The Fear
Charlie Higson
 The Fear begins 5 days before Small Sam and The Kid, having escaped from the London Underground,arrive at the tower at the end of The Dead. A prologue introduces a new being named 'The Collector' who "collects" "toys". Throughout the chapter he refers to the captured children as his "toys" and laments their "breaking". He captures 2 children after a brief struggle, and adds them to his collection. However, The Collector mainly collects newspapers and other paraphernalia which results in his house turning into a land fill. The Collector lives in a 5-story house which is piled high with rubbish, but he mainly lives in his basement. The basement is basically a maze of his own excrement as well as bloodied flesh and more junk. The focus then shifts to the settlement in the {Tower of London}, where a scouting trip is in the process of being organised. The scouts are Dognut, Courtney, Olivia - who is going to find her brother Paul, Jessica - who just went as she broke up with her boyfriend, Finn - who is looking for friends, Al - who is looking for his sister Maria, Marco and Felix who were with DogNut at the Imperial War Museum. After a quick row upriver, they end up at the Houses of Parliament where they find a girl named Nicola and her group, who operate under similar conditions to the pre-apocalyptic government, with elections and various titles. She tells them none of their friends are here but lets them know about David King at Buckingham Palace. During the journey, the group is attacked by the 'gym bunnies', a group sickos who due to their good physical condition are harder to kill, corner DogNut's crew. About to go in for the kill, they are interrupted by a brutal group of mercenaries, known as "hunters", led by Ryan Aherne. They guide DogNut's crew to the Palace where Al is reunited with his sister. Later, the group realises that David isn't all that he seems; through Dognut's quiet inquiries, they discover that David is extremely paranoid and wishes to imprison their group. They head to the museum at night, without Al, who stays with his sister, and Jessica, who is too scared to continue. As it is night, the sickos are out in larger numbers and the gang gets chased to a house where they think kids are living in. Instead it turns out to be the Collector's lair. The group encounters the large monster and make a run for it. Without realising, Olivia gets left behind and gets killed by the Collector. They group later arrives at the Natural History Museum where they meet Brooke, Robbie (their Head of Security), Justin (the leader) and Paul (Olivia's brother). Paul asks for Olivia but is told by Courtney that she was killed by the Collector. Meanwhile, a boy ,referred to only as Shadowman, spies on the ramshackle settlement in St James's park, noting it's feudalistic nature and the possibility that John, the leader of the group, may be insane. Back at the museum, Paul, Olivia's brother, is hysterical after being told of Olivia's death - he is determined to kill the being known as the Collector. DogNut's group, Robbie, Jackson (a friend of Robbie), Ryan's hunters and a couple of others from the museum join with Paul to kill the Collector. The large group coax the Collector out of his lair onto the road, where they savagely kill him. Upon returning, Justin gives DogNut a tour of the place. He shows DogNut the experiments that they've been carrying out to investigate the disease and to find a cure - this included taking samples from 3 sickos that they've locked up in the Tesco lorry. He explains to DogNut of the large number of sickos residing in the basement of the museum where they obtain their test subjects from. They have found out so far that UV light (sunlight) rapidly increases the speed of the disease causing a sicko to die if exposed to too much sunlight. However, they also found that sickos could also build up resistance to the sunlight by exposing them to a fixed amount of sunlight each day until they were fully able to roam about in the day time. Afterwards, Paul has lost his mind and starts to threaten and blame everyone for Olivia's death. Brooke calms him down. DogNut decides to head back to the Tower first thing next morning but is persuaded by Justin to stay longer to write his and his group's story into a book in which Chris is writing in the library. At the Palace, David and Nicola meet secretly. David proposes that the 2 groups form an alliance - a step into helping with his plan of taking over London. Nicola is reluctant, but ends up creating a deal that involves removing the 'squatters' at St James Park as they pose a threat to her group at the House of Parliament. Until then, she won't officially agree to the alliance. David accepts and immediately asks for Jester to go and recruit children who can fight. Shadowman visits Jester in Buckingham Palace who convinces him to join on an expedition to recruit more children to join them at the Palace. The small group of Jester, Shadowman, Tom, Kate and Alfie begin walking up North until they encountered a group of sickos. They run away and end up at Kings Cross Station. The group fights off some sickos before Shadowman is hit accidentally by Jester, leaving him with a slight concussion. Jester, Alfie, Tom and Kate abandon Shadowman and are then split with Jester and Alfie together and Tom and Kate being together. Shadowman passes out when a group of sickos are upon him. Jester and Alfie find refuge in a building until a group of sickos finds them. In creating a plan of escape, Jester tricks Alfie and abandons him, escaping by himself. Alfie is killed by the sickos. Jester runs and discovers the Morrison's supermarket but is denied entry. He then finds the Waitrose supermarket where he is rescued by Arran's group (described in The Enemy). Shadowman wakes up and finds himself at the Emirates Stadium. He learns that the sicko, St. George, is much smarter than the rest of the sickos as he is creating an army in the stadium. Shadowman escapes the army of sickos when a fire lights up in the stands (most likely Small Sam escaping as told in The Enemy). He takes refuge in a nearby apartment building where he discovers boxes of weapons and food. He sees this as a sign to follow St. George's army, to learn about them before returning to London city. While watching their movement, he sees Tom, Kate and Callum (a boy from The Enemy) get killed by the army. Dozing off to sleep, he is suddenly woken up by sickos that found his hiding spot - including one of St. George's right-hand men (One-Armed Bandit). Shadowman manages to kill them all and plans to kill every single of St. George's right-hand men, including St. George himself and Jester for betraying him. All the while, DogNut, Courtney, Marco and Felix who are at the museum, are preparing to head back to the Tower. Finn decides to stay while Brooke joins the group. Robbie and Jackson join the group but are only escorting them part of the way. They set off to the Tower until they are ambushed by the 'gym bunnies'. Everyone is killed except for Jackson and Robbie who manage to escape the battle and Brooke who is saved by the Holloway crew (as described in The Enemy). She is taken to Buckingham Palace with the Holloway crew and is revealed that she is the quiet and heavily bandaged girl in the sick bay. Like in 'The Enemy', she tells Maxie and Blue about the museum and that David is a liar. Meanwhile, Paul, who is still crazed, secretly leaves the museum for Buckingham Palace. He meets with David and Jester who take advantage of his mental state, and tell him a fake story that everyone was plotting against him. This causes Paul to take revenge on everyone. David convinces him to return to the museum and release all the sickos who are in the basement. Paul agrees and returns to the museum. He kills a boy named Jamie who was on duty at the lower levels of the museum. Just before his death, Paul reveals to Jamie that he was bitten by one of the sickos in the lorry.