The Generation Killer

by Adam Simcox

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Urban Fantasy; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

The second thrilling instalment of Adam Simcox's 'wildly entertaining' (Adam Hamdy) THE DYING SQUAD series.

There's a new serial killer on the streets of Manchester - and only a dead cop can stop them.

Detective Joe Lazarus works for the Dying Squad, solving crimes the living police can't. When the Generation Killer starts wiping out Manchester's innocents, Joe and his new partner Bits have mere hours to catch the murderer. A young woman's life depends on it.

Joe's former partner Daisy-May has her own problems. Children are going missing in the afterlife, and she's the only one who seems to care. Her investigation uncovers a conspiracy so vast, it threatens both the living and the dead.

Her predecessor the Duchess can't help this time; she's tracked her treacherous sister, Hanna, to Tokyo, where she's been recruiting the dead. The Duchess must enlist the help of a local detective if she's to have any choice of stopping her.


Time is running out for the Dying Squad. And if they can't crack their cases, it's the living that will pay...

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 320

Sample

Summer had judged Manchester, and had found it wanting.

It bloated its concrete and scorched its roads, constipating its buildings with sweat and fury. Storm clouds squatted overhead, refusing Mancunian pleas to break or leave. Rain was as familiar to Manchester as a kissing cousin, but it had become timorous, reluctant to shower the city in its sopping wet smooches.

On the sixth day, God created MANchester; that was what the locals claimed. Such was the pent-up charge in the city, those locals were beginning to wonder why He had bothered.

Most were, anyway. Others were like Megan, who used the long days and bijou nights as a passport to delve into the city’s nooks and crannies, to document every last cobbled stone and neglected alley. She worked alone and celebrated that fact. Her art didn’t invite collaboration; in fact, it actively discouraged it.

There were exceptions, of course. From time to time, a wandering soul would catch her eye and jolt her muse. That was what had happened on her latest project.

It promised to be her most exceptional yet.

The last of the day’s sunshine barged its way into Megan’s flat, but she left the light on anyway. It was always on. Her ragtag collection of foster parents had always chastised her for it, but they’d never had to endure the screaming night terrors that she had. The light stayed on. Always.

She trudged into her bedroom, flopping down onto the bed and letting her eyes wander over the dozens of photographs pinned to the walls. The Lads Club in Salford. The Victoria Baths. Granada Studios. Manchester Town Hall. The frame of them all just so, an ongoing series that was missing one final location.

‘I can hear you, you know,’ she said.

‘How?’ replied a boy’s voice.

‘I can hear you breathing.’

‘I’m not breathing.’

‘Everyone breathes.’

‘Not me.’

‘Come out then,’ she said, ‘and stop not breathing in the shadows.’

A dead boy emerged from next to the wardrobe.

Thirteen or thereabouts, he wore an old-fashioned green blazer, grey shorts, a mucky white shirt and a stained black tie. A buzz cut of ginger hair completed the picture.

‘We talked about this, George. You can’t just keep breaking into my flat.’

‘This is important, though.’

‘So are boundaries. You hiding in my bedroom is breaking them.’

‘I was going to wait outside, like you said,’ George replied, ‘but then I found it, and I got too excited.’

‘You found what?’

‘The arches, Megs. I’ve found the arches.’

Megan subconsciously gripped the camera that bounced against her chest, suspended by a leather strap around the back of her neck. She checked the camera’s shutter count. It read zero, as it should; she’d thrown in a new roll of film just before she’d left the house. Still, if George really had found the arches, it paid to be sure. She didn’t work digitally. Her work relied on a special sort of film that only one developer in the world made. No second chances; you got the shot, or you didn’t.

‘It’s just up here,’ said George, pointing to the canal footpath ahead of them.

The arches were an urban myth, a bauble offered up to hunters of lost Mancunian legends. A few smudgy photos of them nestled on urban explorer websites, most looking as much like derelict toilets as a town hidden beneath a city. That, ultimately, was what the arches were: a suburb of long-abandoned shops, built deep within Manchester’s bowels to service the city’s inhabitants as they hid from Hitler’s bombs in World War II.

Certainly if anyone was capable of finding them it was George. It was one of the unsaid things between them; his ability to get anywhere and everywhere was one Megan gently exploited. She consoled herself with the fact that he seemed to love it. It gave him purpose.

‘Keep up,’ he called as he reached the pathway, beckoning her with an insistent hand.

Night had settled but had neglected to tell the temperature, which sweltered stubbornly, licking Megan’s back like you would a stamp. There was something in the air that she didn’t like. It felt spiteful, like it was laughing at her.

