DogNut meanwhile was too hemmed in to do much more than barge sickos out of his way. A searing pain in his ankle stopped him dead, and he looked down to see that a fallen mother had got hold of his leg and sunk her teeth into him. He stamped on her with his other foot and stabbed down, taking her in the neck.

‘Courtney!’ he shouted, but didn’t know if she could hear him.

Where was she?

‘Courtney!’

There. He forced his way over to her and pulled the sickos from her back. She was bleeding from small cuts all over her, and her right arm was red from shoulder to fingertips, but she was still battling with her knife. DogNut took hold of her and started to drag her away, ignoring the sickos that grabbed at him from all sides. All his energy was ebbing away. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up.

‘Come on, Courtney,’ he said. ‘Don’t give up. You and me, girl. You and me.’

‘You and me, Dog,’ said Courtney.

‘Love you, girl …’

‘Love you, too …’

As Brooke stood watching helplessly, she spotted the lead mother moving in fast towards the two of them, holding the knife. She was a horrible sight, with her sunglasses and her mad grin.

Brooke sobbed. It wasn’t right. Sickos didn’t carry weapons. They were too stupid. And this mother was smiling.

‘Look out!’

It was no good. The mother came up behind DogNut and plunged the knife deep into his side between his breastplate and his backpack. He howled and the mother laughed.

DogNut fell to his knees.

Overwhelmed, he thought. Courtney was right after all. Overwhelmed. He couldn’t get a fix on what was happening. One moment he was in the pit at the bank, with sucking mouths fixing on to him, the next he was back at school, playing football, now he was in class, struggling to make sense of algebra, then he was with his mum, arguing about something …

Don’t argue, Mum, he thought. Can’t we just be friends? We don’t have long.

Why don’t we have long, darling?

Because I’m dying, Mum. Can’t you see? I’m in the pit at the bank and sinking under all these mouths. Sickos, Mum, too many of them, so don’t argue.

But you have to do your homework.

It’s algebra, Mum. You know I can’t do algebra.

You have to try.

What’s the point, Mum? I’ll never need to use it in my life.

Well, you might one day …

Might I? I ain’t needed it so far and it looks like I ain’t going to be around for much longer. I don’t think algebra would’ve saved me today.

Saved you from what, darling?

Don’t you ever listen, Mum? I told you: I’m dying. There’s sickos, Mum. I’ve been overwhelmed. This time I’m not going to get out. They’re going to drag me down, down in their rotten flesh.

Are you by yourself, darling? I can’t bear the thought of you dying alone.

No, Mum, I’m with my friend. I’m with Courtney …

Courtney …

He called out her name.

‘Courtney,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry …’

But Courtney was already dead. She’d gone down hard and cracked her skull on the edge of the pedestrian island in the middle of the road. Already sickos were tearing at her body.

Brooke could stand it no longer. She wasn’t going to watch her friends die and do nothing. Screaming, she ran towards DogNut, shoving sickos aside. They dropped back, startled by her fury. She made it to DogNut and put her arms around him. He was still alive.

‘Can you stand up?’

‘What?’

Brooke grabbed DogNut’s sword. It was sticky with blood. With her other hand she pulled DogNut to his feet and then circled her arm round him, holding him up. Three mothers came at her, sticking their spotty faces right in hers, like mocking kids in a playground, salivating, their eyes somehow dull and mad at the same time.

‘Get away from me, you ugly bitches!’ Brooke screamed, and sliced the sword across their throats in one hard determined thrust. Blood spattered her front and the mothers staggered back, clutching at their wounds with twitching hands.

I did it, she thought. I got them. I can do it.

She wasn’t sure she could do it again, however. She’d been lucky. Now the sword felt unbelievably heavy. She waved it uselessly at the ring of sickos that had formed around her.

It was only her left now.

Let them come. Let the gym bunnies kill her. She couldn’t take any more of this. She looked at the bodies of Felix and Marco and Courtney.

And then she felt DogNut stir and moan.

No. She thought. I will not let it end like this. She wasn’t ready to die yet. As long as she had a breath left in her she would protect DogNut. She had to survive. Otherwise who would ever know what had happened here? Who would tell the story of the death of heroes?

She became aware of the lead mother smiling. She looked like she might have been quite beautiful once, with a good body, fit. Now she was just this ugly thing, with boils and spots across her face, eating away at her. Her teeth black. She knew she was the winner today. Brooke cursed her.

She darted in and Brooke swiped at her. Missed. Felt a blow to her face. A cold, dazzling band of pain across her forehead. Blood gushed down and she couldn’t see anything.

Oh no …

DogNut’s hand felt for hers, took the sword from her. She felt him moving, swinging the blade. Felt his body red hot against hers. In this moment she loved him more than anything in the world, more than anyone.

‘You’re still in with a chance,’ she whispered.

‘I knew it …’ he croaked.

Brooke wiped the blood out of her eyes.

The mother was standing there. Eyes hidden behind the sunglasses. Showing her black teeth in a sick grin. The girl was hers now. She looked at her knife, hardly able to believe that she could control it. She licked her lips. The other sickos, the ones who weren’t already ripping into the dead bodies, were holding off, waiting for her to move in for the final kill.

She raised the knife and stepped forward, and at the same moment something distracted the rest of them. They turned as one and charged off across the road.

The mother grinned wider, lifted her knife higher, drunk with its bloody power. Brooke held her gaze. Clutching DogNut tight. With one last desperate effort DogNut swung the sword. It flapped feebly at the mother’s face, doing nothing more than knock the sunglasses off.

The mother paused. Brooke looked into her eyes. Saw some last glimmer of humanity there.

And then an extraordinary thing happened.

The mother grunted as an arrow struck her in the right eye. She tilted her face upwards, wailed and toppled over backwards. The next moment another group of the bunnies went down beneath a swarm of arrows and other missiles. There was movement off to Brooke’s left. A group of kids was approaching from the north. They looked street tough and hardened, working together like a smooth killing machine – a well-drilled unit. There were archers out on the flanks and several kids with slingshots. A boy at the front with a spear was moving expertly, a deadly killing machine. Brooke picked up silly details like the shaved patterns in his hair.

Another boy, with flame-red hair and a slingshot, ran over.

She was being rescued. Maybe there was some hope left in the world after all. A muscular-looking black kid with a club smashed two sickos aside. There was a girl alongside him, with short scrappy hair, wearing a leather jacket. In her bewildered delirium, Brooke thought that the girl could make more of herself.

Maybe she could show her how.

In a few seconds all the gym bunnies were dead. Battered to the ground or pierced by arrows. If Brooke hadn’t seen it for herself, she wouldn’t have believed it. Wouldn’t have believed that a bunch of kids could destroy sickos so easily. It was the most efficient and deadly attack she had ever witnessed.