The Dead Read Free Page A

‘Bam’ Bamford, champion prop forward for the school, and bunched next to him in a pack were four of his friends from the rugby team, armed with hockey sticks. They yelled at Jack and Ed to follow them and cleared a path between the startled teachers who dropped back to either side. The seven boys had the muscle now to power down the corridor and into the empty entrance hallway at the end. They kept moving, Ed running up the stairs three steps at a time, all tiredness forgotten.
    They soon reached the top floor and hammered on the dormitory door.
    ‘Open up! It’s us!’ Bam yelled. Below them the teachers were starting to make their way on to the stairs.
    There were muffled voices from the dorm and sounds of activity.
    ‘Come on,’ Jack shouted. ‘Hurry up.’
    Monsieur Morel was coming up more quickly than the other adults, his big feet crashing into each step as his long, muscular legs worked like pistons, eating up the distance.
    At last the boys could hear the barricade being removed from the other side of the door. They knew how long it took, though, to move the heavy wardrobe to the side, shunting it across the bare wooden floorboards.
    There had to be a better system than this.
    Jack turned. Morel was nearly up.
    ‘Get a move on.’ Ed pounded his fists on the door, which finally opened a crack. The boy on the other side put an eye to the gap, checking to see who was out there.
    ‘Just open the bloody door,’ Bam roared.
    Morel reached the top of the staircase and Jack kicked him hard in the chest with the heel of his shoe. The big man fell backwards with a small, high-pitched cry, toppling down the stairs and taking out a group of teachers on the lower steps.
    The door swung inwards. The seven boys made it through to safety.

4

    The adults were scraping the dormitory wall with their fingers and battering at the door. Now and then there would be a break, a few seconds’ silence, and the boys would hear one of them sniffing at the crack down the side of the door like a dog. Then the mindless frenzy of banging and scratching would begin all over again.
    ‘Do you think they’ll give up and go away?’ Johnno, one of the rugby players, was standing by the heavy wardrobe that the boys used to barricade the door. He was staring at it, as if trying to look through it at the adults on the other side.
    ‘What do you reckon?’ said Jack, with more than a hint of scorn in his voice.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Exactly. So why ask such a stupid question?’
    ‘Hey, hey, hey, no need to start getting at each other,’ said Bam, stepping over to put an arm round his friend’s shoulder. ‘Johnno was just thinking out loud, weren’t you, J? Just saying what we’re all thinking.’
    ‘Yeah, I know, I’m sorry,’ said Jack, slumping down on to a bed and running his fingers through his hair. ‘I’m all weird inside. Can’t get my head straight.’
    ‘It’s the adrenalin,’ came a high-pitched, squeaky voice from the other side of the room. ‘The fight or flight chemical.’
    ‘What are you on about now, Wiki?’ said Bam, with a look of amusement on his broad, flat face. Wiki’s real name was Thomas. He was a skinny little twelve-year-old with glasses who seemed to know everything about everything and had been nicknamed Wiki, short for Wikipedia.
    ‘Adrenalin, although you should properly call it epinephrine,’ he said in his strong Manchester accent. ‘It’s a hormone your body makes when you’re in danger. It makes your heart beat faster and your blood vessels sort of open up so that you’re ready to either fight off the danger or run away from it. You get a big burst of energy, but afterwards you can feel quite run down. It’s made by your adrenal glands from tyrosine and phenylalanine, which are amino acids.’
    ‘Thanks, Wiki,’ said Bam, trying not to laugh. ‘What would we do without you?’
    Wiki shrugged. Before he could say anything else there was an almighty bang from outside and all eyes in the