Bleak World

Introduction

The first chapter of this book was originally published as a short story in one of Peter Salisbury's science fiction anthologies (Flight 1401). Now the story continues to explore more of that post-apocalyptic world, and to unravel the fate of a young man who has survived death and destruction on a global scale.

Prologue

In a headlong dash from a gang of starving scavengers, Carl tripped on a heavy metal object. A glance revealed a blood-stained microscope, a symbol of everything that had happened since the bioweapon. Billions died from haemorrhagic fever, fighting and starvation, and now he must survive in the ruins of civilisation. He dodged into an alley and through a ruined shop, where he dived inside a delivery truck parked out the back. Sacks of old clothes deadened the sound as he shuffled beneath them. Minutes passed in growing silence. He had escaped with his life, but for how long? Can his luck hold out, not just against the scavengers, but also against predatory steampunks, Dark Chapter and the legendary Riders?

Chapter 1: The Bullet

Reflex alone made Carl's muscles contract and throw him to his left. He had ducked behind a wrecked and burnt out half-track before he realised what had zipped past his right ear. The sound made by a passing high velocity bullet was unmistakable. A second later, the 'crack' of the long-range weapon echoed down the derelict street. He listened intently to the dying echoes.

Cowering beside the rusty, upturned floor plate of the vehicle, Carl scanned over the surrounding paving with an eye trained by need and fear. Slabs were tilted and cracked where roots and grass shoots pushed through. A single crocus waved its golden petals in an eddy current that weaved a spell in the concrete dust between the slabs. The street was wide, with shrubs in concrete planters, soil spilling from their cracked sides. A couple of bushes showed purple buds straining to burst in the gentle warmth of midday. At intervals the rusting remains of vehicles straddled the pavement; one had run right through a shop window before bursting into flames. Soot still clung to the side of the building, although the shop itself appeared to have been more fire-resistant than the car.

Glass splinters were everywhere. Not a single building was undamaged; some were burnt to charred concrete stumps and sagging steelwork; the fancy porticoes and cupolas of others along this whole stretch were chipped and pock marked as a result of small arms fire. The city was far enough north that the sun didn't climb very high even at noon but in an abandoned, run-down sort of way, it seemed too peaceful and deserted a place for someone to be intent on murder.

Apart from Carl's own footprints in the dust, the road was untravelled. Who or what was shooting at him? He felt for the knife under his jacket and shifted the heavy pack on his back into a more comfortable position. Part of its weight came from the protective outer layer of bullet-proof quilting; the rest was simply everything else that he owned. It made being shot in the back at least less likely to be deadly.

Carl estimated the shot had travelled the full length of the street. Eight hundred yards ahead in the hazy distance there was a junction, on the other side of which was what may once have been a hotel. Its sign was hanging at an angle, the neon letters broken, lifeless and unreadable. Carl inspected the half-track carefully. The shot may have been intended to make him dodge towards it. In that case, the vehicle would be booby-trapped or might even contain a scavenger waiting to pounce while his attention was drawn elsewhere. An old, washed out odour of burnt rubber came from the front tyres, which were now each little more than a mass of concentric steel bands and charred rubber. The rust on the tracked section showed thick and mottled red. A melted blast-point where an armour-piercing shell had impacted was covered with the same layer of rust.

The temporary hiding place Carl had chosen was a six month old remnant of the attempt at military control by a frightened government over a rebellious population. The bankers had been the first to rob them, then the supermarkets upped their prices and the government raised the taxes. A general strike hurt the workers most but it was the bioweapon that had been the deciding factor. Once unleashed, however, it had mutated and turned on the oppressors.

Moving his head from side to side, Carl could see right through the rusted carcass. As far as he could tell, there was no attacker lurking within and there were no trip wires, so he wasn't in danger from anything close at hand. The shot had to have come from the hotel at the junction. The youth's focus returned to the street and his immediate surroundings. Just because the half-track wasn't concealing anyone or anything, it didn't mean there wasn't someone else watching from a shop thirty feet away. Ripped curtains hung in a broken apartment window above a sweetshop whose shattered door was adorned with a limp and fluttering Venetian blind. On either side, dark and dusty interiors beckoned through splintered door frames, torn clothing hung in shreds to fragments of windows clinging like broken teeth along the lower edges of shop fronts. A few scattered bones, human bones but small ones, most probably a child's, occupied the shadowy lee of a post box. No skull was visible and the bones were cracked and scored by tooth marks. That was something else to look out for: packs of dogs. Carl was only in this part of the city because his sleep the night before, shut inside an abandoned taxi, had been undisturbed by their howls that made his skin crawl and his hair stand on end.

