The Enemy Read Online Free PDF

He was happy. Almost happier than he had been before the disaster.
    The one thing he longed for, though, was peace and quiet. To be alone, real y alone. That would be bliss. To just sit there, in al the space of the shop, without it being ful of other kids. Sitting here in the crow’s nest was as good as it got.
    He put his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the Hol oway Road.
    “Come on, Arran, we need you. . . .”

    T hey were limping along. Olie and Achileus were walking ahead of Arran and Freak, who were both silent, lost in private thoughts. Olie knew wel enough not to push it. If the other two didn’t want to talk about what had gone down, then he wasn’t going to try to make them. Freak had lost his best friend, and Arran had been badly bitten. Ol ie hadn’t expected him to take it so badly, though. Arran was tough. Hated showing any weakness in front of anyone else. Something had happened to him back at the pool. He had the look of someone who had stared at something nasty. Stared for too long.
    Arran’s skin had been punctured. There would be a big danger of infection. The grown-ups were filthy and riddled with germs and disease. Luckily, Arran hadn’t been in the water, but the mother who had attacked him had looked pretty foul.
    Why had Arran frozen like that? Al the fight went out of him. One minute he was cracking skul s with his club, and the next he was just standing there, in a dream. Had he lost his nerve?
    Arran had to know that nobody would blame him for what had happened to Deke. It had been Freak’s stupid idea to go into the pool. How could they have prepared for the ambush? It wasn’t like grown-ups—usual y they were stupid and slow and confused. Not much different from the pack of dogs the gang had dealt with earlier. This bunch had acted together. Organized. A team.
    How many of the adults had they kil ed? he wondered. He knew for sure he had hit seven of them, but it didn’t mean that each shot was a kil ing shot.
    When they’d bundled out through the reception area he’d seen two of his targets lying stil on the floor. He must have fired thirty pel ets, maybe more. It had been too dangerous to try to col ect them afterward. He had a pile back at the camp, but it was a lot to lose in one day. At this rate it would be sooner rather than later that he ran out altogether. He’d have to find some more, or start col ecting pebbles.
    Damn. He loved those heavy steel bal bearings.
    His ankle was sore; he had landed wrong leaping over the turnstiles. They made a sorry bunch. Freak had been pretty badly mauled. He was covered with filth and there was blood on him, but as far as it was possible to tel , it didn’t look like his own blood. At least Achil eus looked unharmed. He swore that boy had iron underpants.
    Achil eus wasn’t particularly a friend of Ol ie’s. He was always having a go at him for being too rich, too clever, too quiet. But Ol ie didn’t let it get to him. The two of them had a sort of grudging respect for each other. When it came down to it, Ol ie valued Achil eus’s fighting skil s, and Achil eus valued Ol ie’s brains. They usual y kept out of each other’s way. Ol ie wasn’t used to being up front. It felt weird.
    He remembered driving in the family car. Him and his mom and dad and three brothers. Ol ie had always sat in the back, staring out of the side window, trying to keep out of their arguments and fights. He remembered the few occasions when it had been just him and his dad, and he’d gotten to ride up front in the passenger seat. How different it had felt, like they were equals. And how nice it had been to get his dad al to himself. His dad had been like Ol ie. Quiet, distant, always thinking about something.
    They were al dead now. Al five of them.
    His dad had been the first to go. One of the very first to die when the il ness struck. He had even been on the news; the headline had said something like “Another Death from Mystery Il ness Sweeping