The rattle of gunshots from behind reminded me the truck driver was not the only contender. A hail of badly aimed bullets flailed the wall ahead. The Blackshirts chasing me were too far away and maybe too excited to get off any decent shots as they came out of the double portico, but they sure as hell didn't help the situation any. Luckily they were keeping their fire to the right to avoid hitting the moving Bedford and from their angle truck and bike must've seemed pretty damn close. More puffs of plaster powdered off the wall beside the second passageway and at any moment - we're talking split seconds here - I expected to feel bullets thudding into my back.
Goddamn, the truck had covered the archway and the driver was slamming on his brakes to keep it that way. It slid onwards though, bellying across the passage. Another gunshot, the crack clear as a bell this time - hell, I was close enough to see the joy in the driver's eyes - and I felt leather rip at my shoulder.
No numbness, no pain - no real damage.
I twitched the handlebars, no more'n a shrew's shrug, as the hood closed the gap, knowing I couldn't stop now even if I'd wanted to.
I kept up the roar, jaw straining, eyes narrowed, hands clenched tight around the grips, bullets spewing into the wall above and beside the passageway, truck still sliding, the hand with the gun waving at me, the gap closing down, tighter, tighter -
And then I was through, elbow skimming along the truck's hood bar, leather sleeve on the other side scuffing plaster. I was in the cool shade of the short passageway, my roar hollow-sounding, and then I was out again in bright, glorious sunshine, tearing over the wide forecourt for the open gates, their gilded ironwork rotting to rust, the tall railings on either side worthless protection against the death that had claimed almost all, bloodline having no privilege over blood type.
Through the gates I sped, and around the old queen's memorial, past the statues of women and children I'd gazed at from the balcony room less than ten minutes ago, round to the other side where Victoria herself sat feeing the long, elm- and lime-lined Mall. I swear I could feel her mournful eyes on my back as I fled Buckingham Palace, heading for another sanctuary in the dead city. Half a century ago she'd been proud mother to a fabulous empire and a great country; now there was nothing left of empire and precious little of country. Better then those eyes were only of stone.
Gunfire broke the thought that was fleeting anyway. I had a straight run ahead of me and I took full advantage: the Matchless approached seventy and I knew I could coax more out of her.
If I was gonna lose those bastards behind me I'd have to.
2
ST JAMES'S PALACE and Clarence House to my left, the overgrown park and lake on my right Sally and me, we'd fed the swans in that park and laid together on the moist spring grass. But that was another lifetime, a different age, and this was now. Crazy that memories should override all other considerations, even at moments like this, choosing their own time, it seemed to me, with a mercilessness that suggested self-torture. But they were my link with the past, and the past was all I had left.
I avoided the few cars parked along the road, some of them askew, doors wide as if the drivers had skidded to a halt and attempted to flee before the Reaper finished his job. Probably there were bodies -
rotted corpses or loose suits of bones - still inside some of them, but I wasn't looking, I had other things in mind.
The mutt, his sandy-brown coat glistening damp gold in the sunlight, looked over his shoulder as he heard me coming up. He didn't break pace any, but seemed pleased to see me.
'Lose yourself, stupid!' I yelled at him as I drew level. 'Get off the road!'
I swerved into him to give him a fright and he veered away, making for a flight of stone steps leading off the main hike. I watched him go and returned my attention to the road just in time to avoid a Wolseley parked sideways across the Mall's centre. Its passenger window suddenly shattered inwards and the metalwork of its doors punctured as bullets tore into it. The shots were wild, but that didn't mean they couldn't get lucky. I straightened up, keeping the Wolseley at my back, using it as a temporary shield.
Those Blackshirts were acting like good ol' boys from down South out on a nigger hunt, rednecks on a roust, the local sheriff one of 'em. Back home we'd pretended that kind of bigot didn't exist - theirs was another state anyways, a foreign country almost - and when the news informed us otherwise, we'd be pretty damn certain some black buck had raped another white girl so he, along with all his blackass cousins, was getting exactly what he deserved. You might say these days my opinion on such things has changed a little, 'specially now I'd kind of taken the place of that black boy.
Admiralty Arch loomed up, sandbags piled high in front of the doorways and windows of buildings around it, red London buses and other vehicles clearly visible in the square on the other side. I kept the Matchless on a set course, building speed, putting distance between me and the truck behind. The roads through the arches had been narrowed some by barbed wire and guard boxes, but that was no problem for the bike -I was through in the blink of an eye and into the great square beyond.
With its loose jumble of immobile vehicles, Trafalgar Square looked like one of those frozen pictures you used to see sometimes on a movie screen, as if at any moment the action would start right up again and everything would get going, engines rumbling, car horns honking, people jerking into life. Last time Sally had brought me here - she was like an excited kid showing me the sights - the square and the sky above it had been full of grey pigeons; now even they were gone. The dry fountains with their silent sirens under Nelson's Column were surrounded by wooden barricades and where sections were broken or had fallen flat I could see brick shelters inside. I had it in mind to take refuge in one of them, or even hide behind a barricade, but as I dodged between cars, taxicabs and buses, something moving caught my eye.
I'd never quite worked out how many survivors Hubble had recruited into his Fascist army - the Blackshirts had always appeared in small groups before now - but had figured their numbers to be maybe a hundred or so, and today they seemed to be out in force. Right then another vehicle was heading towards me and from its camouflage marking this one also had to be military. I paused long enough to establish it was a Humber heavy utility, a four-door station wagon that could carry at least seven passengers over heavy terrain. Like the Matchless I was riding, it was probably intended for the North Africa Campaign but never made it overseas. The Humber was entering the square from the Strand and as I watched it nudged a black cab aside, then swung round a double-decker bus.
I took off in the opposite direction, weaving through the still traffic and catching a glimpse of the Bedford pushing its way past the barbed-wire barricades of Admiralty Arch as I did so. The Humber and the Bedford had to be in contact with one another by radio, maybe by one of those walkie-talkies, but I was confident I could outrun 'em both, the bike ideal for slipping through blocked roads and over debris. If it hadn't been for gasoline rationing during the war years, the roads would've been a lot more crowded, which would've suited me fine. No matter, I still had the advantage.
A bus poster wanted to know if I'd Macleaned my teeth today, while a board at the base of Nelson's Column said that England expected me to enlist today. I went on my way, steering around a quaint little English taxi that looked like an upright piano on wheels, its headlights masked to narrow crosses, and past a Dodge van with a loudspeaker mounted on its roof, then squeezing by a platform truck carrying huge casks of God-knows-what, all of these vehicles abandoned by their drivers and passengers three years before, Blood Death victims who had not understood what was happening to their bodies, why their arterial veins were suddenly hardening and swelling, becoming rigid beneath their skins, why their hands were darkening, extremities filling, why smaller veins were becoming engorged, bulging then popping beneath the surface, blood beginning to trickle, then stream, from every orifice, their ears, their eyes, their nostrils, their mouth, from their genitals, their anus, from the very pores of their body, not realizing that their main arteries had begun to coagulate, their body's clotting factors all used up by their major organs, the brain, the heart, the kidneys, causing instantaneous haemorrhaging and necrotic bruising elsewhere, their chests and limbs cramping with agonizing pain until their skin split and everything vital stopped functioning, their curiosity, their awe, their fear and panic lasting mere minutes because the Blood Death held no patience and no pity, each of them dying wherever they happened to fall.