‘I don’t think anything’s following us,’ Nadia finally said, ‘but it’s going to be dark in a couple of hours.’ She pushed her hair back from her face and looked at me. ‘The bee-brains don’t hang around after dark.’

‘So we’re safe.’

‘Nope.’ She shook her head. ‘Once it’s dark, we have to deal with the night patrol.’

‘The what?’ I said. Winifred had used the term earlier, but hadn’t explained it.

Nadia shook her head, panting. ‘All you need to know,’ she said, ‘is that however bad you think the bee-brains are, the night patrol is worse. Pray we don’t run into one.’

‘What now?’ asked Oskar, finally sitting up.

‘What else can we do but walk?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘The farther we get from the Hive, the better chance we have of surviving after dark.’

Oskar nodded up at the darkening sky. ‘I’ve been keeping my eyes out for the recon drones,’ he said. ‘They should be looking for us, but I haven’t seen a damn thing since before we ran into trouble.’

‘Well, I guess it’s stating the obvious to say something’s gone very badly wrong,’ said Nadia. ‘C’mon,’ she said, taking a weary step forwards. ‘We walk, or we die.’

We were headed towards a second bridge beyond the one that had been our original destination, spanning the river some way off in the distance. ‘That’s one too many fuck-ups,’ said Oskar. ‘I’ve had it with this shit. No more fucking missions until they guarantee our safety.’

‘I don’t suppose you managed to keep hold of the flare gun?’ asked Nadia.

‘No,’ said Oskar miserably. ‘It fell under the vehicle when we crashed.’

We made steady progress over the next two hours, without further encounters. The Hive began to recede into the distance until I began to believe we had some chance of making it back across the city alive. Nadia called another halt just as the sun dipped closer to the horizon, the undersides of the clouds streaked with red.

Oskar shook his head. ‘We can’t afford to stop. We’re too vulnerable as it is.’

‘If we don’t rest up, even just for a couple of minutes,’ Nadia pointed out, ‘we’ll be too exhausted if we run into any more trouble.’ She reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a plastic bottle half-full of water, taking a sip from it before passing it to me. ‘Easy with that,’ she said. ‘The rest is back in the SUV.’

The water tasted like sunlight as it flowed down my throat, and I had to fight the urge to drink it all down at once. I was ravenously hungry. I reluctantly passed the remaining water over to Oskar, and I watched him give most of his share to Lucky.