Transferring his gaze to the paving close by, Carl searched for something that might offer a hint of a way out. A ripped and filthy sneaker, blood-stained on one side, lay half hidden in a collection of leaves, plastic and paper fragments. With an unsteady hand, he reached forward and picked it up, while still within the shadow of the half-track. Using his long bladed knife, he edged it out to where it could be seen, as if he was carelessly planning to move in that direction. A shot whined past and he ran for cover in a shop doorway on the opposite side.

Carl had run as fast and lightly as he could but still his feet made the slabs clink and grind at every footfall. He had managed to dodge the crocus as he streaked towards the nearest shop. Despite finding himself unhurt, he realised that the choice he had made was a poor one. The certain smell of carnage made him gag and, holding his breath, risking being the target of another shot, he rolled and twisted quickly through the shadows to the next doorway. The second shop held only a smell of dust and sleepy decay. Picking up a stone, he tossed it inside, handgun out and ready. There was no response, so he edged into the dark interior.

From the more secure vantage point, Carl confirmed that his camouflage should have been more effective than it had appeared to have been over the last five minutes. It had worked when hunting animals, so how had the shooter seen him? Carl's head and face were covered by a piece of grubby netting, in which were trapped leaves and scraps of litter. The jacket and trousers were camo-patterned to begin with and had been further 'distressed' by rolling in the dirt and by stitching on random pieces of paper and other litter picked from the ground. 'Random', that was a word which had sounded so cool, mere months ago. Now everything was truly random, in a world wrecked and ravaged by disease, fear and death.

The sound of a sickly breeze sighing along the street told Carl that he had concealed himself only just in time. Five Riders in full mail armour swept up on electric cycles and grouped behind the half-track which had been his shelter only moments before. The cycles were the long range, high power jobs that made the eerie wind noise as they moved. The Riders were big, heavy set types. They had to be to carry the weight of the mail, but it was their look of hunger which bothered Carl most.

His camouflage had held good after all and the Riders did not see the lone youth, breathing low, lurking in the shop. The shooter in the hotel must have been aiming at the glittering armour of the Riders. Carl was at once grateful for the shot which had warned him to lie low but at the same time he was terrified of the Riders. Rumours passed between loners, suggesting that starving Riders were not above eating the odd waif or stray. The well-stuffed panniers of this particular gang gave the impression that these were not in immediate need of a meal but you could never tell, until it was too late. Carl kept very still.

He guessed the shot must have been intended as a deterrent to the Riders. The pity of it was that no-one with any sense messed with such men. Travelling in small packs, they were the scavenging elite of what was left of humanity. Their swords and daggers reflected light with the same high polish as their mail armour and their bikes. They relied on reputation rather than camouflage for protection. For himself, the lone youth preferred to be as near invisible as he could manage.

The lead Rider lifted the faceplate of his helmet and with a series of grunts and gestures, conveyed what presumably passed for a plan. This comprised stealthily removing a length of tubing from the frames of three of the bikes, connecting the tubes together, then adding a firing mechanism and a short belt of six explosive rounds. While the men worked, Carl admired the stainless steel frames of the cycles, the crystal steel panels covering the battery packs and the slight heat shimmer rising from the cobalt amalgam motors. Perhaps one day, when all the Riders were gone, he imagined, he might find such a cycle abandoned just waiting to be taken.

One of the Riders crawled through into the interior of the rusting hulk of the half-track and took general aim at the hotel. Even Carl could tell that a third floor window with a tattered, half-drawn blind looked the most likely vantage point for a shooter lacking much imagination. At a further grunt from the leader, one of the other Riders stepped out into the middle of the carriageway. With a penetrating growl, he raised a fist in the air. The instant the end of a long barrel appeared beneath the blind at the third floor window, the Rider in the half-track refined his aim and fired two rounds. Both exploded, tearing the window blind to shreds and showering glass shards onto the paving in front of the hotel. A severed arm, still clinging to a sniper rifle, teetered on the splintered window sill, then clattered down onto the ground below.

After waiting a few seconds, during which nothing more was seen or heard from the hotel, other than black smoke billowing from the third floor room, the Riders relaxed. Their gun was dismantled and the parts returned to the bikes from which they had been removed.

