still have the energy to kill each other.
The plane sank lower still, low enough that I could make out the insect forms of people on the city's streets. Never alone, always in crowds of ten, or twenty, or greater. Safety in numbers.
Soon, the plane was low enough that I could see individual faces. I could also see the Eiffel Tower, prodding the sky above the heart of the city. I began to wonder where, exactly, they were planning on landing.
A few minutes later and we were a hundred meters or so above the roofs of the buildings and a few hundred meters away from the start of the Champs Elysees. 'You have got to be fucking kidding me!' I said.
Kelis grinned, making her look like a little kid for about a tenth of a second. 'What's the matter?'
The list that sprung into my head was too long to recite in the few seconds before we ploughed towards the ground at several hundred miles an hour. I settled for, 'What about the cars?' I'd seen news broadcasts in the bunker, the streets of every major city choked with vehicles abandoned when their owners sickened and died.
'Cleared them the last time we were here,' Soren said.
And when was that? I wanted to shout. How do you know people haven't been piling the road high with broken-down cars and trucks since you left?
No time left for that. The plane had started its final, fatal plummet to the ground. Now I could feel the breakfast I'd eaten four hours ago rising up to choke me and I think I might have screamed for real, because roads are narrow and aeroplanes are wide and no one in their right mind tries to set one down on top of the other in the middle of one of Europe's biggest cities.
The golden blur of buildings rushed by on either side. I looked across at Soren but he was just frowning faintly, like a man wondering whether there was a chance he'd forgotten to buy milk that morning. Kelis was still smiling, the expression more feral than happy.
And then we were only twenty feet above the road. There were cars there, three of them right ahead of us, but there was absolutely no way we'd be pulling up now. The wind screamed past the wings and I screamed too, but it didn't matter because the back wheels had finally hit the ground with a noise louder than I could have believed possible. As they scraped along with the front wheels still stubbornly in the air, the plane jerked underneath us like a wild horse which had just been saddled for the first time. Suddenly I wasn't the only one screaming.
I was buckled in, but the strap nearly broke around me as we swerved violently to the right. There was a hideous crunch beneath us, as if we'd just run over the world's largest cockroach and I knew that we'd passed the first of the cars. But there were still two more to go. For just a moment I wished that I hadn't taken the drugs which had killed the Voice inside me. That I could have heard it still, telling me that everything was going to be OK, that I was invincible. But maybe even the Voice would have had a few doubts right then.
Another swerve, to the left this time. Another horrible crunch. A firework display spat gold past the windows. After a second of confusion I realised that it was the spark of the undercarriage dragging over metal. There were screams outside the plane too now. Our landing must have come out of the blue sky without warning for those on the ground. I wondered if anyone had been caught beneath it. If some of the crunch we'd heard had been bone, not metal. But I didn't wonder too hard. Other people's deaths don't count for much when you're facing your own.
Then, almost incredibly, we were slowing down. The awful rasping sound of metal on tarmac was still shuddering the inside of the plane. I guessed that we were pulling one of the crushed cars along with us, the drag of the undercarriage fighting against our vast momentum. We were going no faster than a car on a motorway now, the buildings rushing past us on either side finally individual and recognisable. And then we stopped altogether.
There was a second of one of the most profound silences I'd ever heard. Then one of the men beside me whooped and soon the rest of the crew joined in, and I did too because, Jesus, it felt good to be alive.
When we got out, we saw that we'd stopped just ten feet shy of the Arc de Triomphe. I wasn't the only one who let out a jagged, slightly hysterical burst of laughter at the sight of the plane's nose, sniffing at the base of the world-famous landmark. The plane itself had seen better days: one of the wheels had torn off, and an engine was hanging loosely from the wing.
Soren scratched at his short cropped hair. 'Guess we're going to have to do some work on that.' I couldn't see it being a quick job. But then I had no idea how long we were supposed to be here.
