As if Jester could read his mind, which David sometimes thought he could, he answered the question for him.

‘But this lot,’ he cried, ‘you should see them in action. They’re skilled fighters, David. They’re going to really make a difference.’

David’s smile grew wider. This was turning out to be a very good day all round.

‘Well, come on in!’

62

They never discovered Shadowman’s hiding-place in the burnt-out building, and he’d spent the long night there listening to them feed. St George and his gang first, and then the others, who fought over every last scrap of flesh and skin and bone. Finally, the most diseased, the weakest, had come to the table and Shadowman had had to watch them in the grey light of dawn as they licked the road clean of blood. Now he could see more clearly the mess they’d made. There was almost nothing left of Tom and Kate.

As the day dawned, some of them had started to drift away, first in ones and twos, and then in larger groups. Wandering off to find somewhere to sleep until it got dark again. The last to leave were the toughest, the ones who didn’t fear the daylight, St George and his boys. They trooped up the road past Shadowman’s hiding-place, looking pleased with themselves. St George at the front, his great fat head too heavy for his neck to hold upright. Then Bluetooth and the One-Armed Bandit, followed by Man U and …

Shadowman had to hold back a laugh. His bolt had hit something when he’d fired it into the night. It had hit the last member of the gang. The one he’d been struggling to name. It stuck out of his shoulder – either it was too deeply embedded to pull out, or he simply hadn’t bothered to try. He didn’t look too troubled by it. He almost seemed to wear it with pride. Like a medal. Shadowman wept with joy at this tiny victory. Not only had he wounded the bastard, but he’d given him a distinguishing feature. He was no longer just a faceless stranger.

When you named things you owned them.

A big smile spread over Shadowman’s face as he finally worked out what to call him.

Spike.

63

That bit there was a road. It ran beside the train tracks and led to the forest. Past the forest was the city, with all those houses and parks and fine buildings – the cathedral, the stadium, the row of theatres, the shopping centre. Next to the city was the farm. Where she lived. It was just like the one she’d made playing Farmville on Facebook. The hours she’d wasted on that! She tended her new farm just as carefully now as it hung above her. She planted seeds and pulled up vegetables. She milked the cows and fed the chickens and exercised the horses. Her sheepdog, Baxter, rounded up the sheep. She could look after this place, keep the animals well fed and safe and happy. Nothing bad was ever going to happen here. Not like in the real world. Not like the cold, heartless, unfair, unfair, unfair place London had become. Where she could do nothing to save her friends.

Her imaginary world was warm and sunny and bright. Everyone smiled all the time and there were no wolves to frighten the sheep, no foxes to get into the hen-house, no grown-ups to shoot the rabbits. No grown-ups at all. Anywhere. Not even healthy ones. And her farm was a private place. No one else knew the secret road to get there. There were just the three of them, Brooke, Donut and Courtney, sitting at the kitchen table, eating freshly baked bread and soft-boiled eggs and drinking cold milk. Sitting side by side, laughing and chatting.

Never mind that this farm didn’t exist, nor the city, nor the forest, nor the network of roads, that they were all just made up out of the stains and cracks and blotches that covered the ceiling above her bed.

Never mind …

She could lie there for hours, suspended somewhere between wakefulness and sleeping, staring up and wandering about in that imaginary world. She’d sunk so far into her depression that she’d reached a numb place, where nothing mattered any more. Nothing was real. She was detached from her body, oblivious to the pain that blazed around her wounded head. They gave her painkillers now and then, but they did little to help. She sensed they were rationing them. Pills like these were rare and precious these days. They probably wanted to keep them for their own. They’d stitched her face, though. She had felt them tugging and gouging and gathering her skin together where it had been sliced through clean to the bone across her forehead.

At first she hadn’t known where she was. Hadn’t cared. Had simply drifted in her dream world. Slowly, slowly, however, despite her trying not to, she had started to tune in to what was going on around her. They’d brought her to Buckingham Palace, where David and his followers lived. They’d carried her upstairs to some kind of sick-bay. It was quiet and peaceful in here, lit only by the soft glow of tea candles. Girls came and went, dressed as nurses. It was one of them who had stitched her, a girl called Rose. She seemed to be in charge. She gave Brooke her pills, took her temperature, fed her, took her to the toilet …

How long had she been here? A day? Two days? A week? Years …

She had no idea. Time had ceased to have any meaning for her. She just lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling as the seasons came and went on her farm.

She had to stay up there, among her animals, because there were places she couldn’t go, memories she couldn’t face. Every now and then she settled into a deep calm; she would be floating on pink fluffy clouds counting sheep, sliding on a rainbow, or sitting at that kitchen table with her friends. There were times when she’d feel warm and safe and well fed, cared for, looked after …

And those were the most dangerous times, because her defences would drop and suddenly the memories would come screaming back at her. How Donut and Courtney had come all the way across London to find her. How she had been reunited with them only to have them snatched away from her. The friends she hadn’t seen for a year and had thought must surely be dead. Slaughtered by sickos.

Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.

Tears would well in her eyes and soak her pillow. Sometimes she woke up crying, and one of the nurses would come over and ask her how she was and wipe away the tears and stroke her hair and Brooke could pretend that everything was OK.

She would never reply when they asked her things. She hadn’t spoken a word since she’d come here. Didn’t think she would ever speak again. What was the point? What was the point of anything? Living or dying or talking or laughing …

All she could ever look forward to in the future was a life of pain and loss. They were all just children – what chance did they have? They could play at soldiers, or scientists, or nurses and doctors, but they were just as helpless as the cattle on her farm, the chickens and sheep, they were just farm animals, waiting to be eaten by the grown-ups.

She hadn’t dared look in a mirror at what a mess the mother had made of her face. To make it worse the wound had become infected. The nurses had covered it with disinfectant and antiseptic, but it had burned. At times she thought the infection must be burning right through to her brain. Sending her mad. She thought about Ed, once so handsome, remembered what the cut had done to his face, and she knew that she would look just as bad if she survived. She would be a freak, a monster, like the disease-ruined mothers and fathers who wandered the streets. Was this God’s punishment for how she’d treated Ed?

Or was it just shitty luck?

She knew she must look bad because when Rose and the girls inspected her wound they winced and grimaced and said things like ‘poor girl’.

Poor girl.

She also gathered that her whole face had swollen up from the bruising and infection. Her eyes were puffy and blackened. She must look more like a corpse than the old Brooke. The most beautiful girl on the bus.