Page 3

Speaking of which...

"Moll," the Cracker ventured timidly, "there’s a police car chasing us."

The Gangster’s Moll didn’t even glace at him. "Of course there is," she said. "We’ve got to throw them off the trail." Wrenching the wheel over hard, she roared into a side street, neatly demolishing a pile of cardboard boxes that someone had placed there for exactly that eventuality. "Now if this were a film," she said, twisting and turning through a maze of lanes, "this would be a dead end. But since it isn’t..." the car rushed into another road, sideswiping a few vehicles as it did. "Since it isn’t," she said, "we’re through."

The police car wasn’t so lucky. Barrelling out of the side street at something like ninety kilometres an hour, it hurtled across the street, bounced over the pavement and rammed the wall on the other side. There was a crash loud enough to be heard above the noise of the Moll’s engine, and the pursuit was over.

"Don’t you think we should go back and rescues those cops?" the Cracker ventured.

"Rescue them?" the Gangster’s Moll sounded honestly astonished. "Whatever for?"

"Well, the zombies will get them otherwise, and..."

"Zombies?" The Gangster’s Moll laughed. "The zombies won’t get them, Cracker. They’re zombies themselves."

"Zombie cops?" The Cracker peered back over his shoulder to try and get a glimpse of the crashed police car, which was fast receding astern.

"Of course. Did you ever know any other sort?"

The Cracker glanced at the determined set of the Gangster’s Moll’s jaw and decided to keep his peace, in case the Moll was provoked into throwing him bodily out of the vehicle. "Where are we?" he asked instead.

"Route Something." The Moll indifferently handed him her satellite phone. "Call the Billain and see if he can guide us."

The phone rang in the Cracker’s hand before he could even begin trying to remember the Billain’s secret number. "Where the hell are you two?" the evildoer yelled. "I’d expected you here by now."

"Sorry, chief, we got chased by a police car and had to make some detours." The Cracker looked in the rear view mirror. "And now," he added, "we’ve got a zombie riding on our rear bumper, making faces at us through the back window."

"What?" the Gangster’s Moll turned her head briefly to look, and only lost control of the car long enough to send a packing case lying on the street flying. "You’re right," she observed. "There is a zombie riding on our rear bumper, making faces at us through the back window."

It was a pretty friendly-looking zombie, actually, by zombie standards. It waved and smiled when it saw they’d seen it. The smile was marred a little by the fact that it had lost all its front teeth, but it was a nice smile for all that.

"What do we do about this?" the Cracker asked, plaintively.

"Just let it ride," the Billain said over the phone. "It’s going to fall off eventually."

"If it doesn’t," the Gangster’s Moll said, "I can always back the car up against something and turn it into zombie squash." She grabbed the phone back from the Cracker. "Tell me which way to go, damn it."

While the Billain guided her, the Cracker turned back to look at the zombie, which was actually looking far happier than any zombie had a right to look. He found himself wondering why it looked so happy. In fact, it looked not so much happy as stoned right out of its mind. As he thought that, the light outside suddenly vanished. They were driving down a tunnel.

"This is the ramp down to the Secret Shelter," the Gangster’s Moll said, before the Cracker even got a chance to ask. "Is the zombie still back there?"

The Cracker looked round again, and couldn’t see it. "I don’t know. Maybe it’s fallen off."

"That’s good," the Moll said, slinging the vehicle with abandon round a series of bends. "I’d hate to have to back this car against something. You’d never find anyone to get the bodywork fixed."

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