A car was heading towards them down the dirt track. Nicky hadn't seen one of those on the road for at least a year. The petrol had all gone off by then, which it turned out was something petrol did. She'd learned all sorts of interesting facts like that since the world ended. She'd definitely do better on her GCSEs if she sat them now.

The car drove through the front gate and parked on the grass by the driveway. It was eerily quiet.

'Electric,' Simon said. 'They must be generating power at Imphal.'

Then the car doors opened and three men and one woman stepped out. Two things were instantly obvious: the men were ex-military, and the woman was in charge. Nicky couldn't have said why she was so sure, it was something in the arrogance of the way the woman carried herself.

She was, improbably, wearing a cocktail dress. It was moss green and would have been a great choice to complement her loosely curled, shoulder-length auburn hair and impeccable make-up, if she hadn't been walking across a field outside a farmhouse in the middle of an apocalypse.

She was also, ridiculously, wearing three-inch heels.

The woman saw Nicky staring at them. 'They're Louboutins,' she said.

 'But what if you want to run away?' Nicky blurted.

Simon gave her a quelling look. The woman raised an elegant eyebrow. 'I wasn't especially intending to. Why, are you anticipating a need?'

'Absolutely not,' Simon said. 

'It's just,' Nicky felt compelled to add, 'there are quite a lot of blood-starved monsters out there. Millions of them. So most people like to be at least vaguely ready to flee for their lives.'

'Our best estimate for the UK's phage population is one point three million,' the woman said to Nicky, then turned to Simon. 'Well, if we've quite finished discussing my footwear, perhaps we could get down to business?'

'Yeah, let's,' Simon said, staring very firmly at Nicky. 'Welcome to Mill Estate. I'm Simon Akinyemi.'

The woman sat at the very centre of the table opposite Ollie and Nicky. She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs, revealing quite a lot of thigh. The skin she'd exposed was olive and smooth, but if she was doing it for Simon's benefit, she was wasting her time. He seemed more interested in checking out her car.

'Meredith Hind,' she said. 'I took over at Imphal Barracks a little while ago. You probably heard.'

Simon nodded. 'We did. And then we didn't hear much of anything.'

'Except for some quite unpleasant rumours, I expect.'

'I judge people on their actions. There's three dozen survivor communities living in peace here, and the urbans around York Minster. Trading. Resource sharing. It's a good set-up and we look out for each other.'

'I'm aware,' Meredith said. 'It's one of the reasons I decided to move in.' She didn't, Nicky noticed, respond to either the implied question or the implied threat. Her face was very cheek-boney and symmetrical and hard to read. If someone had put a gun to Nicky's head and ordered her to describe it in one word, she would probably have gone with 'smug'.

Before Simon could reply, Adnan and Suzy came out with breakfast, a big tureen of porridge. It didn't need two of them to carry it; they were just being nosey.

Meredith looked down her nose at it. 'No, thank you. I had lobster benedict earlier.'

'So why did you ask for a "breakfast meeting"?' Nicky asked.

Now Meredith was looking down her nose at her. 'It was more about the timing than the cuisine.'

'Then you could have just said eight o'clock. Which is anyway a ridiculous time of day for it.'

'I'm sorry,' Meredith said. 'Who are you exactly?'

Weirdly flustered, Nicky found herself looking at Simon to answer. She wasn't entirely sure why, except that if he gave it the stamp of authority, it might make what she and Ollie did seem marginally less silly.

'These are Nicky Lester and Ollie Nguyen. Our resident journalists,' Simon said.

'Journalists?' Meredith's pointedly dubious gaze took in the farmhouse and the fields and the barns and the lack of anything much else. 'Do you write a lot of livestock-centric stories?'

 'They cover phage attacks. Scavenging expeditions. Everyday life in the changed world. Nicky and Ollie produce a newsletter than gets circulated to all the local communities.'

Meredith smiled patronisingly at them. 'Oh yes. The News of the Wolds. I believe I saw your last edition. Wasn't the main feature a chicken beauty pageant?'

'We called it Yorkshire's hottest chicks,' Ollie said proudly, while Nicky sent him a death glare. 'Our readers will be right interested in you. Mind if I take a photo?'

'Not at all. You'll find a three-quarter shot from the left is my best angle.'

Ollie snapped a picture from the other side, which made Nicky want to high-five him. 

 'Alright then,' Simon said. 'I'm assuming this isn't a social call.'

They got down to it, and Nicky concentrated on taking notes. She noticed Meredith noticing that she used shorthand. That'd teach her to scoff. Nicky did actually have a journalism degree, even if she hadn't exactly been putting it to best use post-apocalypse. Or pre-apocalypse, if she was honest. 

'I do wonder if you have quite the resources you need for your own protection,' Meredith said at one point.

Simon stared her down. 'We're happy with our set-up.'

'Yes, I can see what a bucolic idyll you have here.'

She was definitely being sarcastic. At that moment, George and Den were wrestling Kylie, their new heifer, towards the cow shed. It wasn't going well. George looked on the point of tears, possibly because Kylie had deposited a cowpat on his foot.

Nearby, hidden under a hedge – but not hidden enough – Jill and Kester were enjoying an early morning quickie. And round the side of the house, Tom had managed to drop half the laundry he'd been hanging up into the mud and was swearing inventively.

The house itself used to be picturesque, back when it had been an eighteenth-century stone manor. Since then it had been repeatedly extended and renovated to accommodate Simon's growing roster of rescuees.

Meredith was looking disparagingly at the breeze-block west extension which, to be fair, was particularly wonky. Nicky and Ollie had helped build that one.

'These are rather perilous times,' Meredith said, turning her attention back to Simon. 'One can never be too careful. I do have some highly trained and highly armed personnel I'd be willing to loan out. For a price, of course.'

Simon shook his head firmly. 'Thanks, but no thanks.'

Meredith smiled. 'That's what that little fishing community on the Ouse said, and last week they lost two people to phage attacks. Very tragic.'

'What is this?' Nicky asked incredulously. '"Nice community you've got here, shame if some phages happened to it"?'

'That analogy would only work,' Meredith said coolly, 'if I were the source of the phages as well as the protection. I'm not.'

 The meeting ended not long after with very little having been decided. Meredith looked satisfied all the same. Nicky wondered if the point of the trip had been the negotiations, or an opportunity to suss them out. 

'Bloody hell, Nic!' Ollie burst out as soon as Meredith and her men had driven off in their silent car. 'What got into you?'

'Yes, thank you, Nichola,' Simon said. 'That was very helpful.'

Nicky flushed. 'I'm sorry,' she said contritely, but couldn't help adding, 'I mean I'm not that sorry. She was laughing at us the whole time.'

Simon didn't seem to be listening. He was looking out through the still-open gates. 'That is a very dangerous woman.'

Ollie stared at him. 'What, Ms celebrating the end of the world in a party frock and stilettos?'

'Mmhm,' Simon said, gaze still fixed down the road where Meredith and her entourage had disappeared