Farkas gathered Wightman, the turret gunner and Donald back towards the armoured car.
“Let’s get moving. There’s no telling what will happen next—it won’t be pretty, that I can tell you.”
The gunner got the engine started. Wightman reversed to turn. When they pulled forward, Donald was revolted to see their wheels had crushed two surplus cadavers into the gravel. Some of the ultramarines were laughing about it. A couple of hogs dashed from the bushes and fought over the bodies, tearing and squealing in a tug-of-war. The ultramarines cheered and laughed, and laughed more when the chef ran out, shot the bigger hog with a pistol and dragged it back to be cooked. Table-sized shadows flitted across the scene as a couple of lammergeiers glided low and circled looking for a perch.
“Jesus Christ,” Donald said. “Those ultramarines are absolute barbarians—but they know how to shoot.”
“Shut your hatches,” Farkas said.
When they descended the ramp back down to the Old Kent Drain, they found it now scattered with groups of surplus generally drifting east, although without much conviction. Farkas offered Donald use of the commander’s periscope, which projected through the roof behind Wightman’s seat. Donald turned it to the left—the south side of the Old Kent Drain—as directed by Farkas. The armoured car drove past a muddy path jostling with people flowing out from the Lands of Dasti-Jones and spreading onto the public drain. It was easy to see why it was called “surplus flow”. It really did flow like a viscous liquid.
“That’s a discharge of surplus,” Farkas said. “It’s a bit early in the season for big discharges. They’re probably just trimming their system, maybe pumping out five hundred to balance a local area.”
“This is routine?”
“Oh yes. All the sovereigns do it.”
“But why?”
“To balance the land.”
This did not illuminate Donald, but he was too sickened by the butchery on Blue Bell Plaza to pursue the point.
*
They crossed the Great Ring Drain of London around three o’clock in the afternoon. Donald asked them to stop so that he could open his top hatch and get a better view. The Great Ring Drain encircled the whole of the London basin at a radius of between fifteen and twenty miles from the Central Enclave. The Great Ring Drain had been a major highway of the Public Era marked on old road atlases as the M25. Nowadays it was taken as the demarcation separating the world of the gangster petty domains from the Big Seven sovereign lands that radiated into England beyond. Hence it featured routinely in the erotic novels of Titty Titterington and Samantha Saucifield.
As they continued, Farkas explained that their way became more hazardous now. Between the Great Ring Drain and the Central Enclave lay the petty domains of the gangsters. The public drains in this stretch were prone to flooding, others got blocked by gangsters, others simply became so churned up as to be impassable. Farkas had been given a route in his briefing, however, it turned out to be quite theoretical for picking a way along tracks constantly splitting and converging in featureless bushland. They came up against a brick wall about a dozen feet high—the boundary of some gangster’s petty domain—and back-tracked to try again only to blunder into marshy land where even their ten wheels were struggling for traction. They tried a woodland route to the north where the land was a little higher and drier, attaining good progress until an ear-stinging clang resounded inside the hull. Farkas ordered a halt. Donald thought they must have suffered some drastic mechanical breakage.
“That was a rifle bullet glancing off the armour—a warning shot,” Farkas said. He stooped to scan with the periscope, whilst shouting up to the gunner in the turret: “Did you see where it came from?”
“No. But I can see a turnpike about a mile in front.”
“How do you know it’s a turnpike?”
“There’s a couple of ultramarine armoured cars on it.”
Farkas studied the scene ahead of them, obviously weighing pros and cons. He glanced at his watch.
“It’s after half past four; it’ll be dark in an hour. We can’t go on messing about.” He sighed, set his jaw, and made up his mind. “Okay boys, we’re doing a tour.”
“Yeehah!” cheered Wightman. He plunged into gear and gave the mighty engine such a welly of power that the vehicle reared up before charging forward, breaking through stands of hazel to cut across strip fields, scattering natives in panic. Donald pressed his eyes to the heavy glass port in his front hatch while a furious storm of thwangs and clangs lashed at the armour. The car burst through a wall of firewood, jolted across a ditch and skidded around a pond amidst a cloud of panicking ducks and hens. The pelting of bullets on the armour never ceased. Farkas was swearing, shifting the focus of the periscope constantly to spot where the shooting was coming from.
“Horsemen in the woods on the right—two o’clock. Can’t you see? Open fire!”
Donald had also picked out horsemen in black armour nearly blended into the shade of trees about two hundred yards away. They were exactly as Titty Titterington described them, like Cromwell’s New Model Army. He flinched. His spine quivered as an outburst of demonic viciousness stunned his senses—the sensation was of someone pounding their palms against his ears. The horsemen disintegrated before his eyes. The head fell off one horse whilst its rider toppled in opposite directions, having been shot in half down the chest. Again the demon roared. Cartridge cases gushed across the deck under the turret cage behind him. The quadruple-gun turret fired at such a high rate that individual shots merged into one deafening clamour
“Good kill! Wightman, keep your foot down!” Farkas yelled.
A particularly violent jolt tossed Donald out of his seat. He crouched on the deck beside Farkas, shocked, his
