It dawned on me slowly that a lot of people were staring. Several of them were wearing black clothes and red bandanas, and were going to great lengths to elbow their way through the crowd in my direction.

A shadow fell across me.

"Stay the f.u.c.k there," it said, poking the two dead punks near me with a smoking rifle.

My guardian angel, I guessed. The one who blew off the giant's head.

From below, it looked a lot like a tattered, hunchbacked ogre.

Its voice was actually kind of s.e.xy.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Her name was Malice. I figure she was probably 'Alice' - maybe 'Melissa' - at one time, but the whole gung-ho nickname thing worked pretty well for the mercenaries the Wheels-Mart paid to keep the peace, and they were never happier than when striding about, calling out each other's ridiculous handles across the braying crowds.

Spuggsy.

Moto.

Tora.

Nike.

And so on. I pretended to be impressed as they introduced themselves. Pumped up and black-clad in every case, moving with that familiar 'I'm-a-hard-b.a.s.t.a.r.d' confidence you see in mercenaries the world over.

They'd propped me up in a canvas shelter off to one side of the auction (still noisily ongoing through the tent's doorway) and now Malice was staring at me, more-or-less-alone, with her arms folded. Nate stood behind me, dabbing at the cut on my neck. I think he was enjoying being part of the attention. Light through the tattered canvas ceiling dappled the interior of the room, making it seem busy and claustrophobic, and it was almost an effort - in amongst the extremes of brightness and shadow - to focus on Malice's eyes.

She was the blackest person I'd ever seen in my life, and she was so beautiful it hurt.

"So," she said, voice guarded. "Guess we owe you one."

"Why's that?"

"Took out the three G.o.dd.a.m.n amigos back there. They been causing trouble few weeks now. Coming in off the water, we figured."

"Happy to oblige."

She smirked unconvincingly.

Malice wore the same black threads as all the other guards (though it would be unfair not to mention how the baggier parts of the ensemble crinkled as she moved, hinting at what was going on underneath) and the same red bandana - in her case folded into a bright sweat-band around her crown. Her hair was shaven away to that not-quite-stubble length - like the velvety patch on the tip of a horse's nose - which so few women can pull off, but makes the ones who can look so ball-rupturingly sensational.

Malice looked like she had a hunch on her back. A big one.

Once in a while the hunch - hidden away beneath black veils - gurgled to itself.

The kid, she told me, was a fraction over a year old. Malice never mentioned the father, so I figured he was long gone or dead. It (I never found out a name, or a gender) stayed quieter than any baby I've ever known, and seemed perfectly untroubled by its mother lugging about a high-powered air-rifle and a sweet a.s.sortment of other popguns. Once in a while Malice jiggled in a strange sort of way, rocking the wicker harness the baby was huddled inside, as if she knew when the sleepy sprog was on the verge of waking up without even having to look.

Every time she jiggled like that it looked like she was giving me the come-on.

"Who are you?" She blurted, just as the silence was getting uncomfortable.

I shrugged. "Just a customer. Just pa.s.sing through."

She shook her head. "Uh-uh. I saw the way you took out them rats. You're ex-mil, pal. Showed in every move. Special forces, maybe. SEALs. Whatever it is you Brits got..."

Not even close, honey.

"Does it matter if I am?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Yeah, it f.u.c.kin' matters. Some psycho stalking 'bout in my Mart."

"I didn't start th..."

"And the only ex-mils round these parts're with the Choirboys."

Aha...

I frowned. "Clergy, right?"

She spat on the floor, as if disgusted by the very name. I started to like her even more, and wondered just how highly the universally loved Neo-Clergy were actually regarded...

I held my palms out - like showing her I had nothing to hide - and pointed to the distinct lack of scarlet tattoos on my eye.

"I'm not with the Clergy."

Her eyes darted to Nate. In the cover of the tent he'd flipped-up the pirate eye patch like a pedal-bin lid, making him look like a astonished panda. "But your pet here?"