She was close, though. She could feel it.

She scratched at the birthmark on the back of her hand, picking off the fresh scab. She knew she shouldn’t, but it calmed her when nothing else would.

‘It’s through here,’ said George.

She saw a circular pipe. Mulch was smeared on its lips, darkness draped around its mouth. It didn’t look to be much more than four foot high.

‘You’ve been down there?’ she said.

‘Course. How’d I know it was down there otherwise?’

Megan frowned. ‘You never said anything about a pipe. There’s no other way?’

George shook his head. ‘This is it.’

She nodded, reluctantly shifting on her feet, moving closer to the pipe. A faint red glow came from some undetermined point in its depths. She could fit. She’d need to duck, then crawl, but she’d fit.

‘Hello?’

Her voice was snatched by the tunnel, passed from side to side, losing strength with each hand-off.

‘What are you doing?’ said George.

‘Trying to judge how deep that thing goes.’

Very, by the sound of it.

She took another couple of steps closer, steeling herself, wavering.

‘I’ll go first,’ said George. ‘Follow me.’

He pulled himself up, grunting with the effort, then turned back to her. ‘You coming?’

Megan gripped the pipe’s upper lip and swung herself upwards. A blast of cold, dank air greeted her. Normally it would have been a relief from the heat outside, but there was nothing normal about this situation, and certainly no relief. This was what you had to do, though, to get the shot. Any artist of any worth had to suffer for their art at some point.

George stopped, turning around, his head grazing the top of the tunnel. ‘I can’t wait for you to see it.’

Megan nodded, squashed down her fear and began to shuffle into the guts of the pipe.

‘How much further?’ said Megan.

George didn’t reply. Instead he stopped, rising to his full height and putting his hands on his hips. As she reached him, Megan did the same.

The pipe had spat them out into an alcove that looked down upon a cathedral of tiles. It reminded her of a pantomime she’d been taken to as a girl; she’d been treated to a box seat, and she was afforded a similar vantage point here. Instead of a stage, though, there was a metal gurney in the centre of the room. A large hypodermic needle hovered over it. Mucus-infested tiles stretched off in every direction. Water roared in the distance.

He’s behind you; that was what she’d screamed along with the other pantomime-goers.

He’s behind you.

She turned.

He wasn’t. No one was. Only the pipe and its selfish darkness.

She frowned. A few feet to her left was some sort of desk. Or control desk, to have it right; it looked ancient, like something out of a comic book. Rust bubbled from its surface, and pools of dank water lay around it.

There was an insignia on it. Megan leaned in to take a closer look.

A cross had been emblazoned on the desk’s base.

A swastika. What the hell is a piece of Nazi machinery doing in a Manchester dungeon?

‘Come over here a second, George.’

‘This isn’t even the best bit,’ said George.

‘I’m sure,’ said Megan, ‘but I want to get a picture of this desk. You’ve been in all the other shots. Can’t break the tradition now.’

George looked over his shoulder, sighed, then reluctantly obeyed, perching himself against the control desk.

‘Smile.’

He didn’t, but Megan took the picture anyway.

George led her down a flight of stone steps, across the centre of the room (Megan was careful to skirt around the table and the needle that sat above it) and into a clammy, low-ceilinged corridor. Water spewed all around them, like a sprinkler vomiting mould. Small dishes leaked light from the ceiling. The outlines of door frames were etched into the sides of the tunnel. An ancient-looking telephone was bolted to the opposite wall, a prop from civilisation that looked utterly out of place here.

Megan’s finger pushed down on the camera’s button, firing off a machine gun’s worth of shots.

I could do an exhibition on just this place, she thought. It’s incredible.

‘Really good stuff’s through here,’ said George, pointing at a rusty steel door ahead of them.

Although it wasn’t really a door, Megan thought, more an impression of one. Its imprint could be seen in the tiles, like someone had drawn a pencil outline on a planning sketch. The door stood half open, a strange staccato light seeping out.

‘What is that?’ said Megan.

‘Hard to explain,’ said George. ‘Easier just to show you.’

He slipped through the doorway, disappearing from sight.

I don’t like this, thought Megan. Something’s off. Maybe it’s the Nazi desk in the other room: big-arse red flag right there. That, and the serial killer’s operating theatre.

Plus, there’s the light coming from the room in front of me. How?

I should get out of here.

She stayed where she was, though, her toes tipped for flight, her camera clutched tightly in her hands, her palms sweaty.

