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‘He’s away being a warrior with Balor somewhere.’ And she began to get up.

‘Morag, wait.’ She stopped and turned to look at me. ‘You get a cutlass with that?’ I said, nodding at the pistol. ‘Maybe an eyepatch? She cracked a smile but didn’t sit back down. ‘How long have you been sat here?’

She shrugged. ‘A little while.’ She sounded half pissed off and half coy.

‘Prefer it when I was unconscious?’ I asked.

‘You’re nicer,’ she said, smiling again.

‘You okay?’ I asked. She nodded.

‘I was worried about you,’ she managed to say and then looked embarrassed.

‘I was worried about me too.’

‘I didn’t like seeing what happened to you.’ For all the violence I knew she would’ve seen just by growing up in Fintry and the Rigs, somehow she’d not managed to become inured to it. Then I realised what she was really trying to say. I’d been really stupid.

‘You didn’t like watching me do what I did?’ I said. She considered what to say next but it was written all over her face.

‘Morag…’ I began.

‘I’m being selfish.’ She stood up.

‘Wait,’ I said, and she stopped. ‘Morag, look at me.’ She wouldn’t. ‘Please.’ I couldn’t make out her expression. ‘I would never hurt you. Do you understand me?’ Finally she nodded. ‘Please sit down, stay with me.’ I tried to keep the pleading tone out of my voice but she sat down again. Not surprisingly there was an uncomfortable silence, then she looked up at me.

‘I wouldn’t let you,’ she said, her voice full of that steel-like resolve. It was a declaration. She was never going to be a victim again. Initially I was taken aback. I didn’t want her to think of me in the same light as all the other arseholes she’d met in her short life, but then again maybe I was. Finally I nodded and smiled.

‘So, you like Balor then?’ I asked as casually as I could manage a little while later. Morag let out a little laugh.

‘I was winding you up,’ she said. Good job, I thought.

‘What’s with you and Rannu?’ I asked.

‘I think he thinks I’m some kind of prophet,’ she said, seeming partly embarrassed and partly amused by this.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’ll piss Pagan off.’ She shrugged. I could feel myself fading again but more naturally this time. I was just tired.

17

Crawling Town

Crawling Town was not going to be difficult to find. Balor had given us access to a satellite he bought time on to track the huge convoy. Besides, we couldn’t miss the irradiated and polluted dust cloud kicked up by that number of vehicles.

We said goodbye to our psychotic benefactor on the banks of what was left of the state of New Jersey, near where the city of Newark had once been. Balor had provided us with vehicles, hazardous environment gear and some other bits and pieces that would come in useful. The vehicles, like most of our gear, were treated with a serious anti-corrosion finish or they wouldn’t last a day in the Dead Roads. I think he was helping us because we had the potential to piss people off and maybe even cause some chaos. In fact he’d been pretty good to us except for the bit where I’d had to spend five days in hospital.

I watched, straddling the low rider that Balor had provided for me, as Rannu drove the armoured muscle car off the flat-bottomed boat. Mudge was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, bottle of vodka in one hand, some inhaled burning narcotic in the other. I wasn’t best pleased at Rannu’s presence, but I knew first hand that he was capable, and sooner or later we were going to need all the guns we could get.

Balor and Pagan came to stand next to me. Neither of them said anything. Balor just favoured me with one of his disturbingly toothy smiles. I think he thought he’d taught me some valuable life lesson. He had: if I were ever to tangle with Rannu again I’d shoot him in the back, a lot, preferably while he was sleeping. I noticed Balor was watching Morag now as she walked off the flat-bottomed boat towards us.

‘Balor,’ I said, deciding I had to know something. He turned his monstrous head towards me. ‘There’s a story about you. I’ve got to know whether it’s true or not.’

‘Which one?’ he growled.

‘Did you ever see the Grey Lady? I mean-’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said. Pagan was watching us both, a look of slight concern on his face. Morag was just about with us now, her clothes and the armour she’d managed to scavenge covered by the poncho pan of her hostile environment gear. Balor seemed to be considering my question. We were all dressed in anti-radiation/pollution chic, we had on either ponchos or, as in my case, dusters to keep the worst of it out.

‘She scares me,’ he finally said. Not really what I wanted to hear, probably served me right for trying to be clever. ‘Besides, I only have eyes for Magantu.’ He was looking at Morag. Then he turned and walked back towards the water.

‘Who’s Magantu?’ Morag asked, only hearing the tail end of the conversation.

‘It’s the name of a great white shark from a Polynesian legend,’ Pagan said. We watched as Balor waded into the water. It was a clear but colourless grey day. Opposite us, across the water, we could see the broken spires and grey canyons of New York. Balor disappeared beneath the water. I fixed the filter over my face and then clipped the goggles to it. Rannu gunned the four-wheel-drive muscle car up the small dirt slope that led away from the water. Balor’s people began reversing the flat-bottomed boat away from the shore.

I plugged a connecting wire into one of the sockets in my neck and pushed the other end into the bike’s vehicle interface. Both the car and the bike were typically American, all style and muscle, no handling.

‘Come on,’ Pagan said to Morag. ‘We can work in the car.’ Morag didn’t say anything to him. Instead she fastened her mask and goggles and climbed on the low rider behind me. Pagan was obviously pissed off but didn’t say a word. He headed towards the car and Mudge got out to let him in the back seat. I felt good. Morag clipped her PDW to the bike on the opposite side to the Benelli assault shotgun I’d bought in one of New York’s many arms bazaars. Then she wrapped her arms around me.

‘I’m driving in the afternoon,’ she told me as I gunned the engine and we took off into Jersey, the others following in the muscle car. I heard a cheer from Mudge.

This was a scarred land. It had been hit pretty hard during the FHC as the corporations and the equatorial states had gone after what was left of America’s heavy industry. They’d used nukes as well as biological and chemical weapons. Those, along with the pollution from the deregulation of industry that had taken place before and after the FHC – a desperate attempt by America to hold on to its failing economic power – had left a wasteland nobody wanted. So the people nobody wanted had moved in.

Most of the land was covered in a white ash-like dust. The colours in the sky were vivid and unnatural, and everywhere we passed, from distant tower blocks and empty suburbs, to abandoned refineries and power stations, was eerie and deserted. It was like being alone in the world. I found myself liking it. I liked Morag’s skillsoft driving of the low rider less. Though not as much as Rannu and Pagan disliked Mudge’s driving, and when he and Morag decided to race each other I had to agree with them.

We headed west, further into America. Progress was slow, most of the routes were still partially blocked by debris. All the vehicles that had been abandoned on the Dead Roads had been pushed to the side, presumably by the passage of Crawling Town. There were, however, still craters, rubble too heavy to be moved, downed bridges and the general poor repair of the road to deal with. The satellite info told us that the slow-moving convoy was heading towards the ruins of a city called Trenton, near the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border. This was a border held and violently defended by the US proper.