But the newcomers had never served Queen M. They only served one leader and he must have ordered them to come here, to follow us in from the sea. Their skin was red and crazed, untreated third degree burns. It was astonishing they were even standing. They were barely fighting. It didn't matter, though. The presence of the Infected, like an old fashioned zombie horde, routed the others. Half the people who should have been following us turned to face the new threat. The rest kept on, but there was a hesitation to their actions now. They knew what was coming up behind them and inside something was screaming at them to turn and face it.
I only took a second to watch the new reality unfold. Then I kept on running, using the time the Infected had bought us. The others must have had the same idea because suddenly we were at the road and astoundingly it was all five of us. Haru's mouth was a bloody mess, and there were droplets all over Ingo's face that might have been blood or might have been sweat. Nothing in his expression told me which.
We were almost clear but in much more danger now. Up here we were a tight little target and Queen M's people were all behind us. There was nothing to stop them using their guns. Two seconds later and they realised it too. Concrete sprayed out from the sea-wall of the hotel as I dived for shelter behind it but it was only five feet high and there was no way I could stay there. I lifted my head above the wall and emptied my clip at my pursuers. They dived for cover too but for them there was nothing but sand. Soren's semi-automatic blazed beside my Magnum. A few moments of that and the sand was more red than gold.
I knew I had to get up and run. We'd bought ourselves only a tiny window of time. But my back itched with cold at the thought of turning it on all those weapons. Soren got up and turned to go. I don't know how he sensed that I wasn't moving. Maybe all those years away from people had made him hyper-sensitive to them.
He spun round, grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet, then flung me in front of him. Kelis was already running, Haru and Ingo trailing her by only a few paces. Ingo was somehow managing to run backwards as fast as the others ran forward. There were two guns in his hands and he wasn't even breathing hard.
I sprinted. I couldn't believe that I still had the energy when my legs felt like they were made of over-cooked pasta. My stomach was churning and loose, wanting to spill out everything inside it. There was a grunt from behind me, hard and bitten off, but I didn't turn round to look. The bullets were streaming all around us. Every millisecond could be my last, and call me selfish, but all I wanted to think about was me.
I almost laughed when we came through the narrow road between the low-rise hotels and into the main road behind. Queen M was smart but boy was she cocky. I guess it never occurred to her that we might break through the line of men she'd left on the beach. Her people had left their rides right where we could get them, with the keys still in the ignition. We took the nearest vehicle, a big red jeep with silver spoilers and paint that hadn't seen water or polish since the Cull. The back was stacked high with barrels of petrol. More guns and more ammo too. There was no food, but that we'd be able to find on the journey.
Kelis took the wheel, I jumped in shotgun while Haru and Ingo piled into the rear, both facing back and firing. She'd turned the key and started the engine before I even realised that Soren hadn't climbed in with us.
The second bullet took him in the shoulder as we watched, but that wasn't the one that was going to kill him. That one had gone in through his stomach, exiting raggedly through his back. There was no return from a wound like that.
'Mierda!' Kelis said. 'Soren – get in here!'
He gritted his teeth at her, more a grimace than a smile, but we all knew what he meant. 'Go!' he shouted. 'I'll hold them off and disable the other vehicles.' He'd already dived behind one. Collapsed really, onto his knees. But he didn't let go of his gun and I knew that he wouldn't until we were clear.
'No way,' Kelis said. 'No fucking way are we leaving you behind!' Her hand released the key and reached for the door.
I grabbed her wrist, hard, wrenching her round to face me. 'He's dead already, Kelis,' I told her. 'His body just doesn't know it yet.'
She wanted to argue with me, but knew I was telling the truth. She looked back at Soren, face twisted in grief. Maybe she hadn't felt about him the way he'd wanted but she'd sure as hell felt something. Her eyes locked with his for a moment. His mouth opened but the only thing that came out was a gush of blood. He wasn't even going to get any parting words.
