Chapter 14
But Tom didn’t find any food on the way to school. The street was empty and the corner shop dark and lifeless, the windows dark and gaping like Uncle Andrew’s eyes. At the time he visited before the Great Fire, there were people in the street and food in the shops.
The people of the city survived without food these days. That thought didn’t make Tom’s stomach rumble any less. Those people also seemed to be reluctant to come out. Tom saw stirrings behind dusty curtains, but no faces, and he thought of Mr Stuart and the others in town, and wondered if any of these people hiding in their houses were alive or dead. And if they—he shuddered—kept asking people to listen to stories of how they died.
Thing, of course, being a metal-eater, found plenty to browse, so much so that Tom b
