The Power of Five Oblivion

themselves in this part of the city, but there were a dozen of them and they were out hunting for food.
    When London was attacked, they must have been pets that had been left behind and they had banded together, just like the people we’d seen in the Tube station, forming a pack. As they came rushing towards us I saw that they certainly weren’t anyone’s pets any more. They were horrible. There were little fat ones, running as fast as they could on stupid stunted legs, and tall, raggedy thin ones with matted fur and blank eyes. They were all mongrels, the worst bits of every dog you ever saw thrown together to make the ugliest creatures you could possibly imagine. It was obvious that all of them had only one thought in whatever was left of their brains: food. They were howling and barking, snapping at the air with teeth that were jagged and as sharp as razors. Obviously they spent quite a bit of time attacking each other. There wasn’t a single one of them that didn’t have some dreadful injury … bites on the stomach and chest, throats torn open, ears and eyes missing. One of them was dragging itself after the others on two legs.
    They must have been downwind of us when we came out of the house and had picked up our scent. God help any of us if we had been alone and unarmed. The dogs would have gleefully torn us apart and eaten us. From the look of them, they must have often done exactly that. Of course, we had weapons. We had plenty of time to see them coming. So although they were like something out of a nightmare, there really was no chance that they could do us harm.
    But that wasn’t the point. I saw Blake raise his machine gun and send a spray of bullets, which cut into them, killing four or five instantly and halting the others, as if they had run into a sheet of glass. Several of the dogs were wounded, not killed outright, and they went completely mad, snapping at their own bodies, trying to bite out the cause of the pain. One or two of them sniffed at their dead companions, realizing that there was an easier meal right in front of them … although maybe it would be better if they came back later. In any event, the attack was over. But at the same time the sound of the machine-gun fire had echoed across the city and now anyone in St Meredith’s or nearby would know that we were here.
    “Run!” Will ordered.
    He was right. If we were going to reach St Meredith’s and find Jamie’s door, we had to get there as quickly as we could. We had lost the advantage of surprise but there might still be a few moments before the enemy worked out which direction we were coming from. Forgetting the dogs, we belted towards the entrance to the church. As we went, I saw Will take something from his belt and throw it. It was a grenade! It only occurred to me then that the entrance to the church was almost certainly locked, and although he might have been planning a more cautious approach – picking the lock, for example – we couldn’t waste any more time. We just had to get in.
    Will put up his arm to signal us to stop and we crouched down. The grenade exploded, smashing open the wooden door which had stood there for centuries, even surviving the destruction of London … until we had arrived. We were about thirty metres away now and out of the corner of my eye I saw something move and felt my legs turn to jelly as the spider scuttled round the side of the church and stood there, quivering, looking down at us with the dozens of glittering black discs that were its eyes. There was a huge, heaving sack of venom under its belly. I had seen the spider the day we first came to St Meredith’s but it was even more horrible now because it had seen us. It knew we were there.
    We couldn’t go back. If we turned round, it would leap onto us in a second, and anyway, what would be the point? We had to get into the church. We had no choice but to continue forward, racing towards it. Twenty-five metres. Twenty metres. We weren’t going to make it.
    It would have killed us all. I’m sure of it. It was already tensing itself to jump right onto us. But then, before it could make its move, something else happened – so extraordinary and inexplicable that I couldn’t believe it. I really did think I must be dreaming or hallucinating. Or maybe my fear had driven me insane.
    The sky burst into flames.
    I mean, the whole sky. If you can imagine dousing all the clouds in petrol and then putting a match to them, that was what