If I thought the monster man who had attacked us up on the hill was gruesome, then I’d been naïve. The straggly hair told me this was the same creature I thought I’d seen in the trees during the challenge. Now I could also see his face I felt ill. He’d obviously been much further down the decomposition process than the previous zombie. There were scarcely any scraps of flesh clinging to his bones; in fact, half of his skull was pure bone. The other half was writhing with maggots. A single worm slithered out of his eye socket.

I swallowed down my horror, let out a cry and raised my hands. I was going to send this damn thing back to kingdom come where it belonged.

Screams tore the air and people scattered in all directions. I held my ground and flicked my fingers, twisting my right index finger into a figure of eight and using my pinkie for added impact. Whether the zombie sensed what I was doing or not, it wheeled round and barrelled towards me. That was fine. I only needed two more seconds. I rotated my wrist – then something slammed into me, knocking me down and interrupting the rune.

For one horrifying moment, I thought there was more than one undead bastard. Then Mike’s arms went round me, pinning me in place. ‘Don’t worry, Ivy. I’ll save you.’

The bloody plonker. I wriggled underneath him in a vain attempt to free myself as security guards streamed in from all the directions. Some were carrying tasers but I doubted they would help. This was a corpse, after all; electricity would increase its strength and speed, not decrease it.

‘Let me go!’ I screamed.

Mike looked down at me with a confused expression. I twisted round so I was on my back and thrust my hands upwards to shove him off while turning my head to see where the zombie was. Why wasn’t it on us yet? At the speed it had been going…

I gasped in horror. With Mike’s intervention, it had abandoned its sprint towards me in favour of focusing on the one other person who was standing alone. Frozen in shock and seemingly unable even to scream, Belinda only managed to blink once and hold up her hands. Then the thing was on her.

Blood sprayed out in all directions, arcing into the air before splattering on the hard ground as the thing bit Belinda’s neck with its teeth and ripped at her flesh with its claws. Fingernails, I thought dully. Not claws. That used to be a human being.

‘Oh my God.’ Mike’s entire body was quivering. He gave me a wide-eyed look of horror then sprang up and bolted away, as streams of red-robed witches finally appeared from all directions.

Working as one, the Order witches raised their hands and cast out a combined rune. The zombie was flung backwards from Belinda, her blood staining every inch of its body and features. With nothing to support her any longer, Belinda collapsed. Moonbeam pelted towards her.