He would have to be much more careful. The more he took in of his surroundings, the more he realized that there were grown-ups everywhere. The floor was covered in them. If he took one wrong step he would tread on one. He remembered when his dad had taken him to the zoo in Regent’s Park. In the reptile house they tried to spot lizards or snakes in their glass cages. When you first looked you couldn’t see any, but if you were patient, you spotted them. Lying in clumps, on top of each other, under rocks, half buried, lazy and bloated.

He had to get out of here.

He moved cautiously to the window. To try to get some idea of where he was.

To begin with, he could make no sense of what he saw. It was a huge alien space. Not inside but not outside. It reminded him of something.

Yes. The amphitheater in a gladiator film.

Of course.

It was the Arsenal soccer stadium. He was in a hospitality box, looking across the rows and rows of red seats toward the field. There were grown-ups out there, some sleeping in the seats, some lying on the floor, some wandering aimlessly about.

Maybe they’d come back here because it was familiar; it meant something to them. There was certainly not going to be any more soccer played here for a long time. Far below, the grass on the field had grown high. A father was standing there, very still, like a statue. Grass up to his knees. He was fat and, like a lot of grown-ups, looked completely bald. He wore a white vest with a red cross of Saint George on it. Sam had the unnerving feeling that he was looking straight at him.

Sam felt sad. Dad had brought him here once. He remembered how full of life and sound and color it had been. He’d been scared at first, all those people shouting and singing and swearing and jumping up and down. But he’d gotten into it and had ended up shouting along with them, even though he wasn’t really a soccer fan.

Now look at it....

There were sliding glass doors here that opened onto the terraces, but even if they weren’t locked, the noise of trying to open them would most likely wake the sleeping grown-ups. Besides, there were more grown-ups out there. If they spotted him it would be impossible to get away from them in such a wide-open space. No. There had to be another way out, a back way. There must be some stairs down behind the stands.

He crept across the carpet. The room was very big; it opened up at the back into a sort of dining area with broken tables and chairs in it. There were still more grown-ups sleeping here, and Sam had to look away as he glimpsed a half-eaten body lying under one of the tables.

Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.

He tried to pretend that he was in a film. He’d always had a good imagination; he could lose himself in a game for hours and hours. The film was The Lord of the Rings, and he was a hobbit in an orc castle. His dad had been reading him the book at night before he got sick, but it had been a bit old for him. He preferred the movies.