'Philips, Mitchell,' Curtis said. Two of the crew crouched to begin work, others standing close by to guard. 'The rest of you – it's time to rock and roll.'
Every single person in the party save me was suddenly holding some very serious ordinance in a very serious way, and the few ragged people I'd seen melting out of the side streets around us were melting right back into them. There was a 'don't fuck with us' vibe going on that made me feel safe and uneasy at the same time.
Paris was eerily quiet. This was the first time I'd been in a major city since the Cull. I'd known, intellectually of course, what it would be like. Less than two per cent of the population left alive by now – the place was bound to be a ghost town. But nothing prepares you for the sight of somewhere you've seen full of people, noise and motion suddenly so still. Worse because the buildings – the bones of the place – were mostly intact, with no visible reason for what had gone so wrong.
Still, but not deserted. There were subliminal flickers of motion out the corner of my eye as we walked the narrow side streets in strict military formation: point man, scouts, rear guard. They'd placed me in the centre of their small arrow of personnel. For protection or to stop me escaping? I couldn't tell, it didn't make much difference. There was no way I'd be heading off into these mausoleum streets alone.
We were being watched – everyone knew it – and not by friendly eyes.
Still, the attack was unexpected when it came. Queen M's people were watching forward, sideways, behind. They were watching above, scanning the roofs of the buildings for snipers or spies.
They weren't looking below.
Being right in the middle is no protection at all when the attackers are coming at you out of the sewers. There was a quick, loud grate of metal as a cover was shoved aside. And then the whine of bullets and the crack of their impact as someone stuck his arm out and fired round a full 360 degrees. I felt a stinging graze on my right thigh and knew that one of the bullets had winged me.
Not everyone got off so lightly. Kelis let out a grunt and I could see that a bullet had struck a rib, probably snapping it. Another of the men went down and didn't get up. More bullets thudded into his corpse, the blood now oozing slowly out without a functional heart to pump it.
A second later, Soren had stepped in front of Kelis, pushing her to the ground behind the tree-trunk solidity of his body. His semi-automatic was firing round after round, and even over the noise of them, I heard the splash of our assailant's body falling into the filthy water below.
But he wasn't alone. Drain covers were popping up all over the street, figures pulling themselves acrobatically out of the sewer. Our formation was shot to hell. Everyone had scattered after that first, shocking burst of gunfire. I felt horribly exposed, unarmed and unprepared. My first instinct was to fall to the ground, but that's where the threat was coming from. Instead I found myself kneeling beside the fallen, bloody body of our lost man. Up close I could see that he was young, maybe still a teenager. His eyes were open, blankly reflecting back the last daylight he'd ever seen.
I didn't know exactly what I was doing there. My body seemed to be moving without my mind having to give it any instructions, as if it had realised that this was more than the conscious me could deal with. I wondered for a second if I'd meant to try to help him, but then my hands were reaching for the gun he'd never had a chance to fire, slicking the barrel back and forward to load a bullet into the chamber. Before I'd quite registered what I was doing I'd fired a round point-blank into the head just emerging from the dark hole of the sewer in-front of me.
The force of the shot twisted the man round, giving me a perfect view of the exit wound ripped out of the back of his skull, the bloodied shards of bone and the white meat inside.
I heard the ragged breath of someone behind me and twisted, firing at the same time. The shot was wild but good enough to take the man in the chest. He fell, gasping, with hands clutched against his body, trying to keep in everything that belonged inside. It was a battle he couldn't win, and after a few seconds his hands slackened and fell. I'd taken two lives.
After that I made it to the side of the road, crouching in the lee of a small brick wall. I could taste the adrenaline in my mouth, a bitter tang. It had flooded my system the moment the fight had begun but already it was washing back out again, leaving fear and weakness in its wake. I saw my hand holding the gun begin to droop and then shake. I brought my other hand up to steady it but that one was shaking so hard now too that I was afraid I
