Lottery Boy (11 page)

“I mean, look at ’im, Janks! Look at ’im… What is this, Janks? A wind-up? I mean, this is turnin’ into a
joke
.”

“You think I’m a joke?”

“No, Janks… Not
you
, that dog of yours. And all
this
.”

“Come here and
say
it then.”

“No, come on, Janks. I’m just sayin’…”

For three or four of Bully’s breaths it was quiet outside the gun, as if everything had been said. And then he heard the two men begin to threaten each other, grunts and yells bursting out between their words, so that Bully couldn’t tell exactly what was happening until he heard a sound that very few men will ever make more than once in their lives.

In and around London, in the first hours of the morning, mobile phones lit up with a screenshot of a boy and his dog. And a message:

And a good many men rubbed their eyes and went back to sleep, thinking nothing more about it. But in bright little flats in dark little places, a few paused for a moment in what they were doing (to the relief of some) to seriously consider this offer. And though most of these men went back to doing what they were doing, more than one or two decided they wanted
in
on this. And
all
these men – fat, thin, tall, short and funny-looking – had one thing in common: they didn’t
care
what they were searching for. They just wanted the money. And before the sun came up they were buzzing through London, on the lookout for a stray named Bully who was going to make them rich.

Bully woke and choked, Jack licking his face, spit and snot going
up
his nose. He strained his neck to lift his eyes and saw a streak of grey painted into the darkness.

In summer the light came back in the middle of the night, a long time before the sun, and he guessed he hadn’t been unconscious for more than a couple of hours. He tried to pull himself up on Jack’s dog lead but his arms weren’t listening to his head, refused to do what he asked of them, even when he was nice about it. He was a dead weight; the old blood from last night was stuck in his top half and he felt like a worm cut in two.

He tested his legs. They still did as they were told and he braced his bare feet against the sides of the bore. They slipped a few times and he stayed where he was. Then he remembered that inside all guns, big or small, there was
rifling
in the barrel. These grooves in the metal spiralled up, round and round inside the gun, spinning the shell to its target. Phil had explained it to him. He’d shown him his pistol that he’d brought home from his war and Bully had looked down it and seen the little grooves shining in the darkness, and pictured someone dying at the end of it.

Bully didn’t want to be dying
inside
a gun, and he lifted his knees up a little, felt for the grooves with his toes and then jammed them in as far as they would go. And he pushed and pushed … and slowly, slowly he shuffled himself and Jack back up the barrel.

A few seconds after he got his elbows hooked over the lip of the gun, the pins and needles started poking into him, and he was a long time writhing about and complaining about it, saying
Jesus wet, Jesus wet
, even though he was drying out now.

He remembered then the man’s scream from a few hours ago and he looked down around him. And there he was, that man, lying on the ground. His pockets were turned inside out and his belly was leaking onto the grass and turning it a dead brown colour. But Bully still watched him for a while longer until he was sure he was dead.

When the pain had had enough of him, Bully started climbing out of the barrel. It was easier than getting in because he was getting
out
. It didn’t matter how scary it was looking that far down, with a dead man on the ground. He shuffled back along the barrel on his hands and knees, Jack still inside his hoodie. He looked for his trainers and socks but they were gone. And though he squinted up into the grey light, he couldn’t see his coat in the tree either. Janks must have taken it, searching for his ticket. Then he remembered what else was in one of his pockets. He stood still a moment, taking it in, mourning the loss of his mum’s birthday card.

Today was the first day he would not be hearing her voice since the day she died.

He heard a car roaring past on the empty road, saw its lights still on, showing up the early morning. He got himself moving, walked towards the gates, pretending the dead man wasn’t there, but then he looked back, couldn’t help it, just to make sure he really was never getting up again.

On the road he got his bearings from the compass on his penknife. He watched the little arrow point north and made his way towards the river. He didn’t have any money or any food or even any shoes. But all he had to do was just keep following the arrow to get to Watford and Camelot, and then he could buy as much food and as many pairs of Reeboks as he liked. The geeky guy had told him Watford was about twenty miles away, north of London. That sounded a lot but then he thought about how much walking he did most days just wandering round. And he was bound to bump into Watford if he just carried on walking north, at least to see a sign for it or find a train going that way.

First of all, though, he had to get across the river.

London was empty. Nothing much was moving. Even the river was sludgy and slow. He walked past the Eye, stared at the grey, empty pods hanging from the whitening sky. It
was
broken now, nothing going round.

“Jack!” he yelled because Jack was off chasing pigeons still sleeping on the ground. And then he looked around as the buildings across the river threw his own voice back at him. All around him it was like TV with the sound right down, making him nervy and twisting him around. Basically, the quiet was too LOUD and he felt like the last boy in the world and he wanted the zombies back, pouring out of the station and across the bridge so that he could lose himself among them.

He wondered then if it would be better to wait longer, to hide out until it got busier or even until Monday morning before he crossed. But the tourists didn’t turn up until the middle of the day and Monday was too far away and he felt the urge to make a run for it
now
.

He knew if he didn’t get across now, the more chance they had of hunting him down, of picking up his scent again on this side of the river. And even if Janks didn’t use his dog, humans could still hunt. All Janks and his crew had to do was look for a boy without shoes and socks and a funny-looking dog. Even in London that wouldn’t be hard to find.

* * *

He got to the end of the footpath that ran alongside the river and then on his hands and knees he crawled up the steps to the road bridge above. He heard a car coming and ducked down, waiting long after the tyres had gone, until the smell of the exhaust disappeared. Then he peeped his eyes up just above the top step, so that anyone looking would just see half a head. When he saw the road bridge it looked much longer than he remembered because it was closer and emptier than he’d ever seen it before. There were, he reckoned, two or three football pitches in distance between him and Big Ben. And though he was thirsty and his eyes were heating up whilst the rest of him was getting cold, he waited. And he waited. And he watched the long hand shudder towards the end of the hour, getting ready to bang on to the whole of London that it was four o’clock on a Sunday morning.

He ducked down as another car raced past, making time on the straight through roads. Then, like he was going to hold his breath for a very long time, he took a deep one and decided this was it. He stood up and began to run across the bridge towards Big Ben, the clock face getting bigger as he ran.

He was running jinksy because of his ankle and kept veering off into the road. Once he tripped over Jack and swore at her for getting in his way. Two cars passed them on the bridge. It frightened him, the first one, going ever so,
ever
so slow, like it was going to stop, but it didn’t.