Still barely daring to breathe, Carl watched the Riders saddle up and, with the same curious rushing of air, pull away and continue on their way up the street. Only when all was dead quiet once more did the youth venture out, a small, lonely piece of jetsam in a once grand and prosperous but lately ruined landscape.

Chapter 2: A Bird And A Bike

Less than five minutes later Ray flew in, a brown-winged, speckle-bodied blur, startling the wary Carl with his cry. Carl's surprise rapidly dissipated as he listened for any other sound, but there was nothing. This time Ray had swept in from some hidden vantage point although, as often as not, he dropped like a stone from being a black dot in the sky to make a couple of sharp-eyed circles close overhead. This time he flapped his wings to reach a perch on the highest branch of a tree a hundred feet away.

The peregrine had stayed with Carl since he had rescued it from a country estate where it had featured in falconry displays. The grand country house, centred in landscaped grounds, had been owned by a wealthy family, but no amount of money had been able to save them from the bioweapon. Carl found the kitchen door wide open at the rear of the house and he walked in, not knowing what to expect. What he found was a vast residence, completely empty of life. Anything edible had been ravaged by mice, rats and dogs. At the foot of the great staircase, which bifurcated halfway up to lead to separate landings, he paused simply to wonder at what it must have been like to live in such a house. Before he could lift his foot to the first step, Carl was startled by something brushing against his leg. He looked down and was greeted by a hungry-looking black and white cat. Carl bent to stroke it, but he was startled again when it hissed and ran away along an oak-panelled hall. As he walked from room to room, he saw that the place contained extraordinary wealth, in the form of paintings, tapestries, silverware, statuary and ceramics. None of it meant a great deal, though, when there was no-one left to see it. After giving himself a full tour, he went back outside to explore the outbuildings, and that’s where he met his new friend.

Ray had been trapped in a cage, weak from starvation. Falconry equipment lay in a shallow wooden box next to the cage. Carl saw at once that the bird had no fear of human company, so he took pity on it and fed it scraps of dried meat from his pack, along with plenty of water. The youth had no clue how to hunt with it, all he knew about the creature was the name and description on the cage, so he unfastened the latch on the cage door. Once free to escape, the bird had cried pitifully and climbed out wearily onto the falconers’ glove. Carl took it from under the bird and pulled the padded gauntlet onto his left hand. Carl had watched a couple of falconry displays but all he could remember was the leather glove the falconer wore to protect him from the bird's talons. It was the one piece of equipment Carl took with him when he left. From then on Ray had stayed either on the glove, or perched very close by, until he was strong enough to fend for himself.

Carl had camped on the edge of a patch of woodland which offered both a modest amount of game and some shelter while he continued to feed the bird. After a week Ray began taking off for short flights, then on longer and longer forays by himself, until there were several days when Carl didn't see him at all. Believing that the bird could see him more easily than he could see the bird, Carl set out, walking steadily northwards. He had almost forgotten the bird when it swooped down on him one evening. From then on Ray had stayed in loose association with Carl, finding his own food, but returning to take an odd scrap from the youth. Ray quickly made himself useful by giving an early warning of the approach of any threat. Ray's tactic was to cry once, before diving away in the opposite direction to which there was any sign of movement. Carl responded by listening intently for a few seconds, then crouching low to follow Ray to the nearest place of safety or concealment. The incident with the sniper he had narrowly avoided without Ray's help, but a concealed gunman was not something a bird of prey was likely to spot any more readily than Carl had. It had been simple luck that the sniper was more interested in the Riders.

Ray's latest message was no less clear than if the bird could speak. The fact that Carl could see Ray up close confirmed that the Riders were by then far enough away not to worry about and, apart from the smoke drifting up from the hotel three blocks back, nothing else moved. Carl continued past wrecked cars, burned out buildings, and piles of rubble strewn with bones. The bioweapon had been a furious contagion, spread in air and water, and by touch. It killed fast. One morning you might wake with a fever, and by lunchtime your temperature had soared until you were too weak to move. By teatime, the bleeding had begun, and by the next morning your lifeless corpse was prey to the growing army of scavenging flies, dogs and other carrion eaters. In the towns and cities there had been so much death and yet all there was to show now were the bones, chewed and scattered by animals, many of which had once been pets. Some bones still had scraps of clothing clinging to them but they had become invisible to Carl most of the time. His mind rebelled against the evidence of a vanishing human race, and made him bone blind.

