Wrecked

When they finally came to it, the Royal Armouries was a modern building of glass, steel and sheer grey stone, cut to an angular cubist form like the other buildings along the canal wharf. They were silent, perfectly still and lifeless, their multicoloured, polygonal forms like a surrealist still-life beneath the arid rush of the dead sky above.

'For Ryan!' the war cry went up. 'For Ryan! And for Tom!'

They shored up the boat and clambered up onto the canal side. The friends' pounding footfalls and their whoops and yells echoed across the wide space of the open, flat-tiled courtyard, the only sounds of life in the emptiness. The Armouries loomed up and the friends hollered out their mania and their insane exhilaration at it all.

Above the entrance was an image of the horned pageantry helmet of Henry VIII - the emblem adopted by the Royal Armouries. Its metal face grimaced down at the approaching friends in amusement, gilded spectacles set upon its hook-nosed leer and ridged horns curling on either side. Its image was emblazoned on all the signs for the Armouries and on a row of white vans parked to the side of the courtyard. Matt pointed them out as possible getaway cars but none of the others ceased their whooping and caterwauling to acknowledge him as they rushed in.

'I want a sword!' some shouted. 

'I want a helmet with horns!' 

'I want a peg leg, cutlass and a hook for my hand!'

'Special Exhibition – Crown Jewels and National Treasures' – Jack pointed out a sign on the wall. It had a picture of a golden crown encrusted with gems and said he nearly peed.

They weren't the first to try their luck at the Armouries, it seemed. Broken glass from the front doors glittered like heaps of gems. It ground under their boots as they stepped through an open gap in the doorway. A long, bloody smear led to a handprint on the remaining pane.

Through the gloom of the museum's interior they saw the floor was littered with debris, broken museum pieces and what seemed to be bodies scattered across it. A hallway spanned the length of the building and cleft apart the upper levels of the museum. It made a chasm that reached from the ground floor to the ceiling and was spanned by walkway bridges high above.

In the dim light that emanated from the glass roof the group saw bodies getting up from where they lay among the broken glass and litter. Some ragged, morbid figures appeared from around corners and turned towards them as they entered.

Stick together!' 'Don't get separated!' they called to each other as they held their neighbour by the arm as they stepped through the glass and filed inside. 'Keep steady now!'

A canteen on their left was ransacked, with tables and chairs strewn around and piled against the doors. On their right was a conference room, vacant and bare except for dark stains splattered across the floor along with what seemed to be bones.

The exhibits were on the upper floors. All the weapons, all the artefacts and loot; the friends could sense them. They drew the friends up with the lure of their hidden treasures.

The last of the friends made their way inside.

'Right, come on, let's do this! Let's go!' Nick flipped his visor down. 

'FOR RYAN! CHARGE!' Nick screamed as loud as he could and ran ahead down the hallway. The rest of them took up his cheer and thundered along behind. A body sat up at the sound of their approach and Nick teed its head off like a croquet ball as they passed.

A group of the Dead rushed out to meet them as the group charged down the hall, cursing and yelling with incoherent fury at the intruders. There were men and women in staff uniforms and some in civilian clothes that came at them from the office and gift shop. There was even a group of kids in school uniform that rushed at them screeching, and trailed rank saliva between their blackened teeth. Their manic eyes, filmy and seeping, locked on those who had disturbed their charnel quiet. The Dead reached out to claw at them, to flail and grab at them. The friends bellowed their war cries, the paint on their faces twisting in savage glee, teeth bared in grins of malice through the bright colours and outlandish colouration of their tribe.

The Bhuna amped the friends' rage up to fever pitch.

They were no longer on the run, they thought, they were no longer hiding and waiting in dread or running in fear as they were driven from their home. The time of being afraid, the time of being the prey, was over.

'Revenge!' they cried. 'For Tom! For Ryan! For our home!'

The two groups collided by the reception desk, where torn and scattered guidebooks littered the floor. They clashed together in their unyielding momentum, those at the back cannoning into those at the front, doubling them up, smashing them together in the collision of bodies. A couple of the lighter Dead were knocked down in the impact, but the sturdier ones who kept upright landed heavy blows down on the friends. Joe caught a wallop around the head. He couldn't tell from whom, or even if it was from friend or foe, and lost his footing. Nick fought for enough space so that he could bring the butt of his dumbbell's handle down on the head of one of the museum staff but it only earnt a furious bellow and a powerful overhead clout in return. Sarah yelled as a Dead hand crushed down on her shoulder like a vice, and in the press of bodies she was unable to even move her weapon. She loosed a flurry of punches with her left fist down on to the squalling, shrieking schoolkids who pummelled her in the belly and painfully in the breast but couldn't hold them off.

The friends at the back linked arms, yelled joyously and heaved forward like a rugby scrum as they steamrolled the remaining Dead to the floor. The group bashed them down with joyous savagery as the living corpses floundered on the stone tiles.

The friends heard the other Dead in the building take up their call, alerted to their presence. Their whoops and howling came from all around them, echoing throughout the museum as the noise reflected from the bare stonework high above and all about them. The friends listened, awestruck at the choir of so many of the Dead, their awful howling like the call from a wolf pack. Their prize was so close though, just within reach. How insanely brave their quest was! How madly brilliant!

Nick ripped a bunch of keys from the belt of a dead curator. 'Thank you! These might come in useful,' he said.

Jack fought with a latecomer to the fray, a girl in a leather jacket with green hair.

'This way! Hurry up! Come on!' the friends urged each other. They started to climb the stairway, which spiralled up to the floors above and left him behind.

The friends stared upwards, open-mouthed, inside the hollow central column of the stairway. They gaped in awe until they were pulled and jostled along. The Dead girl fought with Jack and smacked him across the head when he wasn't looking. He booted her away and chased after them.

'Wait for me!' he protested.

In metal lettering on the stairway column were the words 'HALL OF STEEL' and all around its interior was a dizzying array of hundreds of weapons and pieces of armour that towered skyward.

Far above they beckoned, so high and out of reach but calling them upward by their promise. Vast, splendid arrangements of muskets and polearms interlaced with bristling lattices of swords and suits of armour that stood watch in their gaunt rank and file. Front and centre to it all was a huge fan shape composed of scores of halberds and poleaxes above the royal crest.

The friends rushed up the stairs, puffing, panting and chattering among themselves excitedly, eyes wide with anticipation and lust for their prize. They pointed, claiming first rights on various armaments they spied through the circular windows onto the Hall of Steel display.

'I call tax on the first one like that!' 

'I want one of them – No! No! – One of them.' 

'There! Right there! That's got my name on it. That's the one for me!'

Half a dozen of the Dead wearing curator uniforms stood in wait at the top of the stairs.

They shifted from foot to foot, agitated and aggressive. Their low groan of anger shifted to a roar as they charged the first of the friends who rounded the corner. Emma, Nick and Jenny were caught by surprise and bowled over but were quickly aided by those behind who retaliated at the guards who swung their fists and grabbed at them.