I should get out of here, but then I’ll never know what’s in that room. And what’s in that room could be the defining shot of my career, the truth that we’re all seeking.

A muffled sound behind the door. Tinny. Insistent. Familiar somehow.

Taking a deep breath, Megan opened it.

It was as if someone had set up a home cinema room in a sewer.

George sat quietly, cross-legged, facing a wall. Next to him was an old projector. It whirred noisily as it passed reams of film through its innards, throwing a smeary image onto the wall in front of it.

The image showed a boy sitting on a chair in a pure white room. He was dressed in a surgical smock, and his legs were so short his feet didn’t touch the floor. They swung to and fro above it. The balloon he held in his hand seemed absurd, its redness a cut lip against the room’s white backdrop.

‘What is this, George?’ said Megan. ‘What is this place?’

He turned to her, placing a finger against his lips. ‘Shush. It’s about to start.’

A woman’s voice began speaking.

‘Day three, test subject Walter Truman. How are you feeling today, Walter?’

The boy – Walter, Megan assumed – stared directly at the camera. ‘I didn’t sleep too good.’

What the hell is this? Some sort of live theatre shit? Is someone playing a joke on me here?

‘You didn’t sleep too well,’ said the woman’s voice, off-screen, ‘not too good. The correct sentence would have been I didn’t sleep too well.’

The boy nodded, clutching the balloon a little tighter to him.

‘Why is it that you didn’t sleep well?’

‘Saw them again. When the lights went out.’

‘You saw who?’

‘The man and woman.’

‘Describe what the man and woman looked like, Walter.’

Walter scratched at his arm, an action that released the balloon. It drifted away from him, floating towards the ceiling. He reached for it.

‘Leave the balloon, Walter,’ said the woman. ‘Tell us about the man and woman.’

Walter pouted. ‘Don’t want to.’

‘Why not?’

‘’Cos I don’t like thinking about them. They’re scary.’

‘What’s scary about them, Walter?’

‘Don’t like their faces.’

‘Why don’t you like their faces?’

‘They look like trees.’

‘How so?’

‘Got leaves on them.’

‘What do they say to you, these people?’

‘Weird things.’

‘Weird things?’

‘Like they’re confused. They don’t know who they are. They can’t remember.’

‘That is weird,’ said the woman off-screen. ‘Can you see them now?’

The boy shook his head. ‘Wears off by the morning.’

‘I see.’

The sound of a door opening could be heard. A man in a surgical gown and mask walked into frame. He held a syringe in his hand.

The boy drew up his feet, wrapping his arms around his legs, trying, it seemed to Megan, to make himself smaller.

‘Now, Walter,’ said the woman. ‘You know it only hurts for a moment.’

‘Always hurts,’ said Walter, his voice only just audible. ‘And it makes me see the tree people.’

‘They won’t hurt you,’ said the woman’s voice, her on-screen colleague reaching out and taking Walter’s arm.

He inserted the needle quickly, his thumb pressing down on the plunger, then swiftly withdrawing it.

Walter put his head between his knees and began to cry.

‘Are they in there with you now, Walter?’ came the voice off-screen. ‘Do you see them? Describe them to us.’

‘No,’ Walter mumbled, his arms still wrapped around his head.

The balloon floating above him popped, making the gowned man flinch.

‘They’re here, aren’t they, Walter?’ There was a hint of excitement in the woman’s voice. ‘Describe them to me.’

The man in the surgical gown grabbed Walter’s head and forced open his eyes.

Walter looked into the distance. He began to scream.

The projector clunked to a stop, and the image warped.

Megan realised she hadn’t taken a breath.

George turned to her. ‘He wanted you to see that.’

A chill massaged Megan’s back. ‘Who did?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said George.

‘You’re sorry for what?

He’s behind you, screamed a voice in her head, just as though she was back at the pantomime.

He’s behind you.

Megan swallowed.

She turned.

He was.

‘Move,’ said Daisy-May. ‘Just fucking move, would you?’

The stuffed pink bear in the chair opposite didn’t, mainly because it was a stuffed pink bear. Daisy-May could have believed there was a mocking look in its beady plastic eyes, though, one that said I’ll move when I’m ready, and maybe not even then.

‘Bastard bear. Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Warden of the Pen, the queen of fucking purgatory, and when I say move, you move.’

She waved a hand at the bear. The bear didn’t wave back.

‘Is it ’cos I’m young? You think just ’cos I’m a teenage sensation, that gives you the right to blank me? No, mate, I’m not having that. The Duchess didn’t care about my age. She thought I had the right stuff, so who are you to say otherwise?’