Nate 'tsk'd through his teeth and waggled a finger. "Ex." He said. "Ex, sugar."

She just glared.

"He's officially retired," I said, flipping Nate's eye patch back down with a quiet slap.

Malice spat again. "No such thing."

The silence stretched out. Malice started pacing a little, left then right, keeping her eyes fixed on us all the time.

I drummed my fingers on the arms of the chair, creating every impression of disdainful boredom, and whistled quietly. My neck felt tight, like Nate had stuck a monstrous plaster across it, and I hadn't had a chance to find out what had caused the wound yet. I was sort of glad I couldn't see.

Outside, the fast-talking MB sold a battered BMW to a man with three piglets of his very own, who'd outbid a guy with a portable power drill and a book of jokes.

Mostly the vehicles were cheap, in 'who-gives-a-s.h.i.t' money terms, but I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. When 93% of the world shuffles off the mortal slinky there are a lot of jalopies left rusting in empty driveways. The way they saw it, the black-clad personnel of the Wheels-Mart were just agents. Middlemen to cut out the tedious business of finding, breaking into, hot-wiring and maintaining vehicles. The klans sent their scavs along to buy the best of the pick, and as long as everyone kept themselves polite, self-serving, and oh-so-very-neutral, the whole system worked.

Until someone who stands out shows up. No one likes a guy who rocks the boat.

I got the impression Malice and the other guards were mighty twitchy. Ready to snap. Ready to kill.

And they didn't like the Clergy.

Hmm.

After long, boring minutes had pa.s.sed, I cracked my knuckles nastily and said: "So. You going to let us get on with it, or what?"

Malice made a show of ignoring me, pulling off that same weird rolling motion, hip-twitching as she soothed the baby.

I stood up.

"Or do you guys make a habit of pulling this s.h.i.t on anyone who does your job for you?"

She smiled, and this time I think there was at least a glimmer of genuine humour in there, no matter how guarded it was.

"You want a job, limey? That it?"

"f.u.c.k no."

"What, then?"

"Want a set of wheels."

"Going somewhere?"

"Yep."

"Want to tell me where?"

"Not really." I shrugged my tattered coat back on over the top of Nate's bandage, and threw Malice an impatient stare. "We able to do business here or not? 'Cos if it's less of a timewaster I'm quite happy to go stand in the crowd and shout at the w.a.n.ker on the wire."

Her nose wrinkled thoughtfully. "You got currency?"

"Apprehending known villains not good enough?"

"Covers fuel costs, maybe. World don't turn on good deeds, pal."

"Too f.u.c.king right."

I picked up the pack the thieves had been after and brandished it for Malice's inspection, oozing all the business-like cool in the world.

"Ten cans Pedigree Chum," I said, letting the bag spin on its straps. "Six packs of cigarettes. Two bottles Jack Daniels, one bottle supermarket-brand vodka. One tin powdered milk. Three cashmere blankets, only the best will doodle-do. Two packs condoms." (Malice's eye met mine, lightning-speed) "Three vials amphetamine, six sachets barbiturate tablets, eyedropper full of acid, an eighth of Moroccan woodbine - if you believe the dealer - and five hypos of some weird mil-s.h.i.t called 'Bliss'." I smiled sweetly. "Take your pick."

Nate coughed, awkwardly. Malice was staring at me with an ironic eyebrow, like she was trying not to laugh. I became distantly aware of a quiet noise, like: Spitaspataspitaspata The pack was leaking. A few jagged shards of gla.s.s - half a vodka bottle and the angular rim of a JD litre - had torn their way through the fabric in several places, and their wasted contents were puddling on the floor. It looked like a lot of other s.h.i.t had fallen out too. Somewhere outside, in the thick of the crowd.

"Ah," I said. "b.u.g.g.e.r."