Several friends took stinging, winding blows, but they managed to batter down most of the uniformed Dead. They sent them tumbling and flopping down the stairs as the remainder were sent wounded and growling to retreat back into the gloom of the exhibition.

The friends did what they said they wouldn't do and promptly split to either of the two sections that took their fancy without a second thought. Matt's imploring yells to stick together were ignored before he'd even finished spinning the last clawing, hissing ghoul by the arm and thrown her down the stairs.

Jack went to the right, along with Joe, into the Tournament section. Here there was a gaily coloured marquee with a suit of jousting armour inside, and to the left was a display case of weapons and helmets. Jack and Joe rushed over in their excitement and on the way felled a growling, slavering girl who wore jeggings and a print t-shirt that said 'Love Life' with a neat one-two move between them.

Jack bashed in the glass pane of the display and wrenched out a poleaxe. He brandished it with childlike delight and admired the monstrous relic of a weapon. He lowered it so a man in a tattered business suit ran headfirst into the long spike at its tip. With difficulty, Jack managed to tug it back out. Jack weighed it in his hands and looked it over, his lip curling in disappointment. On closer inspection, this appeared to be a hulking lump of wood and rust nearly two metres long that was way too heavy.

'Nah,' he said, and he let the ancient artefact fall with a crash. The blade bent and chipped on the floor. Joe looked over his choice of weapon – the bottom half of a reproduction jousting pole meant for display purposes. It was banded with bold red stripes, which were very eye-catching, but in essence, it was also merely a heavy lump of wood. Dulled by disappointment, he let his loot drop too and they trotted on.

Further down the gallery they heard Jenny and Jane's audible excitement. They had found a display containing a whole row of armour miniatures that ranged from child-sized down to doll-sized playthings. The girls squealed and clapped before they struck the glass and reached in to rescue and cuddled the brave little metal soldiers. 'Miniature Cuirassier Armour' the information plaque read. They were modelled after the heavy cavalryman of the seventeenth century and sported darling little leather boots.

One of the Dead in a curator's uniform that they'd previously chased from the stairs came back and rushed up behind the girls. He was a moment away from crashing into the back of them when Jack body-slammed him off course and gave him a knock to the head with his mallet.

Jenny and Jane didn't even look up as they fussed over their findings. Jenny held up a tiny suit of doll's armour that was about a foot tall. 'Look, I found one for Jack!' she said.

'Nah, it's too big,' Jane replied, laughing.

'Aww, they're such adorable little things!' Jenny said, and she hugged another tiny suit to her bosom. 'I think I'll keep this one.'

Joe followed after Jack, who stomped off and left them to it.

Jack stopped when came to a lone display in the centre of the room. In a glass cabinet was a hideous face set in shining steel. It was hilariously grotesque: a grimacing face with bared teeth, a jutting, beaklike nose and ugly fat lips moulded into the steel. Horns curled out from the disembodied head and a pair of spectacles were perched in front of the bulging eyes.

'Oh wow.' The insult of a moment ago was forgotten.

It was the iconic figurehead of the Royal Armouries. Its motif could be seen at the building's entrance and on every signpost there. It was unique, a priceless artefact, a prize possession of the whole museum, and right there for the taking.

Information on the display case said that 'The Horned Helmet' was presented to King Henry VIII by the Emperor Maximilian I in 1514 and made by armourer Konrad Seusenhofer. It was for King Henry VIII to wear at court pageants and parades that accompanied tournaments and belonged to a matching suit, now lost to time.

Jack's old biker helmet rolled across the floor as he plucked his treasure out from the shards of glass and fumbled with the opening latches. He reverently crowned himself with his find and closed the mantle on his head. He was the Grand Jester King of all England. Shaking, Jack turned to Joe and laughed at his wide-eyed, appalled expression.

'Look at that! Isn't it amazing? I always fancied myself as a comedian, a class clown. Now I fulfil my vision to become the chief jester in this apocalyptic age of infernal madness,' Jack said in rapture.

'The fool in the Shakespeare plays of old was always the wisest of the cast. He was the one in on the joke, aloof and laughing at the ambition and madness that consigned the wretched kings and damned nobles to their graves.' Gabbled Jack as he gave a turn. 

'What an incredible find, and all mine. Mine! A piece of living history.' How majestic he must look. Jack spread his arms, gave a whirl and laughed maniacally, delighted at his own brilliance. Hopping around splay-footed as he imagined a jester might, Jack set off to the next gallery across the footbridge and left Joe to follow.

Inside the helmet, Jack had to keep turning and tilting his head at various angles. He could barely see where he was going.

Joe floored a girl who accosted them with a roar, a whirl of hair and a lash of nails. In one hand she held a rusty dagger that she swiped perilously close to Jack's neck and that Jack didn't even see because of how restricted his vision was.

'I've never seen them use weapons before,' remarked Joe as he booted it out of her hand.

The girl crawled away from them, growling and spitting as she retreated. Jack darted in and finished her off with an overhead whack with his mallet.

'Knock knock! It's the killing joke!' Jack crowed, and he pranced madly across the bridge.

The rest of the group was in the War gallery on the opposite side to the Tournament gallery. This was a much larger collection in the museum with many more exhibits. 

The Tournament gallery had definitely been visited before at some point. All around them the friends could see the trail the visitors had left. They could also see the trail of what was left of the visitors.

There were scattered, bent and broken weapons on the floor, stuck in the walls of the displays or lodged in the bodies that lay flat, curled up or sitting dead in their various poses. Loose bones, severed, inedible gristle riddled with teeth marks and dark crusty patches were all about them on the stone tiles.

From their handbags Sarah, Katie and Emily produced digital cameras and took pictures of each other as they posed with mannequins in the uniforms of Napoleonic cuirassiers or British redcoats. They planted kisses on a hard, rugged cheek or wrapped their arms around them and pouted suggestively, looking like they had been captured and were willing conquests.

The Dead still came at them, snarling, wailing, singly or in groups, and the friends fought them off with their new, ancient, weapons that they'd liberated from the displays. They found swords, maces, axes and war hammers and used their new toys with gusto and wild peals of laughter to slay the Dead as they ran at them or send them off wounded and howling back into the depths of the museum.

At the centre of the room there had once been a display of several Gothic knights on horseback, but now, knocked from their mounts, they lay upside down, humorously bandy-legged.

Nick sprang up on the display and hacked down at the Dead who came at him, drawn to his shouts of exuberance and laughter.

The prize he had claimed was a beautiful sixteenth century duelling sword with a gilded, shell-like hand guard. 

'Ha! Have at you!' he cried. In his mind he was Errol Flynn and the star of his very own swashbuckling adventure. Nick booted one of the armoured horses down from its stand onto one of the Dead that knocked it flat on its backside. Nick ran him through for dramatic effect then with a downward swipe from his sword he left the ghoul's head hanging.

'You know, I take back what I said earlier about only using bashing weapons,' he chattered away in Matt's directon. 'A sword is fine too. I took the top of someone's head off just now. It was like a boiled egg. You should've seen it.' Nick's eyes were wide as he held his weapon to the light.

