48

open window. The scattered Blackshirts were already moving in, some of them thumping on the Ford's triangular hood with their guns and fists.

'Get bloody well in!' came the woman's voice again and I guess it was her cursing that shocked me out of my stupor.

I yanked open the rear door and the Ford immediately took off, giving me a split second to hop onto the white-painted running board. I looped an arm through the lowered front window, gun still held tight in that hand, the other quickly tucking the clip into my pants pocket before grasping the top of the open door, and hung on for dear life as the Ford's rush dispersed the Blackshirts again. A hand reached out from inside the car, grabbing my belt and trying to pull me in. That became more difficult as the Ford gathered momentum and the open door pressed against me, trapping me on the running board.

One of the goons had decided to stand his ground and I groaned when I saw him raising his Sten gun as we sped towards him. It was a stupid move on his part, taking his time to get a bead on me when he should have shot from the hip, because the car was on him before the gun was even chest-high.

Self-preservation gave me the strength to push the door wide again and it caught the Blackshirt straight on, lifting the Sten and sending him spinning round, bullets spraying the air and busting the top windows of a nearby bus. The door's recoil crushed my chest, the sudden pain causing me to drop my right arm and lose hold of the Colt. It fell somewhere inside the car.

'Will you get in here!' came the woman's voice again, frustration more than anger giving it its pitch.

Instead I almost lost my grip and tumbled into the road as she steered onto a kerb to avoid a truck blocking the way. I forgot my own manners, aiming a cuss at her that would've turned her cheeks red under any other circumstances. I hauled myself up and threw myself onto the back seat, the door slamming shut behind me of its own accord. Wheezing from the pain in my bruised chest, I sprawled across the lap of the other person sharing the back seat with me, the owner of the hand that had grabbed my belt moments earlier.

I noticed her sweet scent first, and then her gentleness as she tried to hold me steady. Breathing hard and shaking some, I looked up into her shadowed face. Her smile was as sweet as her perfume, and kind of, well, demure too. Leastways, that's how it struck me. A line of sunlight through the window on her side shot sparkles of gold through her light brown hair.

The car bumped again as it left the kerb and I was jolted against her small breasts. Just as quickly I was pitched back into the other corner. The girl held on to the front seat, looking ahead over the driver's shoulder, her face anxious.

As I steadied myself I took note of my fellow travellers. Oddly, the man in front of me wore a brown trilby and a tweed jacket despite the heat of the day. His attention was on the road ahead too, so there was no chance to catch his features. I noticed, though, that his straggly hair (with no barber shops around any more we all had bad haircuts, although I kept mine reasonably short with sharp scissors and guesswork) did not quite manage to cover the burn scars that fingered their way up the back of his neck from beneath his shirt collar.

My angle was better to take in the woman - the girl -driver, and as I studied her she threw a quick glance my way.

'Who are you?' she said, her voice raised, but no longer shouting. Her accent was pure London, but not from the smarter end.

Before I could answer, something - debris of some kind, I guess - struck the windshield, cracking the glass. The girl wrenched the steering wheel round, hissing something tight and nasty as she did so, and the Ford executed a squealing curve into the broad, littered and ruined street that was the Strand. Past taped shop windows we sped, avoiding small craters or foetal bundles that were carcasses in the roadway.

Bullets thunked into metal behind us and I felt the girl beside me flinch. I took a peek out the rear window and saw the Bedford truck was back in the game; the Blackshirts in the rear section had lifted the front flap of the canvas roof so that they could lean on the cab's top and take potshots at us. Luckily, the metal-encased spare tyre fixed to the Ford's trunk was taking most of the strikes.

'And just who the hell are those people?'

The driver wasn't looking my way - she was too busy avoiding a Griff Fender removal van and a Shank's open-back truck that had collided with one another years before and had remained locked together ever since, blocking most of the road's centre - but there was no doubting who she wanted answers from. Before I could say anything a bullet shattered the rear window, whistling between the heads of me and the girl I shared the back seat with and finishing the job on the windshield in front. I pulled her down into my lap and crouched over her. The driver let loose some more curses as fresh air rushed through the car.

'We'd have pinched an open-top if we'd wanted the wind in our hair,' I heard her shout over the noise.

'Keep going!' I advised, my own voice a little louder than hers.

She said something that I didn't catch.

' Isaid, any idea where we should go?' she yelled when I leaned close and pressed her.

'Keep heading east. We'll lose 'em if you can pick up speed.'

'Hey, you a Yank?' She risked a glance over her shoulder, and I got a better look at her face.

Her eyes were a hazel-brown and she was pretty enough, although the thinnest of scars cut diagonally across her cheeks, rising over the bump of her nose. Her lips were unrouged, but still nicely shaped, and her jawline was firm, indicating some stubbornness in her nature. Her dark hair, curling over her forehead, was tucked neatly into a snood at the back of her head. Why I was noticing these things about the two women at this point of time, I had no idea; maybe I'd spent too long on my own and their effect on me was overriding more urgent considerations. I don't know; but that's how it was though.

'Watch the road,' I told her and she turned away, only just managing to pull round a two-toned Austin.

When she'd straightened up again, I said, 'D'you have any weapons?'

At that time I had no idea of what had happened to my Colt.

Now the man with the trilby, its brim slouched low and shading his eyes, craned his neck to look at me.

He shook his head, saying nothing, and his appraisal was cool.

'Why would we need weapons?' the girl driver called out 'The war ended three years ago.'

I didn't answer her. We were passing the narrow street that served as forecourt to the Savoy and I was tempted to tell her to pull into it. We could have left the car and run through the hotel to its riverside entrance, easily picking up another vehicle parked on that side (I kept several there, keys in the ignitions).

It might have been too risky though: our pursuers were close and probably would've caught up with us on foot. Besides, the Savoy was one of my 'home bases' - I had my own grand apartment right up there on the third floor overlooking the Thames - so I was reluctant to bring the enemy so close to a sanctuary.

Better to lose the Blackshirts before going to ground.

We passed blitzed buildings, some of them destroyed by the Luftwaffe's bombs, others ruined later by gas explosions and electrical wires burning, still more by fallen cigarettes, lighted candles, or any manner of domestic accidents caused by victims of the Blood Death dropping dead in their tracks. The damage to the city was not yet over: gas mains still blew, waterpipes continued to burst, and bomb-hit buildings still toppled long after they'd been struck. London was a dangerous place, even without this army of lunatics roaming the streets.

Strangely, no epidemics had spread after that black day of Vergeltungswaffen - vengeance - despite all the rotting corpses left lying around, but maybe that had something to do with the nature of the Blood Death itself and its effect on human and animal body systems. An attempt to clear up the place had been made by those who had the Slow Death (and didn't realize it) until eventually even they were gone.

Leaving just the crazies behind.

Oh, and there was one other danger, but that hadn't happened for a little while, so maybe it was over.

We entered the Aldwych, the gutted shell that had been St Clement Danes just visible beyond the logjam of traffic ahead.

'Swing left!' I ordered, checking on our pursuers as I did so. The Humber station wagon was catching up with