‘Should we check in the church or carry on looking out here?’ whispered Jackson. ‘This is all new to me.’

‘Outside first,’ said Ollie. ‘We need to recce the whole area. We don’t want to get trapped in there. Come on.’

They left the safety of the trees and ran across open ground towards the body. They jumped a low wall and threw themselves flat.

‘It’s Gabby,’ said Jackson. They were close enough now to see that the body was indeed hers. She’d been half unwrapped from the sheet and part of her face had been bitten off. Grown-ups had been here. The question was – where were they now? And what had happened to the rest of the kids?

‘Over there,’ said Ebenezer and he nodded towards something. Ollie looked. At the other end of the churchyard were four grown-ups, sitting as if having a picnic. They were spattered with blood and were chewing on lumps of raw meat, tearing off ragged chunks with yellow teeth. Ollie saw that one of them was eating a hand. A small hand. A child’s hand. He felt his stomach lurch and fought off a gut-kick of sickness. And then he saw that another of them, a slack-jawed father, was picking at a wound in his own leg, digging out bits of rotten flesh, sniffing them and then popping them into his mouth.

The adults hadn’t spotted Ollie, Ebenezer and Jackson yet. They were too busy eating. Ollie eased himself up on to his knees and got his sling ready. It was quite a distance to shoot from here, but he hoped he could still do enough damage. He took aim and loosed a steel ball. One of the grown-ups, a bald mother, jerked her head and toppled sideways. The others ignored her, just carried on eating. Ollie fitted another ball to his sling. The second shot got the father who’d been picking at his leg right in the neck. He put a hand to his throat and stood up, looking around. The next shot took his teeth out and knocked him down. The odds were balanced. It was time to go.

The kids charged. Ebenezer had three lightweight throwing spears. They may not have been very heavy but their points were sharp, and he hurled two of them as he ran, taking down the last two grown-ups, who had finally realized, too late, that they were in danger. Then Jackson was in among them and she finished them off with her spear.

It was over quickly and the three kids stood there, panting and gasping with rage. There were two dead children here. Too badly mauled to be able to tell who they were.