I did,' Matt growled. He was sticking to his principles and clutched a hefty medieval pole hammer. The hammer's head was arranged in a distinctive pattern of three curved points, two above and one below, with a curved claw on the back designed to prise plate armour apart. It was an effective weapon, he had found, and really quite a beautiful one in its way. He had to admit it made him feel a lot more powerful than some old DIY tool.

No! He was being brought in to Nick's madness. The violence of it all made him sick; the insane abandonment that everyone succumbed to frightened him. Matt stared wide-eyed at them.

'What hell have I descended into?' he groaned.

All around him, among the gore and the mess and the chaos, the others chattered like kids on a school trip, off their heads on this drug. They took pictures of themselves and each other and compared the trinkets they'd robbed from Europe's medieval history. All the while, the howl of the walking corpses echoed to a crescendo.

Matt noticed that increasingly the Dead were carrying weapons and swung them at the friends. He saw a couple of daggers and a mace slice way too close for comfort at those around him. The madness of it all made his head spin, and here Nick was, joyfully encouraging it, as always, the ringleader of this dreadful, evil circus. Matt stared at Nick with hatred.

'Where is everyone? Where's my girlfriend?' Matt demanded, but no one paid attention. 'We need to regroup! This is all gone to hell.'

'I don't really care for this little shield thingy though,' Nick said, and he swiped a small round buckler down at a Dead youth who came at him. He clanged her twice across the head with it. His attacker – a nightmarish teenage girl covered in scars and with blood all round her mouth– screeched and ran away. 'It's like a bloody saucepan lid!' Nick said. He got frustrated with it, wrenched it off his arm and flung it after her like a Frisbee. It missed.

Matt set off to find Jane and Jenny. On the way, he found Jack and Joe, who were in the process of liberating more treasures. Jack wore a steel gauntlet on his left hand and wielded a spiked mace in his other. Matt heard him refer to it as his 'tickling stick'. Joe proudly admired the ornamentation on a sixteenth-century war hammer and claimed it for his own. Matt did a double take when Jack turned round and he saw the hideous face of Jack's horned helmet. Jack ran up, breathless and laughing, but he took in a whiff from a decaying body on the way and was nearly sick.

'WHERE'S JANE AND JENNY?' Matt bellowed at them, killing their humour in an instant. 'YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LOOK AFTER THEM!'

'Why are we supposed to look after them?' Jack complained. Cowed, they followed Matt back to the Tournament gallery to retrieve them.

The War gallery of the Royal Armouries was a thing of wonders. Relics from warfare throughout human history were mingled together in displays and scattered across the floor from the earlier doomed expedition. Jenny saw suits of armour, muskets, bows, shields, pikes, and rifles from around the world. Dummy warhorses in their fine livery had been toppled and lay together in their pan-historical chronic rest. In the middle of it all, somehow, surreally, was a helicopter minigun from the Vietnam War, its six monstrous barrels aimed at the heavens. They were displayed together in a pastiche of human history, the legacy of all man's killing inventions in a final resting place, together in a post-modern, post-apocalyptic graveyard.

Jenny felt there was an unearthly beauty to it all, in its unreal, horrifying way. All the while, the howls of the Dead called out and there was the clashing of steel, the thump of weapons and shattering glass. At any rate, she was proud of the helmet she'd found. It was a round, crested one with a visor, apparently called a burgonet. It restricted her view but it was very beautiful. She was also still clutching the toy knight to her chest.

She and Jane re-joined the rest of the group and then Matt, Joe and Jack, who were apparently looking for them. By now, everyone had discarded their old weapons for relics they had found.

Now we've got what we came for, we should leave,' Matt demanded.

'No!' everyone cried. 'Let's go up! Upwards! We want more! More!' The building still echoed with the howls and wails, and the friends whooped, hollered and raised the pitch of their voices to mimic the chorus of the Dead. They laughed as they mocked them and ran to the stairs.

'CROWN JEWELS AND HISTORIC TREASURES' read the title placard of the next floor up. 'GENUINE AND REPLICA FINERY THROUGH THE AGES'. The group screamed in delight.

A team of security guards appeared at the top of the stairs. The nearest of them caught Joe with an unexpected smack from a baton he held. The friends nearest to Joe pulled him back as the rest of the guards emerged. Joe grimaced and held his arm but said he was alright.

They were a scary-looking bunch. They were stout, tall, heavyset, some with old wounds crusted over.

Six of them stood ready, glowering and baring their teeth. They held security batons, wooden cudgels, and one even held a sword. Guns were holstered about them: pistols and an assault rifle.

'Since when do they carry weapons?' Sarah complained. 'That's not fair!'

The friends stayed close together, hands on the shoulders of those in front, ready, braced for whoever made the first move as they shuffled back and forth, waiting for an opening. A couple at the front gave an experimental swipe at the security guards to see if they could goad them into making a move or to knock the weapons from their hands. The guards stared back, solid and unyielding. Their rheumy eyes roved over the friends and the things they had stolen with silent fury.

Matt jabbed out with his pole hammer and poked a guard in the chest. He cried out in alarm as he had to block several blows back from them in retaliation. One cracked him across the forearm. He groaned, and the friends to his left and right managed to parry the next couple of blows aimed at him.

He couldn't draw back because of those pressing in to the back of him and he wasn't about to turn his back on these brutes.

Jack saw an opening made by the guards who were swinging at Matt. He darted in and smacked one who had a sword above the wrist. The guard's arm broke and the sword rattled to the floor. In return, Jack got clouted by a heavy backhand from the guard's other fist and was sent sprawling against the wall. The guards swung blows that the friends only just managed to bloc and flinch away from.

It seemed these Dead were a different class altogether. They didn't yield, they didn't flee and they kept their formation. Someone grabbed Jack's shoulder and pulled him back into the line.

Then the guard made the mistake of bending down to retrieve his sword. Matt swiftly brought his pole hammer down on top of the guard's head, the long reach of his weapon allowing him in past the others' weapons.

There was another flurry of blows in retaliation to this and the other guards pushed in to strike back. The friends had to lock weapons and heave forward with all their might to stop them getting pushed down the stairs.

A few of the group received painful bashes from weapons or punches from the guards but still the guards held firm together. Both groups stayed locked in formation. They swung weapons and parried each other.

The friends at the back started to panic. 'Some of them are coming up the stairs behind us!' Emily cried.

Sarah took the initiative and cried, 'Squad – advance! Forward… march!' She grabbed the shoulders to either side of her, heaved forward and boldly propelled Jack forward right into the midst of the guards.

'Jesus Christ!' Jack screamed. 'What are you doing?' 

In Jack's moment of terror, mercifully, the rest of the group came with him and he found himself at the front of a spearhead right into the guards' line.

Sarah swung down with her mace over his shoulder as they pushed through while several blows thudded into the side of Jack's armour. They finally cleaved the guards' group in two and bludgeoned them down as they separated. 

None of the guards were granted mercy after they were felled. Matt looked on, appalled, as they were all joyfully given medieval-style executions with the newly acquired loot.

