of the Maze's staff died during this exodus, beaten to death with anything that came to hand. Kendrick followed the inmates' example, unable and unwilling to resist the desire for vengeance.
One or two Labrats fell, shot by the few remaining guards. But the rest of the prisoners, caught up in a whirlwind of mindless rage, surged forward regardless, the soldiers dying under a torrent of blows.
A sound like muted, distant thunder came from somewhere yet higher up. They swarmed through the Wards in their hundreds, lifting men and women out of their beds where they found them alive, and leaving the corpses behind. They moved on more slowly now; they were becoming tired.
Finally they reached the surface level, staggering numbly up staircases and along corridors as the Maze staff – so very few of them now – fled at their approach, their yells of warning reverberating into the distance.
Kendrick moved on with the rest, always upwards, horrified by what he could now see of his own body in the brilliant electric light illuminating the upper levels. His clothing was reduced to less than rags, his scarred flesh smeared with blood and grime.
Gazing down a final passageway, he spotted natural sunlight streaming through a door at the far end. The ground rocked again beneath their feet and Kendrick knew that – at last – someone had come to rescue them.
26 October 2096 Los Angeles
Kendrick still dreamed of endless corridors.
Sometimes he burned with a strange silvery light. Other times he died, over and over again, the stiff black handle of a razor-sharp knife protruding from his chest, the pain unimaginable. He remembered dying in two different ways. He remembered running to escape from someone with his own face, then slumping against a wall, unable to breathe in the poisoned air.
Kendrick opened his eyes to the broad grey blur of rotors slicing through the air above him. He lifted his head from the co-pilot's seat and gazed out and down to the landscape below.
Struggling upright, he could see smoke rising from campfires several hundred metres below. How long had he been asleep? He dragged his scattered thoughts together, and caught Buddy's eye when the other glanced briefly over.
Los Angeles, he remembered now. Buddy was taking them to Los Angeles.
He'd obviously been unconscious for most of the journey. He felt obscurely grateful for that. Now he was looking down on the reconstructed parts of the city. He was familiar with television footage of the ultra-modern spires, like shards of crystal rising quite literally from the ashes. But now that he was actually here, those occasional oases of light and technology appeared uncomfortably poignant amid so much unreclaimed devastation.
Stroking the back of one hand, Kendrick started tracing the new whorls and shapes underlying the skin, reflecting that since he'd made his way back to the sunlight McCowan had vanished from his senses.
A little while later another glance downwards revealed a huge encampment of tents spread far across a hill. Among them the symbol of the Red Cross was prominent. He suddenly thought of Hardenbrooke, and of what it must have been like to be here when the city was destroyed.
Soon they passed over a recognizably military encampment with trucks and jeeps standing in ordered rows, all painted in their camouflage colours.
As if reading his thoughts, Buddy smiled reassuringly. 'Mexican Army. Remember, California is barely part of the US any more. Not that it'd be much of a prize anyway, since the economy and everything went tits-up after the nuke. Washington's got its hands full enough with breakaway republics, without worrying too much about who's left in charge of a bunch of ruins.'
The helicopter ripped on through the sterile LA skies. Here and there, areas that had miraculously survived the devastation could be seen. But Kendrick was shocked at how much of the city was still in ruins after so many years.
Deserted five-lane freeways stretched in parallel lines towards the ocean and, as they dropped lower, Kendrick noticed scores of abandoned swimming pools scattered across the side of a hill, next to the ruins of expensive mansions. He vividly recalled detailed news footage of the Beverly Hills burning.
The pools themselves looked like half-revealed bones bleached white in the merciless heat of the sun. Elsewhere, what had once been boulevards full of expensive boutiques and fashionable galleries had been reduced to abandoned shanty-towns. Everywhere around them the palm trees grew wild.
As Buddy guided his aircraft towards the ground people gazed up at them from a wide expanse of unkempt grass that rose and dipped with artificial uniformity. Nearby stood a group of buildings, some half-demolished, some apparently built of random detritus, roofed over with sheets of corrugated metal. Some of the open land nearby had been tilled, and new crops grew on it in rows. It took a moment for Kendrick to realize that he was looking down on an erstwhile golf course. All around it the rusted skeletons of cars were scattered across the cracked tarmac.
Kendrick stepped out of the helicopter, the whine of its rotor blades dropping rapidly, and blinked in the bright Californian sunshine. The people he'd noticed earlier were moving towards them, dragging a huge green tarpaulin behind them. Buddy dropped down from the cockpit and ran towards them to grab one edge of it. Kendrick stood by as they hauled the tarpaulin over the 'copter.
Buddy then stepped over and clapped him on the back, but it wasn't hard for Kendrick to sense just how uneasy his friend was.
'What's the tarpaulin for?'
'Smothers the heat signature.' Buddy turned to greet Veliz who was standing chatting with the others.
'Hey, Samuel, still got any of that Mexican beer?'
Kendrick's skin itched in the early-evening heat. He felt drowsy from the food and drink that he'd been given. They sat out in the open air by a crackling log fire built in a circle of bricks. Nearby stood half a dozen patched- together vehicles which, contrary to their appearances, apparently did function. Kendrick gazed numbly into the flames, the stars overhead, trying hard not to think of anything in particular.
A woman came over, although he couldn't help but notice that she didn't get too close. Her face cracked open in an uneasy grin – there was something likeable about her.
'Still hungry?' she asked. 'Could getcha 'nother bite to eat.'
'I'm fine for now.' Kendrick shrugged. 'It's sort of hard to believe that everyone here is a Labrat. Haven't seen this many of us together in one place since…' He let the sentence trail off.
She nodded. 'Same for all of us, yeah.'
He studied her more closely, wincing when he saw how close she looked to dying. She was in the advanced and final stages of rogue augmentation growth, her neck dark with the spread of nanite threads inside her, thick cords of the material distorting her cheeks and lips.
Kendrick felt a powerful stab of pity. He looked away.
Shortly after the woman had left him, Kendrick made his way to the building where he would be spending the night. Right now he wanted to be somewhere inside rather than being watched by scared eyes out in the open.
He found his way to a communal bathroom and stared for a long time at his moonlit reflection in the fly- specked mirror hanging from a nail above the washbasin. The room was little more than a cupboard with a
