While he’d been lying there in the sack, quiet as a mouse, still as a corpse, he’d heard them eating. They must have caught another kid before him.

The grown-ups moaned with delight as they fed. Chewing loudly, slurping and belching. Sometimes there was a crunch, or one of them would spit. Once there had been some sort of fight.

Sam was glad that they had something else to eat, but felt awful that it was another kid.

And he was glad, so glad, that he couldn’t see anything. The smell of blood was bad enough. It made him want to throw up.

It was quiet now. He could almost imagine that he was alone.

He’d been so scared, more scared than he’d ever been before in his life, and although his life had so far been quite short, there had been a lot of scary moments in it. Like when his mom and dad had left him. It had happened one night. His mom had come into the room he shared with his little sister, Ella. Mom had looked bad. Tired and sweaty and ill, with yellow skin and big black rings under her eyes. Gray lumps around her nose. Zits like a teenager. She had been shaking, her teeth chattering so loudly he could hear them, rattle, rattle, rattle. She’d woken him up and hugged him, and he’d felt her tears on his neck. She’d told him that she and Dad were going away. She said there was nothing she could do to help him and his sister, and if she stayed it would be dangerous for them.

Mom had told him to look after Ella, and he had tried. He had really tried. But he was only small. And now he’d left Ella all alone. She would be sad without him there. He hoped his mom and dad would understand. The thing was, though, he was too small to look after anyone, really. He was only nine.

At least he hadn’t seen his mom and dad die. Sometimes, when he felt sad and lonely, he would picture them alive. Happy. He saw them on a sunny island, like when they’d gone to the Canary Islands. He told himself that they’d just gone away on a long holiday to somewhere where the disease hadn’t happened. They were on a beach in their swimsuits and sunglasses, drinking cocktails with umbrellas in them. That always cheered him up, imagining they were safe somewhere and that they were maybe thinking about him and Ella. They were probably planning to come back and rescue them.

Deep down, though, he knew that really they would never be coming back. They must have died just like all the other grown-ups. Because if they hadn’t died . . .

They’d be like the others.

These grown-ups, the ones who had captured him, weren’t people anymore. They couldn’t speak, only grunt and hiss at each other. They were mad things. All they thought about was food.