The Power of Five Oblivion

happened. We didn’t feel any heat. Perhaps there was none. But the whole of London, the church and the spider were bathed in a deep red glow. At the same time, I thought I heard a bell strike somewhere in the far distance, coming from another church or maybe from St Meredith’s, and later on I realized that it must have been exactly eight o’clock – twelve o’clock in Antarctica – and if ever there was a moment of truth, this was it.
    The sky blazed. The spider froze. We didn’t stop. It took us less than a minute to reach the front entrance where the door was shattered and the stonework charred, wisps of smoke still rising. For just a second, Jamie and I were close to each other, our shoulders touching and I saw him turn and look back, the flames reflecting in his face. I had never seen him look so dismayed.
    “What is it? I asked.
    “Matt,” he said. Just the one word, but I knew it meant that something dreadful had happened.
    And then we were inside the church. It was a big place, five times the size of St Botolph’s back in my village and a lot gloomier too, with most of the windows broken, rubble over the floor, the pews all smashed up and most of them taken away, probably for firewood. There were huge pillars holding up the ceiling and chapels leading off at the sides. Everything was very dark and red.
    I didn’t know what to think. Part of me thought that we’d done it, that we’d made it here and nothing was going to stop us finding the door. Jamie and the Traveller would soon be on their way … on yet another journey. I suppose I should have been glad. But I wasn’t. I would never see Jamie again and without him I had no reason at all to be here. What would happen to me? The Nexus would look after me, I guessed. And if Jamie won the fight against the Old Ones, perhaps I’d be able to return to the village, or one like it. But George was dead. Rita and John were dead. Just about everybody I knew was dead. And on top of that, the world was on fire. I was in the middle of a ruined city. There was no way back.
    Blake, Simon, Ryan and Amir had fanned out in front of us. I had my gun. Jamie had his. The Traveller and his brother were covering us from behind.
    Blake pointed. “There it is,” he said. “The door…”
    There was a burst of gunfire, horribly loud, deafening in the empty space, and Blake was hurled off his feet, dead before he hit the ground. I cried out. The ginger-haired woman who had come in the helicopter to the village and followed us to Little Moulsford before she lost us at the Sheerwall Tunnel had caught up with us again. She was striding towards us in her long coat with a look of grim determination on that pale, thin face of hers. It was she who had fired the shots but she was surrounded by armed policemen and I knew at once that they weren’t going to stop, that there weren’t going to be any warnings or questions. They would kill us all – Jamie too, this time – and that would be the end of it.
    But Jamie had his power, didn’t he? I waited for him to tell the woman that he wasn’t there or to order her to simply drop her gun or whatever. It never happened. A gas cylinder exploded – I didn’t even see who threw it – and suddenly there was smoke everywhere, thick yellow clouds gushing out around our feet. I gasped for breath. My throat was raw. My eyes were burning and I could feel the tears streaming down my cheeks. It was some sort of tear gas. The woman knew just what Jamie could do and she’d taken no chances, disabling him and the rest of us before she closed in. How had she got to St Meredith’s? It was obvious. She had known where we were heading and she had simply waited for us to turn up.
    Blake was gone but the others were shooting back. Bullets exploded all around me. Once again I found myself in the middle of a gun battle, unsure what to do. I didn’t dare fire myself in case I hit Jamie or the Traveller.
    “Go, Jamie! Go!”
    I think it was Will who shouted the order. It was impossible to be sure. There must have been hundreds of bullets being fired and I screamed as one hit my hand, going right through the palm. With what little vision I had, I saw Jamie start forward and even then the thought occurred to me that it was a shame that he hadn’t had time to say goodbye properly. Maybe that was why I followed him or maybe it was simply because I didn’t want to be left on my own. Either way, four of us made the sprint to the door, although