumped up even further following the attack on the squatter camp and all that had happened since then. These two had missed most of the excitement, but had heard about it. How one of the kids from Holloway had taken on the squatters’ leader, John, in single combat to settle the argument between them and David.

  The Holloway kid had won the fight, but Pod worried that the squatters might not stick to their agreement.

  Pod had told them that the palace was now on red alert.

  Whatever that meant.

  Actually, they knew what it meant. It meant their job was as much to stop anyone from getting out as getting in.

  ‘Do you think he’s from the camp?’ one of the boys whispered.

  ‘I dunno. Don’t think so. He arrived from the west. He’s alone. He doesn’t look dangerous to me.’

  ‘Shall we grab him then?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘I think we need to talk to him.’

  ‘After you …’

  65

  David was sitting at the table in his office, writing up his diary for the day, when Pod knocked and poked his face round the door. David slid the diary under some papers. No need for Pod to know he kept it. Wouldn’t want anyone to get any ideas about reading it. There were too many secrets in there. One day, though, it would be very valuable. His own personal record of events. The sort of thing that would be kept in a museum.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We have a visitor,’ said Pod, trying to keep from smiling too broadly. He was evidently very pleased with himself.

  ‘Is it Nicola?’ David asked rather too quickly, sounding more excited than he had intended.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh … Who then?’

  ‘A couple of the guards spotted him wandering around in the road outside. Looked like he was trying to get in.’

  ‘Who is he, Pod?’ said David with growing irritation.

  ‘He’s from the Natural History Museum.’

  ‘Oh, right. Anyone we know?’

  ‘No. But he’s got an interesting story to tell.’

  David leant forward over the table and smiled at Pod.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘We’re keeping him down in the guardroom out of the way. Apart from me and the two boys who brought him in, nobody knows he’s here.’

  ‘And they know to keep quiet?’

  ‘Of course they do. They’re well trained.’

  ‘It’s just with everything going on here at the moment we have to be very careful,’ said David. ‘I don’t want the new arrivals talking to anyone from the museum.’

  ‘I know,’ said Pod. ‘But this guy might be just what we need to solve your museum problem big time.’

  ‘You’re either going to have to bring him in, or tell me more about him, Pod. You can’t keep teasing me like this.’

  ‘I’ll go and get him.’

  ‘And get Jester too. He needs to be in on this.’

  ‘All right.’

  Pod hurried out and David stood up. He went over to the windows and looked out towards the gardens. It was black night outside so all he could see was his own reflection looking back at him. Could he dare to hope that all his plans were going to fall neatly into place so quickly? Not that anything was guaranteed. The Holloway kids were a deadly fighting force, but they were difficult to deal with and didn’t like being told what to do. He had their leaders safely tucked away in the sick-bay under armed guard, which was a start. And John was beaten. He finally had the squatters under his control. Nicola would have to stick to her agreement. She might not realize it, but she was his, and all her kids were his too. He rubbed his hands together. If this boy that Pod had found was all he had implied, then maybe the museum kids would be his soon as well.

  It was all happening scarily fast, everything at once, but he’d been planning for a long time, setting it all up. That’s what it took. Not violence, not shouting and screaming and running around with a big stick, but careful planning and intelligence. Thinking things through. Organization. So that now he could let all the pieces slip into place.

  He’d have a lot more to write in his diary tonight.

  No matter. He liked to stay up late. Didn’t need much sleep. Up late and up early was what worked. Some kids liked to sleep all day, but not him. That was no way to get things down.

  He grunted. Out of the corner of his eye he’d caught the reflection of one of the paintings. A full-length portrait of some long-dead princess or other. For a moment she had looked like Nicola.

  Nicola …

  He was trying to keep a cool head and a clear mind, but thoughts of her kept jamming the gears. He remembered her sitting there opposite him at the table. Remembered her getting up and coming over to him. Standing too close. She’d been mocking him, he knew that much, but all the same …

  All the same.

  He remembered the smell of her, the flecks of gold in her green eyes … Oh yes, he’d thought about her a lot lately. Pictured her standing by his side on the balcony. Pictured her …

  Pod came back in. He had a boy with him who looked pale and thin and slightly crazy. There were dark rings round his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for days. His hair was a mess, and as David watched he scratched his scalp with dirty fingernails, then rubbed his neck. There was an agitated, fidgety feel to him. His gaze flicked around the room. Seeing ghosts in the shadows.

  David poured him a glass of water. Handed it to him. He drank it down in one long gulp.

  ‘This is David,’ said Pod.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said the boy. ‘I know who David is.’

  ‘Were you looking for me?’ David asked. The boy stared at him, sussing him out. He sniffed. Put the glass down carefully on the table.

  ‘No, not really. Yes, a bit, yes and no.’ He giggled nervously. ‘I wasn’t sure what I was looking for … Something. Something or other. Or both. Or neither.’

  ‘You’re lucky you didn’t come across any strangers out there,’ said David. ‘Any grown-ups.’

  ‘Lucky?’ The boy gave David a withering look. ‘For me? Or for them? I kill grown-ups. I destroy them. I see any I’ll strangle them. I’ll kick their balls off. I’ll smash their sick faces into their heads. I’ll stick my knife into their guts and twist it.’

