“No, man. My fight is over. I’ve done my bit, and now I’m a danger to everyone trying to do theirs. The Red Lord will be back soon, and he won’t stop until he wipes every last one of us off the face of the earth. Kill me, and he’ll have to find another ride, innit? It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Ted took the last two steps, squeezing the hammer’s handle. He lifted it over his head but stopped halfway. He let the hammer drop with a deflated sigh.
“Maybe there’s no United Kingdom left, but before it fell, we were a nation that didn’t execute its enemies. A tradition, I think, that should be retained. I won’t kill you, Vamps, but I will take you prisoner. It will be up to the group to decide what to do with you. You killed their friend, and they deserve the right to judge you. If the Red Lord comes back, he’ll be our prisoner too. Maybe we’ll find a way to get him talking.”
Vamps shook his head. “You’ll regret it, man. Just kill me. Please!”
“I don’t know you, Vamps, but I ain’t gunna kill you. Maybe if the Red Lord pisses me off enough, then I’ll change my mind, but right now I don’t have it in me to kill you. Not if you’re telling me you’re not the one who killed Eric. No more death.”
“But—”
“And if what you said is correct, we don’t have time to stand around arguing about it. If you want us to keep the Red Lord from hurting anyone, let us keep you prisoner at the castle. It has plenty of space in the dungeon, and you’ll have company.”
Vamps frowned. “What do you mean?”
Ted motioned for Vamps to follow and marched into the cabin. He yanked open the door to the First Aid room and found Nathan sitting sullenly on the bed. The boy showed no emotion as he looked up at Ted, but he tilted his head curiously. “Hey.”
“Come on,” said Ted. “You’re being moved to a different cell.”
Nathan stood up. “Why?”
“Because tonight, this place is going to be swarming with demons. And I don’t want you to die.”
Ted took his two prisoners up the hill and into the castle. Then he shared the news that an attack was on its way. This time, nobody in the camp panicked. They were tired of waiting for a fight to come. It was time to get it over with.
39
DR KAMIYO
Through some bizarre twist of irony, Kamiyo’s captors placed him and the others in the supermarket’s pharmacy. It resembled a cell, but with a counter on one side instead of a wall. Someone always sat on a chair out front watching them.
“They have enough medicine here to keep us healthy for a year or more,” said Kamiyo. “Not as many antibiotics as I’d like, but plenty of everything else. We need to make a deal with these people.”
Philip pulled a face. “I don’t think we have a strong bargaining position right now. And you say there’s enough medicine here to keep our camp healthy for a year, but that would be at the expense of this group not having it for themselves. They would have to be mad to give it up. You can tell they know its value because of how organised everything is.”
“I do not know what we have that they do not,” said Aymun. “These people are afraid, and fear makes people clutch tight to what they have.”
“So what would you do, Aymun?” Kamiyo had got to know the man a little over the last couple of days. At first, he was stunned to learn the man had once been part of an Islamic militant group, but then even more flabbergasted when he heard about the man’s more recent exploits in Hell. He was a strange man, but always calm and never quick to anger. Kamiyo had started to enjoy the man’s presence.
Aymun considered the question. “I would like to give you an answer, but human behaviour cannot be easily predicted. The only way to convince someone to consider an unfair exchange is to make them allies, not trade partners. Do not bargain with them when they are the ones with all the goods. We must implore them towards charity.”
Philip huffed. “They’re not going to just give us what we want.”
Kamiyo didn’t know what would happen, but he wished things would move along. All this waiting was driving him insane. He studied the shelves inside the pharmacy, noting how the boxes had been shuffled into matching groups. The people here were fastidious, working, rationing, exercising. They were no different to the people at the castle in many ways—and equally suspicious of newcomers.
Kamiyo was tired of always being a newcomer.
He moved away from the spot he’d been using to sleep. His captors hadn’t provided blankets, so he had been using bundles of sealed bandages as a pillow and his coat for warmth. The only time he’d been out from behind the counter in the last two days was whenever he needed to go to the toilet. He was dutifully escorted and led immediately back. The only decent part of his imprisonment was the food. The stale biscuits they had given him with some boiled spaghetti had been sublime.
As always, there was a guard on the other side of the counter when Kamiyo approached. “Hey, I want to speak with Pritchard.” Pritchard was the leader of this group, the bald thug who had assaulted Kamiyo and taken him prisoner. The man who carried around a toy gun painted black.
“Pritchard’s a busy man,” said the guard—an elderly gentleman, rendered weak by an apparent lifetime of smoking and drinking. Kamiyo knew he could overpower the sickly man, but the chances of getting out of the supermarket were slim. There were too many people—too many locked doors.
“I know he’s busy, but so are we. We came from a
