The Fallen Read Free Page B

boy. ‘Just like always. Even though Robbie’s not around. They was all locked. We’re sure of it.’
    ‘We found Jason,’ said the first boy.
    ‘Who’s Jason?’ asked Blue.
    ‘He’s on one of the other security teams,’ said the boy. ‘He also checks the doors. We found his body, what was left of it, half eaten. God knows how, but all the doors are open …’
    Blue looked at the frightened faces of the boys. Somebody here had either been careless or crazy, but finding out the answer to that would have to wait till later; right now they had to deal with the grown-ups.
    ‘Looks like you got a war on your hands,’ said Blue.
    ‘Don’t I know it,’ said Boggle.
    ‘So come on,’ said Blue. ‘Let’s win it …’
    Achilleus was staring at a cross section of a giant sequoia tree that was fixed to the wall at the very top of the museum. It must have been five or six metres wide. The sign next to it said it was thirteen hundred years old when it was cutdown. Thirteen hundred years was a very long time. Like Paddy, Achilleus had never been to the museum before, would have sneered at the idea, but since the disease, since everything had changed, he’d found himself thinking about the world a lot more than he ever used to. Thinking about life and death and time and history. His dad had loved history. Was obsessed by the History channel. And here was this tree that had lived through it all. The Middle Ages, the discovery of America, the Napoleonic Wars, both world wars …
    ‘There’s nothing up here,’ said Jackson.
    ‘’Cept this tree,’ said Achilleus and Jackson laughed.
    ‘Don’t think that’s going to attack us,’ she said.
    Achilleus turned to her and smiled. ‘Could fall off the wall and merkolate us.’
    ‘Could do.’
    ‘We ought to check the opposite side from where we came up, I guess,’ said Achilleus.
    ‘OK. And then we’ll stay at the bottom. Guard the main hall.’ Jackson’s voice wasn’t what Achilleus had been expecting when he first saw her. She was posh. Like a private school kid. Didn’t look like one, though. Looked like a bloke, to be honest.
    She was staring at him, her lumpy potato face barely visible in the half-light. It was like she was waiting to say something, or for him to say something. He realized the two of them were alone; the others had moved down the stairs. All except for Paddy, who stood there, slowly drooping under the weight of the golf-bag.
    Let him droop.
    And let her wait. He had nothing to say to her. Except …
    ‘So what are you waiting for?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    Jackson led them back down to the next level.
    Bloody girls …

4
    Dinosaurs … why did it have to be dinosaurs?
    The gallery was stuffed with them, filling every space – fossils of complete dinosaurs, bits and pieces of others, heads, claws, teeth, models, toys, pictures. There were dinosaurs trapped in cases, leaning over them, hanging from the ceiling, up on platforms, peering round corners … The route through the gallery was on two levels: the ground floor and a raised steel walkway that snaked overhead. The route had been designed to weave past every exhibit, and in the near dark, lit by leaping candlelight and the jittery criss-crossing of torch beams, it had become a confusing maze, like some spooky fairground attraction, made all the more disconcerting by the jagged, skeletal shapes of the dinosaurs.
    They weren’t the worst part, though.
    As far as Maxie could tell, there were about twenty-five mothers and fathers in there. She couldn’t be sure, what with the kids running around and the busy jumble of exhibits, but there seemed to be adults everywhere. She could feel the sickly heat coming off their bodies. Smell that familiar sweet-and-sour stink. Hear them wheezing and shuffling and moaning. They weren’t particularly aggressive, but they were scared and cornered and foughtdesperately when attacked. They’d split into little packs of three or four, and Maxie’s