She ventured an uncertain smile. “I’m used to doing things knowing there’s a whole team behind me: that if I fall, there’s someone else there to pick up where I left off.”

He struggled to his feet and looked over the lip of the pit. “You have my pity: I wouldn’t like to rely on me, either.”

She joined him. “It’s getting darker,” she said, looking up at the cloud-shrouded sky. There was no hint of orange in it at all.

“This is going to be a night like no other,” said Petrovitch. “The Jihad must have cut the power completely. When it gets properly dark, it’ll be chaos.”

“Then,” she said, lifting herself up to ground level, “we’d better get moving.”

Petrovitch lifted the steel pipe onto his foot and lofted it in the air so she could catch it. “I have a plan,” he said. “We’ll need that.”

She reached down and wrapped her arm around his back. Their faces were very close. He didn’t know what to do.

“I’m lost,” he said. “I don’t know which way to turn and I have no map to guide me.”

“You think I do? Until this morning, I was a nun.” She adjusted her grip and heaved him up. “It’s like the blind leading the blind.”

The pain in his shoulder flared bright, and he closed his eyes against it. Something warm and soft pressed against his, dry, cracked and dusty lips.

He opened one eye. “Did you just kiss me?”

“Maybe,” she said, and looked away. “What’s the plan?”

“We steal a car.”

“And the Jihad…?”

“Won’t be able to touch us in a pre-Armageddon wreck. In fact, the older the better. Only, I can’t hotwire anything at the moment, so you’ll have to do it. Can you stand being ordered around by me?”

She spun the pipe over her wrist, up her arm, down the other until it slapped into her open palm. “Sam. Yes, for the last time.”

“I still don’t know why.” He started to push through the bushes back toward the street.

32

The only cars left on the road were old: the newer majority had been conscripted by the Jihad. Petrovitch picked an ancient, rusting Skoda, one that had clearly been through several wars already, and one he knew how to take. He nodded to Madeleine, who smashed the passenger window with the steel pipe. Chips of glass exploded across the back seat, and she quickly reached through to open the door.

“It wasn’t locked,” she said.

“Yeah. Beginner’s mistake. Don’t worry about it.” He clawed at the driver’s door and helped it open with his boot. “Pole, through the steering wheel, and twist hard.”

The steering lock snapped and Petrovitch crouched down by the dashboard.

“The plastic bit under the steering column. Get your hand behind it and rip it out.”