quick glance at Leona, he decided not to. There was no knowing what she’d been through in the arena. He could guess; beaten repeatedly for sure . . . and most probably worse. So far, she’d shown no sign of wanting to talk about it.
‘You need a militia that can do the really bad stuff. Do it without batting an eyelid. Enjoy it, even. A powerful force of mind, that is.’
Bushey looked up at him. ‘What is?’
‘The arrogance of youth. You can do wonders with that kind of energy, that kind of self-belief. You can put the world to rights . . . or create dangerous little monsters.’
Leona shuffled uncomfortably on her rump. ‘Not all kids are bad.’
‘No,’ Adam smiled at her. ‘Not all bad.’
‘Jacob wasn’t bad,’ said Leona. ‘Didn’t have a bad bone in his body.’
Adam said nothing. He didn’t know anything at all about her brother. He’d only seen the lad from afar being given the red-carpet treatment by Maxwell; one blond-haired teenager, one black teenager, neither looking wild or malnourished.
‘Nathan wasn’t bad either,’ she added. ‘Do you think he’s with those praetorians now?’
Adam shrugged. ‘I suppose. Do you think he’s actually going to lead Maxwell to your home?’
She wiped her hands on a tuft of dry grass stalks beside her. She stared into the flames for a long while, the still night filled with the crackling of fire and greasy fingers being sucked. She wasn’t sure what a young man like Nathan would do in that situation. He’d always been a good friend to Jacob. He’d always been good with the younger children. But if he was with them, then he was with very different people at this moment in time. She really couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind right now.
But there was one thing she was sure of. ‘He loves his mum,’ she replied eventually, as if that completely answered the question.
It was then they all heard the skittering of a small stone kicked carelessly across the motorway. It was somewhere out in the darkness beyond the flickering light cast by their fire. Adam snapped the torch on and panned it down the tarmac.
Caught in the glare, one hand held up beseechingly, a lean face crumpled as it winced at the intense beam. It was one of the people . . . the scavengers.
‘P-please . . .’
A man of about forty or fifty. Dark grey tangled curls framed a creased and gaunt face.
‘Fuckin’ hungry,’ his voice croaked.
He was wearing what looked like a threadbare police uniform; a fraying sleeve well on the way to dropping off its seam at the shoulder.
‘Poor bastard,’ she whispered.
Walfield racked his gun and shouldered it in one swift motion.
‘NO!’ shouted Leona. She raised her hand at him. ‘No! Stop it! Can’t you see? He’s just hungry! That’s all!’
The man was cowering on the road, his hands and arms cradling his head. She could hear his breathing, fluttering with fear. But he wasn’t running.
‘He just wants a little food,’ she said. She turned back to face Walfield, Adam and the others. The smell of meat being barbecued had to be an almost unbearable smell for them.
‘We could give them some,’ she said.
The men stared at her. She could see they weren’t sure it was such a good idea.
‘We can carve off enough to do us for tonight, and let them . . .’ she gestured out into the darkness to where she imagined the rest of those people were eagerly waiting to see what was going to happen, ‘let them have the rest of it. After all, we’ve got guns and I’m sure there’s no shortage of deer or rabbits between here and home.’
Harry nodded earnestly. ‘She’s got a point.’
‘Let’s show them a small kindness,’ she said, annoyed at the emotion in her voice. ‘I don’t suppose they’ve seen any of that in a long time.’
Adam turned to Walfield. ‘All right. Danny, lower your gun, mate.’
He got up and produced a long kitchen knife that he’d liberated from a kitchen supplies store earlier. ‘Hold this,’ he said, passing the torch to Bushey. Then he started to hack at the large browning carcass on the spit. Fat dripped and spat on to the fire as he cut at one of the rear legs and eventually pulled it free. Then he worked on the other, tugging it loose a moment later with the sound of cartilage snapping.
Held by the hooves he carried a haunch of still sizzling meat in each hand and