The bear stared implacably back at her.

What was she doing wrong? The Duchess had been able to move things with her mind (had, she’d told Daisy-May, on one occasion broken the mythical Xylophone Man’s neck with the merest flick of a finger), because that sort of power came with the job. The Duchess had assured Daisy-May it would be the same for her.

But then she’d assured her of many things. Lied to her about many more.

Like how Daisy-May had been murdered up above – on the soil – and who’d done the murdering.

Focus, you silly cow, she told herself. Stop picking at the scabs of the past, and focus.

She leaned forward, her face inches from the bear, her arm stretched towards it, then closed her eyes, visualising the bear hovering out of its seat, just as the Duchess had taught her.

‘Move,’ said Daisy-May. ‘Move.’

She opened her eyes and yelped in triumph as the bear hovered in the air, its furry body tilting slightly to the left, as if tipsy and making its way home.

She beckoned to it with her outstretched hand and it began to inch forward, before picking up pace and sailing straight past her.

She turned to see an elderly man standing at the entrance to her office. He was holding the bear, a small smile on his face, like he was sharing a joke with the stuffed toy.

‘That was you controlling it, Remus?’ asked Daisy-May.

Remus chuckled. ‘I picked up the odd trick from the Duchess over the years.’

‘Ma’am. You picked up the odd trick from the Duchess, ma’am.’

The man bowed his head, his thinning greased-back hair doing a poor job of hiding the crown of scabs on the top of his head. ‘Quite right, ma’am. It’s easy to forget one’s manners when you get to my ripe old age. Not something you’re burdened with, of course.’

Daisy-May glowered. ‘Pretty dark over here, Remus, with all that shade you’re throwing.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ said Remus, nibbling at his bloodied lower lip.

Course you don’t, thought Daisy-May. You’re just a lost little lamb. The sort that’s got wolf’s teeth you won’t hesitate to use.

Remus was a fixture of the Pen, the prize or punishment for those unfortunate enough to be tasked with ruling the realm. He’d been the number two to the Warden since whatever came before time immemorial, and Daisy-May knew she should value his counsel and take advantage of the thousands of years of experience he possessed.

Something about him bothered her, though.

It’s ’cos he’s a straight-up snob. Always looks at me like I’m going to pinch the silver.

Take the uniform change. One of Daisy-May’s first orders of business had been to dispose of the starched, fascist-lite uniform of the Pen. ‘Always reminds me of the SS,’ she’d explained to Remus. ‘If this regime’s going to be kinder, the uniform’s going to be kinder too.’ Remus had flinched like she’d slapped his ancient cheeks (face and arse) when he’d seen the punk stylings she had in mind. It was under the Duchess’s regime that existence itself had almost ended, the millions of Dispossessed (a nice word for a purgatorial subclass of people who had been abused and looked down upon over the centuries) in the Pen rising up in revolt. If a skinny tie and drainpipe jeans were part of that never happening again, then so be it.

It wasn’t just the uniform change Remus held in disdain, though; it seemed to Daisy-May that he reserved his ire for everything she did. It wasn’t in what he said, but what he didn’t: a raised eyebrow at one new policy suggestion, a weak smile and a strong shake of the head at another.

He didn’t so much kill her with kindness as drive-by-shoot her with understated disapproval.

And he could move things with his mind. He was every inch Warden material, and what was she? A shit-kicker girl from a shit-kicker family, from a shit-kicker council estate. Someone who’d never chased power, but had caught up with it anyway.

That’s why I chose you, the Duchess would have said. It’s because you didn’t chase it, and you weren’t born into it. There’ll always be a hundred Remuses in any organisation, and you’re worth a thousand of them. Don’t you forget it.

She’d try not to. Her imposter syndrome had other plans.

‘What can I do for you, Remus?’

‘There’s something you need to see.’

Daisy-May didn’t doubt it. When you were the boss, there was always something you needed to see, and usually something even more important that you needed to do.

‘Is it Hanna? Has she found her?’

Remus shook his head. ‘There is no word from the Duchess, and when it comes to Hanna, no news is good news.’

‘Never realised you were so glass-half-full, Remus.’

Remus smiled. ‘If you’d let me send more of our operatives to the soil, we’d have a greater chance of finding her. That girl has already almost toppled existence once; the damage she could do on the soil, unchecked, isn’t worth thinking about.’

‘It’s my job to think about it,’ said Daisy-May, ‘and there’s no badder bitch than the Duchess. She’ll find her, and when she does, she’ll take her down.’

