One

The thought of books had stayed with him. He supposed there would be no more. Not for a long time, at least. He thought of all the books he had read over his lifetime, a great deal of them in those prison cells of hyperbaric chambers where there'd been little else to do. Were they still important? Maybe yes. Maybe more so than ever. Aidan had not been read a bedtime story since they'd found him. That wasn't good enough. It was time to remember the stories Jane had been told as a child, or make up some new ones. It had been a while – he remembered singing silly, off-the-cuff songs to lull Stanley to sleep – but it was in him; it was in everyone, like the skill to make fire, or love.

Becky came back empty-handed. He was harder on her than he should have been, perhaps because of that.

'I just looked in a corner shop,' she said. 'I waited a long time to make sure there was nobody inside.'

'But that's not the problem, is it?' he asked. 'It's people on the outside, watching you, waiting for you to make your move.'

'Well, I'm here aren't I?' she snapped.

'Have a dried apricot.'

They walked most of the day in silence.

'How many minutes until we get to London?' Aidan asked.

'I don't know,' Jane said.

'Ten?'

'A bit more than that.' But he wasn't really listening any more. Up ahead, maybe a mile away, there was a strange glinting on the road, as if someone were sending messages by reflecting light off glass.

'What's that?' Becky asked. They had all stopped.

'I don't know,' Jane said.

'Code?' As if she had read his mind.

'Maybe. I don't like it. Let's get under cover somewhere for a while.'

They scampered down the embankment to a ploughed field. They had to leave the wheelbarrow. Jane dumped it in a ditch and they hurried across the field, dust pluming up from every footstep and lifting from their clothes, their hair, as if they were made from the stuff. At the far end of the field they climbed over a charred fence. There was a lake beyond it, dark and flat as a lithograph.

They lay down by the fence and watched the road. Their dust ghosts rose too slowly, but were then whipped away by the currents of wind. They had barely dissipated when the first of the figures appeared.

It was like looking at a mirror image of themselves. A man led the way for a woman pushing a young child in an old-fashioned pram. The child was too big for it, legs hanging over the side, jouncing at every bump and crater. He seemed to be wrapped from head to toe in shiny material, similar, perhaps, to the reflective insulating blankets that marathon runners wrapped around themselves at the end of a race. Was that what he had seen glinting earlier? Jane thought the child must be injured, or sick. He wanted to go to them, to ask them if they had come from London and why they were heading north, but there was something he didn't like about the senseless motion of the child's limbs.

'Is that a little boy?' Aidan asked. 'Like me?'

'I think so,' Jane said.

'Can we play? He can have my boat. I've played with that enough now.'

'Let's just watch them. I'm not sure if they're friendly.'

Jane could sense Aidan's scrutiny of him. He hated having to seed his mind with doubt. Boys of five shouldn't have to be saddled with issues of trust when it came to other children. He didn't want him growing into a suspicious, lonely man. But he didn't know what else he could do.

The pram – not the best mode of transport for such an unpredictable road – hit one pockmark too many and the woman struggled to right it. The child slid out on to the surface; they heard the dull crack of its head, or Jane imagined he did. The man turned and started haranguing the woman. Two more figures appeared, as though rising out of the road itself. Men. They picked up the child – one of them grasping it by the hair – and dumped him back in the pram. There was no cry of objection, from the child or the woman.

'Becky, I think maybe you should take Aidan down to the lake for a while,' Jane said. 'We don't need to see any more.'

Becky tugged at Aidan's sleeve. The boy resisted. 'But I want to play.'

'Aidan, it doesn't look good. I think—'

'NO!' Aidan said, his chin thrust out in determination.

Jane glanced back at the travellers and saw how they had turned towards them. He saw the first man's stance alter. He saw his knees bend slightly. He saw his shoulder recoil.

'What—' began Becky. And then the fence to her left disintegrated, the bolt the man had fired from his crossbow burying itself in the dead bark of a tree with a dull phut!

'Let's go,' said Jane.

Aidan was pulling toys from his pocket. 'He can have this if he wants. He can—'

'Now,' said Jane, and grabbed Aidan's hand.