Sally sat up. She was pale, alarmed, with dark circles under her eyes. Vee stopped singing now, and looked across at Season with an expression that conveyed all the fright that a sister and a woman could feel. The noise of screeching people and shaking doors was so loud that when Vee said something. Season could only see her lips move, and indistinctly hear the word ‘… please.’

Mike Bull came across, walking with unusual speed and economy. He leaned over Season and said as quietly as he could, ‘I thought we could starve them away. But it doesn’t look like we’ve succeeded. We can’t hold them off for a whole lot longer.’

Season gave a wobbly smile. ‘You’ve done your best,’ she told him.

Vee said, ‘What are we going to do now? You saw what they did to Granger.’

Mike cleared his throat, looking from Vee to Season and then to Carl. ‘You’ve got that .38 of yours, don’t you, Carl? With one shell?’

Carl nodded, His face was lined, and as white as typing paper.

‘Well, then,’ said Mike, ‘I suggest you use it on…’ and he inclined his head towards Sally. ‘Back of the head, she won’t even know.’

Season felt as if it were totally impossible to breathe. The noise outside the supermarket was hideous, and yet inside her head was nothing but silence and coldness and disbelief. Back of the head, she won’t even know. Where that fine blonde hair is parted into plaits, where I’ve caressed her so often as she dreamed herself to sleep. And she won’t even see her father again.

Mike could sense what Season was thinking. But he muttered, ‘It’s the kindest way, you know. That mob’s out of their skulls. It’s going to be rape, torture, you name it.’ Carl cleared his throat, strangely formal. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘thanks for the hamburger helper, if nothing else.’

Mike tried to smile, but he couldn’t. All he could say was, ‘Good luck, people. I mean it,’ before he went off to warn the others.

Sally said, with as much childish dignity as she could, ‘Mommy? Mommy, I’m frightened.’

Season reached out and touched her cheek. ‘Yes, baby,’ she said. ‘We all are.’

*

They had seen the fires and the crowds from ten blocks away. Ed had ordered the convoy to draw up on the wide triangular piece of rough ground by La Brea Avenue, and now they were sitting in their wagons while gunfire popped and echoed through the night, and people rushed and ran and stumbled past them on their way to Highland. The word must have gotten around that the Hughes supermarket was on the brink of collapse, and that there was going to be plenty of food to be looted.

‘Do you think we’re too late?’ asked Karen, from the back. ‘My God, just look at them. They’re like crazy people.’