“You mad yet?” Paul cried at him. “You wanna hit me, you stupid arse?” Paul gave him a desperate grin. “Try and catch me, then.”
Paul ran, out of the office and into the corridors. Adam gave a cry of pure hatred and belted after him.
The Alpha Carrier had almost crossed the lawn to the sports hall. Behind it, Mark saw furrows in the turf that flickered along their length with flaming gobbets of metal. The campus echoed with the screeches and howls of the Infected, writhing and gnashing, crazed with pain. They felt what the Alpha Carrier felt as the creature burned.
But it kept on coming.
“No!” Erika shouted at Carson. She was struggling with him in the cockpit, fighting to wrest the controls out of his hand. “No, we’re not going yet!”
But Carson was twice her size. He grabbed her shoulder and shoved her, sending her tumbling out of the chopper.
“You wanna stay, stay!” he yelled. “We’re going up!”
Freckles and Pudge were already in the back, strapped in. After one look at the monstrosity heading their way, Johnny had joined them. “Get in!” he yelled at Erika and Mark. “We have to go now!”
Mark stood off to the side of the chopper, paralyzed by indecision. Why was Carson acting this way? The pilot was really going to leave without them? And yet that creature was close enough that they could smell the flames coming off it now. Johnny and Freckles and Pudge were frantically beckoning to him through the chopper’s sliding passenger door. If he didn’t get in right now, Carson was going to take off, and he’d be left behind. Erika had fallen out of the cockpit and was picking herself up off the roof. The rotor blades whipped past overhead, blasting his hair about everywhere. And where was Paul, where was Adam?
Wouldn’t Paul want them to save themselves, rather than wait for him?
Carson reached over and slammed the passenger door shut, locking Erika out of the cockpit. “Get in the bloody chopper!” he yelled at Mark through the window. Then he turned back to the controls and Mark heard the chopper begin laboring as it clawed at the air and began to lift.
Doing anything was better than doing nothing. Mark sprinted toward the chopper.
Johnny reached out a hand to help him in, but he ran past it, around the front, and threw himself up onto the helicopter’s nose. His scrabbling fingers hooked on to the underside of the windshield; his feet found a small projection that would give him leverage. He hauled himself across and lay spread-eagled across the window, face-to-face with Carson, who was staring at him in amazement through the glass.
“What are you doing?” the pilot yelled at him.
“We’re not going yet!” Mark shouted over the deafening noise of the blades. “He’d wait for us! We’re waiting for Paul!”
“Get off the chopper!”
“We’re not going yet!” he screamed.
Paul could hear Adam hot on his heels as he threw himself up onto the ladder and began clambering toward the roof. Adam was wheezing fit to die but he wouldn’t give up, he wouldn’t stop, not when there was still the possibility he could get his hands around Paul’s throat.
That’s right, you keep chasing, Paul thought. Just a little farther.
He shoved up against the hatch and it burst open in a blast of wind. His clothes and hair lashed about his face and body as he scrabbled up and into the night.
He saw the chopper immediately. Then he saw Mark spread over its nose, hanging on for dear life, and Carson reaching out through the pilot’s door, whacking at Mark to dislodge him. Erika was beating at the pilot’s arm. Johnny was in the back, with two other kids, Freckles and Pudge. Where had they come from?
He stood there for a second, trying to work out what on earth was going on. Then he saw a huge movement out of the corner of his eye, something massive and bright, and an enormous hand reached up and slammed down nearby. Flaming, melting fingers slithered for a grip, and dug in with a crunch.
The Alpha Carrier was climbing onto the roof.
“There he is!” Mark squeaked, pointing at Paul. “There he is!” And they all started shouting and beckoning him, even Carson, who looked like he’d been about to take off moments before.
Paul ignored them all. He dropped to his knees and reached down the ladder. Adam was clambering up, eyes glittering with rage.
“You made it!” he cried. “Come on!”
Adam hesitated for just the barest of moments. And maybe it was something in Paul’s voice, or something in his expression, but in that moment he saw Adam realize what had been done to him. He understood that Paul had goaded him to get him moving, when it seemed he couldn’t do it himself. Paul had tricked him … but he’d done it for his own good.
And he was smart enough and big enough to swallow his pride and reach up his hand.
Paul hauled him through the hatch, propelling him with a strength borne of desperation. Mark slid off the window; Erika was climbing into the back; Carson had shut the pilot’s side door and was back on the controls. Another blazing hand crashed down nearby.
“Going up, going up!” Carson yelled.
Paul and Adam pelted across the roof, sprinting for the open side door of the chopper, where the others were urging them on. The chopper lifted: an inch off the ground, two inches, three. And then they were there, their feet on the landing skids, launching themselves up, where grasping hands latched on to them and pulled them inward. Paul clung on the nearest secure object he could find as the sports hall roof dropped away beneath them.
