The End (12 page)

‘Well, I
am
in charge here,’ said Saif. ‘Was never any argument. Because there’s no one better.’

‘In that case you’re gonna be smart enough to listen to me this time,’ said Shadowman. ‘You show me some respect, I’ll show you some.’

Shadowman held his hand out to Saif. Saif stared down at it for a long moment, then laughed and shook it hard and quick.

‘What you want from
me, hard man?’ he said.

‘Right now St George is waiting for something,’ said Shadowman. ‘He’s not given up. He’s growing stronger. Getting ready. I just know that when he’s ready he’s gonna make his move.’

‘And do what?’

‘That I don’t know. But I hope that before he does we’ve got time to unite all the kids in London. To create our own army and be ready to take him on.’

‘And where do I come in?’

‘There may be things that come up and we’ll need your help, but for now I want you to carry on doing what you’re doing. Keep watch on him. And when he does move I want you to come into town and tell us. And then I want you to stand next to us. Stand up and fight them.’

15

‘Come on, line up straight. You don’t look like soldiers, you look like a useless bunch of little kids.’

Wiki giggled. ‘I don’t mean to disrespect you, Paddy,’ he said. ‘But we
are
a bunch of little kids.’

‘You won’t be when I’ve finished with you,’ said Paddy. He hated his troop talking back to him. ‘We’re going to lead the children’s crusade and help wipe the
sickos off the planet.’

He was strutting up and down in front of the ragged line of kids, waving one of Akkie’s spears around. Trying to act like an officer. Trying to kick them into shape. His troop. The troop he called the Youngbloods.

His dog was sitting patiently nearby, watching him as he walked up and down, her tongue hanging out. It was a warm day.

For now he was
calling her Bright Eyes, because most of the others refused to call her Ripper. When he thought of a better name for her, he’d change it.

Standing in the front line of his troop were Sam and The Kid, then Yo-Yo, and Zohra with her little brother, Froggie. Then Jibber-jabber and Wiki and Blu-Tack Bill. Behind them, in a second rank, were some of the other kids who’d come from
Holloway and a bunch of the
smaller kids from the museum. They were twenty in all, and none of them were any good at being soldiers. Blu-Tack Bill was the worst. He had no interest in drilling or fighting, or even standing still. He kept wandering off or sitting down. Paddy had got quite cross with him at first and shouted at him several times. Once he’d realized it wasn’t going to
make any difference, and that nothing he said or did was going to make Bill keep in step with everyone else, he’d just been ignoring him.

The Kid was probably the keenest, but that didn’t make him the best. Somehow he got everything wrong or misunderstood or took it the wrong way, and the harder he tried, the keener he was, the worse he got. Paddy was ignoring him now as well.
The thing was – Paddy didn’t really know what he was doing himself. He tried to give orders, but he’d only picked them up from watching war films and playing computer games. He didn’t really know what most of the commands meant and he kept forgetting how he’d used them before, and ended up giving the same command to mean something completely different. He just hoped the troop didn’t
notice.

He got them marching, shouting things at them like ‘assume the position’, ‘blue on blue’, ‘present arms’, ‘extraction point’, ‘watch your six’ and ‘fubar’.

‘Can’t we just do some fighting?’ Sam asked when they stopped for a rest. ‘Drilling’s boring and a waste of time. What difference does it make if we can march in step with each other? Or put our spears on our
shoulders at the same time? That won’t help us in a battle.’

‘It’s all about discipline, soldier,’ said Paddy. ‘It’s about making you obey orders quickly without having to think.’

‘But if a grown-up’s attacking me I can’t wait for an
order to defend myself. I’ll just do it, surely? And anyway the orders don’t make any sense. Eyes right and slope arms and fire in the hole.
What we need to learn is how to use our weapons properly.’

‘All right, all right. We’ll do that. We’ll do some more drilling tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ said Wiki. ‘You mean we’ve got to do this every day?’

‘Of course we’ve got to do this every day. How else are you going to learn to be soldiers otherwise?’

‘Actually I don’t really want to be a soldier,’ said Wiki.

‘Me
neither,’ said Jibber-jabber. ‘It’s boring.’

‘But we’re going to fight now.’

‘Fighting’s boring too.’

‘I like fighting,’ said The Kid. ‘The old one two, in out in, snickersnee, snickers bar, have at thee, varlet, I regret that I have but one life to give, they don’t like it up ’em, Ken clean-air system, whammo!’ The Kid illustrated this outburst by throwing some fighting
moves and fake punches that scared no one.

‘Yeah,’ said Paddy. ‘What he said. Probably. Let’s do it then. Fall in!’

Nobody moved.

‘I’m really confused now,’ said Sam. ‘I can’t remember what we’re supposed to do when you shout “fall in”, and the more you shout it, the less sense it makes.’

They were outside the museum, over to the west side, in front of the new extension.
Sam could see the huge white concrete pod thing behind its high glass wall, and right up there at the top was where Einstein and his team of scientists were trying to find a cure for the disease.

Sam had been really freaked out when the Green Man
had said that he was the one who would save them, that he had something in his blood that could fight the disease. The Green Man said
he could smell it. Had known it from the start. Sam had never wanted to be special, never wanted to be different. All he wanted was to find Ella and for the two of them to be safe together. Other kids looked at him funnily now, and he knew the older ones, the fighters, were trying to protect him. Einstein had taken some of his blood. He hadn’t liked that at all. He didn’t like needles.
He didn’t like blood, even though he’d seen buckets of it this past year. And worse. Somehow it was different when it was your own. Einstein had made very sure everything was clean and sterilized and used a load of antiseptic and a brand-new needle. Sam had no idea what they were going to do with his blood, but they were up there now, working away.

