The next few minutes were tense and confusing. Every road they tried seemed to be blocked by sickos. There must have been hundreds of them out there. In the end the kids found themselves going back over the motorway and into the open ground to the south.

‘Looks like you’re gonna get your way, Kyle.’ Ed sounded gloomy. ‘Somebody doesn’t want us to go back to The Beeches.’

‘Thank you, God,’ said Kyle.

‘So where are we going to go then?’ asked Ebenezer. ‘Maybe we should try to go back to London.’

‘I thought about that.’ Ed was trying to read the map and work out where they were. ‘But we can’t get back on to the M4 and all the roads that way are blocked.’

‘So, what then?’ asked Lewis.

‘We need to get somewhere safe and sit this thing out. You heard what Josa said about the open countryside. Look for signs to Ascot or Sandhurst. That’s our best bet.’

‘Didn’t they used to do horse racing at Ascot?’ Brooke asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Kyle. ‘My dad lost a load of money on the horses. Silly sod.’

There were still sickos on these country roads, but only in ones or twos, and the occasional sentinel.

‘Where are they all going?’ Ebenezer asked.

‘Let’s hope Slough,’ said Kyle and he laughed.

‘That wasn’t it then?’ said Brooke. ‘The wave? And if it was, it wasn’t so scary. There’s hardly any of them.’

Ed kept his mouth shut. No point in freaking anyone out. He was looking out of the window, trying to work out how many sickos there must be on the march. There may not be that many here right now, but if you added them up, multiplied them, all round London, all heading in …

That was too many to think about. He glanced up at the moon, partly covered by wispy clouds. He’d never seen it look so red. It wasn’t a good sign. Blood on the moon.

‘I reckon we’ve got past them,’ said Lewis, eyes on the road.

And that was when it got really bad.

As they rounded a bend, they almost ran into a pack of them, swarming across the road. Lewis had to slam on the brakes, and Kyle, who didn’t have his seat belt on, went sprawling on to the floor with a curse.

The headlights lit up a massive force of sickos, tramping across the countryside. Lewis tried to back away, but there were more sickos coming out of the bushes along the verge and filling the road behind them. They began to flow past the car like a flooding river.

Now Ed cursed. He remembered what it had been like the other day, how quickly they’d got bogged down when they’d tried to plough their way through. And there were many, many more of them in this mob.

‘What do we do?’ Brooke asked.