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in my seat and lean across him to try and see whatever it is he's looking at. There's a blockade of some kind stretching right across the motorway. There are dark green military juggernauts straddling both sides of the road. Armed guards are manning red and white-striped barrier gates while other soldiers direct the queues of approaching traffic. What the hell are they doing? Unless I'm mistaken, the cars trying to leave the city are being stopped. They're not even being searched. They're either being marshalled up the slip-road and straight off the motorway or they're being sent round through a hole that's been cut in the central barrier and forced back the way they came. The traffic is being channelled back into town.

'Don't want us to go far, do they?' Harry says, watching the cars below us as we begin to shunt forward again.

'Thought they said they were getting things under control.'

'What?'

'I was watching something on the TV just before I came out to get you. They said the situation is being brought under control.'

'Well this is probably part of that control, isn't it? They need to know where everyone is...'

'Do they?'

'How can the authorities protect us if they don't know where we are?'

I don't bother answering him. The fact that I've just seen a substantial military presence out on the streets doesn't inspire me or fill me with confidence. If anything it makes me feel worse.

As we move away from the motorway the traffic begins to thin out again. I put my foot down and continue towards home.

My nervousness and paranoia is increasing by the second. I need to be back with my family.

The streets we're driving through now are uncomfortably silent and still. It all looks and feels perverse. The country seems to be tearing itself apart with unprecedented levels of violence, so why is everywhere so quiet? The normal human reaction to a threat like the Haters would be to stand and fight but today we can't. These people are sick. They're driven by a desire to kill and destroy and, from what I've seen, they won't stop until those desires have been satisfied. To stand and fight against them would mean displaying the same emotions as they do. It would be self-destructive. To fight back is to risk being called a Hater too. All we can do is keep ourselves to ourselves and not retaliate. The population is withdrawing from each other in fear. Fear of everyone else and fear of themselves.

We finally pull up outside the apartment block and I get Harry inside. I'm about to go back out to get his bag from the car when I spot a solitary figure walking down the street. Instinctively I wait in the shadows until I'm sure they've disappeared before setting foot out in the open again. Christ, I'm too scared to risk even being seen by anyone I don't know.

Chapter Twenty-Four

'Dad,' Ed says.

'What?' I grunt, annoyed that I've been interrupted. I've been reading through a pile of music magazines I found under the bed. I thought I'd thrown these out years ago. They've helped me get through the uneasy boredom of this never-ending afternoon.

'What's he doing?'

'What's who doing?' I ask, not lifting my head.

'That man from the house down the road. What's he doing?'

'What man?'

'Jesus Christ,' Lizzie screams as she walks into the room. The panic in her voice makes me drop my magazine and look up. Fucking hell, the man who lives in one of the houses adjacent to our apartment block is dragging his wife out of their house and into the middle of the street. She's a huge woman with a wide backside and flabby arms which are thrashing about wildly. The man - I think his name is Woods - is pulling her along by her feet and I can hear her screaming from here. He drags her down the kerb and her head cracks back against the road. He's carrying something else with him. I can't see what it is...

'What's he doing?' Ed asks again.

'Don't look,' Liz yells at him. She rushes across the room and tries to turn Ed around and push him towards the door. Josh is in the way. He's standing in the doorway eating a biscuit and Lizzie can't get past.

'Don't look at what?' Ellis asks. I didn't see her come in. She's behind me, standing on tiptoes and looking out of the window.

'Do what Mum says,' I say as I try to pull her