LITMIR.BIZ

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one—made their move. When they sprang towards the bus and his people began shooting. Some of the silver bullets hit their marks, Angel’s included as he hunkered down and joined them in firing at the sea of fur. But it hardly dented their numbers, more hounds taking the place of their fallen comrades pretty much immediately.

      There was a scream, and Angel looked across in time to see one of the troopers get dragged through a window. The top half of his body vanished, leaving khaki legs kicking out, so hard one of the man’s boots came off and was flung back into the bus to bounce off a seat. Then the legs just stopped moving, collapsing against the window as a jet of redness sprayed inside.

      Angel put up a hand, stepping back to avoid the blast of warm liquid—only to nearly slip on the floor which was already slick with it.

      More screams, as troopers at other windows were killed one by one. Angel couldn’t tear his eyes away as a clawed fist punched its way through one soldier’s head, deflating it like a balloon; the meat and bone hardly slowing it down.

      One trooper had his rifle wrenched from him and broken in two, such was the strength of these creatures. Then the muzzle end was rammed into its owner’s chest, like he was a vampire being staked.

      Bit by bit, the anger had drained from Angel to be replaced by fear again. The self-preservation thing that had urged these people to follow him, away from the main battle. But there was no way out, not now. Maybe not ever. There were just three of them left now, the others—only one of which he recognised, as a trooper called Harrison—had joined him, were even looking to him to get them out of this. Impossible! They were doomed ... Not just the trio of survivors, but the human race. How could they ever have hoped to succeed against those things to begin with, when not even the governments, the real armies hadn’t stood a chance? The most they’d been able to do was survive ... for a little while anyway. Hope to see another dawn once night fell.

      Now Angel knew that he definitely wouldn’t—that he’d be joining the other angels very soon—a kind of peace washed over him. He wouldn’t have to struggle anymore, rail against all this. Wouldn’t have to live in fear, waiting for the other foot to fall every day. For him, it would be over. No more fighting, no more battles ...

      As the wolves flooded into the bus, he abandoned all hope and just waited for the inevitable.

      But he was wrong to do so.

      At the very last minute, perhaps even the last second, he heard it. The sound of engines. All the mutts that were inside the bus, that had been approaching Angel and his colleagues, eying them up as their next meal, paused, sniffed the air, then turned at the same time.

      The wolves that had been climbing all over the outside of the bus were suddenly being scraped off, like he’d seen his dad scrape ice from the car during those harsh winters back in the day. No, not scraped so much as blown off—or more accurately torn into by a gun more powerful than anything they possessed to combat the enemy. The noise was incredible!

      The ones inside exited, in support of, or in solidarity with, their kind; Angel didn’t quite know, didn’t care. But they ended up suffering the same fate. He rushed to a window and saw one of them get ripped to pieces by bullets that looked like miniature flaming arrows. Then Angel traced the fire back to a vehicle that had pulled up just off to the right of the bus, an open-backed pickup with a mounted machine gun at the rear that had ceased pumping out its deadly load for a moment.

      “Deepak!” he heard someone shout, then traced that back to a man wearing a cap, riding a motorcycle which pulled up alongside the truck. “Concentrate your fire over there, into that clump of them! Ridgeway, go and check the bus for any survivors.”

      Angel saw one of the men from the pickup, keeping his head low all the time and clutching his helmet, rush across to the bus, forcing his way inside through the front doors this time. He clocked the three of them left, nodded, then said: “I think this might be your stop, fellas. Everybody out!”

      Angel let the others go first, then followed the man called Ridgeway himself as they half-crouched, half-shuffled towards the truck. There were still plenty of the mutts around, enough to overpower them all—enough to overrun Deepak and his gun. They weren’t out of the woods yet, by any stretch of the imagination. But Angel had started to hope again.

      “Get in, get in,” Ridgeway told them, doing the same thing Angel had done when they’d found the bus—waving the survivors into the back of the pickup this time. He stopped for a second, raised his rifle and let off several bursts, felling a number of the creatures that had gotten too close for comfort.

      The cap-guy on the bike was shouting orders at his team, telling them to get moving—that he would hold the enemy off, lead them away. Angel’s first thought was: Is he crazy? Then he took in the man, properly took him in now he was closer. There was a calmness about him that had nothing whatsoever to do with letting go of life, of giving up. Quite the opposite in fact: it came from embracing it, and all the confidence that went with that.

      Here was a bloke who hadn’t just had the mantle of leadership thrust on him; he looked like he was born to it. And he was about to pull all of their arses out of the fire, as young as he appeared to be ... Twenty? Twenty-one, if he were a day.

      “Go!” he shouted to Ridgeway, to his driver, and even slapped the side of the truck to emphasise they should get motoring. As they pulled away, Angel watched—the hounds now massing behind the biker. Watched as the man dragged the front of his bike up into the air, spinning on the back and taking out the nearest couple of wolves with his front wheel.

      When it hit the floor again, he set off, trailed by a horde of the beasts. Not one of them came after their vehicle. The guy was leading them away like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, off into that park.

      Angel realised his mouth was hanging open and he closed it again. He wasn’t quite sure what had just happened; how he was still alive. “He ...” All he could do was point back towards the biker. Finally, he found the words, staring at Ridgeway. “It’s suicide. They’ll slaughter him!”

      The soldier shook his head. “I seen him get out of tighter spots than that, man. He’ll be okay.” Then Ridgeway smiled. “It’s down to him we came looking for you in the first place. We should have been scouting out a route for a supply run ... But he had a feeling something was wrong at 5C.”

      Angel was gaping again, blinked once, twice. “How did...?”

      “Look, don’t ask me. But I’ve been around long enough to know you trust that guy’s instincts, right?” There was a look in Ridgeway’s eye that told him this man had been saved by those instincts, probably more than once. Angel was still new to the experience though.

      “But who...?” asked one of the other soldiers this time, for variety; Harrison he noted.

      Ridgeway beamed once more, as the truck hit a bump in the road and jolted them all; as they passed what was left of a street sign that read ‘nham Estate’. He adjusted his helmet and regarded them all in turn, though Angel knew who that had to be back there. Even at 5C they’d heard the rumours, the stories. He hesitated to use the word legend, but if the cap fitted ... It could only be one person at the end of the day. But Jesus, he was so, so young.

      “That folks ... that was—”

      “Daniels,” Angel finished for him. “It was Tommy Daniels, wasn’t it.”

      Ridgeway nodded, grinning again and clapping Angel’s shoulder. “The one and only, my friend. The one and only.”

      C h a p t e rT w o

      “How’s the grub?”

      Peel looked up to see the young girl called Pat standing in front of him. No, not girl—he wasn’t allowed to call her that. Young person, then. Much better. She was holding a tray with a bowl and cup on it, hovering around the seat opposite him. Peel held his hand out for her to sit, then spooned more of whatever it was he was eating into his mouth. Could well have been mashed up grubs for all he knew; looked like it; smelled like it too. But it actually tasted okay, and he wasn’t

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