Smith The Storm

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-29738-2
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 544 Seiten

Four ordinary teenagers are forced to face the truth behind the terrible events that began in The Fury. Imagine if one day, without warning, the entire human race turns against you. Every single person you meet becomes a bloodthirsty, mindless savage, hell-bent on killing you - and only you. Friends, family, even your mum and dad, will turn on you. They will murder you. And when they have, they will go back to their lives as if nothing has happened. The world has the Fury. It will not rest until you are dead. Cal, Daisy and Brick now know the terrifying secret of the Fury, but the truth has made the world more dangerous than ever. After the earth-shattering events of The Fury, they are forced to leave their safe haven in search of answers.

Alexander Gordon Smith is the author of the Escape from Furnace series, as well as The Inventors (shortlisted for the Wow Factor competition) and The Inventors and the City of Stolen Souls. He has also written a number of non-fiction books, as well as hundreds of articles for various magazines. He is the founder of Egg Box Publishing, an independent press that promotes talented new writers and poets. He co-owns a production company, Fear Driven Films. He lives in Norwich.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Alexander Gordon

Leseproben

Roly

Monday, Hemsby, 12.22 a.m.

Roly Highland was drunk. He staggered down the beach, an eveningful of cheap rum making the world reel with every step. At one point he missed his footing entirely and sprawled forwards, landing on his face. For some reason he found it insanely funny, giggling into the soft, cool sand. What felt like half a year later he pushed himself up, realising he’d dropped his bottle somewhere. It was almost pitch black here, just the faintest hint of moonlight making it through the clouds. The sea was right in front of him, as dark and as flat as slate. He could hear it whispering, urging him towards it. He didn’t like the sea, not since he’d almost drowned in it when he was eleven.

‘Can’t hurt me now, though,’ he slurred as he teetered back to his feet. ‘’Cos I’m drunk!’

He gave up on the rum – there had only been a couple of mouthfuls of backwash anyway – and set off to his left. His best mates Lee and Connor were out here somewhere, plus Connor’s new girl Hayley. Roly’s thirteen-year-old brother Howie was around as well, although he’d wandered off an hour or so ago claiming he wasn’t feeling too good. That was the rum, it did that to you. Roly’s head had been thumping for most of the night too.

‘Hey,’ he called out into the darkness. Something erupted upwards from nearby, the flap of its wings like somebody clapping. The silence it left behind, broken only by that same endless whisper of the waves, was almost spooky. ‘Whoooooooo,’ he said, nearly falling flat on his face again, scuttling crablike on his hands until he found his feet. The others were probably hiding, planning to jump out at him or something. But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him flinch.

‘Because I’m invincible!’ he shouted, his words swallowed by the sea. He giggled again, thinking of how impressed they’d be when they failed to scare him. Connor was two years older, seventeen now, and there were times when Roly felt like a total baby in front of him. That’s why he’d drunk so much tonight – he’d matched his friend drink for drink and was still standing. Connor had to be impressed by that, and Hayley too. She was proper fit, and maybe if he impressed her enough tonight then she’d dump Connor and go out with him instead.

Only if he could find them, though. Where the hell were they?

‘Oi!’ he screamed, lobbing a few choice swear words into the night. The beach had been pretty deserted all evening, which was weird considering it was a Sunday smack-bang in the middle of summer. It was probably something to do with whatever had happened along the coast earlier. There had been some kind of explosion north of here, apparently, somewhere up by the old Fursville theme park. Roly hadn’t seen anything but he’d felt the tremors at about seven.

‘Mines,’ Connor had said matter-of-factly. They’d been sitting in the older boy’s flat and the blast had been so powerful that the windows had rattled.

‘Huh?’ Lee had said.

‘Them old sea mines, from the war and stuff. They find them all the time, they probably just blew one up.’

They had all nodded, and that had been that. Connor was seventeen now, and he was going to join the army. He knew about stuff like explosives.

God, that all seemed like years ago. Roly staggered onwards, gulping down salted air and trying to remember what else had happened that evening. Already some of it was fading away, like disappearing ink.

‘Screw you, guys,’ he called out, fed up with their games. ‘I’m going home.’

He stopped, reeling from side to side in an effort to work out which way led back to town. The sea lay to his right, vast and black and menacing, so he steered his stubborn legs left towards the dunes. A soft breeze kicked up grains of sand, carrying them into his mouth where they crunched between his teeth. He muttered curses as he struggled on the crumbling ground, grabbing rope-like strands of sea grass to help haul himself off the beach. Once he was over the hump of the dune the going was easier, and he stumble-ran down the other side, wondering if there was any way of getting another drink.