A tiny percentage of the world population had been immune, but that was still millions of people. Many of the immunes lasted no more than another week. Utilities failed and the dead polluted the water supplies. Overnight all services shut down. Roads were clogged with stalled vehicles; trains and planes crashed. Emergency radio and TV stations broadcast automated loops, until their backup power failed, and no-one could hear them anymore when the batteries ran out in their radios. As far as Carl could tell, no-one ever claimed responsibility for releasing the bioweapon, but it didn't stop every government finding another to blame. Within days of the global slaughter the bioweapon lost its potency because it was designed not to persist in the environment. The disease had erased billions, but that simply motivated politicians in their bunkers to launch missiles aimed at the centres of foreign cities. Fires burned for days after the explosions, leaving only the less important cities, towns and villages to the survivors. Carl passed right by anywhere which had been bombed and burned to oblivion, without even a thought of going nearer. His first encounter with such a place told him that it contained nothing whatever of value. Armies had set out to take control of supplies in warehouses and government stores, but mutinies inevitably turned gun against gun. Carl had only escaped because he was immune to the worst symptoms of the bioweapon. The fever had left him too weak to move for two days, but his blood had mercifully stayed in his veins, rather than ebbing out from every opening. The moment he was capable of doing so, he had left the town where he had lived, drinking only bottled water and water from streams treated with tablets taken from a camping shop he had found on his way out. He had aimed for open country, avoiding roads and settlements of any kind, and stopping only to find shelter overnight and to trap local game. Somewhere along his random path, he had found Ray and a well-stocked larder, which he returned to daily while he camped in the woods with his new companion.

Carl jumped at a sudden sound. It was Ray reminding him with a sharp cry that he had spent too long leaning against the side of a rusty van, brooding over the catastrophic collapse of everything human. With a shudder, he rubbed his eyes and looked around. Cities which hadn't been bombed to oblivion had frequently been shelled by marauding bands of immune soldiers. They were awful places where, whenever Carl stopped for more than a few minutes, a chill seeped down his spine. Where he saw devastation at every turn he imagined that the souls of the not-so-very-long-dead still lingered, surprised and heart-broken. He gulped down some water from his canteen, and heaved the rucksack onto his shoulders. The position of the sun gave him a rough bearing and he took an oblique path to the one he had been on previously, intending to head away from the direction the Riders had taken. Quitting the city was something Carl wanted more than anything right then. His imagination was one thing, but the smell of rot, decay and death still lingered, even after last month's rains, and it only served to remind him more acutely that danger could lurk in any shadow. The open country beckoned, but he needed to find at least a week's worth of supplies and somewhere secure for the night. Abandoned vehicles were the best, if he could find one intact, preferably one with old-style mechanical locks, then he could shut himself inside and be safe until morning.

The grey of broken concrete and rusty red were the two most predominant colours in the city. Carl's eyes scanned ahead, leaving Ray to keep his eyes peeled to the right, left and behind. Any splash of colour provided a hint of an undamaged vehicle, or a shop which hadn't been either shelled or burnt to rubble by looters. In the first week following the bioweapon attack he had been lucky, finding a camping shop which still contained a few rucksacks to choose from and a tent which had been at the very back of its shelf behind other pieces of equipment that had charred or melted beyond use. There had been a hunting knife, complete with sheath, dropped by a looter, and then there was the last advantage of trekking across a city: there was never any shortage of cable to use for traps and snares.

Two hours after the hotel shoot-out Carl broke into a shop and plundered enough canned and dry goods to last him several days. He ducked out of the doorway into shadow absorbed with thoughts that he should leave the city that night, when he heard Ray screeching ahead and to his left. Carl's curiosity was roused at once, because the cry had not been the accustomed single alarm call. He hefted the pack and caught sight of Ray hovering, dropping then climbing again with a repeating cry. Once he swooped over Carl, then returned to his station, hovering above his chosen spot. Carl took a roundabout route, although he assumed, by the fact that Ray hadn't flown away, that there was unlikely to be any immediate danger.

'What are you up to, Ray?' Carl muttered to himself. 'I haven't ever seen you act like this before.'

Carl at last reached a spot where he could peer around the final corner to see what was of such interest to Ray. In the road was what looked like a sack of clothes. As Carl crept closer, he saw that the clothes appeared to be attached to a pair of boots and that a lock of grey hair flopped to and fro where an eddy current stirred the dust in the street. This was no random sack of clothes, it was a man, and one who was either still alive or not long dead. He stole closer, until he was less than fifty feet away, and had direct line of sight. The next thing Carl noticed was the sound of a Rider's bike. He squinted down the street and saw from the glitter of polished metal that it was a Rider who was lying on the road, with his bike stalled in the front garden of a half-demolished house. Carl watched for several minutes to see if the Rider moved. Ray, having seen Carl approach, ceased his crying and dropped to perch on the parapet of a tall building overlooking the scene.