  He mimed the action, leaning towards David and breathing foul sour breath over him.

  David backed off. ‘Sit down,’ he said, and the boy sat, looking like he could spring up out of his chair at any moment. He was dressed all in black with a slightly grubby roll-neck jumper that he kept fiddling with, picking at the material.

  ‘What’s your name?’ David asked.

  ‘Paul,’ said the boy. ‘Paul Channing.’

  66

  They’d brought his head out on a pole. Poor doomed kid, he hadn’t stood a chance. His face looked peaceful, calm even, but he must have died screaming in terror. And once again Shadowman had been able to do nothing more than watch. For two days they’d been trying to get at the boy. He’d been hiding inside a Waitrose supermarket on the Holloway Road. Close enough to where Shadowman kept his secret stash of weapons and supplies to allow him to sneak back there whenever the action slowed. He could eat and drink and rest, and each time he returned he found the grown-ups still hard at work, nibbling away at the defences.

  Shadowman had found a good look-out spot in a tiny flat above a carpet shop opposite the supermarket. It was high enough and the road was wide enough that he didn’t need to worry about being detected. He’d dragged a bed over to the window and, using pillows to prop himself up, he could lie there and watch what was going on
through his binoculars.

  The supermarket had been well fortified and Shadowman had been holding out some hope that the strangers might give up and go elsewhere.

  No such luck.

  Eventually they’d smashed their way past the barricades and got inside the shop. The place was so well fortified he’d assumed that there must be loads of kids hiding in there. In the end, though, there was only the evidence of this one dead body. This grisly, battered head on a stick. Why the others had abandoned the boy he had no idea.

  There were loads of grown-ups gathered here now, every day more and more of them turned up, and all the while that they’d been attacking the shop they’d grown more confident.

  St George was triumphant. He was a diseased commander at the head of an army. He paraded up and down the road, using the severed head as a banner.

  Shadowman felt a cold fear grip him. The army would move on now, sweep through London like a swarm of locusts, devouring everything in their path, collecting more strangers as they went. St George was the leader, Spike, Bluetooth, Man U and the One-Armed Bandit were his generals, and the rest of them were his horde. Hadn’t Genghis Khan’s Mongol army been called the Golden Horde? This lot were hardly golden. They were a rabble, but they still needed a name.

  If he named them, he would feel like he had more power over them.

  What to call them, though?

  The Horde?

  The Mob?

  The Enemy?

  It was there, in the back of his mind, the word he was looking for, but he couldn’t tease it out.

  The right word.

  The right name for this terrible ragged army.

  No point trying to force it.

  It would come to him.

  67

  ‘I used to live at the Natural History Museum,’ said Paul. ‘Not any more. They don’t want me there. I don’t want them. They laugh at me.’

  ‘Yes, you told us that,’ said David patiently.

  ‘I hate them. I hate them all. I just want to hurt them. I want them to know what it feels like. To feel like I do. I want them – You never met Olivia …’

  ‘I did meet her, actually,’ said David. ‘She came here on her way to find you. I offered to look after her and keep her safe, but the others took her away. DogNut and his friends. They wouldn’t let her stay here, even though she begged me. They took her to the Collector. They gave her to him.’

  ‘The others, yes,’ said Paul, nodding his head violently. ‘Yes. They did that. Because they hated me, you see? They wanted to get back at me.’

  David fixed Paul with an intense stare. ‘It was them all along, Paul, don’t you see it?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘All of them,’ said David. ‘Brooke and Justin and all of them at the museum. They were working with DogNut and the others. They made a plan together.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘Of course they did!’ David almost shouted at Paul, who was gripping the edge of the table with white-knuckled claws. ‘DogNut always had a plan. Jester overheard him when he was here, didn’t you, Jester?’

  David looked at Jester, who was watching from by the fireplace. They’d been working on Paul for a long time as his muddled brain went round and round in circles.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Jester. ‘I heard them plotting. They were talking about how they’d secretly made a plan with Brooke …’

  ‘No. Not Brooke,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t think so. Brooke was nice to me. I liked her, I needed her help, but she disappeared. I looked for her. I wanted to talk to her.’

  ‘That was all part of the plan,’ said David. ‘Can’t you see? They were all in it together. Brooke and DogNut and the other kids at the museum.’

  ‘Justin?’ Paul’s eyes were wide and staring.

  ‘Yes, even Justin. He’s the one in charge, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Does he like you, Paul?’

  ‘Nobody likes me. Because I can’t fit in. That’s why they make me work with the sickos.’

  ‘Tell us more about the sickos,’ said David, leaning back in his chair.

  ‘They keep three of them. In a lorry.’

  ‘A Tesco lorry?’

  ‘Yes. They keep it in the car park. There are three sickos in there. It’s my job to look after them. To feed them and clean them out. To keep them chained up and muzzled. That’s all I’m fit for. They won’t let me grow food, or work in the library, or the science labs … No, all Paul the idiot is fit for is cleaning up after sickos.’

  ‘What would happen if they got out?’ Jester asked.