The first line of Hemsby’s rubbish wooden beach bungalows was in sight when he heard voices up ahead. Or were they voices? They sounded more like grunts and whimpers, dogs maybe. He ducked down on to one knee, planting his hand in the earth to stop himself tumbling. Was it his imagination or was the air suddenly colder? He shivered, tilting his head and waiting to see if the noises came again.

They did, a distant, snorting squeal that belonged in the slaughterhouse up the road. There were footsteps too, fast and hard, coming this way. It had to be Connor and Lee taking the piss. They were probably still trying to scare him – and it was working, his pulse tripping, the pleasant numbness of the rum starting to wear away.

Man up, Roly, he told himself. He couldn’t look scared, not in front of the others. They’d never let him forget it. He rose unsteadily, creeping on to the tarmac road which seemed to sprout organically from the beach. He walked around a bungalow as the noises grew louder, wondering how long it would be before the lights came on inside and the owners started yelling at them the way they did most weekends.

The road curled round to the right, widening into the beachside promenade up ahead. There were streetlights there, forming puddles of sickly yellow light which seemed to make the shadowed parts of the street even darker. Another cry barked out from between two shuttered arcades fifty metres away, those hammered footsteps getting closer. Then somebody shouted, a voice so full of grief and terror that Roly didn’t recognise it until a figure skidded out on to the road, slipping on the sandy tarmac and crumpling into a heap.

‘Howie?’ Roly said, watching his little brother scrabble for a footing. What the hell was he up to? Howie lifted his head. He was still some distance away, but there was something wrong with his face. His mouth hung open, surely too wide, his eyes huge and white and wild. Roly took a step forward, adrenalin stripping the last of the alcohol in his system and leaving him as sober as he had ever felt in his life. ‘Howie,’ he called out. ‘What’s wrong?’

There were more footsteps, he realised, coming from the same direction. His brother made it to his feet and started running towards him, his arms wheeling, just as Connor sprinted out from between the arcades. The older kid didn’t even stop for breath as he turned up the street towards Roly. Hayley followed, then Lee, then some guy that Roly had never seen before in his life, all of them legging it towards him at full pelt. Something really bad had to have happened, because they all looked as though they were seething with anger.

Not anger, he thought. Fury.

His brother had halved the gap between them now, foam spraying from his lips. Connor was closing on him fast, uttering the same guttural wet barks. The urge to turn and bolt was so strong that Roly almost went, but he couldn’t leave his brother.

‘Howie, what’s wrong?’ he asked. Howie didn’t answer, just kept running, pounding down the street in the hand-me-down Nikes that Roly had given him last Christmas. They all kept running, a tide of people surging along the promenade with nothing but hatred in their faces. ‘Howie?’ he said again, his voice cracked and broken, ‘Howie!’

Howie seemed to see him for the first time, and his expression flooded with relief.

‘Roly,’ he cried. ‘Help me!’

Even as the words left Howie’s mouth Connor reached him, grabbing a handful of his T-shirt. They tripped on each other, falling hard in a tangle of limbs.

Roly ran at them, watching in disbelief as Connor drove his knuckles into Howie’s cheek. Even twenty-five metres away he heard the dull thump. Howie cried out, his hands slapping at his attacker, his eyes locked on Roly silently screaming help me help me help me.

‘Hey!’ Roly yelled, still sprinting, twenty metres away now. ‘Get off hi—’

His world turned inside out, a soft, dark explosion inside his head that seemed to burn every single thought into oblivion.

Every thought but one.

Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it.

The boy on the ground wasn’t his brother. It wasn’t even human. Disgust boiled inside his stomach, raging into a white-hot fury that drove him down the street. Time slowed, everything perfectly quiet compared to the sapper’s fire that flared in the very centre of his mind. Only one thing was important. There was only one thing in the entire world that he had to do –

Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it

– because this thing was wrong, it was his enemy, it was something that shouldn’t be, that couldn’t be –

Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it

– something there inside that bag of flesh that had to be obliterated.

Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it.

He fell to his knees, driving his fists into the squirming shape, again and again, tearing at it with his nails, his teeth, with every weapon he had, wanting just to

Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it.

Wanting it to be gone, to be dead, to be dead, feeling as though he wouldn’t be able to breathe again until he had killed it, like he was drowning, his lungs screaming, and the only way he would ever be able to get to the surface again was to

Kill it kill it kill it kill it kill it.

He punched and scratched and gouged and choked and fought and...