‘If you say so. Ma’am.’

‘I do,’ said Daisy-May. ‘If it’s not Hanna, what do you want?’

Remus led her out onto the main gantry. A dozen or so video screens glowed with crime scenes from around the world, ones that her Dying Squad of paranormal investigators should have been en route to, and would have been if the tunnel separating the living and the dead hadn’t been so mortally poisoned. Her team below, stuffed into the bowels of the command centre, noted the details of the crimes then sat on their frustrated hands, the sense of inertia growing all the time.

Daisy-May balled her fists up, trying to knead out the uncertainty. ‘What am I looking at?’

Remus pointed at the top right-hand screen. It showed a gaggle of men and women in yellow jumpsuits encircling a body on the floor.

‘Are they police?’ asked Daisy-May.

‘Soil police, yes,’ Remus replied. ‘They’re not who made the request for us, though.’

Daisy-May whistled. ‘We have a pickup?’

‘We have a pickup. And that’s not all.’

Remus told Daisy-May what that’s not all entailed.

She nodded along.

When he stopped talking, she started thinking.

‘Where’s Joe Lazarus?’ she said, finally.

It had been a while since Joe had been involved in an old-school stake-out.

He couldn’t say he’d missed them much.

The last one had involved a Lincolnshire farmhouse and a string of dead bodies that included his own; he hoped this one would be easier, in the surprise, you’re dead stakes.

At least it didn’t involve squatting in a ditch.

What it did involve was a craggy clump of rocks overlooking one of the newly developed Dispossessed townships.

They’d changed, the Dispossessed. Whether that was for better or for worse was a matter of debate as far as Joe was concerned, but one thing was undeniable: they’d evolved from the confused, brain-muted half-souls he’d first encountered in the Pen. Since they’d risen up against the Duchess – and since Daisy-May had managed to talk them down, and sell a more inclusive afterlife for them – their intelligence had developed at a frightening pace.

Why that was was a matter of some debate amongst the Dying Squad intelligentsia, but Joe thought he knew: it was because of the kindness shown by Daisy-May. That intelligence had always been there; it had just needed someone like the Pen’s new Warden to recognise it, then bring it out.

‘Time’s fucking dragging, man. How long do we have to stay here for?’

Of course, intelligent didn’t always mean polite.

Joe shifted on his stomach, levering himself with his elbow. His new partner was to his left, having adopted a similar on-the-belly position. Tall and lean like a crash-diet whippet, Bits (a nickname Joe had objected then eventually succumbed to) twitched sporadically, animated by a dozen different ghost drugs in his system.

‘That really depends on you, doesn’t it?’ said Joe. ‘This is your lead we’re following.’

‘Not my anything,’ said Bits. ‘Heard tell of the bloke, that’s all. Know this is his patch, and know sooner or later that he’ll be along.’

‘Well, that’s three things more than I know,’ said Joe, turning back, raising the binoculars once more, ‘and that means we stake out this patch until we get a glimpse of him.’

‘Could be hours,’ said Bits.

‘Could be days,’ said Joe. ‘That’s the job, and you’re lucky to have it.’

‘Feel lucky,’ said Bits, ‘lying next to you, with rocks sneaking up my arse.’

‘There’s a chain of command here,’ said Joe, ‘and I’d ask you to remember that.’

‘Fuck-all chance of forgetting it,’ mumbled Bits.

Joe grimaced, biting his tongue. He tried to remind himself that there were worse things than a dawn raid with an insubordinate colleague. Not that dawn (or any other time of day) really existed in the Pen. Night simply meant black and red volcano clouds, day grey and red. The light never changed – it was watery, like it couldn’t get up the courage to be one thing or the other – and dawn? Well, that was just a squelchy mishmash of the two. Still, it was better than the Pit, a hell Daisy-May had been good enough to release him from.

It was better than that.

‘That’s him.’

Joe looked to where Bits was pointing. A male member of the Dispossessed, head down and hands scrunched into the pockets of his black trench coat, was walking amongst the smattering of cabins and huts below them, looking around him as if he suspected some sort of imminent attack. He stopped at the last building on the right, a spooned-out dollop of concrete at the end of the street, knocked on the door and waited.

‘You’re sure?’ said Joe.

Bits nodded. ‘That’s Zed.’

‘And you’re sure that’s his name? Because it sounds more like a cleaning brand.’

‘We catch him, you can ask him for a birth certificate,’ said Bits.