Making a cure.

Was that even
possible? And, if it was, how were they ever going to use it? How were they going to get close enough to the grown-ups to inject them? It made no sense. How much blood would Sam need to give? There were so many of them. He’d be drained dry.

‘Eyes right!’

Paddy had spent ages setting up a fighting arena in a sunken terraced area surrounded by steps you could sit on. He had some
stuffed dummies and a sort of assault course thing. Ben and Bernie, the emo engineers, had helped him, but Paddy had made most of it himself. He’d been fired up ever since rumours had got out that there was a grown-up army camped out up in Kilburn. All the talk now was about the London kids needing to build their own army. Paddy wanted to make the Youngbloods into
a proper fighting
unit, although Blue and Maxie had already made it very clear to Sam that if there was any fighting he would be nowhere near it. He was going to be safely guarded behind the lines.

There was no harm in learning how to fight, though. In the short time he’d been at the Tower of London he’d done some regular combat practice and had learnt a bit. Not that he could remember much of it
now. The training at the Tower had been well organized, and run by kids who really knew what they were doing. This was different.

The Youngbloods were hopeless.

The next half-hour was mad – kids running and climbing and shouting, swiping at the dummies and each other with the wooden poles wrapped in rubber tubing that Paddy had given them to use as weapons.

Bill sat on the
steps and played with his lump of Blu-tack, moulding it into all sorts of complicated shapes, his fingers working away too fast to follow, and then just as quickly he’d squash his little models and shape them into something else. Wiki and Jibber-jabber stood off to one side, talking about something in a very serious way. Froggie broke off to play with Bright Eyes. Sam did his best
to join in, but the fighting wasn’t really organized and he was small and not very strong and he kept getting whacked. Once on his fingers, which made him cry. He decided he was better at hiding than he was at fighting.

The Kid really went for it, charging about and yelling and swinging his weapon like he was in some kind of pole display team. Yo-Yo turned out to be pretty good.
Twice she let The Kid exhaust himself, waving his pole like a maniac, and then just thumped him with her own pole. And each time The Kid went into a fancy dying routine.

‘Aaargh, I am killed! My lifeblood ebbs away. You slay me, daddio. Bury my heart at wounded knee …’

After they’d been at it for some time, and Sam was thinking of giving up, he heard laughter and looked over
to see Jackson and Achilleus watching them.

‘You’re gonna really scare them grown-ups, Paddy,’ said Achilleus. ‘They’ll be filling their nappies in fright.’

Achilleus was holding a pile of gear. Armour and weapons and clothing. Sam knew that he and some other kids had been over to the Victoria and Albert Museum to pick up equipment. Sam spotted an enclosed iron helmet,
big and ugly and mean-looking.

‘It’s only our first day,’ said Paddy. ‘You wait and see, Akkie. We’re gonna be the best-trained unit here.’

‘I’m sure you will, caddie.’ Achilleus walked over and plonked the helmet on Paddy’s head. It was way too big and way too heavy. Sam saw Paddy sort of sag down. It was like someone had put a giant bucket on his shoulders.

‘I can’t
see anything,’ he said, his voice muffled.

‘You look great,’ said Achilleus. ‘A proper warrior.’ He whacked the helmet with his spear and it made a dull
clonk
.

Paddy said, ‘Ow,’ and took the helmet off. He studied it, grinning.

‘Cool bucket helm,’ he said.

‘Actually it’s called a sallet,’ said Wiki, who knew everything. ‘Fifteenth century.’

They were joined by Ollie
and some of his missile team, Lettis tagging along behind, looking sad and far away. She reminded Sam a little of his sister, Ella. Paddy had tried to get her to join his Youngbloods, but she’d refused, and when he’d tried to push it Ollie had told him to get lost.

Ollie’s guys were carrying stuff as well – bulging bags and bundles of sticks.

‘Arrows,’ said Ollie, dropping
his bundle to the ground. ‘You lot can do something useful and help us make them. We need as many as possible. I’ll show you how to do it.’

Wiki and Jibber-jabber hurried over. This was more their thing. Soon half the kids were sitting in a circle as Ollie gave them an arrow-making workshop.

Paddy tried to give the sallet back to Achilleus.

‘You can keep it for now,’ said
Achilleus, walking away. ‘I got to go to some boring meeting. Bring it me back later when you’re done.’

A meeting. They were all getting ready for a big fight. Sam was trying not to think about it. But there was a feeling in the air. People were on edge. Waiting.

Sam went over and sat next to Lettis, who was with Ollie on the top step. He smiled at her.

‘Shall we make some
together?’ he said. Lettis turned to him, but said nothing.

Sam felt a whack across his arm and turned angrily to see that it was The Kid.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Stop your daydream believer, private. Get your head down from the clouds and concentrate on the matter in hand. This is a battle without humour or humanity. The last battle. The apocalypse disco. We’re going down with
all hands.’

Sam laughed and belted The Kid with his pole and soon they were chasing each other around, laughing and yelling, and Sam had forgotten all his worries.

16

‘So that’s why we got you all together.’ Jester looked around at the assembled kids. ‘Why we’re all here. So I could tell you about what Shadowman showed me …’

Maxie felt out of place here. She’d never realized quite how posh the Houses of Parliament were inside. She’d seen the place on the television, bits of boring debates on the news, MPs shouting at each other
about stuff she didn’t really understand. You never really looked at the building when it was on TV, but it was like a palace inside. One of the local kids had told her that’s what the place was actually called – the Palace of Westminster.