As far as Maxie could tell, there were about twenty-five mothers and fathers in there. She couldn’t be sure, what with the kids running around and the busy jumble of exhibits, but there seemed to be adults everywhere. She could feel the sickly heat coming off their bodies. Smell that familiar sweet-and-sour stink. Hear them wheezing and shuffling and moaning. They weren’t particularly aggressive, but they were scared and cornered and fought desperately when attacked. They’d split into little packs of three or four, and Maxie’s team had split up as well, losing all their discipline in the labyrinth.

Maxie had Big Mick with her and two of his crew from Morrisons, as well as a boy and girl from the museum. She hadn’t known Big Mick long, but it was long enough to know that, though he wasn’t too clever, he was big and he was reliable. Knew how to handle himself in a fight.

The museum kids were a different story. They weren’t a lot of use, except for holding the torches and lighting their way. Whenever they came across a knot of grown-ups trying to hide, the local kids would shrink back while Maxie and Mick and his boys cut into the adults with their weapons, hacking and jabbing them until they stopped moving. The museum kids seemed shocked by the violence, but Maxie just wanted it over, and the more aggressive and merciless they were, the better. She didn’t like it in here with the dinosaurs. If she let them into her mind she’d be a little kid again, screaming to be let out.

She finished off a young mother with hair so fine it looked like candyfloss, driving the point of her spear right through her neck, but then slipped on her blood as it sprayed on to the floor. She tried to right herself and flailed with her free hand for something to hold on to. She felt a stab of panic. A burning sensation like acid rose up her gullet. It was silly mistakes like these that finished you. She grabbed hold of the cold, hard leg of some stupidly tall fossil and saw a movement, something coming fast round the corner towards her; she was still teetering, fighting to stay upright, and she lunged towards the movement, letting her momentum right her. At the same time she brought her spear arcing up.

Then pulled it back just in time.

It was a kid, one of the fighters from the museum, running the wrong way. Maxie swore at him, but saw that he was crying, his face wobbly with fear. Whether that was because he was running away from something or because he had nearly been impaled on Maxie’s spear, she didn’t know, and didn’t much care.

‘You idiot,’ she snapped. ‘I could have killed you.’