'Sir Shitface of Twatsby I hereby proclaim thee a terrible cunt, and I sentence thee to death!' Jack proclaimed, and he smote the last guard's head off with the sword he'd dropped.

'Eww!' the friends chorused at all the blood, and they laughed at how outrageously disgusting it was. They tried to shoot the guns but found to their audible dismay that they were all empty. Sarah booted the severed head down the stairs and by sheer chance it slammed straight into the face of the green-haired ghoul that was coming back for more and sent her tumbling right back down again.

The friend's laughter was cut short at a new sound from up ahead. There was a screech as something grated along the floor. A steady pounding and creaking of grinding metal approached them.

The friends held each other and screamed as a huge figure came around the corner. It was clad head to foot in plate armour that gleamed dark and golden in the shadows. Its visor was cast in the likeness of a lion's jaw and other leonine motifs gave diabolical grins and leers on the shoulders and joints of the metal colossus.

The monstrous figure glared from a black slit that gave no glimpse whatever of what was inside. In one hand it held a huge metre-long sword, that it raised it from where it scored a line along the floor tiles.

It was another surreal moment from a surreal past few weeks in a surreal life. This, however, was one moment that would forever be burned into their minds for however long they lived.

The museum around them was a synthetic fabrication of modern glass, steel and stone. It was block-like, square and lifeless. Its hard edges were exactly measured, geometrically precise components, mass-produced by the hundred thousand and constructed from a kit. It was soulless, synthetic, a fabrication of the common era.

In stark contrast, sunlight shone from the glass walls on to the beauty of the armour's surface. It gleamed on an intricate golden floral design handwrought from its helmet, to the pauldrons down to its greaves. This wasn't just a machine of war but a work of art. The armour was a wonder of the Renaissance age, the finest craftsmanship of its era, a guardian of the ancient living past – unique, magnificent, and priceless – and it came with the express intent of murdering them.

Facing the golden sentinel, this piece of living history, was their gang of reavers in their outlandish multicoloured suits, their tribal paint and their scavenged loot. They whooped and yelled, consumed by their lust for trinkets and spoils.

The ancient warrior swung its weapon and drove back the tide of intruders who shied from its reach screaming. With the next swipe it landed a cut straight up Joe's forearm, and it wasn't slowed, nor did it even react, to the strikes that rung out on its metal carapace. Another heft of its sword cut the air in two a hairs' breadth from Emily's neck, and she shrieked and tried to push back through the people behind her. Nick's sword crashed against the pauldron on the knight's shoulder, but to no effect. The metal giant swiped him back with a fist that hit him like a truck.

The friends were on the back foot, and they were perilously close to being pushed back down the stairs. Matt only just managed to parry a thrust from the golden sentinel but the sword's tip drove into his upper arm and he yelled out. The group began to voice a cry to retreat, and they were on the verge of panic against this unearthly opponent. With another mighty thrust the sentinel struck Jenny across her helmet and the sword clashed against the friends' weapons.

Then the ancient warrior struggled, its weapon locked against the armaments stolen from its tomb. It held its ground against the trespassers but was surrounded. Shunted and bashed from all sides, the glorious relic swung out and struck back at the attackers and dealt out punishing blows. It struggled under the rain of beatings from all sides and at last it staggered and fell to its knees.

The armour began to crumple and buckle under the rain of blows. The lurid patchwork marauders pummelled the majestic helmet, the beautifully decorated vambraces, and pounded dents into the gorget. The armour crumpled, sank and collapsed beneath the torrent of vandalism like under the weight of centuries, the violence of the intruders pounding down, ruining, and finishing what time never could. The sentinel raised itself back up on one hand with incredible, stoic endurance under the punishment, but rents and gaps were forced between the plates and Nick drove his sword between them again and again, over and over, until the ancient champion finally collapsed as blood seeped from all the cracks.

Their way to the treasures was now left open.

The friends cheered and rushed in straight away, scattering once more to plunder with complete abandon. Andy was left breathless and gasping, and he retreated to a quiet corner to get his breath back. Glass cases shattered all around and greedy hands plunged in to claim their rewards of rings, necklaces, brooches and diadems from the jewellery displays.

Jane stayed back with Emma. All had accumulated scratches and bruising but Emma clasped a hand to a dripping gash on her head. During the fight, the knight's sword had rang a blow across her much-coveted medieval sallet helm, with its beautifully embossed gilding. In shock, she had taken it off to see if it was okay and had caught an accidental knock from the weapon of one of the friends at her side.

'It won't stop bleeding,' complained Emma. 'I wanna go with the others and get some treasure.'

'Come on, I'll take you to the toilets. We'll get you cleaned up,' Jane said. 

'Are you going to be okay, Andy?' Jane called. Andy gave her a thumbs up. 

Emma sent Jane off when they got to the toilets. Inside, she reeled off a handful of paper towels and clutched them to her head. It was didn't hurt, but it bled and bled. She went to sit in a cubicle.

She looked out when she heard the door open. 'Have you got some bandages?' she asked. 'It's absolutely pissing out…'

It wasn't Jane, Sarah or anyone else at the door. At the front of a large group of deathly shades was a ghostly-white teenage girl. She was covered in scars and had dark blood crusted around her mouth.

Back in the museum gallery, the friends were lost to their frantic, wanton lust for spoils. They bedecked themselves with lockets, rings, medallions, pendants, amulets, brooches, bracelets, armlets, diadems, torcs and crowns. Gold, silver and gems from all points of history, from Roman Britain, medieval, Renaissance and modern, all were draped together and on top of each other. Fur-lined robes and embroidered cloaks whirled around the friends' shoulders as they brushed the glass flecks from themselves and spun around in their majesty.

Now they were becoming something. With these possessions they were no longer victims, no longer lowlifes, peasants or cowering rats at the mercy of the world. They had transcended this to where they knew in their hearts they should be. They were masters of their world and reality.

Nick handed out fistfuls of sparkling trinkets and glittering baubles. 'Take it, it's all yours! We came from nothing, but we have risen to become kings!' he crowed in his elation, on top of the world.

Torcs and bracelets nestled between their watches, pendants with necklaces; they layered it all on, glimmering like Christmas decorations. Jane was lost to a wonderland of gold and gemstones, silver and regal finery. She went to Sarah, Emily and Katie, who were admiring their reflection in a glass panel as they tried on one ornament then another.

Unable to decide between them, they wore both. Jane tried asking whether anyone had some bandages in their handbag but they couldn't hear and soon the precious metals and stones began to work their magic on her too.

'Try this on,' Katie said. She beamed with a dazed, rapturous expression and placed a silver tiara that sparkled like dew over the top of Jane's seventeenth-century cavalry helmet. Jane turned this way and that, lost in how wondrous its reflection looked as the others squabbled over more trinkets.

Jack found himself stuck looking after Jenny. The two of them had been separated from the group after Matt saw her go wandering off by herself, drawn by distant glitter, and ordered him to go and make sure nothing happened to her.

Everyone else in the group was having fun doing their own thing while he had to look after this bitch. There was no one else around in the section they were in and among all the crashing and banging, the whoops and revelations, no one could hear them. It also seemed Jenny couldn't hear a thing Jack said, as she had her back to him and dug around in a cabinet of nineteenth-century royal treasures.

