She leaned over him. Smiled. Arran liked it when she was happy. Then her smile grew wide so that her mouth was a gaping hole surrounded by jagged teeth. She lunged at him—

“I’ve got my lotion on!” Arran shouted.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Arran wiped sweat from his face.

“Jesus,” said Ollie. “There’s loads of them.”

“Get into place!” Arran yelled, just as Blue ran up with Jester and the rest of the fighters.

Arran was pleased to see how fast the kids got themselves together and back into battle formation.

The front line of grown-ups stopped about a hundred yards away, and the two groups stood looking at each other.

“What are they doing?” said Blue.

“God knows.”

Jester whistled. “They’re like a bloody army,” he said. “Can you take them, d’you think?”

“Don’t know,” said Blue. “I’ve never seen so many in one place before. They ain’t usually this organized.”

A smaller group of grown-ups pushed to the front and stepped clear of the pack. Almost as if they were in charge. At the vanguard of this new group was a huge fat father whose neck didn’t seem able to support the great cannonball of a head that lolled over his chest. Random tufts of hair sprouted from his otherwise bald scalp. He was wearing shorts and an England vest with the cross of Saint George on it. A pair of wire-framed glasses with no lenses in them perched on his squashed and rotting nose. He rolled his head back and stared at Arran. It looked like he was laughing.

“They must have been following us,” said Arran, his head clearing as his system was pumped full of adrenalin. “We need to avoid a fight if we can.”

“How we gonna do that?” said Blue. “Look at ’em. They’re not going to go away.”

“We’ll back off,” said Arran. “See what happens. Maybe get to somewhere safer. Somewhere we can defend. Where’s Ollie?”

“Here.”

“Stay with us. We’ll need your firepower.”

He and Blue shouted orders, and the kids began to retreat from the grown-ups. Arran and the best fighters stayed at the back, facing the enemy. The road in the other direction was still clear. Maxie and Lewis kept with their teams on the flanks. The little kids had formed into a tight, frightened bunch in the middle. They were huddled so closely together that it was difficult to keep them moving. They kept bumping into each other and anxiously looking back. Maeve and Whitney goaded them, shoving them along, encouraging them, telling them not to worry, but there was a mounting sense of panic.

Staying indoors all the time, the little kids had been sheltered from the worst of the fighting. They weren’t used to this. Some of the older kids, too. They weren’t all fighters.