Ed had been there when the Windsor kids had arrived. At their head were the twins he’d heard about, riding matching white horses, and wearing gleaming black and gold armour that must have been specially polished for the event. They also both wore a plastic wreath on their heads, spray-painted gold, to show that they were the winners of the last races. There was something arrogant and lordly about the Golden Twins. They had a snooty look to them, like they thought they were some prince and princess arriving at a rival’s castle.

Behind them came their troops, well drilled and well behaved. A few of them had horses, and there were four pick-up trucks loaded with sickos, all securely tied up or chained. A group of smaller kids brought up the rear, nervous but excited. This was the biggest group to arrive.

The next largest group were the kids from Slough. Ed had watched them come in as well, keeping himself well hidden in the crowd of onlookers. Josa and Kenton had been at the front, Josa carrying a baby that must have been about a year old, her boys behind her, trying to look mean and tough, some of them succeeding. Ed reckoned they’d been lucky to get out of Slough without sustaining any serious damage from the wave of sickos passing through. It looked like they’d managed to round up most, if not all, of the ones that Ebenezer had released from the pens. They were being herded along in a group, chained and kept at a distance by Josa’s long wooden poles.

The Sandhurst kids were the smallest group, but they were a hard-looking bunch, dressed in denim and leather, with big boots, as if they’d modelled themselves on a biker gang.

There wasn’t much to distinguish between the Bracknell and Maidenhead groups. They looked like any bunch of kids arriving at another school for an event, a football match or whatever, excited, slightly nervous, sticking together. In the past there would have been teachers herding the kids, making sure they didn’t misbehave. Now it was the other way around: the kids were herding the adults, and the adults were the problem. Diseased, violent, anarchic and stupid.

All the arrivals had a few horse riders among them and there were more horses kept here at Ascot. Some of the new kids negotiated with the locals for extra mounts. There was a barter system in place. Kids were exchanging food and drink, weapons, armour, clothing, shoes, books, footballs and sports equipment, seeds and fertilizer, anything that was considered valuable and hard to get hold of. And some of this stuff was then exchanged for tokens to bet with. Arno Fletcher really did have a good system going on.