“Have you thrown down the torches yet, Callum?”

“Just lighting them now.”

“Can you see anything at all?”

“Hard to make out what’s going on. There’s a whole bunch of grown-ups. Some are attacking the shop, the rest seem to be attacking a kid. He keeps getting away from them. He’s running around like a nutcase. Don’t know how much longer he can hold on.”

“How many grown-ups?”

“Can’t tell. They don’t seem very organized.”

“Is the kid armed?”

“Don’t think so. Wait, they’ve got him. He’s surrounded.”

Arran swore and ducked under the shutter into the mall.

What they called the mall was little more than a covered walkway that ran down the side of the shop from the street at the front to the parking lot at the rear. Arran looked quickly in both directions. Apart from a couple of dead palm trees in pots, it was empty.

“Clear!” he yelled, and Achilleus brought the others out behind him.

“Bernie and Ben! We need the street doors open.”

The emos came out. They weren’t fighters, they were engineers. They both looked terrified.

“Can’t you open the barricade?” said Bernie, her eyes darting about anxiously.

“No,” said Arran. “We need all the fighters ready for action. Now hurry.”

“But there’s grown-ups out there.”

“We’ll kill them if we have to,” said Arran.

“Yeah, you wimps,” scoffed Josh. “They don’t scare me. I can’t wait to get out there. It’s gonna be a massacre.”

“It’s too risky,” said Bernie.

“Whoever that kid is, he’s in trouble,” said Arran.

“What if he’s one of them?” said Ben. “What if it’s a trap?”

“Then we’ll kill him as well.”

There was movement from the shop as Maxie brought her back-up squad out. They had longer defensive pikes designed to keep attackers at bay.

“You stay back here,” said Arran. “Defend the mall. If anyone gets past us, you’ll need to stop them from getting inside.”

“You sure about this?”

Arran tried not to sound too angry.

“Yes,” he lied.

Then Freak appeared, looking pale-faced and wild-eyed. He was holding a short spear.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

Nobody argued.

Bernie and Ben reluctantly moved over to the barricade and prepared to pull it back. They had rigged a system of two great gates on wheels made from bits of metal they had laboriously cut up and bolted together by hand. The metal was mostly from old cars.

They undid the padlock, pulled the chains loose, and slid the heavy iron bars aside. Then they slowly rolled back the gates with a terrific squealing of metal against metal.

As soon as the gap was wide enough, Arran hurled himself through. A startled grown-up was standing nearby. Arran clubbed it on the head, and it hit the pavement with a crunch.

Next out was Freak, itching for a fight, with the others behind him.

“Come on,” said Achilleus, and his fighters fanned out in the road. With Arran and Freak at the front, they marched over to where at least twenty grown-ups had formed into a crude circle.