Dragon Shield Read Online Free Page A

jiggling on her wrist as the wheels bounced across the uneven paving stones.
    He ran up a residential street with old brick Georgian houses on one side and a concrete and glass council estate on the other. He nearly tipped the chair over again as he had to clump it off the kerb into the street to avoid a crocodile of primary school kids road-blocking the pavement. Jo just held onwithout a squeak of protest, and he kept going, even though his arms and legs were beginning to burn with the effort.
    Jo looked at the kids as he pushed her past them: they looked normal, red-cheeked, bright-eyed, just like what they were – people. The only difference was that they weren’t moving. On reflex Jo put her hand out to touch one as they passed.
    ‘What are you doing?’ shouted Will.
    Her hand smacked into the teacher’s arm. From the brief moment of contact Jo could feel that she was warm, and soft, just as if she was normal and alive but her body was also, strangely, as unmoving as a slab of stone. Their forward momentum wrenched Jo’s arm painfully backwards.
    ‘Ouch,’ she grunted.
    ‘Stop mucking about!’ said Will breathlessly. ‘Or you’ll have us both over.’
    He turned a corner and then another, and then there it was: Coram’s Fields – one of those sudden open green spaces that London hides in the tangle of its streets. It was surrounded by railings and dotted with huge old trees with thick nubbled trunks that disappeared into bushy explosions of leaves that overhung the grassy space beneath. And there they saw their car, like an old friend parked opposite.
    And even better, between them and it, frozen in motion as she jogged across the street towards them was the familiar figure of their mother, disconcerting in its stillness, her coat whipped backwards, her wallet still open in her hand.
    Jo got out of the chair as they approached and tugged at her mother’s sleeve. She didn’t react. Her brow was furrowed and she looked worried. The lack of life in the familiar face was horrible.
    They stared at her.
    ‘It’s like she’s, you know . . .’ said Jo.
    She didn’t need to finish. Will could see it.
    ‘She looks like she’s just about to move again,’ he said. ‘Any minute . . .’
    Jo suddenly hugged her and kept tight hold.
    ‘No,’ she choked, her voice muffled in the folds of her mother’s coat. ‘She looks like dead people must look.’
    Will didn’t know what to do. He stared round the street, full of still cars and people like statues. No one was looking. There were no dragons on the rooftops. It was like the still world was a true picture and Jo and he were the mistake, the only moving things in it. He felt a nasty lurch of aloneness. He put his arms round his mother and Jo and squeezed.
    ‘She’s still warm,’ he said. His voice sounded rough. He cleared his throat. ‘She’s soft and warm. Like always. Not like she’s dead.’
    Jo pulled at her. She didn’t move a bit.
    ‘Can’t move her,’ she said. ‘We can’t leave her here. If things start moving she might get hit by a car. She’s in the middle of the road . . .’
    Will tugged at her, but there was no doubt. She wouldn’t move. He looked round at the cars on the street. Their mother was clearly jinking her way through the traffic in her hurry to get back to them. It didn’t look like she was about to get hit, and she was usually quite nimble. But she did seem very exposed. He tried, as he often did, to think what his dad would do. He wouldn’t just stand around wondering; he was always moving, always doing something.
    Will pulled the wallet from between her fingers and snapped it shut. Jo looked at him.
    ‘Anyone could come along and nick it,’ he said, feeling a bit silly. She took it from his hand and slid it into her mother’s pocket.
    ‘I don’t think anyone else is moving except us,’ she said. ‘I’m scared.’
    ‘Yeah?’ he asked. Her chin came up in a defiant way he knew only too well. He