against the window-frame as the hands struggled to pull her out over the jagged shards of glass still stuck in the frame into the front garden.
Then he appeared out of nowhere, out of the darkness in the lounge, an ice-white face, eyes wide like porcelain marbles behind the rim of his spectacles, his mouth a dark yawning oval of rage. She felt the swish of air, and saw a pale-blue plastic blur.
The Swingball bat smacked the forearm of the hand that had hold of her hair.
‘Let go of my sister!’ screamed Jacob like a banshee. He pulled the bat back off the arm, revealing half-a-dozen gouges, and then swung it down again on the forearm. The hand instantly let go and retreated taking the Swingball bat with it, still firmly attached.
Leona ducked down and sank her teeth into the hands around her wrist. They too swiftly let go.
The mattress was almost wholly inside the lounge now, and she sensed she and Jacob had already lost the initiative. They were coming in regardless.
She turned to Jacob, grabbing him by the hand, she turned on her heels, leading him out of the lounge, into the hall, and towards the bottom of the stairs.
CHAPTER 76
10.09 p.m. GMT London
When the sky had started to darken she knew she had only a little daylight left to make use of. Jenny decided it was dangerous to be walking out in the streets on her own. The length of pipe she had picked up earlier today had felt like an all-powerful mace capable of dealing out death with one blow. But that had been back when it was in the middle of the afternoon. She’d felt a lot braver then. Now it was dark, and every shadow promised to be the poised form of some starving ghoul, waiting for her to get just a little bit closer before leaping out at her.
Her big metal pipe, right now, felt about as effective and menacing as one of those long twisty party balloons you can make a poodle out of.
Her feet were tired and blistered. She must have walked ten or fifteen miles from Watford.
Along the way she had counted the number of people she had spotted; 47, that was all. Most of them through windows, behind curtains and blinds, picking through piles of discarded plunder in the doorways of stores, or cowering in the dim shells of their homes.
As she had passed through the outskirts of north-west London, entering Kenton, and started seeing bodies, pushed to the kerbside, half-buried down rubbish-strewn alleyways, tucked behind wheelie bins, she’d decided to count them too.
She gave up at 100.
As she passed north-east of Wembley and spotted the unmistakable archway of the stadium in the distance, she entered Edgware. It had gone ten in the evening when she decided the prudent thing would be to find somewhere discreet to curl up and hide until the morning, even though Shepherd’s Bush was now only a few miles away. It would be the cruellest irony if only three or four miles from home she was jumped by someone.
She found a furniture store that had been broken into and some of the stock dragged out and carried away. She was bemused by that, that someone would decide now was a good time to get their hands on that lusted-after leather couch. She felt confident that no one would be lurking inside though. There was no food or water to be had here. That meant it was relatively safe.
She found a comfy couch near the front of the shop, where she could look out of the still intact display window on to the high street, yet she was shielded from view by the high back and the over-large cushions. Safe-ish, comfortable, a good enough place to quietly curl up, watch the sky darken and wait for dawn to come. She finished off her last bottle of water.
She awoke with a start. It was fully dark. The glow-hands on her watch showed it was 10.31 p.m. Something had prodded her awake. A sound? She could hear nothing right now.
It was pitch-black inside.
Outside, on the other hand, was faintly discernible, lit by the pallid glow from the moon. There was nothing she could see in detail, just the outlines of the buildings opposite. There was no movement of any kind. But something had awoken her from a very deep sleep. Something had jabbed her sharply to pull her out of that.
And then she sensed it wasn’t anything outside