'Come on, we shouldn't stay apart from the others. Let's go back and join them,' Jack urged. 

Jenny held more jewellery to herself and blew kisses at her reflection in an unbroken pane of glass.

'Yeah that's great. And those are too. There's plenty more back over where the others are,' said Jack.

Jenny pulled her gloves off so she could stack rings on each section of her fingers, right to the tips. She held them up and turned them this way then that while she was humming.

'You are one spoilt, greedy, stupid bitch,' said Jack as he watched her help herself to the display cabinet. The goodies he wanted were over in the Tudor section where Joe was. 

'What a cosseted life you have,' Jack said and his lips clenched in bitter anger. 'You don't do anything for anyone, only leech off others. You never have any expectations placed on you but hold everyone back, cause drama and ruin things for everyone else. Everyone has always only ever carried you through life and still you demand more, like they owe you – for what? You're a dead weight, a burden, and girls like you are the chief tormentors of guys like me while you pass yourselves round guys like Ryan and Nick for your own gratification. And how highly you think of yourselves for it! Like you're as good as them or on their level.' 

'We should go back. Let's join the others. Come on, let's go,' Jack called flatly, back in hearing range. There was no reaction.

'I hate you and wish death on you every day, Jenny. You're a dumb slut and everything that's wrong with the world.' Still no reaction.

Jack looked her over, from the curve of her hips to the swell of her breasts, those great, round forbidden fruits, the like of which had been denied to him all his life. Those were the real treasures here. The museum was full of expensive metal and rare minerals that anyone could pick up and take, but laugh it off all he wanted, the fact was that it took someone special, someone different from him, to ever get close to treasures like that. It seemed it took someone better than him, someone who had something that he never had and likely never would have. It made everything else, all this, seem meaningless and empty.

Jenny took her helmet off so she could try more necklaces on and she set down her miniature knight doll. This was the doll she'd compared him to, and now he had to babysit her.

This was the same girl who'd said all those things about him as everyone had turned on him and decided to publicly humiliate him, to pull him apart for their amusement and push him over the edge that night when he went off by himself. He could have died. Jack remembered all the times he'd tried to befriend the others and had been rebuffed. They held him in contempt for trying to reach out and understand them. Jack remembered the vicious cruelty of the things Jenny had said about him and the apparent delight she took from it.

'You think you're one of our friends, but you're fucking not. You think you're clever, but you're fucking not. You're tiny, you're weak, you dress like shit, you're socially retarded, you're ugly, you look like a frog, you've got a massive forehead, a big nose and no chin, you're an idiot and no one. Likes. You.'

He remembered every word. Jack burned hot again at the memory.

He smashed his tickling stick down between Jenny's shoulder blades. He struck her to the ground and swung down again and again with the sharp steel of his mace as Jenny writhed in agony. Jack smashed the bones in her arm, broke her ribs, pummelled those pretty, shapely legs as she lay and squirmed on the floor in pain. He took great pleasure at the savage punishment he rained down on her. It was her compensation, her payback, and Jack grinned in devilish glee at how he administered divine retribution upon her.

'Knock knock!' He smashed his weapon down onto Jenny's luscious, fruity breasts and made her howl in pain.

'Who's there?' He beat down on those curvy, round buttocks like a drum.

'The last guy who'll ever hit that!' And he pounded away at the soft, kissable skin of her face until it was all mush and so no one would know what it was like to treasure it again and then chuck it. 'It's your one and only cure for being a cunt!' Jack wiped away his sweat and glowed with satisfaction at his hard work.

Well, that was what he imagined, anyway.

What Jack actually did was to sneak off and leave her to it. He went catch up with Joe to get some trinkets of his own. His devilish glee was to run off chuckling and truly not give a damn if the Dead came and took care of Jenny for him.

Joe found a lion's pelt complete with its head and paws and tied it across his shoulders. Jack found a golden medieval crown, heavy and ornate. It was truly magnificent, fit for a king. He dug around in his rucksack for a while as Joe layered medallion upon pendant above amulet around his neck in golden sheaves of precious metal.

Triumphantly, Jack produced a tube of glue from a tabletop figurine kit. This would keep the crown firmly stuck on top of his helmet and that crown would go perfectly with his royal purple cloak. He was a genius.

The glue ran down his fingers and onto the artefacts. He found that the crown was too wide and wouldn't fit between the horns no matter how hard he jammed it down. Finally, it set rock solid at a jaunty angle between them. Actually, this was even better. 'A happy accident,' he said to Joe. It looked glorious. He had to show it off.

Emily was over at a display case by herself. He hadn't had the opportunity to speak to her in such a long time, not since their passionate tryst on top of the washing machine… well, their near-tryst. Whatever it was. 

Now seemed to be the perfect time to speak to her. Jack took a breath, snatched a ring from the nearest display, a big one with ridiculously over-the-top ornamentation, then went over. Just as a joke, he got down on one knee and presented the ring to her.

'Emily, darling Emily, would you make me the happiest guy in the worl—' She turned around, screamed and ran away.

Jack laughed it off and followed her. In an awkward, tense moment, he fumbled for words. 'What's up Emily, why don't you talk to me? It's like you're avoiding me and never leave your friends' side so we can speak.' His voice wavered. Jack gathered his courage. 'I miss you,' he said.

He then thought to take his helmet off so she could hear what he said and might stop looking at him with that wide-eyed, frozen expression.

'I miss you,' Jack repeated. 'You seem to be so distant lately when I thought we could get to know each other.'

Emily didn't say anything and gave a small shrug and a hum. It was like she tried to look anywhere else but him, Jack couldn't understand it.

Jane appeared and Emily turned to her with visible relief at the interruption. Jane, however, looked terrified. 'My God, there you are, I've been looking all over. Help me! Emma's in trouble. This is all going to hell.'

The three of them ran to the lavatories and around the corner saw a crowd of the Dead beating at the door of a cubicle inside. Emma's screams came from within.

'The Dead must have followed us up the stairs and cornered her. What are we going to do?' Jane hissed.

Their hearts dropped when they heard someone push open the door behind them.

More ragged museum staff, teeth bared and sputtering in rage stood on the other side. The three of them slammed the door closed and pushed against it but now they were trapped inside with the Dead, who bellowed, wailed, and beat at the cubicle door with Emma in it. The nearest Dead turned to look their way. There was nowhere to run.

'Well, we're done for,' Jack said in a kind of detached way as he felt the Dead thumping on the door behind him. He held up his weapon, for all the good it could possibly do against the crowd of monsters who turned to face them.

The Dead moaned, wailed, slammed on the cubicle door. Emma screamed from within and the door behind them pounded with a volley of blows. The noise rose so loud it began to overwhelm Emily.

They were trapped, and there was nothing they could do as the first of the Dead in front of them growled a threat. It shifted from foot to foot in agitation and looked as though it would lunge at them any moment.

The three of them pushed back against the door to hold it closed from the Dead outside. It was the only thing they could do.

