‘No, something else. They’re not human any more. As I say – they’re monsters.’ The man seemed to come alive, filled with a sudden flush of energy. He picked up his spear and paced up and down. ‘But together we could beat them,’ he said. ‘Kill them all. If we can get the door open we all go in together. You guys look pretty handy. Must be to have come this far. We can defeat them. Then all the stuff in there – it’s ours.’

Blue thought back to when they’d been in the corridor. Jackson saying she’d seen something. Something she couldn’t explain, hiding on the shelves. A snake thing, she’d said.

At the time nobody had believed her.

‘So how do we get in?’ he asked.

‘The keys are over there.’ The man jabbed his spear towards the wall behind the kids. Blue swung round and shone his torch over the breeze-block wall until it fell on a set of keys hanging from a hook.

‘I don’t get this,’ he said. ‘How did you end up in there?’

‘We came through the door from the main warehouse. We were beaten back, the freaks had been attacking us, we weren’t enough, they killed all the rest. We had a good thing going in there.’

‘They chased you into the cage?’

‘Yeah, and pulled the door down on us. There’s keys there that’ll let you in. And other keys that will get us all through into the warehouse proper.’

For the first time Blue noticed that there was a door into the cage with a heavy-duty lock on it.

‘We go in hard,’ said the man. ‘And kill them before they know what’s happening. We got to be quick, though, cos, as I say, they’re clever. They’ll fool you. Twisting everything around. They’re more dangerous than I can get across.’

‘So to open the door to the warehouse,’ said Ollie, ‘we have to open your cage and come in there with another set of keys?’

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you trust us?’

‘No,’ said Ollie flatly.

‘It’s the only way in,’ said the man.

‘We can go back outside, force the main loading doors.’

‘Hah! You’ll never break your way in through them, pal. Believe me, we’ve tried. And while you were knocking politely on the doors they’d take you down one by one. It’s like a fortress, this place.’ The man paused, then offered the kids a smile. ‘I’m Seamus, by the way. I’d shake your hands and give you the old how d’you do, but until you open this door I can only wave.’

‘I can’t say as I like grown-ups so much,’ said Achilleus. ‘What’s stopping us coming in there and killing you?’