Afterwalkers by Tom Becker

Author:Tom Becker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic UK
Published: 2014-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

“Jamie? You all right?”

Slowly, grudgingly, the world began to swim back into focus. Jamie was lying on the sofa in the front room, his head propped up on something soft. His chest and his throat were aching and there was a deep thudding inside his skull where he had been hit, but he was alive. Two familiar faces were hovering over him like concerned clouds.

“You’re back,” Jamie murmured.

“And not a moment too soon, by the looks of things,” Sarge said grimly. “Liam rang to check you were all right, and when he couldn’t get through we figured something was up. Came back to find you on the kitchen floor.”

“There was a man,” Jamie said haltingly. “In the dark … I didn’t see him. He ran away … the back door…”

Liam nodded. “We saw, little bro.”

“The footprints were headed across the fields,” Sarge told him. “There’s no point trying to follow them in the dark. Mathers won’t be coming back tonight, at any rate.”

“I’d love it if he did,” Liam said darkly. “I’d wipe that smirk off his face once and for all. Was it him you were talking to on the phone?”

Jamie shook his head. “Mr Redgrave.”

“This gets better and better,” said Sarge. “What did he want?”

“The mortsafes. He says if he doesn’t get them by the end of the week he’ll kill me or Liam. The copper we took from the railway was his – that’s why he dragged us all into this.”

Sarge rubbed his face wearily. The lines around his eyes seemed to have deepened over the previous week – for the first time that Jamie could remember, his dad looked old.

“I’m sorry,” said Jamie. He blinked back the tears threatening his eyes. “I wanted to fight him off, but he was so strong!”

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s all right, son!” Sarge’s grizzled face crinkled into a smile as he patted Jamie’s arm. “This was my fault – I should never have left you on your own with Mathers around. There’s a line I thought he’d never cross, but I was wrong. But I’ll take care of everything, don’t you worry about it. You rest now. I’ll take care of everything.”

The last thing Jamie heard before he slipped gratefully into unconsciousness was Sarge’s voice, whispering a hoarse lullaby:

“No one lays a hand on one of my boys and gets away with it. No one.”

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