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that were left. But it’s too dangerous for that.” He smiled and looked up at Ol ie. “You lot, though, you could real y make a difference. Together we could get back easy. You know how to look after yourselves. You’re good fighters. The best I’ve ever seen. I can take you there. I can take you to safety.”
    “Let me ask you a question,” said Arran, his voice sounding hoarse and croaky. Everyone turned to him; it was the first thing he’d said since the meeting began.
    “What?”
    “Why should we go into the center of town? Why shouldn’t we just leave London? Go to the countryside? Surely we’ve got a better chance of surviving out there. That’s where al the grown-ups were trying to get to when they started dying.”
    “Exactly,” said Patchwork. “And I reckon that’s where they al went. The center of London is empty, there’s none of them around, but the further out we got, the more of them we found. I reckon if you tried to get out of town you’d just come across more and more of them. It’s miles before you hit any proper countryside, but into town from here, how far is it? Five or six miles at the most. You could walk it in two hours if you didn’t have to fight any Strangers. Who knows what you’d find out there if you did manage to leave London. But in the center, where I’ve come from, I can tel you what it’s like—it’s safe.”
    “How do we know you’re not lying?” said Ol ie.
    “What would I gain by that?”
    “Dunno. Don’t real y know anything about you.”
    “Yeah,” said Blue. “What’s your name?”
    “Some people cal me Jester, some cal me Magic Man. . . .”
    “Some cal him jerk,” said Achil eus, and there was a fresh round of laughter.
    Jester nodded. “Yeah, some might cal me that. I’ve been cal ed worse. You can laugh at me if you want, or you can listen.”
    “We’d need proof before we left this place and went marching off across London,” said Ol ie.
    “I’ve got proof.”
    “Yeah?”
    “I’ve got pictures.”
    “What sort of pictures?”
    “From an old Polaroid camera. Photographs.”
    “Show us.”
    Jester took his satchel off his shoulder and opened it. He rummaged around, then produced a cardboard folder. From inside it he took out a handful of square, glossy photos. He passed them to Ol ie, who flicked through them, a smile slowly spreading across his face. He brought them over to Arran, who had to lean forward into the light to see them properly.
    They weren’t faked. You couldn’t fake a Polaroid. It wasn’t like the old days when you could use a computer to do anything you liked. There was no Photoshop anymore, not without electricity to power the computers. Photoshop was just one more thing that had seemed real y important at the time, but now was completely irrelevant. Useless.
    These pictures were the real thing. They showed Buckingham Palace and a group of happy, healthy-looking kids— posing at the front in the parade ground, inside eating lunch around a big grand table, working in the gardens, swimming in the lake, playing soccer. It looked like an impossible paradise.
    A glimpse into another world.
    Arran felt a lump in his throat. His hands were shaking. He gave the photos back to Ol ie, who gave them in turn to Blue. Soon they were being passed from one excited kid to another, al grinning and shaking their heads and starting up a happy murmur of approval. The only one of them who scoffed was Cal um. He looked at the pictures in disgust and sneered at the people in them.
    Arran’s eyes were misting up. What he had been shown was Unimaginable. It was hope. If what this guy was saying was true, then maybe things would be different in the future. Maybe he and Maxie would have a chance. Earlier it had seemed that there was no way out, that they would al slowly die here in this miserable empty supermarket. Picked off one by one, kil ed by disease, grown-ups or dogs, or each other.
    Was there real y a way out?
    He barely