Someone else scrambled up into the cab. Milly twisted round, hoping, but it was Ernie Stasiolek, shotgun in hand. “Budge up,” he told her; numbly, she obeyed. Something caromed off the windscreen and Ernie fired back into the dark. Something howled in pain.

“Thought you might need a hand,” Ernie told Phil. Fire erupted behind them: more Molotov cocktails, covering their retreat.

Phil didn’t answer; he was muttering and mumbling to himself. He seemed to be talking to somebody just outside the driver’s window, but there was no one there. “I’m on it, Jules,” Milly thought he heard him say; then he shouted, “Hold on”, and floored the accelerator.

The tractor lurched and rolled across the drainage ditch at the edge of Groveley Meadow; the plough blade caught the barbed-wire fence and tore it out of the ground. The tractor rocked as it mounted the roadway. Milly thought it would topple over, but it regained its balance and surged forward, the intersection of the High Street, Church Street and Smithy Lane. She grabbed Ernie’s belt as the vehicle lurched, or he’d have been hurled from the cabin.

She heard the screaming out in the darkness, glimpsed the crowd’s scattered frightened faces and the thin white shapes racing after the tractor. Josh Pidcock stumbled and fell; the instant he slipped out of the light the things in their tattered skin-cloaks fell on him. Ernie fired a flare at them, but it was no use. Josh and his screams were lost in the dark.

Phil swerved, circling, then shifted into reverse, so that the tractor and its headlights faced the field. Buying time, if only seconds.

Sounds came from the field. Screams and tearing skin. The ones like Josh Pidcock who hadn’t been fast or lucky enough; the ones who’d fallen behind. But some people had made it. Only a handful, though. So few of them. Is this all that’s left? Milly thought she saw Noel – or maybe just wanted it to be him. She couldn’t be sure.

“The church!” Phil shouted. “Get to the church.”

The remaining survivors ran past the tractor. The creatures shrank back from the headlights, but a brick smashed into the windscreen, starring it white. “Fuck,” muttered Ernie, reloading his gun.

Nothing Milly could do now; only wait and hope and pray. She touched the cross at her throat, but no words would come. The tractor reversed down Church Street, as slowly as Phil dared, covering the survivors’ retreat.

Dust swirled thick about the cave. Charlotte lay coughing and choking, trying to clear her streaming eyes, and Madeleine could have seen nothing from her position. So only Ellie saw that giant, goatish eye, shining a terrible gold, gazing through the dust.

She fumbled with straps and clips, and somehow managed to get the pack off. “Charlotte.” She grabbed the girl’s arm. “Charlotte!”