I expected a flood of eager questions once the doors closed and we were momentarily unwatched, but these children have been broken. They sit silent and scared, clutching their blankets around their shoulders as if they were some kind of armour. One small boy keeps being shoved against me by the movement of the lorry. I try to talk to him, but he ignores me. Eventually I put my arm around his shoulder and cuddle him in close. At least that way, I reason, we won't bang into each other so much. But his response to my attempt at comforting him is to bite my forearm, hard. I yell and snatch it back. Little beast.
"Hello?" I hear a faint shout from deeper in the bowels of the lorry. "Hello, is that the woman who came to rescue us?" It's a girl.
"Yes," I shout back. "My name's Jane. What's yours?"
There's no reply, but a few moments later I hear vague sounds of commotion and I realise someone is fighting their way through the crowd to get to me.
"Hello? Where are you?" she says again.
"Here," I reply, and I steer her towards me in the darkness until I feel small hands grabbing at my coat. I grasp her hands tightly. I fight down my fears and put on an upbeat facade.
"And what might your name be, young lady?" I say cheerily.
"Jenni," she says, and thrusts a gun into my hands. "They didn't think to search us."
For a moment I'm too surprised to speak, and then I remember Tariq giving her the weapon back in the school hall.
"Oh Jenni," I say eventually. "You are my kind of girl!"
"Where are they taking us?" she asks. I can hear her trying to be brave.
"I don't know, sweetheart. I don't know anything." But that's a lie. I know Spider. I know what he's capable of.
I shove the gun into my trousers and pull my jacket down over it. They searched me back at the school; they've no reason to do so again.
"Where are you from, Jenni?" I ask.
There's a long silence, and I wonder if she heard me, then she says: "Ipswich."
"And how old are you?"
"Thirteen."
"So you were eight when…"
"Everyone died."
"And how have you lived since then? I mean, who's been looking after you?"
"Mike," she says, as if this explains everything. "But he's dead now." Her matter of factness stops me cold. I don't ask any more questions. She lets me put my arm around her though, and she nestles into my chest. She soon she falls asleep. I feel the slow rise and fall of her breathing as we rattle and bounce in the darkness. Eventually I rest my head on hers and I slip into a half-sleep. I have no idea how much times passes until the explosion.
In the enclosed space, the bang is deafening. It comes from the front, from the cab, and the lorry lurches violently to the left. We're flung into each other like some mad rugby scrum and there are cries and screams as the lorry tilts past the tipping point and slams down on its side. The doors at the back buckle and a chink of light breaks in. The lorry is still moving forward, crippled now, and we're bounced and jostled. Loud screams from the bottom of the human pile as children are crushed. The lorry jacknifes on its side and the cargo container sweeps in a wide arc then smashes into something solid. We come to a sudden halt and are all flung against the wall, compressed in an awful smashing of limbs. The doors crash open and children spill out of the container, tumbling helplessly onto tarmac.
There's a moment of stillness as our ears ring and we get our balance, re-orientating ourselves. Then the screaming starts again and there are children yelling for air, and for people to get off them, or just crying in pain as the inevitable broken bones grind against each other.
I've ended up at the top of the pile, so I scramble towards the doors as delicately as I can, but it's impossible. The mass of children heaves and shifts beneath me and I'm thrown off balance, unable to escape.
I hear the crack of small arms fire over the din. I can't locate where it's coming from, but it redoubles my determination and I ruthlessly scramble back to the top of the pile and out the doors, literally sliding out across the backs of children. I draw my gun as I do so. To my surprise I manage a relatively graceful landing as kids rain down around me, blinking in the sudden, bright afternoon light.
The gunfire is coming from my left. I spin and see the snatchers who've survived the crash, huddled behind the open cab door, firing up at concrete embankment. We're on an A road, in the suburbs of London, at a guess. Beckenham, perhaps? I glance around the container and see that the first lorry is still upright, parked a few hundred metres down the road. It is coming under heavy attack, many rocks and a few bullets pinging off its bonnet and roof. Before I can react, they pull away, cutting their losses, abandoning us.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The kids are still tumbling out of the lorry, all walking wounded. I briefly search for Jenni, but can't find her in the confusion.
Right, time to take control.
I have no idea who's attacking the convoy. They could be good guys, but they could equally be a rival bunch of snatchers. Until I know, I can't afford to start shooting. I look behind me. There's a side street with a pub on the corner. It's derelict and ruined, but it will have a cellar and that's our best chance of shelter.
"Listen," I shout. "Everyone into the pub. Quickly."
But it's no use. I have no authority here. These kids don't trust me, and why should they? They scatter in all directions, in ones and twos, pure panic. Scurrying for cover or making a break for freedom. I see one duo blindly racing past the snatchers towards the enemy guns. One of them is hit in the crossfire and drops, but the other keeps running and disappears into a tower block.
I feel a hand tugging my coat and I turn to find Jenni pulling me towards the pub.
"Come on," she says urgently. Then she shouts at the kids who are still pouring from the back of the ruined lorry. "Come on! This way!" Thankfully, some of them hear, and once they begin to follow us, the others fall in behind them. Jenni and I begin running towards the pub.
We're about ten metres from the door when a man steps out of the doorway. He's about my height, dressed in tracky pants and a thick, quilted coat topped by a beanie. His face is grimy and hard to make out. In his hands he holds a crowbar. He stands with his legs apart and starts smacking the crowbar into the palm of his left hand like a panto actor in Eastenders pretending to be a hard man. He doesn't slow me down. I level my gun at him as I keep running.
Two more men step out of the shadowy pub interior. They're also dressed in rag-tag looter chic, but while one of them dangles a bicycle chain from his right hand, the other has a gun aimed right back at me. Jenni and I skid to a halt, but the kids behind us are too panicked. They sweep past us and then veer right as they see the menacing figures before us.
Instead of heading into the pub the stampede takes off down the side street, leaderless, lost and running into the territory of god knows what kind of gang. I yell at them to stop, but nobody's listening.
"Leave the kids alone, bitch," shouts the man in the middle over the sound of pattering feet and, I realise, nothing else — the gunfire behind us has stopped.
"She's not one of them," shouts Jenni. "She was a prisoner, like us."
"Then she can drop the gun," replies the man.
I aim it at his head. "And let you take them instead? I don't think so. Stay close Jenni."
I notice that the tide of children is ebbing and that some of them have gathered around us. I glance down briefly and recognise a number of faces from the school. About five of the kids we tried to rescue have rallied to my defence.
"She's telling the truth," pipes up a boy so tiny he can only be about eight. "She tried to help us." I make a mental note to hug the life out of him if we get out of this alive.