The Power of Five Oblivion

which direction we took, we would have to confront them. I could see the lights dancing between the trees like huge insects, fireflies, but I knew they were torches held by human hands. How many of them were there and how had they got here so quickly? Before I could even start counting, a voice called out and I recognized Tom Connor, who was still in his observation tower somewhere above us but invisible in the blackness of the treetops.
    “Stop right there!”
    It was the same command he had delivered to Miss Keyland but now he sounded terrified and the lights didn’t hesitate, not for a second.
    “I warn you,” he shouted. “I’m armed.”
    There was a brief pause and then a tongue of flame unfurled itself from the darkness. It seemed very small at first, like someone lighting a match, but it grew monstrously, rolling forward, billowing out in a diagonal line from the ground to the top of the observation tower. Tom must have realized what was about to happen. For a few brief seconds I saw him, standing there in the middle of his useless wooden fortification, bringing up the useless gun that he had taken from his shoulder, bathed in orange. The fire rushed towards him, hissing through the night. Jamie grabbed hold of me and spun me round before it hit, but not before I saw Tom, a boy I had once played with, disappear in an all-consuming fireball and heard his single, unforgettable scream.
    “We have to go,” Jamie said. “We have to get back.”
    I looked round. The observation tower was on fire, the flames lighting up the forest all the way to the point where we were concealed. But for a dip in the ground, we would have been seen ourselves. The torches continued moving. Somebody – one of the other perimeter guards – shouted. There was a single shot, followed by a much louder, angrier stammer from a machine gun. Another pause. Then a body fell through the trees and hit the forest bed with a soft thump.
    They were getting nearer. The police, the Old Ones, whatever they were. I wanted to cry out but I knew that to do so would be death. I allowed Jamie to pull me away and together we scrambled back the way we had come, running faster even than before, the path lit by a faint orange glow. There were more shots behind us and, as we went, another scream. I tried to block them out of my head. I wanted to find Rita and John again. I wanted to see George.
    Normally, we wouldn’t have been able to move so fast, not at night, but the village was still illuminated ahead of us. We ran past houses with open doors and gates; signs that the inhabitants had left in a hurry. The church bell was silent now and had remained so since the original alarm. But everyone in the village must have heard the gunfire. We heard a further burst even as we reached the garage, softer and less distinct but still unmistakeable. The petrol pumps watched us as we went past, two old soldiers who had been left on the sidelines. The white glow of the electric light was stronger right ahead of us. We allowed it to draw us in.
    And so we came to the edge of the square, lingering in the shadows where we wouldn’t be seen. I couldn’t tell if all the villagers had assembled but certainly most of them were there, pushed back against the sides to make room for the helicopter which had landed right in the middle. I searched anxiously for my own family but couldn’t see any of them. I noticed Mike Dolan and Simon Reade – together as always – and Dr Robinson and Sir Ian Ingram were close by too. Their eyes were fixed on the helicopter. All of them looked small and afraid.
    The helicopter was black and yellow, shaped like a bullet with three huge blades, now hanging limply, and thick metal runners. The front was all glass and I could just make out some of the controls with a few lights winking inside the cockpit. I had never seen a helicopter before, except in pictures, and looking at it now, the real thing, I found it impossible to believe that anything so heavy and so cumbersome could actually rise off the ground and fly. And to have it sitting in the middle of our village! All those years spent hiding and now it had landed as if it had known where we were all the time.
    There was a woman standing beside it. Was she the woman I had heard on the phone? She was wearing a black leather coat that reached all the way to her calves, with black leather boots below. It certainly wasn’t a uniform. It must have been the way she liked to dress. She had