‘I feel sick.’ Deke swayed to one side and Freak caught him.

‘You’re bleeding,’ said Freak, putting a hand to Deke’s side. His clothes were stained black by blood. Achilleus lifted his arm; a large shard of jagged glass was sticking out of his side.

‘Oh no,’ said Freak.

‘I’m all right,’ said Deke. ‘It’s nothing.’ But then he coughed again and there was blood in his spit.

‘It’s in your lung, man,’ said Achilleus. ‘The glass.’

Deke’s eyes were rolling up in his head.

‘Hold on, bro,’ said Freak.

‘I think I’m going to…’

‘Don’t faint, bro,’ Freak shouted and shook his friend as he fell into unconsciousness. ‘Arran! We got to get him out of here.’

Almost as Freak spoke the grown-ups attacked again. At least ten of them blundered up from the pool.

Arran was filled with a blind rage. He couldn’t stand it that another kid was wounded. They didn’t have the drugs to deal with it, and the water in the pool must have been swarming with filth and germs. With a great roar he lashed out to right and left, smashing his club into the grown-ups, shattering bones, breaking noses, loosening teeth, closing eyes. He was hardly aware of what was going on around him, only that Achilleus was at his back, cold-bloodedly dealing with the grown-ups in his own way.

When a mother came at Arran, long hair flying, he gripped her by the throat and squeezed. Her head thrashed from side to side, her scabby hands flapped at him. Her hair whipped out of her face so that for a moment he saw her clearly.

Her nose was half rotted away by disease. There were boils and sores covering every inch of skin. Her lips were pulled back from broken teeth showing black shrunken gums.

Everything about her was disgusting, inhuman, degraded – apart from her eyes. Her eyes were beautiful.

Arran looked into them and for a moment he saw a flash of intelligence.

He froze. Time seemed to stop. He had the sudden vivid notion that this was all a stupid dream. He had imagined the whole thing: the collapse of society, the fear and confusion, the months spent hiding out in Waitrose. It wasn’t possible, after all. It wasn’t possible that the world had changed so much. So quickly. It wasn’t possible that he had become a savage. A killer.

The mother tried to speak, her lips formed in a ghastly pucker and a single syllable came out.

‘Mwuhh…’

Tears came into Arran’s eyes. He couldn’t do it any more.

He loosened his grip.

The mother wriggled free and sunk her teeth into his neck. Then Achilleus must have stabbed her, because a bright spray of blood hosed out from a wound in her chest. The next moment she was gone and Ollie was pulling him towards the turnstiles.

‘Move it, Arran!’ he shouted and Arran slithered over the turnstiles in a daze.

‘Where’s Freak?’

Freak had been fending off the grown-ups with his bare fists, punching, kicking, butting, trying to protect Deke. But he was losing the fight. The grown-ups had sensed that Deke was wounded. They had given up trying to block the exit and were concentrating their efforts on getting at him. Two of them had taken hold of his legs and Freak was engaged in a ghastly tug of war.

‘Leave him!’ Ollie screamed.

‘I can’t!’

A grown-up lurched into Freak from the side, knocking Deke out of his hands.

‘Deke!’

The name stuck in Freak’s throat as he watched Deke being dragged quickly away, face down on the hard tiles, leaving a long, bloody smear. He chased after them, sobbing and screaming insults, but it was no good. There was nothing he could do.

The grown-ups pulled Deke under the water and he was gone. The last Freak ever saw of his friend – the boy he had grown up with, shared six years of school with, played football with, watched telly with, laughed with, argued with – the last he ever saw, was his bright yellow hair sliding into the sludge.

‘Get out of there, now!’ shouted Achilleus. ‘I’m not coming back for you this time.’

No…

Freak was going to go after his friend. He knew it would be suicide but he hated to leave poor Deke at the mercy of the grown-ups.

There was a reason these boys were still alive, though. Something made them stronger than the other kids, the ones who had died in the early days, who had simply lain down and given up, unable to cope with the terrible things that were happening in the world. These boys were survivors. The will to live was stronger than any other feelings.

Freak turned on his heels and sprinted out of there.

4

Callum was in the crow’s-nest. He loved it up on the roof; it was his favourite place. He couldn’t wait for it to be warm enough to sleep out here. You could see the whole of Holloway spread out beneath you. Like Google Earth. The kids had built the crow’s-nest around the dome that stuck up from one corner of Waitrose. They had used scaffolding poles and planks and ropes and any useful bits and pieces they could find. A ladder at the back led to the sloping roof of the supermarket. From there you could climb down across the tiles to a small tower they had constructed at the edge of the courtyard. The courtyard was a rooftop terrace in the centre of the building, enclosed on four sides but open to the sky.

The look-outs could communicate with other kids in the courtyard through a speaking tube. More speaking tubes linked the courtyard with other parts of the supermarket. The system was based on what they used to use on ships to communicate between the bridge and the engine room. It wasn’t much more than a series of long metal pipes that had been slotted and bent through the ventilation and cabling ducts of the building, but it was surprisingly effective.

Callum felt safe up here. He and Josh were the main look-outs and could normally tell if there were any grown-ups around. The only blind spot was the car park at the rear of the building from where Small Sam had been snatched. Those kids should never have been out there without a guard. Callum was hacked off that he had missed the grownups sneaking through the gardens, and since the attack he had spotted loads more of them about. He kept a pile of ammo on a specially built ledge – rocks and stones to use as missiles, mainly – and he was itching to have a go at any grown-ups stupid enough to get too close.

He was keeping a look-out for Arran’s scav party. They needed Arran back. Everyone was on edge since Small Sam had been taken. Arran would calm everyone down, sort things out. Stop the little ones from being scared.

Callum never went scavenging. He had convinced the others that he was more use to them on the roof. In fact he hadn’t been out of Waitrose, except to come up here, for nearly a year. There was an invisible rope attaching him to it. In his mind he wandered the streets below, like a character moving around a game, but in real life he never wanted to go out there again. Waitrose was safe. He had everything he needed here. He was happy. Almost happier than he had been before the disaster.

The one thing he longed for, though, was peace and quiet. To be alone, really alone. That would be bliss. To just sit there, in all the space of the shop, without it being full of other kids. Sitting here in the crow’s-nest was as good as it got.

He put his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the Holloway Road.

‘Come on, Arran, we need you…’

5