The Enemy Charlie Higson Summary

One had a gun.
‘Stay back!’ he said, and the three trapped children cleared the opening. The boy fired his gun through the bars. There was a loud bang and a gout of stinking smoke puffed into the stairwell. If the bullet hit anything it didn’t show. For a moment, though, the grown-ups stopped in their tracks.
One of the other boys was fiddling with the padlock. He had a bunch of keys hanging from a chain on his belt.
‘I can’t remember which one it is,’ he said.
‘Hurry up!’ said Tish.
The grown-ups were still holding back, trying to make sense of this new development.
‘Fear of the cutter!’ The Kid shouted and he darted back at them, hoping to finish off the father whose head he had shredded. He raised his broken blade then chopped once, twice down the man’s face, splitting his nose in two.
‘Got it!’ said the boy with the keys.
‘Come on!’
There was a rattling noise as the chain was pulled free of the gate.
The Kid hacked again and at last the father went over. He tripped and fell backwards down the stairs, trying to stop the rest of his face from falling off with his hands. Encouraged by The Kid’s success Sam stabbed the tall father in the throat. It was enough to stop him and then Sam felt himself being yanked out through the open gate.
He was dumped in the street. The two boys with spears poked them through the opening to keep the grown-ups back while the one with the keys fought to slide the gates shut, before refastening them with the chain and making the padlock secure.
Sam noticed that there were four more boys out here, all dressed in variations of army combat clothing. For a moment he allowed himself to feel safe. He couldn’t stop his body from shaking, though, and his stomach was burning with acid. He leant forward and threw up on the pavement.
The soldier boys formed a protective group around Sam, Tish and The Kid.
‘Can you walk?’ said the one with the keys and the gun. He was tall, looked like an athlete.
Sam nodded and the boy helped him to his feet.
‘It’s not far.’
Sam was too numb to say anything. Tish took his hand and he walked in dazed silence down a paved area between some modern buildings. Ahead of them was the side of St Paul’s Cathedral. A mass of white pillars, arches, statues, windows and carved stonework rising high above the streets to the great black dome at the top.
‘They got past the barricades again, Nathan,’ Tish said to the tall boy.
‘We’ll sort it.’
Sam wasn’t really paying attention. He felt sick and numb, the blood pounding in his ears. He looked at the imposing bulk of St Paul’s. It must have seen a lot in the hundreds of years it had stood here – riots, fires, the Blitz – but surely nothing as strange as what had happened in the last few months.
Sam found it quite reassuring. That it was still here. Whatever happened, whoever lived and died, the cathedral would still be here. The world carried on.
They turned as they reached the cathedral grounds and walked round the edge. Where exactly were these boys taking him? Sam looked at them properly for the first time. They’d been at the dressing-up box. It was funny what the different groups around London wore. They’d had no uniform in Holloway where Sam had been living. Not like the kids at the Tower with their armour and their swords and their medieval outfits. This lot, whoever they were, obviously preferred the modern army look. Tish fitted in very well with them in her green shirt and trousers.
She fitted in too well.
One of them had an identical wound to hers on his forehead.
Sam almost stopped – it suddenly struck him: she knew them. How else had she known they’d hear her shouts? And she’d used the boy’s name – Nathan – just now, hadn’t she? But this wasn’t Trafalgar Square.
Sam looked more closely at the boys. What he had thought were army clothes weren’t necessarily that. Some of them were wearing green-dyed trousers and hoodies.
They came round to the front of St Paul’s and Sam was amazed to see a load more kids there, standing quietly, as if waiting for them. There was something odd, and yet familiar, about them and it was a moment before it hit Sam.
They were all wearing green.
Like the soldiers.
Like Tish.
He looked up at her and she smiled at him.
‘You’ll be all right now,’ she said.
Why didn’t he believe her?
The world spun round him.
If he hadn’t already emptied his guts he’d have done it now.
Why didn’t he believe anything she had told him?
20
Sam and The Kid were hustled up the steps at the front of St Paul’s and in through the great central doors that were standing wide open.
Sam wasn’t sure if he’d ever been inside the cathedral before. If he had he must have been so little he couldn’t remember anything about it. It was vast in here, like something out of a fantasy computer game; the ceiling looked impossibly high, held up by pillars and arches. Marble statues stood everywhere. Painted scenes, gold and red and blue, covered every surface. You couldn’t take it all in in one go. Sam noticed, though, that there were plants in there. The kids had brought in branches and fixed them round the walls, and there were more things growing in pots, jungly plants with big leaves, climbers, great sprouting things.
He heard a squawk and something scurried across the aisle in front of him. It was a chicken. He saw now that there were loads of them, wandering around all over the place. Crapping on the tiled floor. Running in between the legs of the children who were sitting on a field of chairs, dressed in green. As Sam went past, they dropped to their knees and stared at the floor. It was freaking him out. This huge open space, large enough to fit twenty houses inside it. The plants. The chickens. The quiet kids falling to the floor …
All his senses were being bombarded at once. There were fires smouldering in braziers and incense burners hanging everywhere he looked. They filled the cathedral with smoke. It hung up by the ceiling like a cloud and the light streaming in through the high windows caught in the blue haze, so that Sam felt like he was entering heaven.
The smoke stung his eyes, though, and they were already watering so badly that he had to wipe away tears. His dry throat was further irritated. He was soon coughing and spluttering. The sickly scent of the incense mixed with a woody smell from the braziers and the occasional waft of something harsh and bitter.
Then there was the noise. A group of kids was playing musical instruments and their din filled the cathedral like the smoke, adding to Sam’s confusion. Some of the musicians were banging percussion instruments – bongos, cymbals, drums, cowbells, tambourines – hammering out a rhythm in exactly the same way as the grown-ups outside.
What had The Kid called them? The Clickee Cult.
Others were playing violins and guitars, saxophones, flutes and trumpets, anything they could get their hands on. Those who didn’t have an instrument were singing, or rather chanting, wordless ums and ahs. They were like some deranged school band. There didn’t seem to be a tune or even any kind of set pattern. They were all just blowing and scraping and banging, setting up a hypnotic drone. Most of the time it made a horrible discord, but every now and then the different sounds came together and a melody of sorts would rise up and open out and fly, only to collapse and return to the chaotic musical stew.
Sam’s whole body was throbbing and tingling. Waves of pain pulsed through him. There was a growing ache behind his eyes. He was suddenly hungry and thirsty and tired …
A few minutes ago he’d been in a blind panic, trapped in the dark tunnels, the worst place on earth, and now he was here. It was a weird dream whose parts didn’t fit together. Just as the music kept drifting between beautiful and ugly, between order and chaos, his own mood kept swinging – between relief that he had got away and fear of what was going on now, between happiness and confusion …
‘Be
tween the devil and the deep blue sea,’ said The Kid, almost as if he had been reading Sam’s thoughts.
‘What’s going on?’ said Sam.
‘Beats me with a stick,’ said The Kid.
Sam asked the same question, louder, to one of the boys who were escorting them. The boy said nothing. Made a point of ignoring Sam. Wouldn’t look at him. Kept marching forward.
They came to two rows of carved wooden seats facing each other across the narrower end of the cathedral. In the past, when there had been services, the choir would have sat here. Now it was where most of th

The Sacrifice Charlie Higson Epub