More of the creatures appeared, stumbling to a halt before raising their chins apparently to sniff at the air. ‘Why are they acting like that?’ I asked. ‘Is it because they can smell us? Is that what it is?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is, they follow scent paths laid down by patrol leaders,’ said Oskar, without bothering to explain what a ‘patrol leader’ was. ‘Those are the ones you really have to avoid.’

‘I don’t know why they’re looking this way,’ said Nadia, ‘unless . . .’

She looked up, her eyes wide, and never finished her sentence. She slammed her foot down, reversing the SUV hard enough that its rear fishtailed wildly.

Oskar gasped and swore behind us, while Lucky let out a low, grumbling whine from somewhere deep inside her throat.

‘Fuck this,’ said Nadia, her voice high and tight and sharp. ‘Check your guns. Both of you.’

‘Are you expecting trouble?’ I asked as calmly as I could.

‘Something really, really doesn’t feel right,’ she muttered under her breath.

She hit the brake, spinning the wheel at the same time so that the car was spun through ninety degrees. Suddenly we were facing back the way we had come. I twisted around in my seat to look through the rear window behind Lucky, and saw some of the bee-brains take a few faltering steps after us. After a moment they began to run, their skinny, scarred legs pumping with furious motion.

‘I fucking told you something was wrong,’ Oskar yelled from behind me.

The SUVs tyres screeched as we emerged back onto the main avenue. I felt a deep shiver of shock at the sight of hundreds of bee-brains that had appeared from nowhere in just the last few minutes. It looked as if the conga line I had sighted earlier had moved to cut straight across our route back to the stage. Most carried or dragged pieces of junk, just like the bee-brains encountered moments before.

Nadia was forced to slow down to avoid a pile of twisted wreckage scattered across the road. Hundreds of bee-brains turned to watch us. I saw again how bruised and battered they all looked, how wrinkled and scarred.

They dropped what they were carrying, and started to walk, and then to run, straight at us.

‘Fuck,’ said Oskar in a high voice.

Nadia hit the accelerator once we were past the obstruction, aiming straight at a cluster of the creatures directly before us. I yelled and put a hand up before my face as we ploughed straight into them, the vehicle bumping and bouncing over their bodies. Hands reached out, sliding against the glass of the window nearest me, and I took a tight grip on my rifle. The thing that made it worse was that the creatures were entirely silent, like something out of a particularly unpleasant nightmare. Their mouths opened and closed, but no sound emerged.