  ‘What do you think? They’d attack. That’s all sickos ever want to do. If the sickos got into the museum, that’d show them. That’d show them …’

  ‘Three sickos couldn’t do much harm, Paul,’ said David.

  ‘There are others,’ said Paul, grinning. ‘In the cellars below the museum. That’s where we caught the ones we keep on the lorry.’

  ‘You know that was my lorry, Paul,’ said David. ‘They stole it off me.’

  Paul laughed, too loudly, and for no apparent reason, then stopped, too quickly.

  ‘Tell us about the sickos below the museum,’ said Jester.

  ‘Like rats down there. Too many to get rid of. They’re locked out, you see, but if they could do it, if they ever got past the locked doors, they’d come into the museum. Nobody could stop them. Nobody.’

  ‘You must have guards? People protecting you?’

  ‘Robbie got hurt. He’s out of action.’

  ‘Who’s Robbie?’

  ‘He’s supposed to be in charge of security. He got hurt. The sickos could easily do it, if they got through. They could destroy it all, punish them all. Then the bloody bastards would know what it’s like to feel pain.’

  ‘You could stop that happening, Paul, couldn’t you?’ said Jester. ‘That’s your job.’

  ‘Yes. I guard the sickos on the lorry. I check the doors in the lower level, make sure everything’s locked. That’s how I got away from the museum without them knowing. Hee hee hee. They don’t know! I got out through a lower-level window. Robbie got hurt. Robbie’s in bed recovering. Security’s a joke.’

  ‘Did you make sure the doors were still locked when you left, though?’

  ‘Yes, yes. There were sickos down there, but they kept away from me. They knew I’d kill them. I wanted to kill the sickos on the lorry, but after they all turned against me Justin said I wasn’t allowed to be near them any more. They won’t even let me do that now. I’m useless. But I’m the only one who really knows how to look after the sickos. I understand them. The only one.’

  Paul frantically rubbed his neck, like a dog with fleas.

  ‘They hate you,’ said David.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you could show them, teach them a lesson, teach them how useful you are,’ said Jester.

  ‘And teach them what it’s like to feel pain,’ David added.

  ‘Could I?’ Paul’s eyes went very wide.

  ‘You have to,’ said David. ‘They had an arrangement with DogNut, about Olivia. They gave her to the Collector to keep him quiet, so that the rest of them could get safely to the museum. He was blocking their way, wasn’t he? And they had to give him something.’

  ‘They had to give him your sister,’ said Jester. ‘It was all planned. That’s why they brought her from the Tower. To sacrifice her. And they arranged the whole thing with Justin and Brooke.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I really think that’s what happened, I really do.’

  ‘The whole thing was planned to hurt you, Paul,’ said David.

  ‘Yes.’

  David tried not to smile. This was working almost too well. He and Jester just had to keep telling Paul the story he wanted to hear and they could get him to do whatever they liked.

  ‘You mustn’t let them get away with it,’ he said. ‘They have to be punished, and you’re the person to do it. You have the power in your hands.’

/>   Paul raised his hands and looked at them. They were shaking, like an old man’s hands, the fingernails bitten right down to the flesh.

  ‘They must be made to understand,’ said Jester.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re going to go back there, Paul,’ said David.

  ‘Back there? No. No, I can’t … I’ve got away. I want to live with you now, David. Don’t you see?’

  ‘I do see, Paul, but there is one thing you need to do before you can come here.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘It’s important, Paul. You won’t be happy until you do it.’

  ‘OK, OK …’ Paul sobbed. ‘I want to be happy. I do, I really do, but I don’t know how to any more.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Paul, everything’s going to be all right. You did the right thing coming here. We can help you. We understand. But first you have to do just one more thing.’

  ‘OK, yes. Yes. Tell me what I have to do.’

  68

  Brooke had been miles away, wandering the outer roads of her sky kingdom, when they’d come in. She was so deeply lost in her fantasies that she might as well have been unconscious. As she’d stared at the ceiling, she’d been only vaguely aware that more kids were arriving. For a while there’d been a crowd. She’d registered raised voices, an argument about something, shouting …

  Not her argument.

  Nothing to do with her.

  She’d let herself go, fallen asleep.

  When she’d surfaced again, it was quiet. The crowd had gone. Even Rose and the nurses had gone. The boy was still in his bed, but there was a girl with him now, lying on one of the other beds. She was the one with the scrappy hair and the leather jacket that she’d seen after the battle. Her name was Maxie. They were talking to each other and slowly Brooke tuned in to their conversation. They were discussing their problems, but there was something else. Brooke sensed that they didn’t know each other that well. Perhaps had even started out not liking each other very much. She also sensed that they wanted to get to know each other better. That they were growing closer.

  They began to talk like lovers, and as Brooke listened she felt a thaw within her. The cold dark block around her heart started to melt and she was gradually, step by tiny step, led back from fantasy into reality. She began to appreciate that she wasn’t the only one who hurt. She remembered Paul, what she’d said to him when he’d freaked out at the museum. She’d told him that he wasn’t alone. Told him not to be selfish with his pain. Not to blame the world. And that’s what Brooke began to understand now.