Carl's chest contracted when he saw the rear wheel of the Rider bike slowly turning where it had buried itself in the front hedge of the ruined house that Ray had chosen to perch on. The machine also emitted its chillingly haunting sigh which, in a derelict city street, made him feel all the more uneasy. Carl looked up again at Ray, but the bird's sharp gaze moved back and forth only between the fallen man, the bike and the youth. Carl took his time getting right up close, but then in a moment he shrugged off his pack and found himself kneeling, staring at the Rider's jacket which was heavily soaked with blood. The youth's gaze darted right and left to see if this was any sort of trap. Satisfied that he and Ray were alone with the injured Rider, he tentatively moved the jacket aside. He then spent a futile minute trying to see if the blood-soaked shirt beneath the jacket moved enough to show there was life yet in the body. Carl rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was a struggle to tell if the Rider was breathing, but he noted that Ray had floated down to perch on the lintel of a doorway supporting a shattered wall on either side. The bird surveyed the scene with his head tilted to one side, as if to coax Carl towards solving the mystery of the lone Rider.

The man was big, close to twice Carl's bulk in his scuffed leathers, rain-proof trousers and shin-protector boots. Carl went and picked up the chain mail jerkin the Rider must have discarded. He felt at once from the weight of the mail, that another camp-fire tale had just been disproved. A Rider needed no great strength to carry such a thing. It was as light as one of Ray's feathers and, by the way it was ripped, near useless for protection against anything beyond a butter knife. When Carl held up the mail vest he saw that it was not only blood-soaked, but shredded where a sharp blade had passed through it without resistance. Since the release of the bioweapon, the Riders had appeared out of nowhere. They had quickly achieved a certain notoriety but, as he walked back to the prone Rider, Carl wondered how many of the stories he had heard about them bore any truth at all. He looked down at the man, but still dared not reach out to feel for a pulse.

Carl's foot scraped in the dust when he turned to check that Ray remained on guard and had not swooped silently away. The bird had not moved and simply stared back, shifting by no more than a couple of degrees the quizzical angle of its head. At the sound made by Carl's boot the Rider lifted his arm a few inches, before letting it drop back. Carl jumped aside when the Rider moved, but the guy beckoned him closer and tried to speak. His body was curled around his helmet and his lips were dusty, so Carl unscrewed the lid from his canteen to offer him a sip of water.

'How can I help you?'

'You got anything stronger?' the Rider said in a croaking voice.

Carl shook his head. He had always imagined the Riders to be dashing young men who tore up the countryside, plundering whatever they could find with no regard for human life. This Rider, however, looked to be well over sixty, as betrayed by his wrinkled skin, grey beard and the hair which fell to his shoulders in long, untidy white curls. He had evidently taken a tumble from his legendary mount, and was looking distinctly less than heroic.

'Then I'll take some more of your water.'

The Rider tried to lean on his elbow while he drank, but he groaned in pain and sank back against the curb stone. Carl took back his canteen and waited, glancing up at the ever-inquisitive Ray. All was quiet, apart from the Rider's troubled breathing.

When he spoke again, the Rider's voice had some force to it. 'Get me over to the bike.'

Carl moved the helmet to one side. It was a proud-looking affair with a metallic finish to high-impact-resistance composite, and an ornate moulded crest. He reached under the Rider's arms and rocked back, trying to lift the much heavier man. The Rider's face contorted and he sank back, eyes squeezed tight shut with pain.

Carl offered the canteen again.

'No thanks, son. Better you go bring the bike over here. Tap the screen to kill the motor and drag it free of that hedge it's got itself into.'

It took Carl longer than he expected to fight his way through the bushes to the front of the bike where he found the touch screen was mounted on the handlebars. He tapped it and the bike stopped trying to force itself forward. Carl gripped it firmly by the saddle and pulled back hard, but the bike moved so easily that it almost fell on top of him. Despite the bulk of its battery compartment and the panniers over the rear wheel, the bike was incredibly light, and it had a longer wheelbase than a conventional motorbike.

'They're all limited edition jobs, made with a stainless steel strut and super-light alloy tubes,' the Rider said when Carl had it steady on its stand beside him.

