He clambered over the tumbledown wall, Nina behind him. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to—’

‘Don’t move.’

The words were snarled, venom behind them. Eddie and Nina froze at the cold click of a gun’s hammer. Harhund rounded a pile of rubble, Miller lurking behind him. ‘I told you we needed to check the emergency exit,’ said the latter, voice tinged with both triumph and nervousness. ‘Where’s Broates?’

‘Dead, thanks to you,’ Eleanor shot back.

‘Oh? Well, good,’ her son said with unconvincing bravado. ‘I never liked him. Patronising bastard.’

‘Enough,’ said Harhund. ‘We found them, so now we kill them.’

Nina faced Miller. ‘I don’t think you’ll get to claim your inheritance if your mother has a bullet in her head.’

‘That . . . that’s a good point,’ Miller replied. ‘Okay, new plan. Go back into the bunker. Harhund, once they’re inside, you pile rubble on the hatch so they can’t open it again. If the gas doesn’t get them, they’ll starve.’

Eleanor glared at him. ‘You don’t even have the guts to lay a single stone on my grave yourself? Donny, you’re a disgrace. I’ve never been more disgusted with you in my entire life.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he stammered back, ‘it doesn’t matter now, does it? I’m finally free of you. The company’s mine, and—’ his voice rose an octave, ‘and I won’t have you telling me what to do any more!’

She shook her head. ‘Pathetic. You’re still a child, Donny. A weak, cowardly child. Enjoy running the company while you can – with you in full charge, I doubt it’ll last a month before being torn apart by predators.’

‘We’ll see. We’ll see.’ Miller gestured angrily at the trio. ‘Go on, then! Get into the bunker.’

‘Like hell we will,’ said Nina.

Harhund flicked his gun towards the hatch. ‘Go back inside or I will shoot you right here. I will count to three.’ He aimed the gun at Eddie’s heart. ‘One, two—’

His head exploded.

A spouting fountain of gore sprayed across the broken stones as a high-powered rifle round punched through the back of Harhund’s skull, a blizzard of lead and bone fragments erupting from his face and dragging pulped brain matter in their wake.

Eddie was the first to recover, pulling Nina down with him. The shot’s angle told him it had come from lower on the hillside, and the sound of its firing belatedly reached him; not the sharp crack of gunfire, but muffled, like a sheet being torn. The weapon was suppressed, hiding the sniper’s position.

Miller stayed standing, staring in horrified shock at the headless corpse. ‘What – . . . holy shit!’ he cried. ‘What the fuck? What, what—’

‘Get down, you idiot!’ said Eleanor. ‘Do I have to tell you how to do everything?’

He scrambled behind a collapsed wall, panting in fear.