Ebenezer turned away from him, made a face at Ollie.

‘That was clever back there,’ he said. ‘Working out what Seamus was up to. Knowing he had them lumps round his neck.’

‘It was a guess,’ said Ollie. ‘A lucky one.’

‘What would you’ve done if you were wrong?’

‘I’d have thought of something.’

‘Yeah. You always think of something.’ Ebenezer slapped palms with Ollie and glanced up towards the top of the stairs.

‘What are they doing up there?’ he asked.

‘We’ll find out soon enough, don’t worry,’ said Ollie.

‘We got to get back to the church,’ said Ebenezer. ‘We left all them other kids there.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ollie. ‘I’d almost forgotten about them. They’ll be all right, though. That place was pretty secure.’

‘I wonder what they’re doing.’

‘Not our problem right now, Ebenezer. We just got to find out who these weird kids are and then grab what we need and go.’

‘I wish I was there in the church with them. A church is a good place. This place … It’s all wrong, Ollie.’

Ollie smiled at Ebenezer, trying to reassure him. Ebenezer had a strong faith. Prayed every night. Ollie sometimes wished he had someone to pray to. He pictured the kids back at the church. Wondered if they were praying right now.

Wondered if God would bother to listen.

A voice called down to them from up on the platform.

‘They’re ready.’ It was Emily. ‘You can come up now.’

Chapter 61

61

Blue still felt like he was in some weird dream. Not the first time he’d felt this way over the last year. He’d lost track of how many times he’d woken from some twisted nightmare only to find that he was deep in a worse nightmare – what the world had become – and wishing he was back in his bad dream, not having to cope with reality. Reality. You kind of got used to things when they went on around you all the time, so that he’d almost forgotten what the world had been like before the disease came creeping into it.

What was going down now, though, was something else entirely, something new. Something deeply strange. Einstein had had a million questions, but TV Boy had told him to keep them. Told him he was going to make everything clear. That it was going to be ‘show-and-tell’ time. This was shaping up to be one wigged-out show-and-tell, though.

The rest of the warehouse kids had gathered on the platform now, and Blue didn’t know what to think, where to look. To say they were all different shapes was the understatement of the century. And the thing was, they weren’t all human shaped. How they were alive he didn’t know, because the way they looked was … impossible. Alien.