The X5’s engine finally died – irony of ironies – just as she passed her own front door. The BMW didn’t stop, but ploughed forward under its momentum towards the crossroads and the war memorial. Ellie hit the horn as hard as she could, fighting for control, stomping on the brake and pressing down on the clutch.

The car mounted the memorial plinth and climbed the first two or three of the conical structure’s concentric steps. It seemed to rise a little further, as if battling to climb upward, then, with a sigh of dying hydraulics, it sagged backwards and came at last to rest.

There was a still, beautiful moment where all Ellie could hear was the engine hiss and tick as it cooled. Then she remembered the things and shoved the door open, grabbing for the shotgun and hauling it out after her as she stumbled clear on weak, strengthless legs, almost stumbling and falling on the memorial’s uneven steps.

People were running towards the car. Milly, where are you? Someone was shouting her name, but Ellie waved them aside, staring up the High Street. She half-raised the shotgun, a hand on the slide, trying to chamber another useless round. Useless, yes, because she’d seen what effect it had had on one of the attackers. None, zilch, fuck-all. And there was an army of them out there. No, not an army, that was silly. Stick to the facts, Ellie, to what you saw. She’d only seen between a dozen and twenty. Although if shooting the fuckers didn’t kill them, or flattening them with a car, twenty of them would be more than enough.

Up the road, at the edge of the glow from the first set of streetlights, she saw a cluster of pale blurs. They weren’t moving; they were still, watching. Waiting. Calculating. And then they rippled into motion, and vanished back into the dark.

“Ellie?” Plant-Pot was standing beside her, eyeing the shotgun cautiously. “Ellie, are you okay?”

“Never better, Andy,” she managed through her teeth. They were chattering. She remembered something. She put the shotgun’s safety catch back on, then laid the gun in the footwell before clambering back inside the X5. A hand caught at her jacket, but she shook it off.

Ellie fumbled in her pocket for an evidence bag, Several of the glassine envelopes fell out at once as she removed one. Should really have gloves for this, latex ones on both hands instead of a police uniform glove on one – the other having been removed when she’d been stripping the cover from that first flare. But fuck it. She had no idea what was taking place, but one thing she felt entitled to state as an absolute fact was that this was most definitely not a normal night on duty.