Kelis twisted the key and slammed her foot down hard. A bullet hit the back of the jeep, then another, but they were too far away to get a bead on us. Then we were gone.
None of us got to see Soren die. But we saw the explosion, the bloom of fire that would've taken out at least ten of Queen M's men along with any vehicles that the rest of them could have followed us in. A grenade, I guessed. He must have been holding it back, waiting for just the right moment. I wished I could find a tear for him, but I'd only known him a few weeks and the truth was he wasn't a very likeable guy. I saved my pity for Kelis. The numb expression on her face and the emptiness in her eyes were all I could see as we headed out of Miami and away.
It should have taken us two days to reach Las Vegas, but nothing ever goes according to plan. All those weeks I'd been wondering what the world looked like after the Cull and now I could see it for myself I was suddenly grateful for all those years I'd spent hidden away from it.
Florida was a breeze, a straight drive along land that was nothing more than a reclaimed sand pit. We saw people, ragged bunches of them guarding their orange groves and their fields. They didn't bother us and we saw no reason to bother them. We just held our guns out, high and obvious over the side of the jeep, and kept on driving.
Orlando was dreamlike in its weirdness, the city a ruin but Disneyworld itself entirely untouched. And there were people there, more than you would have thought. The only word I could seem to find for them was 'pilgrims'. Some of them had trekked by foot all the way down the Eastern Seaboard to get there, because vehicles were hard to come by and petrol harder still. There were whole families of them, starvation-thin parents with their skeletal kids, like the ghosts of the bloated coach potatoes who used to visit before the Cull.
I don't know why they came. When we asked they just looked blank, as if they hadn't thought about it themselves. I guess the place was a powerful symbol of something mundane but important. Of normality itself, I suppose. They sat on the silent rides, frozen in place among half-wrecked animatronic pirates, or waiting in vain for 'It's a Small World' to start playing as the little puppet children danced but they didn't go anywhere.
We hadn't wanted to stop there, but we needed electricity, a strong current, and this seemed like the best place to find it. We walked past the shambling tourists and into the workings of the rides, the machinery that made it all run. As I walked past the animatronic cowboys, bears and twirling teapots I felt obscurely guilty, like a kid who'd sneaked downstairs on Christmas Eve to confirm that yeah, Santa was just mum and dad. It all looked so shabby and second-rate.
It took Ingo five hours, before he finally got one of the generators working, jump-starting it with cables running from the car. Kelis didn't even flinch as he put the spitting cable against her leg. The force knocked her into the frayed, fungal wreck of what had once been a Mickey Mouse costume. She sneezed out spores when she finally came round, but didn't let out a murmur of pain or complaint. There'd be no more tracking by Queen M. All we had to worry about was every other damn thing on this continent.
The Gulf coast never had much in the way of a population and it had even less now. We drove past deserted wind-swept beaches and wooden houses half-blown away by hurricanes that no one could any longer predict. There was oil still out there, under the choppy waves, but no one had the means to find it. Queen M maybe, before she'd met me.
Biloxi had a population. We had a real good scrap there. It was entirely one-sided, small side arms against semi-automatics and Kelis' cool, trained aim. It could only have been desperation that sent them out against us but I didn't have time for pity. Kelis' face was blank and cold as she shot them all dead and I wondered if she was thinking about Soren as she did it. Probably not. She'd been a killer long before he died.
Then we drove onwards, and even a road trip through hell can take on a kind of monotony. The lowlands of Mississippi scrolled past us like the scenery for a video game that had run out of budget. We seemed to have talked ourselves out on the boat because we couldn't find anything to say in all those hours. I drove for a while, then Ingo. The rest leaned over the side, guns drawn, trying to stay tense and ready for action when really we were just bored. You can only live in fear of your life for so long before you lose the energy to keep caring.
We'd talked about skirting around New Orleans, avoiding the trouble that was bound to be living there, but we needed fuel and food, and we were reckless with tiredness by then.
The outskirts of the city were like a third-world slum. It was hard to say if that was the work of the Cull or