Jack held his weapon out, arms wavering, as more of the Dead turned to come their way.

Emily's boots slipped on the floor tiles as she tried to push back against the door. The mounting pressure against it pushed from the other side. 

Emily's hands shook. She grew dizzy and it was difficult to breathe. 

'What the hell are we doing, what kind of mess have we got ourselves into - what were we thinking?' Emily whispered. She ripped her stolen biker helmet off, the one she'd painted in the garish scrawls like all the others – these so-called friends. It had become stifling, choking. It was covered in the ugly, ridiculous markings of their idiocy, their lunacy. 

'STOP!' Emily screamed out loud and wished with every last shred of her being that this madness would end.

The slamming on doors and the wailing ceased. Emily opened her eyes and struggled to see through the blur of desperate tears.

The Dead turned around to face them and there was only the sound of Emma's breathless crying to be heard.

'Please stop,' Emily stammered in the terrible quiet and prayed that this wasn't it for them, that no-one would get hurt. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered.

'What a funny set of bodies they'll find,' Jack remarked under his breath, frozen rigid where he stood. 'All of us dressed like this, decked out with more decorations than Christmas. They'll be puzzling this one out for a good long time… If there is anything left of us to find.'

There was, however, no movement in the room.

The Dead remained still.

The three friends, cowering and pushing back against the door, scarce dared to breathe. They looked back at each pair of dim, livid, dead orbs that stared back at them.

For a while all they heard was Emma sobbing. Other than that, there was a moment of absolute quiet where no one moved.

Emily lowered her weapon and placed it on the ground. Jack felt so many dead eyes turn their focus from her and on to him and Jane.

'Drop them! Drop your weapons and take your helmets off!' Emily whispered. Jack dropped his mace and gauntlet to the floor with a clatter. It provoked an angry start from the crowd. He winced and repeated 'Sorry, sorry' to all those who glowered at him with their terrible intensity.

Jack carefully laid the horned helmet with its crown on the floor and the robe beside it. Jane did the same and laid her helmet beside Jack's, followed reluctantly by her handbag, which jingled with the weight of a king's ransom of priceless jewellery.

The nearest of the Dead came towards them. It was the scarred girl with blood around her mouth. The friends shrank back but could go no further. The girl bent over and picked up the bespectacled helmet. The crown was crudely plastered on top, and blobs of glue oozed down the side and there were sticky fingerprints all over the gemstones. The girl held the artefact gently in her pallid hands and gave a soft murmur as she looked it over.

Jack grimaced in embarrassment, and then he thought to remove the cluster of pendants and amulets from his neck and placed them down too.

'S-sorry,' he whispered. The girl's name tag said she was called Angela.

Emily, Jane and Jack all took a deep breath, stopped pushing back against the door and stepped away. It swung open from the pressure of bodies on the other side.

'Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. No more. We've stopped,' they mumbled, and they prayed, desperately prayed, that it would be enough.

The Dead were motionless. They stood there in their grave-like ranks, silent and staring at them. Accusing. Waiting.

'W-what's going on out there?' Emma called out. A few heads turned her way.

The others hushed her down. 'Don't make a noise,' Jane told her.

Emily held on to Jack's arm. 'We're just coming for our friend…' Her voice wavered as she spoke to the nearest of the Dead within an arm's reach of her. 'We're just coming for our friend and then we'll go.' There was no reaction for what seemed an age.

Together, Emily and Jack edged to the cubicle and moved through the crowd of grey, ashen bodies, trying their best not to touch them on the way. 

They passed person after person and wound their way around mottled arms and slid past distended bellies and sides. They felt the Dead brush against them, the clammy coldness on exposed skin.

The only noise was Emma's gasping, racking breaths in the cubicle up ahead.

There was a metallic scrape on the floor tiles. Emma must have picked up her weapon. There was a jolt from the group of Dead as they reacted to this, with Jack and Emily in the middle of them.

'Emma! For God's sake - put everything down on the floor. All of it! And slowly. Don't make any sign of aggression. Don't even think about it! And don't touch the weapon,' Emily whispered.

The Dead stood restless and uneasy all around them. That last sudden movement had nearly given her a heart attack. She squeezed her eyes shut and mentally begged for no one to make a false move or do anything stupid.

Emily flicked her gaze up to see the scarecrow-like men and women ahead of them and then back down again just as fast. She didn't want to chance eye contact. The bodies twitched on all sides of them.

Jack gave a sharp intake of breath as a hand clutched his elbow. It was Jane. Together, the three of them linked arms and weaved their way through the crowd. They slid as carefully as they could past each body to get to the cubicle.

Emily could feel Jack's arm trembling in her grip. She knew her hands were trembling too. She swallowed her fear as she reached the last cadaver blocking her way to the cubicle door, a woman in a torn curator's uniform. It took all Emily's courage to look up and meet her dim, filmy glare. When she did, she saw how there was hurt and sorrow in her gaze – the agonising, inexplicable question of 'why?' Why did they, this insane gang of fools, do these things and hurt them?

'P-please can I just… just get her back? Then we'll go. I just want to get my friend back and then we'll go. We'll leave you in peace, I promise. We just want to go,' Emily stammered, looking at the ground.

The woman didn't move. Emily was very aware of all the corpse-like bodies pressing in on all sides. So very conscious of all the hard, claw-like hands that rested so close to them right now that in an instant could turn into hard, merciless bludgeons should they make one false move. What if they were wrong about this all and had put their head inside the crocodile's jaws? Emily slid her grip down from Jack's sleeve and held his hand as tightly as she could.

The woman in front of her blocked the door. There was no way past. If she remained there then there was no way to free Emma. Emily didn't dare push her aside and risk the chance to provoke her. With each passing second there was the chance it could all go wrong, and as long as the woman remained there she was stuck, unable to go forward or back, and there was nothing she could do.

Emily mentally begged her to move. Please move, please. I'm trapped, Emily thought.

The woman stepped aside.

Emily tapped on the cubicle door between the scuffmarks of grime and dried blood from where the hands of the Dead had pounded at the cracked and dented plywood. 'Open up,' she whispered.

There was a pause, then the lock clicked and the door opened. Emma froze, her face an open-mouthed mask of terror at the sight of the crowd of cadavers. Emily grabbed her by the hand. 'Don't… make… a sound,' she said.

The four of them turned and edged back through the crowd of people who stood in their grave-like silence. The crowd who looked back at them were watchful and still. In their slack, dim expressions there was a wordless sorrow in that terrible stillness. They sensed the mourning in the figures about them as though it was emitted in waves. They sensed the hurt they had caused, and the anger, the upset. In their moment of defeat, the friends had begged for mercy when they had given none, and yet, somehow, they were granted it. Now, trembling, they held hands and shrank from the soundless accusations of those terrible stares as they left, humbled and hollow.

Nick was back in the museum gallery. 'Did you hear all that noise, the banging and the crashing? What was that and where's everyone gone? There's so much loot still left.' Dreamlike, he was still lost in the reverie of the treasures he heaped upon himself.

They said they went this way. We should get them back,' Matt said, and he led them to the stairwell.

