‘Slow down,’ said Rozalia as we came back down from the motorway. ‘We don’t know if Casey has any other surprises waiting for us.’

‘Sure.’ Even so, it took an effort of will to make myself ease off on the pedal.

A few minutes later we reached the avenue leading towards Retièn, and by then I had little choice but to slow down anyway. The whole length of the road was just as crowded with ruined vehicles and rubble as I remembered.

‘Hey,’ Rozalia said suddenly, her voice tense. She was in the rear, leaning over the side of my seat and pointing ahead. ‘Did anyone see something?’

‘Like what?’ I asked, leaning my head back slightly without taking my eyes off the road. ‘Bee-brains?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. I could hear puzzlement in her voice. ‘I don’t think so. Or at least, it didn’t look like it.’

‘I didn’t see anything,’ said Yuichi from beside me.

Rozalia blew air through her nose. ‘Well, it was moving too fast to be a bee-brain, anyway.’

‘Some kind of animal?’ Oskar ventured.

Rozalia laughed hollowly. ‘See, I would have agreed with you, except there isn’t anything with four legs in a ten-mile radius of any Hive. The bee-brains’d just kill them for food.’

‘Aren’t they infected by the virus?’ I asked.

‘Animals?’ Rozalia shook her head. ‘No, it’s human specific, far as we know.’

‘Then what did you see?’ I asked.

She shook her head irritably. ‘I don’t know. Besides, it’s not like we have any choice except to keep going.’

She was right, of course. My hands grew damp where they grasped the wheel. As I steered, I had been studying not only the way ahead, but also possible avenues of retreat. I could see the part-collapsed building up ahead that had forced Nadia into an unexpected detour, and thereby sealed her fate. I knew I had no choice but to make precisely the same detour, in order to reach our destination, and had to fight down a mounting sense of dread. But when I turned the corner, there were no milling crowds of bee-brains ready to launch themselves at us: only empty, deserted streets and the wreck of the SUV we had been forced to abandon.

Maybe the bee-brains are all late risers, I thought to myself, forcing myself to relax a little to reduce the painful tension in my chest.

And then, incredibly, I heard what sounded like a dog barking.

‘Did anybody else hear that?’ Rozalia demanded, her hand nearly crushing my shoulder. ‘Did you?’

‘I think we all heard it,’ Yuichi said drily. ‘Guess something’s managed to stay alive around here after all, despite the bee-brains.’