This minor calamity seemed to adjust the atmosphere somehow, as if by demonstrating that I wasn't quite as cool as I'd made out, I'd taken the sting out of Malice's suspicion. I'd like to say I'd planned it that way. The woman even smiled openly once or twice - her posture relaxing for a beat - as we rescued what we could from the doomed offerings.

The alcohol was all gone and the cigarettes reduced to a soggy mess, stinking of whisky. Nate (self-elected expert) declared them to be utterly worthless, then pocketed them quietly when he thought I wasn't watching. The blankets were stained but useable, the dog food and rubbers untroubled by their liquor soaking, and the drugs - which I'd hoped would be my most valuable bargaining chip - had alternately dissolved, shattered, fallen out of the pack, or dribbled away. Two of the Bliss hypos remained, along with a single vial of 'phets and the baggie of skunk. Nate kept moaning quietly under his breath every time we found something else ruined or missing, like he'd had it in his mind that the longer he stuck with me, the more of my stash he was liable to inherit.

I wondered vaguely if the drastic losses were enough to make him stop following me round. To break the debt.

I let the thought go, for now - content to let things carry me, trusting my instincts - and poked about in the miserly little stash we'd rescued. Five years of misery and starvation since the Cull, and the 'drugs problem' had mutated mysteriously from 'There's Too Much', to 'There's Not Enough'. It's hard to take the moral high ground when you've watched your friends die, when you've spent all day chasing ornamental ducks along stagnant ca.n.a.ls, when you're freezing to death and when someone's offering you a quick and easy way to escape.

'Just say no?' f.u.c.k that.

Just say gimme.

If fuel was gold in this mean-a.r.s.ed new world, then hardcore narcotic stimulation was platinum.

"Not going to get you much." Malice shrugged. "How far you gotta go?"

"How about you show me what you've got?"

She shrugged again - the baby hiccupped - and gestured towards the rear door of the tent.

I stepped outside and felt my neck p.r.i.c.kling. This is the same feeling all men get, when they step into a room full of gadgets, or fast cars, or big guns.

Set back from the main square, on an adjacent street between black painted walls of corrugated iron and criss-crossed walkways manned by gun-toting guards, Malice led me through rows of cars, vans, pickups, SUVs, motorbikes, bicycles and - shuffling nervously against the rope walls of a makeshift paddock - a trio of horses. Amidst the dozens of wheeled contraptions the whinnying livestock was about the only means of transport in the place that hadn't been radically altered in some way, and even they'd been daubed with crazy patterns in black and red branding paint. On everything else clashing colours and crudities were smeared along every cha.s.sis, windows were shattered or missing, innards had been comprehensively plundered. It would have been faintly depressing - like a sc.r.a.p yard refusing to give up the ghost - had it not been for the special area, roped-off with its own guards. Inside its boundaries everything had been augmented, streamlined, changed. I gazed lovingly at steel roll-bars, wheel-covers in three types of mesh, hulking nitro canisters wedged inside pa.s.senger seats and ten different variations on the theme of 'heavily armed.'

Pintle mounts poked like miniature SAM-sites from the roofs of jeeps and spot-welded AVs. Swinging hatches - just like on Nate's old school bus - replaced side-doors and load containers, whilst several cars sported a sneaky set of exhausts below the rims of the front doors, to blast flames at the touch of a b.u.t.ton at anyone dumb enough to try getting inside.

I wanted to play.

All of them were painted black and red.

"What're these?" I asked Malice, barely able to control the drooling.

She smirked. "Rentals."

"And how do you make sure the customer brings them back?"

"Oh, that's easy."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. We go with them."

At the far corner of the section my eye fell on something. Something big and angry-looking. Something spiky.

I nearly fell in love.

"The Inferno," said Malice, following my eye. "Cute, huh?"

It had been a fire truck once, though to be fair it bore about as much similarity to its previous incarnation as a shark to a diving bell. It was... sleek, which was an adjective I'd never have picked to describe a fire engine before. 'Like a speeding brick', maybe, but never dangerous. Never predatory.