Naga had everyone ready to move for when Leon and the others got back. They all had their backpack or shoulder bag on or beside them on the ground, each one loaded with a couple of litres of water and several tins of food.
There was still a fair amount of their stuff sitting in the backs of the trucks. It felt foolishly reckless just leaving it all behind, but if help was waiting just a few kilometres away, then it didn’t seem to matter any more.
And Leon was almost certainly coming back with good news. She could have sworn she’d heard the chopping sound of a distant helicopter coming from somewhere over the city.
The mood among them had lifted, a stark contrast to the sombre and sullen collective that had set off from the smouldering ruins of the castle. There were smiles and laughter for the first time in what seemed like ages. Danielle notably amongst them, for once laughing instead of griping about something or other. She watched some of the former knights – Moss, Crouchman, Hester – sitting on their helmets and playing cards.
Several others were making the most of this downtime to stretch out and rest their aching legs and sore feet. Patrick had taken his trainers and socks off, and Osman was busy checking his old feet for infection, replacing padded blister plasters where needed.
Royce was sitting on the tailgate of one of the trucks rolling a cigarette.
Denise had just finished brushing the tangles out of Rachel’s long frizzy hair and was starting to plait it. Naga smiled at that; for the first time in a long time, someone was actually concerned with their appearance.
Naga’s gaze finally settled on their new friends, Jerry and his brood of waifs and strays. They were clustered together away from everyone else, beyond the low centre barrier of the road, where there was a little more open tarmac to move around. It looked as if he were organizing a game for them to play while they waited for Leon’s return. They were gathered tightly around him, listening intently as he talked.
She was so impressed by Jerry. He was so good with them.
He was what? Sixteen? In the good old days . . . before . . . her only experience of boys that age had been surly-faced little thugs hidden beneath their hoods, only looking up from their iPhones to sneer an acknowledgement at the rest of the world.
She wondered if Jerry would have been like that, but here and now, having been handed such a burden of responsibility, he’d become someone else altogether: a pied piper for orphaned children. Peter Pan with his Lost Boys and Girls.
The children had largely kept to themselves since they’d hooked up several days ago. She didn’t blame them. Her group of mostly adults were complete strangers to them.
She saw Jerry spread his arms out wide and the children surged in towards him. Their painfully thin arms wrapped around him, and his around them.
Group hug? Oh God, that’s adorable. Naga smiled as she watched them snuggling in tightly, all squirming to get closer, like teenyboppers around a pop star, but without the screaming or cheering. It was a perfectly silent group hug.
Oddly silent.
She cocked her head at the strangeness of it: no giggles or ‘awww’s or even that self-conscious ‘mmm’ sound that people feel the need to make alongside a hug. It was decidedly peculiar.
The pressing of bodies together looked more intense now, more purposeful than a display of affection. It was starting to look more like a rugby scrum. She saw someone’s pink rucksack drop to the ground amid the forest of scrawny legs. Among the legs she could see the silhouette of one of the youngest ones, a toddler of two or three, being carelessly buffeted and knocked by knobbly knees.
They need to mind the littlies.
‘Hey kids!’ she called out.
None of them looked her way.
‘Jerry!’ she called again. ‘You’ve got little ones in the middle getting squished in there!’
Jerry didn’t respond either.
She wondered what the hell they were playing at. Maybe it wasn’t a group hug after all, but some stupid game. She made her way across to the central barrier and swung a leg over.
‘Jerry . . .’she called again. ‘You need to watch out for the babies . . .’ She pointed at the road beneath their huddle. She caught a glimpse of pale mother-of-pearl shellac and hair-thin legs scuttling across the broken tarmac, around a tuft of weeds towards her.
A viral. One of those miniature ones they hadn’t seen in a long while. Then she saw another one, zigzagging quickly across the road. She saw more, one after another, a line of them, like an ant trail, leading back to the squirming mass of children, weaving around and through that copse of skinny legs, emerging from their shadows like freshly hatched spiders from a deep, dark forest.
She was about to yell at them to scatter when her eyes caught other details . . .
. . . an ear dangling from the side of a girl’s head, attached by a jelly-like string of flesh.
. . . a small dismembered chubby hand lying on the road, fingers still curling and flexing.
. . . a yellow T-shirt twitching from protuberances beneath, sprouting crimson stains.
Oh my God . . .
And in the middle of the dark forest of legs, she saw the silhouette of a baby sitting on his padded bottom, jawbone slowly swinging like a pendulum and descending into his lap from spittle-thin strings of mucus.
She tried to scream. Not bothering to try forming words, just a shrill bark of noise to warn everyone to run . . . but nothing more than a hoarse wheeze came out.
The mass of children collapsed inwards from the middle. Legs no longer functioning as viable supports for the mass of loosening, jellying tissue sagging inwards under its own weight. The silence was broken by the spatter of organs on to the tarmac and a growing moan coming from those children whose vocal chords were still intact: a deep-pitched mournful sound, like the pitiful lowing of cattle awaiting slaughter.
Naga noticed that the ‘ant trail’ of crabs scuttling towards her had quickly escalated into a thicker stream. And from the growing slush pile of organs on the ground, even more were emerging.
She felt the sharp sting of one of them sinking a serrated-edge spine into her ankle. Felt another sting as a second leaped for an ambitious hold further up her calf.
She screamed, finding her voice second time around.
‘RUN!’
Naga staggered backwards towards the central barrier, bumped into it, lost her balance and toppled over its corrugated-iron lip. She landed heavily on the far side, winded from the backwards tumble.
She turned her head to look back under the rusting barrier, ignoring the scratches and scrapes across her face from the gravel. She saw, from low down, from her right-next-to-the-ground perspective, what appeared to be a tidal wave of glinting, wire-thin limbs, sharp barbs and ragged surgical pincers racing towards her.
A second later they were upon her.