Free The End by Charlie Higson Page B

The Kid, even though he talked in his own weird way. In fact, that was probably why he liked him. The Kid looked at the world differently to everyone else. Maybe that’s why he was still alive.
    Ollie was only here because he was looking after Lettis.He’d saved her life and she’d latched on to him, wouldn’t let him out of her sight. Wherever he went, she had to go.And wherever she went he had to go. She liked coming here. To the library. She’d been helping Chris Marker write down the stories before, but now, although she wrote obsessively in her own leather-bound journal, she never let anyone else see it.
    She’d been nearlymute since the attack, when a bunch of grown-ups had cornered her in a church, and had a permanently haunted, broken look in her eyes. Ollie wasn’t sure she’d ever really recover. She was sitting next to Small Sam at the table, staring at him with her big, black-rimmed eyes. Next to her was The Kid, and next to him was another girl, who was called Charlotte or by her nickname, Yo-Yo.She carried a violin around with her in a case all the time. She’d played it one night, in the main hall before bedtime. She wasn’t bad, not exactly a child prodigy, but good enough to make everyone stop what they were doing and applaud her. You never heard much music these days unless someone played a real instrument. Without electricity, all the world’s digital music had disappeared.
    That night, in the main hall, Ollie had sat out of the way in the shadows and wept when he’d heard the violin, the notes echoing up and away into the vast open space of the hall. He’d wept for everything they’d lost, and he’d wept for how clever mankind had once been, composing beautiful music, creating beautiful instruments, teaching children to play, creating machines to preserveit …
    ‘Let’s go back over what you’ve told me.’ Chris Marker was looking down at the big book he’d been writing in. ‘You were captured while you were playing in the car park behind the Waitrose supermarket.’
    ‘Yes. Some grown-ups got over the wall.’
    ‘And they took you to the Arsenal football stadium, where you managed to escape by starting a fire that burned the wholeplace down.’
    ‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Sam. ‘It just happened.’
    ‘OK. Then, trying to find your friends, you went down into the underground tunnels at Camden Town tube station, where you were taken in by two people who weren’t diseased but turned out to be cannibals.’
    ‘That’s where I come in,’ said The Kid. ‘To the rescue remedy! Look up! Look down! Is it a plane? Is it aJames Bond? Is it Superman? No, it’s the mighty Kid! Bravo! He’ll save Sam from the clutches of the evil child-eaters!’
    ‘They were horrible,’ said Sam. ‘They pretended to be friends. They only stayed healthy by eating children and keeping out of the light.’
    ‘I got him out of there,’ said The Kid. ‘Make sure you write that bit. I ain’t never been in no reading book before,skipper. I was the hero, Robert De Niro, William Shakespearo! Walking on the beaches, looking at the peaches.’
    Chris Marker gave The Kid a look that said, ‘You’re not really helping.’
    ‘And so you both went to the Tower of London,’ he said. ‘I wish I’d been able to talk to Ed before he left, and get his side of the story.’
    ‘It’s the greatest story ever told,’ said The Kid.‘It’s got thrills and spills and kill bills. And it’s got me in it. That’s the good bit. You are writing it, aren’t you?’
    ‘Ed would’ve told you the same story,’ said Sam. ‘I’m not making it up. He found us and took us in at the Tower of London.’
    ‘OK,’ said Chris, looking at his book again. ‘And you say you left the Tower to go and look for your sister, butsome kids at StPaul’s took you in because they thought you were a god.’
    Sam giggled. ‘I know it sounds stupid.’
    ‘You had to be there,’ said The Kid.
    ‘I was there,’ said Yo-Yo.