The girl looked up, still coughing; then she looked past Ellie at the cavern wall and her mouth sagged open. Ellie jerked on her arm. “Charlotte!” The girl focused on her, blinking. Ellie pointed at the backpack. “Help. Quick.”

The Dancers and the rest were still rapt in their worship, backs turned. And they were blind. But if they heard one sound over their drumming and piping and the earth’s shuddering, or if the Eye perceived the threat and somehow alerted its worshippers, neither Ellie nor Charlotte would have a chance.

They had only seconds.

“Into the fire,” Ellie shouted in Charlotte’s ear. She took one set of the backpack’s straps, half-lifting it from the ground. After a moment, Charlotte grabbed the other straps and they began to swing it back and forth.

“When I say,” shouted Ellie, staring up at the impassive Eye – did it see them? Did it see? “When I say.” Charlotte was shaking, white with dust. Did Ellie like look that? Probably. Two ghosts, in a cavern full of monsters.

“Now,” Ellie shouted.

And they let go.

Milly saw another brick hit the tractor’s windscreen. Now everything in front was a blur. But that didn’t matter when you were going backwards. Beyond the windscreen, though, the headlights’ bright glare had dimmed: one had been smashed. Phil pressed the accelerator down. Then the other headlight smashed, and there was only the monsters and the dark. Ernie Stasiolek fired his shotgun empty, ducked back cursing as a stone flew past his head. “We’re there! Out! Quickly!”

He dragged Milly from the cab, then Phil, who stumbled like a zombie, blank-eyed. Ernie pushed them both through the lychgate, then turned and flung a Molotov cocktail overarm at the tractor. It smashed against the machine; fire engulfed it. “Go!” he shouted.

Milly caught Phil’s arm and shepherded him through the churchyard. Ernie followed, reloading as he went, while behind them the monsters’ outraged, anguished shrieks climbed the black sky.

Milly fell to her knees on the church floor, heaving for breath. She heard a voice she knew: Noel. She looked up and saw his face, soot-blackened and sweating but alive. He reached out a hand, and Milly scrambled over to him.

Between him and an equally exhausted-looking Laura Caddick lay Tara and Baby Joel; they must have practically carried the pair of them down the last stretch of Church Street. But they’d made it; they were here. For all the good it would do.

The church’s doors were gone. The windows too, and there was no light, other than a few torches in the survivors’ hands and some candles from the altar, which were frantically being lit. Wouldn’t do any good.

Something small and white burst in through the doorway, and someone screamed, but it was only Reuben, his torn lead still trailing behind him. He ran over to Milly and she hugged him close to her and Jones.