Joe took a breath. ‘All right then. Are you ready for this?’

Bits said that he was.

Joe doubted that – your first dawn raid was never something you were really ready for, particularly if you were a newbie (and a Dispossessed newbie at that), but he supposed he’d have to take Bits’s word for it.

Joe slowly withdrew a gun he had no intention of using and stood listening at the concrete hut’s shabby, flimsy door. There was a murmur of clicks and whirls, a sure sign that Dispossessed were inside. He had submitted to a crash course in the language over the last few months (it was pretty difficult to train a Dispossessed task force if you couldn’t understand them) but he struggled to make out any specific words. He’d let his knowledge of the language slide because of Bits’s fluent English – it was one of the reasons he had been chosen for the task force in the first place.

He counted down to Bits with his fingers.

Three.

Two.

One.

Now.

His foot connected with the door, splintering through it easily.

‘Dying Squad,’ he yelled. ‘Everyone on the floor, now.’

It was several seconds before he could truly appreciate the horror of what he was seeing.

The room was like some sort of Victorian back-street abortion clinic. Blood, dried black, stained the walls, crusting it like wallpaper. Zed, the male member of the Dispossessed they’d been tailing, stood with a female counterpart next to a crude metal gurney that rested in the middle of the room. Both were covered in blood fresher than that which decorated the walls, and both carried crude metal instruments that could have passed for torture devices if Joe hadn’t known what they were really intended for.

The true horror was saved for the woman on the gurney, though. She lay unconscious, her insides splayed open with a rusty metal clamp.

Like a bear trap, thought Joe.

Zed and the woman turned towards him, their shimmer betraying their Dispossessed status. Zed froze, but his colleague didn’t. She shoved the metal gurney towards Joe, spilling the opened-up woman from it; it slammed into Joe’s knees and knocked him backwards.

‘Go!’ she yelled to Zed, a click and whistle Joe could have understood even without his recent language lessons. Just as he began to lever himself up, the woman landed, knee first, on his stomach. She reached for the gun, but he was too quick for her; he swung it upwards, driving the handle into her forehead. Her head snapped back and then Bits was there, hauling her off, pinning her arm behind her shoulder.

The woman unleashed a string of high-pitched screams at Joe’s new partner.

‘What’s she saying?’ said Joe.

‘She says I’m scum,’ said Bits. ‘Says I’m a traitor to my kin.’

The woman spat in Bits’s face.

Joe glowered at her, then reached over, wiping away the spit with the cuff of his sleeve as the woman continued to struggle.

‘This bloke here’s a credit to his kin, not a traitor to it,’ he said to her. ‘Bits, you, me, we’re all the same. The Warden wants us to be equal; that means paying the price when you fuck up, as well as reaping the rewards when you don’t.’

He turned to his partner. ‘Cuff her. I’m going after Zed.’

As Joe raced through the back door into a vista of sprawling half-soul humanity, he knew that going after Zed was a lot easier to say than to actually do.

The Pen was a teeming anthill of souls – millions of them – and although there was more structure to it than when he’d first arrived, with settlements, houses and cabins like the one he’d just stormed into, it was still the Wild West. And like the Wild West, losing yourself was the easiest thing in the world to do. That was why he’d brought the gun.

He held it out in front of him, his left hand steadying his right arm, one eye squeezed shut, the fleeing Zed still in range, if only just. His finger tensed on the trigger.

He fired, ready for the kickback, his left hand gripping his right.

If that misses, he’s gone, thought Joe. No way will I find him in amongst all those bodies.

He squinted as the bullet – although in truth it was more of a homing pigeon – arced towards its prey, then found its target. There was an explosion of colour, and a mushroom cloud of pink erupted into the sky.

He allowed himself a smile. Try hiding from us with that shit following you around. It’s like the conscience you didn’t know you had.

He began sprinting towards the cloud. It would follow Zed wherever he went for the next hour, and although he would have preferred something more definitive (such as the gun he’d used the last time he’d ventured to the living, breathing world of the soil), he believed Daisy-May had it right. She’d decreed that non-lethal force be used against the Dispossessed, knowing that the temporary peace she’d brokered wouldn’t last too long if the authorities started shooting the underclass.

Dead bodies weren’t great at offering up leads or confessions, either.

The cloud moved left and right over the throng of Dispossessed, and Joe dived into them, his eyes flicking upwards to follow the trail. They’d been after Zed for days, lifting stones and kicking over woodpiles, and he’d be damned if they were going to lose him now. It felt good to be chasing down leads and the miscreants at the