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Back The Enemy Save as PDF
Chapters (69)
  1. Table of Contents
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He didn’t like it here. The glass walls of the towers that loomed on either side reflected each other back at themselves.

It was like a city designed by a madman. The scale was all wrong and none of the buildings matched. There would be an old church right next to an office block made of metal that looked like a giant engine. Everywhere there were abandoned building sites, some little more than deep holes in the ground, others home to the steel skeletons of office blocks that would now never be finished. Cranes stood over them, and the boys had seen three that had fallen, smashing into the buildings next to them.

“Shall we try again?” said the Kid.

“Okay.”

They got up stiffly and set off, trying a new route.

“We need to keep our eyes peeled like spuds, Frodo,” said the Kid.

“It’s Sam,” said Sam testily.

“Oh yeah, sorry, I knew it was one of them hobbits.”

“And besides,” said Sam. “You don’t have to tell me to look out. I can look after myself. I’ve survived on the streets all by myself.”

“Not these streets,” said the Kid.

“They’re all the same,” said Sam.

“Not so,” said the Kid. “You never know what you’re going to find around here. This part of London is way weird. Things happened differently here to how they did everywhere elsewhere, I reckon. That’s why your bully-butcher friends down below didn’t become sickos. This is an old place. There’s some kind of special magic here. Some old power, from the dark days, the storybook time, maybe even before Caesar and his Romans came, eh?”

“I don’t believe in magic,” said Sam.

“I believe in everything, titch,” said the Kid.

“Don’t call me ‘titch.’ You’re not much bigger than me.”

“I know I ain’t, but you’re still small, buster boy. You’re a right tiddler.”

“I’m a giant killer.”

“I can believe it. As I say, I believe everything, shrimp.”

“Don’t call me that,” said Sam. “Or I’ll call you rat boy.”

“Midget.”

“Tree frog.”

“Crumb.”

“Scab.”

“Plankton.”

“Poop head.”

“Poop head?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, giggling. “That’s what you are. You stink.”

“Not as bad as you, pip-squeak.”

“No, you smell worse, you smelly sock.”

“Don’t you call me a smelly sock, you hairy yellow vetch.”

“Rat boy, rat boy!”

“Squirt.”

“Ass.”

“Hold up.” The Kid tensed and went into a crouch. He was looking intently down the street, like a hunting dog. Sam looked in the same direction.

It was another group of grown-ups. The third they’d seen since they’d been up here.

“We need to be somewhere else, microbe,” said the Kid.

“You’re a microbe, you punk,” Sam muttered wearily as they turned and ran.

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