The Power of Five Oblivion

the horizon itself. Nothing would get past them. If anything moved ahead, it would be seen. They continued forward slowly, at walking pace, and perhaps it was this – and the fact that there were so many of them – that made them seem so nightmarish. They were like robots. In their dark uniforms, clutching their weapons, there was nothing individual about them. Their faces were too far away to be seen, but even close to they would have been blank and emotionless, focused on what they were doing. They were simply a pack. They would not stop until they had found what they were looking for and they would allow nothing to get in their way.
    Three hundred of them had been deployed to find their target: a thin, pale, fifteen-year-old boy with dark hair. If questioned, he would speak with an American accent. He was thought to be travelling with an older man and a girl of his own age. If possible, the boy had to be taken alive. The other two could be killed without a second thought.
    They had spread out from the village in every direction, using it as if it were the centre point of a giant compass. According to the latest information they had received, the boy – Jamie Tyler – was trying to find his way through the thick woodland to the east, but it was always possible that he had doubled back or even reached the perimeter. The wood was being searched by men with dogs, and reinforcements were on the way. A platoon of fly-soldiers had already left London. One thing was certain. The boy couldn’t possibly have travelled far in the night. He must be somewhere nearby.
    Every building they came to, they searched. There were isolated churches and a few farms dotted around – empty now – with rotting haystacks, clumps of trees and pigsties. The county had once been famous for its pigs. Any houses that were still standing, they simply set on fire. It was easier than searching them room by room. The whole countryside was wreathed in smoke. The day had dawned a miserable, choking grey.
    The village itself, where the boy had taken refuge, no longer existed. Every single home had been destroyed. The villagers were dead. They had provided shelter for one of the Gatekeepers, whether they had known it or not, and this was their punishment. The streets and the village square were littered with corpses. Already the crows had descended and were picking at the dead flesh. More columns of grey smoke rose softly into the air and would have been smelled five miles away if there had been anyone left to smell it. The police had taken everything of value. All the food had gone. The apple trees in the orchard had been picked clean for the last time.
    In the middle of all this desolation, a single figure walked along the main road that sloped down from the village square, her black leather coat flapping around her, her ginger hair pulling slightly in the breeze. There was no colour in her face. Her cheeks were pinched, her eyes narrow and guarded. She knew that she had arrived at the defining moment in her life, her greatest challenge. She hoped she hadn’t already failed.
    Her name was Eleanor Strake and she was … well, it was difficult to say what she was exactly. She was in charge of the police, but since the police were now in charge of the country, that made her, what, the commander? That was how she thought of herself, and with the power of the Old Ones behind her, nobody was going to disagree. The prolonged series of terrorist attacks hitting almost every major city in the United Kingdom had long ago wiped away anything that vaguely resembled government. And that had only been the start. In the years that had followed, it was as if a curse had fallen on the land and everything that everyone depended on had been taken away, one item at a time. Security, communications, healthcare, employment, law and order. And at the end of it, food and water had gone too. The pathetic rabble that had managed to survive needed someone to look after them, to save them from starvation, even if it meant putting them into the labour camps that had sprung up in the north and the south – and that someone was her. Commander Strake. Sometimes it made her giddy to think of the amount of power she had at her fingertips.
    And yet all that could be at risk. She had been thrilled when she had heard that one of the five Gatekeepers had actually turned up in England. When the teacher had made the telephone call (the dead teacher now), she had been delighted.