‘You won’t do anything stupid?’

‘No.’

Finn dropped DogNut back on to his feet and the five of them walked on in silence for a while.

They were slightly disorientated and weren’t a hundred per cent sure where they were, but Marco had a pretty good sense of direction and managed to lead them back on to the Brompton Road without any major detours. The main road was busier than the side-roads, however. Small clumps of sickos skulked in the doorways of buildings.

The safest way to get past them was to run, so the kids sped up, first jogging then hammering full pelt as they started to attract the attention of the grown-ups who wandered after them.

The kids were sprinting now, as fast as they could go, trying to ignore the burning in their lungs and the tiredness in their legs.

Running helped clear DogNut’s mind and he was able to close himself off from his thoughts. All he had to do was put one foot in front of the other and keep pushing himself. There was nothing more to his existence. He had to build a little box and put Olivia in it, and leave it back there in the sicko’s house. He had to forget about her, just as he’d had to forget about so many other friends since the disease had changed everything forever.

It was working. He was running from her.

‘Look out!’

Marco’s shout alerted him to the fact that a big knot of sickos had spread out across the road in front of them.

‘Keep going!’ DogNut yelled, and they smashed into the grown-ups. Apart from Finn, they were all still armed. Felix had lost his spear, but had a big hunting knife. Courtney had her golf club, and she used it to crack the skulls of two slow-moving mothers. DogNut’s sword slashed right and left. Marco was busy with his spear. And Finn used the heel of his good hand to shove anyone aside who got in his way. They hit the sickos so hard and so fast and so unexpectedly that they rammed their way through and out the other side before the grown-ups even really knew what was happening.

Their small victory gave the kids fresh hope and energy, and they sprinted on, feeling like they could run forever. They were aware, though, that they were picking up more and more sickos behind them as they went. True, the sickos were slow and lumbering and couldn’t keep up – very few of them had anything like the speed and fitness of the gym bunnies they’d met earlier – but, nevertheless, once they had your scent they’d doggedly follow. You couldn’t afford to slow down or stop until you were well away. The kids felt like they were dragging every sicko in London along behind them in a big net, drawing in more and more of them as they went.

They were all too aware that there was a shambling, shuffling, mindless army of the half dead following them. They couldn’t keep running all night. If they didn’t get to somewhere safe, they were going to be in trouble.

It was all DogNut’s world consisted of now, running, running, running … About three months ago one of the search parties at the Tower had discovered a small warehouse crammed with Nike trainers. They’d carted boxes and boxes of them back to the Tower. So now the kids might not have clean clothes and fresh food, but they were never short of fresh trainers. DogNut was glad he was wearing a new pair now as he pounded down the centre of the road, his heavy sword clutched in his hand.

‘How far is it?’ Felix gasped. ‘I can’t keep this up much longer.’

‘I don’t know,’ said DogNut. ‘Just keep going.’

‘You idiots!’ Marco called out, half laughing, half wheezing. ‘We’re there! That’s the museum!’

22

DogNut couldn’t believe it. They’d been barely a ten-minute walk away when they’d been ambushed. If only they’d known they were so close, maybe they wouldn’t have made the detour at Harrods, maybe they wouldn’t have ended up in the sicko’s house, maybe Olivia wouldn’t have died, maybe, maybe, maybe …

In their panic, in the dark, eyes focused on the ground directly in front of them, they hadn’t noticed the vast gothic building to their right, with two great lines of arched windows along the front, and a pair of tall towers spiking up into the starlit sky on either side of the entrance. With more towers on either end, the building looked more like a cathedral than a museum.

The museum ran down the whole of one side of the road, almost as far as they could see, opposite a row of grand houses. It stood behind a strip of open ground edged by the type of black iron railings you saw everywhere in London. A group of well-armed boys was watching them suspiciously from a small pointy-roofed gatehouse beside the main gates. They bristled when DogNut and his gang ran over, and stayed put on their side of the gates.

DogNut and his friends were suddenly hit by a wave of exhaustion and for a moment none of them could speak. They stood there, hearts hammering, panting and gasping, doubled over, fighting for the breath they needed to talk.

Finally one of the boys from the museum walked over to the gates and looked at the new arrivals, chin raised, giving nothing away.

‘Where you from?’ he asked.

DogNut managed to blurt out the words ‘Tower of London’ and the boy nodded. He was short but beefy-looking, about fifteen years old, with spiky, gelled hair and wearing a battered leather jacket. His nose was flattened, broken. It must have happened after the sickness or a doctor would have fixed it.

‘You the kids Ryan the hunter took to the palace?’

DogNut straightened up. Stared at the boy, a look of pained amazement on his face.

‘You what?’

‘Is one of you called DogNut?’

‘Yeah. I am. But I don’t get it.’

‘Ryan was here before on business. Told us about you.’

‘You gonna let us in then?’ DogNut gasped.

The boy looked away, in the direction the kids had come from.

‘They with you?’ he asked, and DogNut turned to see what he was looking at.

The sickos were arriving.

‘Open the gate, man,’ DogNut pleaded.

‘First you tell us who exactly you’re looking for. See that it all checks out.’

Courtney had her breath back now. ‘We’re mainly looking for Brooke,’ she said. ‘She here?’

‘You’re friends of Brooke’s, yeah?

‘Course we are!’ Courtney shouted. ‘Now open this bloody gate, will you?’

‘Brooke recognized your names when we told her,’ said the boy.

‘Just open the gate!’ Marco shouted.

The boy unlocked the gates and casually swung them open.

‘Nice to see you got a sense of urgency,’ said Felix as he pushed past him.

The boy made a dismissive gesture and nodded to where the group of sickos had stopped and were holding back on the far side of the road.

‘They know better than to come over here,’ he said and waited for the last of the new arrivals to come through before slamming the gates closed and locking them.

‘My name’s Robbie,’ he said. ‘I’m in charge of security here. You cause any stink and you got to deal with me, OK?’

‘Yeah. Good to meet you, Robbie,’ said DogNut, and they slapped palms.

‘Let me ask you one question,’ said Robbie. ‘How come you never asked the hunters about Brooke?’

‘We did ask them,’ Courtney protested. ‘I’m sure we did.’

‘We told them we was looking for David,’ said Marco, taking off his helmet and wiping sweat from his forehead. ‘I’m not sure we ever mentioned Brooke or Justin to them.’

‘That was stupid,’ said Felix.

‘You calling me stupid?’ said Marco.

‘We’re all stupid. We was so thinking about David we never mentioned the others.’

‘How long ago was Ryan here?’ DogNut asked.

‘Couple of hours, maybe.’

‘I can’t believe we’ve been so dumb,’ said DogNut. He wanted to punch something. If he’d only thought to ask the hunters about Brooke then Olivia wouldn’t be dead now.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Courtney. ‘We didn’t know. All that matters is we’re here now.’