But they were not safe yet. They heard a bellow loud enough to rattle the helicopter, and the head and chest of the Alpha Carrier rose over the side of the sports hall, its eyes blind, its face a flaming, sagging ruin. Yet even though it couldn’t see them, it seemed able to hear them. Paul watched in horror through the side door of the chopper as the creature raised one great arm and swung it back, ready to bring it down on them.
We’re not rising fast enough! We’re not going to make it!
They yelled as the Alpha Carrier hauled itself up on one arm and swept the other toward them, a deadly club to swat them out of the sky. Then Carson yanked the flight stick, and the chopper lurched and tilted, swinging sideways. The thundering tonnage of the creature’s hand swept past them, close enough so they felt the wind of it on their faces.
But it missed.
The Alpha Carrier’s desperate swing had taken the last of its balance. It staggered, the edge of the roof crumbling under its weight. With one final, agonized shriek, it toppled backward and disappeared beneath an avalanche of brick and steel as the side of the sports hall slumped down on top of it with a crash that seemed like it would never end.
What came after was a strange peace, the shared disbelief of survivors. The chopper lifted into the sky to the steady beat of the rotor blades, and as they rose, Mortingham Academy shrank beneath them. The Alpha Carrier lay where it had fallen, unmoving, smoke seeping through the rubble that had buried it. The Infected ran about the campus mindlessly, reduced once more to simple, bloodthirsty, brainless things, their purpose lost as their network collapsed.
Eventually, Johnny leaned over and slid the door shut. They laughed and congratulated each other, and excitedly told their stories, and some wept for joy that their ordeal was over, and others wept for the ones they’d left behind. Adam punched Paul in the arm and cursed him out for what he’d done back in the sports hall, but he ended up hugging him afterward. The others told how Mark and Erika had kept Carson from taking off, and Adam hugged them, too, and Paul did the same.
By the time that first flood of relief had subsided, they were skimming over the dark valleys of the Lake District. Paul looked out and saw small towns nestled in the folds of the mountains. Some of them were ablaze.
Carson leaned back in his seat and called over his shoulder.
“Everyone alright back there?”
Paul looked around at the dirty faces of those who’d made it out. Some were red-eyed; some stared bleakly out the windows. But all of the
m were alive. “We’re alright,” he said.
“Getting a lot of chatter on the radio. Ain’t much of it that’s good. Looks like they haven’t been able to keep it under wraps as well as they’d like. Clips turning up all over the Net.”
Erika glanced at Paul. She knew. She’d always known, even before the rest of them had realized.
At least I saved you, he thought. Doesn’t matter that you didn’t want to be saved. Doesn’t matter that you didn’t even need it, in the end. You’re safe. That’s enough.
Then he dropped his eyes, embarrassed at himself, afraid that she might read his mind if he stared too long.
“Any ideas?” Carson prompted.
It was directed at Paul. He sensed that, just as the others sensed it. They looked to him. Even Carson, who clearly didn’t want to take on the mantle of leader himself. Paul felt Mr. Sutton’s hand on his shoulder for an instant, but then it was gone, and he knew it was only his imagination.
He met their gazes one by one. Where now, indeed? Some of them had family they might want to go to. Some of them believed in the safety of institutions, the police or the military. But it was like Radley had said: Nowhere was going to be safe for long.
The collapse would come fast as the virus spread. By tomorrow the whole country could be in a panic. Congestion, looting, riots. By the end of the week, no phones, no emergency services. By the end of the month … who knew? It would be a bloody summer, Paul had no doubt of that.
He had to keep them together. That was the important thing. Whatever this new world would bring, it belonged to them now. Not the adults, not the ones who’d unleashed this catastrophe. They’d had their chance, and now all their towers were toppling, and all they’d leave behind were ruins.
But the new world would be faced by the new generation. A generation that would grow up in it, live it, make it their own. If there was a war to be fought, they’d fight it. If there was a way to survive, they’d find it. The adults would squabble and fight and talk politics until it was way too late, but the kids … well, the kids might just do better.
As long as they stuck together. That was all they needed. They could do anything together.
“Hey, you hear me?” Carson said, interrupting his thoughts. “We got out of there. We got us a chopper. What do we do now?”
Erika gave Paul a small, encouraging smile. Paul smiled back.
“Keep flying south,” he said. “I’ll think of something.”
Chris Wooding’s first book was published when he was nineteen years old, and he has been writing professionally ever since. Chris is now the author of nearly two dozen books, including The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray, Poison, Storm Thief, Malice, Havoc, and the graphic novel Pandemonium. He also writes for TV and film. Visit him online at www.chriswooding.com.
Copyright © 2013 by Chris Wooding
First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Scholastic Children’s Books.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
First American edition, April 2014
Cover art & design by Christopher Stengel
e-ISBN 978-0-545-62191-5
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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