‘Didn’t really notice,’ said Finn. ‘Other things on my mind.’

‘Tell you the truth, man,’ Felix went on, ‘the main reason me and Marco come along on this trip in the first place was to see if we could find us some new wifeys. Know what I mean? The maths ain’t so good back at the Tower. There’s way more boys than girls.’

‘I’m a girl,’ said Olivia.

‘You don’t count, darling.’

‘We sick of the same old faces day in, day out,’ said Marco. ‘And nothing much has changed since the sickness, has it? The peng girls still go with the popular guys, the fighters, the leaders, the good-looking ones. The lucky ones. The rest of us … We do what we can.’

‘There’s always Jessica,’ said Finn, nodding towards her. ‘She just split up with her boyfriend.’

‘Yeah, Jessica,’ said Marco, making a face. ‘To be honest, I always thought she looked kinda … sour.’

Al was stuck with Jessica again. He’d had no choice on the boat, but he’d been hoping that once they hit dry land he could dump her and hang with Marco and Felix who always made him laugh. Jessica had latched on to him, though, and wouldn’t stop going on about her ex-boyfriend, Brendan. She went over, again and again, all the details of their break-up. Al hoped to God she wasn’t interested in him. He much preferred having a laugh with the guys than chatting to girls about all the things they were interested in, like emotions. He was pretty sure she wasn’t interested in him as a potential boyfriend. Girls never went for him that way. He was just a handy ear to babble into. He almost felt jealous of Finn, carrying Olivia. He bet she didn’t go on about emotions and ex-boyfriends and who said what to who and why. Probably too busy banging on about her perfect brother, Paul.

Courtney, meanwhile, was taking the opportunity to talk to DogNut.

‘You scared at all?’

‘Yeah. I guess. Our likkle pleasure cruise was the easy bit. Bummer that we lost the boat, but in the future that’s gonna be the way to do it.’

‘The future?’ Courtney protested. ‘I ain’t doing this again.’

‘No. Don’t you feel it, gyal?’ said DogNut excitedly. ‘This is about more than finding lost friends.’

‘Is it? News to me.’

‘Come on. You said it on the boat. We’re explorers. What were we gonna do? Sit on our arses at the Tower growing old and fat? Dying there? No way! There’s a big world out here, and I aim to see some of it. We got places to go. Mysteries to solve. We need to know what’s going down.’

‘Do we?’

‘Yeah. We gonna go back to the Tower as heroes, explorers. I’m gonna be important, Courtney. I’m gonna change things. We gonna blow this town wide open. The Thames is gonna be, like, our main road. We can easily link up with other kids like the ones at the Houses of Parliament.’

‘I quite liked the sound of sitting safe behind the walls at the Tower growing old and fat,’ said Courtney. ‘Well … fatter. I mean, do you think we’re really ready for this?’ As she said it, she glanced nervously around at the big buildings looming up on either side of them, half expecting a bunch of sickos to jump out from every shadowed doorway.

‘We ready,’ said DogNut, and his confidence spilt over into her. ‘Last time we come up this way was a year ago. We know better now how not to get whacked. We’ve had a whole year more of learning about the sickos, of learning the best way of fighting them.’

‘Or running away,’ said Courtney.

‘That’s how you know, sister!’ said DogNut. ‘When to fight, when to run. I ain’t dumb! I know it’s not gonna be no picnic. So, yeah, I’m scared, but I’m not scared, if you know what I mean. What about you?’

Courtney just shrugged, letting him think she was tougher than she was. Someone he could rely on.

‘I remember one time, back at the museum,’ she said after a while. ‘Me and Brooke and Aleisha was talking. We’d been out and found the lorry, we was all feeling good, reckoned we could handle the sickos, no problem. Anyway, we was talking – and I always remember it for some reason – maybe it was the last time we was all together and happy. I said the only problem with sickos was if you got overwhelmed. Only I couldn’t remember the word at the time. Overwhelm. It’s a weird word. We all had a laugh about me trying to remember it. Overwhelm. It ain’t a word you get to use that much. And whenever I think of Brooke and Aleisha we’re back there, the three of us, laughing.’

‘It is a weird word, overwhelm,’ said DogNut. ‘I can’t get it out of my brain now thanks to you.’

‘You know what I mean, though,’ said Courtney. ‘Don’t you? They’re only really dangerous, the sickos, when there’s loads of them. One or two you can handle, but when there’s, like, hundreds …’

DogNut nodded, didn’t say anything for a moment, because he was suddenly right back there at the bank, and Leo, poor clumsy Leo, was being overwhelmed by sickos.

No other word for it.

He shook his head, dragged himself back into the present.

‘We gonna make sure,’ he said, ‘that whatever happens we ain’t overwhelmed. All right? Deal?’

‘Deal.’

And as they slapped palms, almost as if it had been arranged by a God with a sick sense of humour, they saw movement ahead and watched open-mouthed as a large group of adults crossed the road in front of them.

‘Oh crap,’ said DogNut, and he drew his sword.

9

Marco licked his dry lips. His chest felt tight. This was all beginning to get a bit too real. It had been easy, fun even, rowing up the Thames, and they’d never been too scared of the kids at the Houses of Parliament. They were a bunch of wimps really. He and Felix had started to think that perhaps the world was a safer place than they’d imagined, stuck inside their castle. As they were getting ready to leave, they’d laughed about it together, complained that they were getting bored. Now, seeing the sickos crossing the road, it didn’t seem quite so funny.

And, Jesus, there were a lot of them.

The kids froze, hoping they hadn’t been spotted. But then something alerted one of the sickos and he turned. A moment later all the other adults stopped. They were too far away for Marco to see them clearly, but he’d glimpsed enough of them to be able to tell that they were fast-moving for sickos. That meant they were younger and not as badly diseased.

The most dangerous type.

‘What do we do?’ he said.

‘We run, I guess,’ said Felix. ‘There’s way too many to fight.’

Marco turned round to see if the road was still clear behind them. ‘Back to the Houses of Parliament?’

‘Or we could go up a side-street,’ said Courtney. ‘Try and get round them.’

‘Good idea,’ said DogNut and they dodged up a smaller road called Broadway, pushing on in a fast jog, their packs rattling on their backs.

As they crossed over the next junction, however, they saw another group of sickos running towards them from the side. The kids swore and picked up their speed, only to find the way ahead blocked by yet another gang so that they were forced to duck into an alleyway that branched off to their left. Things were happening too fast for them to get scared, and as long as they kept moving, they were in with a chance of getting away without a fight.

DogNut was hot and angry. It would be a mighty pain in the arse if his expedition fouled up on day one. He wanted to be remembered for something heroic, not for leading his friends into a hopeless dangerous mess.

But that’s exactly what he had done …

The alley turned a sharp corner and came to a dead end. A literal dead end – there was a pile of ancient corpses here, lying on top of each other, dried out in the sun at the base of a brick wall.

Courtney cursed loudly. ‘Now what do we do?’

‘We hope they didn’t see us,’ said DogNut. ‘Hope they run past.’