Nick followed him. He wore a red fur cloak with white ermine around the shoulders and hem. It was woven with a silver trim and held by a solid gold clasp. He had a crown studded with rubies that he struggled to keep balanced on his head. It was too heavy and kept slipping from his Cavalier helmet. He had to readjust it often, which was difficult as he also wielded his bloody sword and a Crusader shield with a bold red cross on the front.

Nick was flushed, giddy with success. He swept his robe back over one shoulder and admired it on himself as they ascended the stairs to the next floor. 'Why haven't you got any treasure? Go ahead, you only live once!' he said, absent-mindedly, as he admired himself in a passing reflection. They walked on further.

'Are you sure they're up here?' Nick asked. 'All the treasures are back on that floor.' 

On the next floor was a giant set piece of an elephant locked in mortal combat with a tiger. The elephant was down on its front legs, the tiger's claws set in its trunk. The tiger looked up, snarling at a colonialist game hunter mounted on the elephant's back, aiming down at it with a gun. Nick passed the scene wide-eyed, and took in every detail with fascination – the expression on the faces of the native guides as one slipped from the huge skull of the elephant and how the other frantically loaded a musket with a ramrod.

Matt and Nick came to a walkway that bridged the gap between each side of the museum floor. On opposite sides of the gallery sets of samurai armour faced them in solemn ranks between arrays of Japanese swords and spears.

Nick no longer smiled. He knew what was coming.

Halfway across the bridge Matt turned to face him.

'This is it. This is where this ends,' he said. 'I've had enough of you and your madness. You've really outdone yourself this time. You can fool them but not me. This was the final nail in the coffin. No more. No more stupid games,' Matt flexed his grip on his pole hammer. 

Nick stared, his wide pupils motionless and cold. 'I suppose it was always going to come down to this. Just can't see eye to eye, can we? I wondered when the time would come.'

'I've brought us this far,' Nick said. 'I gave them hope. If we did things my way, we could become a group that was strong, that was ready to take on the world, to get out there and be great. There are the things you have to do to get by in the world these days, let's not kid ourselves. How else could we prepare them?'

'People only changed their mind and came around to your side since our home got invaded and Tom was killed. Where were you that night?'

'Everything I've done is to help us survive,' said Nick.

'All you want people to do is go off on crazy antics and court disaster. You're not the least bit sorry for any of it. You have no guilt for anything you do, for who we are… Your ideas have brought us close to death more times than I can count!'

'No, yours is the plan that's certain death!' Nick retorted. 'You want us to simply hide away and wait for the end to come. At least if we get out there and change the world we could redeem ourselves some way. We could do something, be something! We could have changed things and leave our mark. We could be legends! How could you be so tiny-minded? There's so much opportunity out there in the world if you have the vision for it, and we finally got our freedom.'

'You're delusional! Listen to yourself with all this talk of legends. Look at us. We're not legends! How are we going to change the world with this bunch? This rabble? How could we do anything good, people like us?' Matt raged.

Matt lashed out at Nick. His pole hammer swung past Nick's head, who took a step back. Matt shunted Nick backwards with the broad side of the pole, but when he went to raise his weapon, Nick rammed him back with his shield.

Nick raised the pitch of his voice to shout. 'What would you have us do? Rot alone in those hovels like they were our tomb, hide away from the world in those rats' nests?' He took a swing at Matt, who parried it.

'Why not dig your own grave alongside Tom and Ryan, then? No one's coming for us, and if they did, we could never live with them. Because of who we are. You know that. We have only one choice – to accept the reality of our world and master it. Everyone has to die sometime. We're already dead men, we might as well try to do something with our lives to be remembered.'

'The reality? You're mad. You live in a fantasy world!' Matt roared.

At the mention of the word 'mad' Nick grew furious and slashed at Matt, the first blow clashing under the head of Matt's pole hammer and the second cutting a stripe across the armour on Matt's chest. Nick dodged backwards against a powerful downward blow that cracked the floor tiles with an almighty smash. It shook the glass barriers on either side.

'You don't make sense any more! That drug's addled your brains. You haven't been right since Ryan died,' Matt cried, and in a bitter despair, he said, 'I wish I'd never clapped eyes on your fucking Herb. I can't control that sick hunger, and I hate it.'

'The Herb kept us alive all this time! Look at all the people who died or turned… into them. Think of those wretches who were somehow spared. We're different. We're better than that. Out of everyone in the entire world, only we were the lucky ones. We are the ones who will get through this. And we'll come through this – swinging!' Nick struck out and Matt stepped back.

'What we are is so much worse. I understand Ryan now. He was right. We're better off dead. At least we could go with a little dignity.' Matt snarled in despair and lashed out again.

Nick slashed the air a breath away from Matt's head. Matt rammed the butt of his weapon against Nick's shield and swung the hammer round so it clashed against Nick's sword and knocked him sideways. Nick's crown fell to the floor. As Matt raised his weapon for a final blow, Nick spiked him in the belly with the tip of his sword. It only punctured a small way past the leather, but the shock of it made Matt lower his weapon again and gave Nick time to stand and put up his guard. A second jab from Nick sliced the top of Matt's shoulder. Matt grunted and rained down a series of powerful, frightening blows at Nick. The first couple dented Nick's shield. The last one smacked into Nick's shoulder and his shield clattered on the floor. Nick barely had time to step back, his wounded arm numb and paralysed by his side. With another swing, Matt's pole hammer shattered a glass barrier on the bridge's and sent shards of it glittering down into the chasm four floors below.

Matt was breathless, and after the success of landing a clear wound on Nick he paused to see what his next move would be. Nick withdrew a few paces. Despite the numbing of the Bhuna, Matt could tell he was definitely in pain. Hopefully he wouldn't run back to the others. Anything but that. He knew he wouldn't catch up because he was very aware of the cool, clammy wetness that was settling around his waist, beneath the stab to his belly. He didn't want to move too much and make it worse. He couldn't look now. It was best to pretend it wasn't a big deal. It shouldn't be a big deal, if he could see to it soon.

Very soon, preferably. The injury was actually probably quite serious. He gasped deeply to get some strength back and realised his throat was painfully dry.

Time was running out, but he had Nick now, surely. He would counter one more false move and then he would kill him, the conceited little rat. He would forever wipe that stupid, smug look from his face and erase it with this same hammer, and he would enjoy it.

Nick ran.

Matt roared in frustration and chased after him, his legs heavy with exhaustion, and every step was agony. 

Nick spun around at the last second and lashed out with his sword. By sheer luck the blade whipped across Matt's hand. Matt yelled and tried to hold on but the hammer dropped from between his severed fingers.

Nick struck out again and again with his sword at Matt's shoulders, his arms, his chest. The blade smacked through the leather armour and flicked blood into the air. Matt fell backwards and tried to crawl away, in terror and disbelief at the wounds he saw opening up on him.

Nick dropped to his knees and gasped for air, exhausted. He tugged his helmet off to gasp at the cool air and flopped backwards. If Matt came back to him now to finish the job, he was too breathless to do anything about it. He couldn't. He gasped and panted on the floor as his eyes rolled back in his head.

