The End

Charlie Higson's The End is survival horror for 11 year olds, set in a London where every adult has turned.

What happens

Paddy is small and he carries the spears. Achilleus is the museum's best fighter, and Paddy cleans his weapons, sharpens them and suggests which one to use in a fight. He thinks Akkie is the coolest person alive. The scarred face, the patterns razored into his hair, the mangled ear, all of it.

Today they're out with Ryan's hunters. The hunters keep huge dogs on short chains and wear leather masks made from the faces of dead grown-ups. Ryan has a string of human ears hanging off his belt. Paddy feels safer with them than without them, which tells you where things have got to.

They're walking to Hyde Park to check a sighting. On the way they find a grown-up standing in the middle of the road, arms straight out, face turned up, like he's waiting for rain. Achilleus asks Paddy if he fancies taking it.

Be careful with this one. What comes next is a killing written out in full, and it happens in the first few pages. There's a pop like a balloon going, then a spray, then the guts on the road and the smell of them. Paddy is sick in front of everyone and says it was the smell. It wasn't. He has never killed anyone before. There's swearing throughout as well.

That's the register for the rest of it. If your reader isn't already at home in zombie territory this will be far too much, and there's no gentler stretch to fall back on. If they've read the earlier books and want the ending, it gives them exactly what they came for.

Which is the other thing to know. This one lands a long way into a much bigger story. Ed, Ella, Sam, the museum, the camp in St James's Park, it all turns up assuming you're already caught up. Paddy's two Jack Russells were killed and eaten by the leader of his old camp, and that gets a sentence in passing, like you'd mention the weather.

What's very good is the deadpan. Achilleus looks at a corpse and wonders if there's a meal deal on at McDonald's. The hunters laugh. Paddy laughs too, but not inside, because he can't look soft in front of them.

What to read next

If your reader wants the whole thing from the start, The Enemy opens on a small boy snatched out of a supermarket car park in broad daylight.