The older man cast a practised eye over the bike, until a surge of pain twisted his features. When the pain passed, he spoke again. 'Don't look bust up none.'

'So you'll be able to ride it out of here.'

The Rider shook his head, tried to laugh, but began to cough.

When the coughing, and the pain that went with it, subsided, Carl said, 'Do you have a name? Mine's Carl.'

'No point telling, son, I'm not going to be around long enough for you to use it, and there's other stuff you need to know.' He lifted a hand from his shirt to show the bloodied palm and said, 'I don't know how many minutes I've got left, so you better listen close.'

'You'll need the bike, after I patch you up.' Carl opened his pack to rummage for the first aid kit.

'No amount of patching up is going to bring me back from where I'm going,' The Rider's features twisted again. 'It's all in the touch screen. Tap the screen to start it up, then kill that blasted siren.'

Carl shivered when the eerie wail returned. To his surprise two taps on the Home screen cut the electronic sound immediately.

A flicker of a smile curled the Rider's mouth when he saw Carl's response to the siren. 'Noise don't make it go, just makes folk bother us less.'

'Carl shivered again. 'I can vouch for that.'

'Now kill the locator, in case the gang come after the bike for salvage. And you won't want to go speaking into the two-way radio, either.'

'But how do I recharge the batteries?

The Rider shook his head. 'Charge in there's enough to run for months. After that, you'll have to figure it out.'

'Is that it?'

The Rider handed Carl his talisman. 'Key don't operate the bike directly, but you see those letters?

Carl nodded briefly. The fob was stamped with a code that gave access to the control screen after a full shutdown. That, however, was not sufficient to start the motor, Carl learnt, when the Rider told him how to voice-print the bike. It wasn't until much later that Carl discovered that the fob was also a badge that identified the keeper.

'There has to be a lot more to it than what you told me.'

'There is more I could tell you, but I ain't gonna last that long. When you ride the first couple of times, go slow, you'll figure it out.'

Carl could see from the Rider's drawn, white face what it cost him to give him the instructions, so he sat down close to the man, and spoke quietly. 'What happened?'

'My second stabbed me but I took off fast before he could finish me off.'

Carl sprang up and stared around, but Ray was still on his lintel, merely tilting his head. If a bird could shrug, Ray would have done so. Kneeling in the dust next to the Rider, Carl said, 'He must be coming after you right now!'

The Rider's voice dropped each time he spoke. 'Nah, I got him back pretty good.'

'But why did he attack you?'

'Said I killed his brother.'

'What, when?'

'Claimed the guy in the hotel was his brother who was scouting ahead for us, and that he wouldn't have shot at us if I hadn't ordered my boys to fire.'

'No, no, no. With respect, I know that's total rubbish because I was there. You didn't see me but I watched the whole thing. The guy in the hotel fired first. Twice, because he tried to shoot me as well.'

The Rider raised his eyebrows in a question. Any other movement was too painful. 'So where did our scout get to?'

'I'd bet the guy in the hotel killed him.'

The Rider's voice had dropped to a whisper. 'Don't matter now, son. You keep that bike clean, you hear?'

'As a whistle.'

'Just leave me right here, take the bike and get as far away as you can.'

Carl could hardly make out the Rider's words as the older man's chin sank onto his chest. He stared at the bloody shirt, willing it to rise. Ray let out a sorrowful 'peep'. The bird knew what Carl was reluctant to admit; there was nothing more to be done for the Rider.

Any thoughts of staying longer scavenging in the city were banished from Carl's mind by the gift of the bike, and he had most of what he needed anyway. He tried the pannier lids and found that once the voice command unlocked the bike, the pannier locks opened too. Rather than spend time looking through the contents, he put on the shining helmet and climbed onto the bike. He lifted the stand up with his foot and tapped the screen. There was an almost inaudible whirr, and when Carl twisted the throttle grip, the bike moved forward. He shivered at the thought, but he must leave at once before the rest of the gang tracked him down. As the bike moved away, Ray sprang from his lintel and flapped up into the sky. The next time Carl looked for him, all he saw was the black spec high overhead. Usually, that was a good sign.

Carl found it hard to shake the nameless Rider's death from his mind. He had seen so many killed by the bioweapon and in the fighting afterwards, but always at a distance; he had never knelt beside a dying man before. He knew that when he woke in the dead of night, the Rider's face would loom up at him from the darkness. An hour or