Page 4

"Bad aim again," he said, aloud. "Bad aim."

A distant buzzing sounded in his ears. At first he thought it was his head, still ringing from the crash. Then he realised that it was outside, and getting closer. The drone was coming back.

"Come on," he grunted to the dead man. "We've got to get into hiding." Opposite was a narrow alley with a rusted old dumpster. He pulled the dead man behind it and pushed him down. A moment later the car bloomed into a flower of erupting high explosive, burning fuel and mangled white hot metal.

"Why?" Tauseef whispered, crouching beside the dead man. "What on earth is going on?"

The dead man turned his head and tugged. The lane they were in was very narrow, and the walls so high that there was only a tiny strip of sky far above. He pulled Tauseef along the alley, his strong hands gripping the living man's coat. The drone came buzzing down the street behind them again, making a low pass over what was left of the car.

"We've got to find shelter," Tauseef said. He took it for granted now that the dead man could understand what he was saying. "We've got to hide until the drone goes away."

They found what passed for shelter. It was a half-constructed building which had been abandoned a long time ago, and was now beginning to crack and crumble back into the ground. Rusted iron rods stuck from the fissured concrete like accusing fingers pointing at the sky.

Or, Tauseef thought, they were pointing at the drones. The reaction to his narrow escape had begun to set in, and he began to shudder uncontrollably. The dead man, crouched beside him, held him tight. Tauseef no longer noticed the smell of charred flesh.

"It must be you," Tauseef told the dead man. "There's no reason for them to go after me. The drones must be after you."

Maybe he was someone important. Maybe he was even some rebel commander, though not one so important that the soldier at the roadblock would have known who he was. But even then, he was dead, and there was no reason for drones to go after someone who was already dead.

"Dead is dead," Tauseef said. "Isn't it?"

The dead man glanced at him from his one seeing eye and looked away. They watched the distant speck of the drone fly back and forth over the roofs, searching.

"Or perhaps dead isn't so dead," Tauseef said. "How the hell would I know? You know, but do I?"

The dead man said nothing.

They moved on when the first stars were beginning to puncture the dark velvet veil of the twilight. The drone had finally departed about half an hour ago, but they'd waited to see if another took its place. The dead man led now, walking almost purposefully, his hand on Tauseef's sleeve. At first Tauseef had been inclined to resist. Then he realised that for the moment he didn't know where to go. They were on the opposite side of town from his home, if the poky little flat he inhabited deserved that name.

They went back down the alley, and paused. Soldiers were there now, prodding around the wrecked car lackadaisically. None of them looked around as Tauseef and the dead man edged past through the shadows.

"Obviously," Tauseef murmured to the dead man, "the soldiers haven't been told what the drone people are doing. Why? Why did they attack us anyway? Who are you?"

The dead man found another alley. Now he was moving quite quickly, as though through familiar territory. His fingers dug into Tauseef's arm. They were near the outskirts of the town, and the cry of a desert jackal sounded faintly in the distance.

"Where are we going?" Tauseef asked the dead man.

As he expected, there was no reply.

They came to the village as the constellations had risen to the zenith and begun descending again to the horizon.

Tauseef was so tired that his legs were hardly moving, but the dead man seemed to gain strength with every step he took. Now it was he who looked like the living man, purposeful, hurrying towards his goal. Tauseef simply hung on because he had no other choice.

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