Ollie saw Blue at the wheel, grinning madly. He must have hot-wired the car. There was suddenly a rush of grown-ups blundering down the road, trying to get out of the way.

“Let them go!” he yelled, but the Morrisons kid was wound up for a fight. He grabbed a spear off the ground and waded into the stampede, stabbing at them. A short, stocky father with one eye was obviously also still up for a fight, though. He hit the kid hard with a lump of concrete. Ollie watched him fall and get trampled by the retreating grown-ups. He put a steel shot into his sling and kept an eye on the father.

He picked his moment, and the shot hit the father in the back of the neck. He too fell, and he too was trampled.

Lewis had been joined by the remnants of the skirmisher team and Jester. Jester had immediately ducked down the pathway to join the smaller kids. Lewis figured that was how he’d stayed alive when all his friends had died on the way up from the palace.

Lewis didn’t blame him. Not all kids could fight. Sometimes hiding was a better option. The skirmishers were armed with an odd assortment of weapons, but it was enough to keep the grown-ups away. Lewis just had to hold out long enough for the front-rank fighters to come back and help.

If they lost the main battle, though, then all Lewis and the little ones could do was run.

A flood of grown-ups came down the road from the front. On the run. Maybe the tide had turned. Lewis pulled the rest of his fighters back into the pathway. It was more important to stay alive now than to kill the enemy.

He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.

He hadn’t lost a single kid.

Blue kept in low gear, his foot hard on the accelerator, carving up the grown-ups, but careful to keep well clear of any kids.

He saw the girl, Maxie, working hard with her spear. She looked like some kind of warrior queen. He steered the car toward her, clearing the attackers out of the way. And there was Arran. That boy was tough. He was badly wounded but nothing could stop him. Blue smiled. He wished he had teamed up with the Waitrose kids before.

Arran knew how Freak had felt last night, when the madness had taken hold of him. Anger burned like rocket fuel inside him. He was drunk with it. He waded in among the panicked grown-ups, swinging his club in vicious, punishing arcs. He was no longer tired or sick. His body felt nothing. It was as if he had left it behind and was watching it from somewhere else, like a film or a computer game. Yes. A first-person shooter. He kept pressing the X button and watching the club swing. It smashed into a skull. It shattered an arm. It snapped a spine.

He could see a long, blurry trail behind it as it moved through the air. And when a head exploded, there was no blood, just multicolored blobs of light.