Slough seemed deserted. They found the main road through the town and drove all the way to the other side, looking for signs of life. The road was a long, dreary drag of car showrooms, DIY stores, builders’ merchants, low factory blocks and offices. They briefly passed through a more residential area of small, ugly, red-brick houses before finding themselves back at the M4, at the turn-off they would have taken if they hadn’t found the road blocked by sickos. They had a brief discussion about what to do and then turned round and headed back into town. This time, when they were halfway through, they turned off to the right when they came to the first major road. It was as depressing and deserted as everywhere else, and they were just about to give up when Brooke started pointing and shouting.

‘There, there, there …’

Ed looked round. Just in time to see a kid scarpering off the street and ducking out of sight between two houses.

‘Well, there’s people here then,’ said Kyle who had also spotted it. ‘Not very friendly ones, though.’

Ed banged the windscreen. ‘There’s another one,’ he said as a girl stuck her head round from the back of a lorry and then quickly jerked it back. ‘Carry on up this road, Lewis.’

The houses were thinning out and it looked like they were heading for open country ahead, but there were signs of life at last. Graffiti all over the place, painted on the houses and on the road, on cars and walls, on rotting advertising billboards, covering road signs, pavements, shopfronts. It was mostly mindless slogans – ‘SLOUGH RULES’, ‘SLOUGH RUDE BOYS’, ‘WINDSOR SCUM KEEP OUT’, ‘ZOMBIE FREE ZONE’, ‘WE WILL KICK YOUR ASS’, ‘MACNAMARA IS CHAMPION KILLER’, ‘WE ARE THE YOUNG’, ‘DIE, SICKBAGS, DIE’, ‘GO BACK TO YOUR SLUM, BRACKNELL’ – plus the usual swear words next to pictures of guns and knives and severed heads and the occasional obscene body part. Here and there was some more imaginative and artistic stuff, fancy tags and decorations, but mostly it was just rubbish.

And then they came to a school, the sign too defaced to be able to read its name. It was modern-looking, made of a central, taller, ring-shaped building with other wings coming off it in a sort of star shape. There was a fence around the grounds that had been reinforced, and someone had built a rather rickety look-out tower by the main gates. Two kids watched them from the platform at the top and others were clustered at the gates, safely on the other side.

‘Looks like they heard us coming,’ said Kyle. ‘Hope they’ve baked a cake.’

‘What you want me to do?’ Lewis asked.

Ed thought about it. ‘Stop here. I’ll go over to the gates and talk to them.’

‘What if they try and attack us?’ Kyle said.

‘Why would they do that?’ said Ed.