There Nick lay.

He stayed there for some interminable time and looked up at the sky through the glass ceiling.

The end hadn't come. He strained to sit up and look at Matt. There was a long streak of blood that traced from where Matt had fallen to where he was now lying, face down, near the hole he'd smashed in the barrier. He gave feeble kicks against the floor, boots slipping in the blood.

What a mess. Another brilliant plan ruined by Matt. Nick felt empty and in pain as he picked up his sword.

'How far would you go for an idea?' someone said. It sounded a bit like himself.

'And what then when that great idea leads to murder?'

Nick limped over to Matt and placed the sword between his shoulder blades. He leaned down onto it with all his weight until he felt it pierce the armour and push down through Matt. The blade slid down between the bone and the gristle and whatever else there was until Nick felt it touch the floor.

There was no triumph, no cause for celebration. What a mess. What a bloody, stupid mess. Nick retrieved his crown. His fingers plastered the fur rim with dark sticky blood and smeared it on the rubies. They were probably fake anyway. On closer inspection he found they were. It was obviously a reproduction. 

Nick placed the crown onto Matt's head and made his way downstairs as he held his cloak to stem his wound. He met Sarah on the next floor down, on her own. She didn't even notice his condition as she was blinded by floods of tears.

'She's dead,' Sarah said. 'Katie. She's dead. One minute she was fine and laughing and then the next minute one of the Dead came out of nowhere. It came from around the corner and hit her with a club. She didn't even see coming. She was talking and laughing and trying on jewellery with me one moment then she flopped to the ground and started convulsing. I got her back by running the bastard down and chopped him up with my axe, but there was nothing she could do for her.' Sarah cried, unable to get the words out. 'She gasped, stiffened up and went still in my arms,' said Sarah as she broke down.

Nick winced as she sobbed onto his shoulder. 'Since when do they use weapons? It's not fair. It's not fair,' Sarah blubbered. 'Where is everyone? I want to go home.'

Nick was dizzy and very frail. The rest of the group reappeared and they all hurried down the stairs together. For some reason, as they went, they pulled his fur cloak off him, along with the jewellery he had accumulated and threw it to the floor. He didn't have the energy to protest. Everyone else was unarmed, and none of them seemed to have any of their loot any more.

Jack pulled Nick's sword from between his numb fingers and looked it over. He saw the fresh blood on the weapon and the wounds Nick had sustained.

'What happened to you? Where's Matt?' Jack asked him, but Nick didn't give a coherent response. He was swept along by everyone down one floor to the next.

In his daze along the way, a trail of bodies rushed by, scattered treasures and weapons, the flash of windows to the outside. They passed Jenny's corpse, battered and broken on the floor, and a wail of grief went up from many in the group. Nick looked at it, stupefied, as they went by and thought he saw a group of the Dead watching them, unmoving, as they made their escape. The tear-stained faces that surrounded him weren't joyful and triumphant, but slack and defeated. For some reason, no one was armed.

Back down in the ground-floor hallway, Nick looked up at the walkways high above them.

Matt's body had moved. Matt stared down through the hole in the glass barrier, one arm reaching for him, the severed fingers pointing down at him in silent accusation, For one horrifying moment, Nick thought Matt was still alive or had come back from the dead. His body remained still, however, and the terrible, condemnatory glare stared past Nick as he went by. Mute with horror, Nick didn't notice if anyone else saw it as he was pushed onward to the museum's exit.

They escaped out into blazing sunlight. They fell about in the courtyard and tried to regain their breath. Nick tried to swallow but could barely do so, his throat was so dry and painful. He murmured something, delirious. The world spun. Sarah still cried, as did some of the others when they pieced together what had happened to Katie from the broken fragments of her story. No one had seen what had happened to Jenny, or how she'd ended up downstairs by herself. They thought she'd been with Joe and Andy the whole time.

Jack took the bunch of curator's keys Nick had collected on the way in and ran off to the row of white vans parked by the entrance.

'We have to wait for Matt. How did he get left behind on his own?' Emma demanded. They still didn't know. Suspicion was mounting.

An engine sputtered to life from across the courtyard and Jack rolled a van over to where everyone was sprawled about and fighting for breath.

The next thing Nick was aware of was how he was being hauled up and propped against the van's side. Jack peeled the leather away from Nick's shoulder and inspected the wound. With a finger he probed where the suit had been punctured by Matt's pole hammer. It burned with a dull fire. Nick tried to conceal it with his hand.

'How did you get this, Nick?' Jack asked, softly, and Nick couldn't meet the intensity of his stare that searched from one of his eyes to the other, or the look on everyone else who was gathered around. Nick mumbled something.

'Something must have hit you pretty hard. Something big and heavy, with a pretty distinctive shape. It looks like it had three points – two above and one below.' Jack made the shape of Matt's hammer with his fingers. 'I can't think of many things that look like that,' Jack said, in the same tone.

The air froze around Nick. They all stared at him.

'How did you get that, Nick?' Joe asked him. Nick said nothing, but that was enough to say it all.

'How did you get that, Nick?' Emma screamed.

'You killed him! You killed my Matt!' Jane yelled. She launched herself at him, and pummelled down on him with her fists until the others held her back. All Nick could do was feebly hold one hand up to protect himself.

'He started a fight with me. He led me away and we fought…' Nick tried to say.

'You bastard! You cowardly bastard. You got him alone and did him in…' Jane screamed.

'No… I defended…'

Jane relented her assault and turned to the others. 'Matt told me everything,' she said. 'You wonder why we look so pale, why we are so numb and don't feel the cold? Why we all became… barren? Sterile?'

Jane looked hollow inside as she spoke. 'We're Dead. Just like them.'

They turned to the museum to see a dozen scarecrow-like grey figures standing and watching them from the doors.

'We're just like them,' Jane said. 'Somehow we can still think, but we're all Dead. And it's all because of him and his stupid fucking drugs.' She pointed at Nick.

The whole group was silent, horrified. 

'No, no…' mumbled Nick. 'Can't blame it on me…'

'And just like them, what we eat, there's only one thing that we can eat… isn't there?' Andy said in barely more than a whisper.

Jack said, 'Nick, what actually is in the Balti?'

Nick ran his tongue over his teeth. 'I would have thought that was obvious by now.' His tone was a familiar, scathing one, despite how he struggled to stay conscious.

'Do you mean… all this time, we've been eating people?' said Sarah, but others had already started to gag and dry-heave.

'We need to! We have to! You saw what happened to Ryan,' Nick said, his voice no more than a whisper. He couldn't speak any more. He feverishly muttered something else but his eyes kept rolling up into his skull and the world faded to grey. Several kicks landed on his chest, his arms, his groin.

Nick's body went numb and he flopped down, overwhelmed by a terrible, all-consuming exhaustion as he slipped down, down, down into unconsciousness as thumps and blows thundered distantly all around.

There was a sensation of being jolted around, and a roaring sound. A car engine. A flash of daylight. The world spun by. He kept blacking out.