Free The Enemy by Charlie Higson Page B

them.
    The nearest one, a father, let off a long slow fart and rol ed over in his sleep. A shaft of moonlight fel across his face. Sam looked at him. He had never seen a diseased grown-up so close before. He had only seen them lumbering past in the street from a safe distance.
    This father was dirty and very ugly. His hair was al stuck together and it didn’t real y look like hair. His skin was orangey-yel ow and hanging loose in flaps, covered in sores and blisters and boils. It had cracked open in places, showing a gooey blackness underneath. He yawned and Sam saw that there was a big hole in his cheek. Through it he could see broken rotten teeth.
    Sam got into a crouch and backed away from him.
    His heels dug into something soft. He hadn’t noticed a seventh grown-up curled against the wal . It shuddered in its sleep and shifted restlessly. Sam held his breath. It was a mother. She wrapped her arms around one of his legs, nuzzled against him, and relaxed.
    She was younger than the other mother, with a tangle of black hair. There was a silver butterfly pin stuck in it. Sam thought it might be a good weapon.
    He careful y slid it out and held on to it tightly. It was like a long needle, with the sil y, jeweled insect perched at one end. If any of these filthy bastards came near him he would stick it in. Yes he would. Just you watch him. He would stick it in good.
    Dirty bastards.
    Bastards, bastards, bastards . . .
    It felt good to swear. Even if it was only in his mind.
    He tried to pul his leg free, but the mother had too strong a grip on it. If he tugged too hard she might wake up. He studied her. She looked quite nice, quite pretty. Then she turned her head and he saw the other side of her face: it was a nest of boils. Great round lumps covered the whole of her cheek, her neck, her ear, even her eyelid. The skin was stretched tight, and it looked like the lumps might burst at any moment.
    Sam had a terrible urge to pop one with the butterfly pin. Instead he leaned over and used the tip of it to tickle her skin. Soon she started to twitch and then let go of his leg to scratch the spot. With a sigh of relief he managed to step clear.
    He would have to be much more careful. The more he took in of his surroundings, the more he realized that there were grown-ups everywhere. The floor was covered in them. If he took one wrong step he would tread on one. He remembered when his dad had taken him to the zoo in Regent’s Park. In the reptile house they tried to spot lizards or snakes in their glass cages. When you first looked you couldn’t see any, but if you were patient, you spotted them. Lying in clumps, on top of each other, under rocks, half buried, lazy and bloated.
    He had to get out of here.
    He moved cautiously to the window. To try to get some idea of where he was.
    To begin with, he could make no sense of what he saw. It was a huge alien space. Not inside but not outside. It reminded him of something.
    Yes. The amphitheater in a gladiator film.
    Of course.
    It was the Arsenal soccer stadium. He was in a hospitality box, looking across the rows and rows of red seats toward the field. There were grown-ups out there, some sleeping in the seats, some lying on the floor, some wandering aimlessly about.
    Maybe they’d come back here because it was familiar; it meant something to them. There was certainly not going to be any more soccer played here for a long time. Far below, the grass on the field had grown high. A father was standing there, very stil , like a statue. Grass up to his knees. He was fat and, like a lot of grown-ups, looked completely bald. He wore a white vest with a red cross of Saint George on it. Sam had the unnerving feeling that he was looking straight at him.
    Sam felt sad. Dad had brought him here once. He remembered how ful of life and sound and color it had been. He’d been scared at first, al those people shouting and singing and swearing and jumping up and down. But he’d gotten into it and