And the archers turned and started running, around to the back of the buildings, through an open gate into another field, where there were only a few scattered sickos. One or two standing like sentinels. The kids pounded through the long grass and weeds. Ed’s lot were worn out, but something kept them going and they managed to keep up at the front of the pack. The archers crossed the field on to a lane. They seemed to know where they were going. And once on the lane they could go even faster.

Ed felt the blood on his skin drying from the heat of his body. It was itchy and uncomfortable. It caked his clothing.

After running down the lane for what felt like fifteen, twenty minutes the archers veered off into a field through a farm gate and up the side of a low hill. They hadn’t seen any sickos for some time and Ed could see that the hill would give them a good view of the surrounding countryside. There was also a clump of trees up here and, as soon as they arrived, three of the archers threw down their bows and started climbing to get a better view. The rest of the group slumped down on to the ground to rest and Ed gratefully joined them. The girl in charge stayed standing, peering out across the darkened landscape.

Ed looked in the direction they’d come from. He could just make out the roofs of the factory buildings. And there was a black stain across the land that could have been the sickos or just the shadows of clouds across the moon, which was still a diseased red colour.

Ed was fully aware of his body now. His heart was racing. His head ached. His arms ached. His legs ached. His chest ached, rising and falling quickly, his lungs burning with lactic acid. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t got any fresh wounds. They’d been lucky. If these archers hadn’t shown up they could all well be dead. They couldn’t have held out much longer.

He looked at the rest of his little gang, sprawled out on the ground, exhausted. Brooke looked pale and haunted. Ebenezer was muttering to himself and had his hand round a cross on a chain. Kyle had a big drunken grin on his face. Somehow Lewis had managed to put his cool back on. He sat there, leaning back against a tree trunk, eyes half closed, just hanging.

Ed struggled to his feet and walked stiffly over to the tall pale girl, who had a pair of binoculars out now and was scanning the land to the east.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘That’s OK. It was pure luck we came across you.’ She had a polite, middle-class accent. Similar background to him probably.

‘What were you doing out there?’ he asked.