Arran sighed.

“All right. I’ll ask them,” he said.

He walked outside into the sunshine. All the Waitrose kids and the Morrisons crew were assembled there—fiftyseven of them in all. Carrying sleeping bags and backpacks, food, water, and weapons.

“Callum says he’s not coming,” Arran announced. There were groans from the kids.

“Typical.”

“He only ever thinks about himself.”

“Leave him. He’s not a fighter. We can live without him.”

“We can’t just leave him here, though,” said Maxie. “He’ll die.”

“So what?” said Achilleus. “Let’s get going.”

Arran shouted them down. “Does anyone else want to stay?”

No one.

The kids stood in silence, shaking their heads.

“You sure?” said Arran. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want. Who’d rather stay here with Callum?”

Still no one.

Arran closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. There was nothing for it: he would just have to persuade Callum to come. He strode back inside.

Bernie turned to Ben. They looked very pale out here. Their black clothes accentuated the whiteness of their skin. They hardly ever went outside.

“Shame to be leaving it all,” said Bernie. “Everything we built.”

“We can build more,” said Ben. “If Jester’s telling the truth, we can make loads of cool stuff in the palace. We can rebuild the whole of London. We’ll be famous. They’ll put up statues of us.”

“Yeah, but . . . the speaking tubes, the barriers, the stoves we rigged up in the canteen, the new signaling system we were working on. It took us ages.”

“You want to stay?” said Ben.

Bernie looked wistfully over toward the supermarket.

“No,” she said. “I want to be a million miles from here. It reminds me too much of everything we’ve lost. All the friends who’ve died. All the bad times.”

“It’s a fresh start,” said Ben. “We’ll build newer and better stuff.”

“Yeah.” Bernie smiled and put an arm around Ben.

Nearby, a group of little kids was clustered around one of the Morrisons crew. A tiny six-year-old called Joel, who had an even tinier puppy wrapped in an old jacket in his arms.

“Oh, he’s so cute.”

“Look at him, he’s licking my hand.”

“What’s his name?”

“Godzilla,” said Joel, and they all laughed.

Maxie looked on and smiled. They’d kept dogs in Waitrose at first, as guard dogs and companions, but it had gotten too difficult to feed them, and they’d become semi wild. In the end they’d had to turn them loose. They were probably dead now, along with most of the other pets that had relied on humans.

Maxie noticed a kid on the edge of the group, not joining in. He just stood there, wide-eyed, molding a big lump of Blu Tack putty in his hands. She went over to him and crouched down.

“What’s your name?” she asked. The boy stared at her but didn’t speak. Instead he rolled the Blu Tack out into a long rope between his fingers.

“He don’t speak,” said Blue, walking up. “Not since his mom and dad died.”