Abruptly, Shearson Jones’s passenger-door was tugged open. Shearson shrieked like a girl, and Peter Kaiser tried to reach across and grab him, but five or six pairs of hands pulled Shearson’s coat and pants, and heaved him bodily out of the wagon.

‘I’m a United States senator!’ screamed Shearson. ‘I’m a United States senator!’

Then he was swallowed up by the mob; and it took all of Peter’s strength to slam the door closed again, and hold it shut against the scratching hands of frantic looters.

Ed, sobbing with fear and exhaustion, jammed his foot down on the gas pedal once more. Slowly, slowly, the wrecked Pinto began to slide out of the way. Then, it toppled, and the Chevy was clear. They surged backwards into the crowds, and drove backwards with their transmission whining in protest all the way to La Brea Avenue, almost a quarter-mile.

Ed stopped the wagon when they reached La Brea, and turned forwards in his seat to look at the supermarket. It was blazing from sidewalk to roof now, with huge tongues of fire licking at the night with a lasciviousness that could only remind him of greed, and pain, and hatred.

He stared at Season. She was wide-eyed, shocked, scarcely able to speak. Sally, in the back seat, was whimpering and shivering.

Then Ed held his hand over his mouth to try and stop the tears. But he couldn’t; they ran freely down his cheeks; and they sparkled in the dickering glare of the burning supermarket as if his eyes were on fire, too.

*

The next morning, when the burned-out shell of the supermarket was abandoned, they went back. Season walked amongst the bodies which lay between the empty shelves while Ed stood silently by the smashed and blood-smeared doors.

‘Vee’s not here,’ she said at last. ‘Nor Carl. I can’t see Mike Bull, either. They must have escaped. I knew this girl, though. Clara, her name was.’

From outside, Ed heard Peter calling, ‘Ed – come here. In the parking lot. And come on your own. Don’t bring Sally.’

Ed walked around the side of the building to the parking-lot. It was strewn with twisted shopping-carts and burned-out automobiles. But Peter was standing in the far corner, where it seemed as if another, smaller, fire had been burning; and where there was an elaborate arrangement of shopping-carts which seemed to have been linked together to form a kind of barbecue.

When he was fifteen feet away, Ed realised what it was, and what had happened. Beside it, in a congealing heap, lay the naked remains of Senator Shearson Jones. Inside it, still half-cooked, were strips of flesh that had been cut from his thighs, his arms, and his belly.

Ed stayed where he was, and didn’t approach any closer. Peter Kaiser looked at him, unblinking, unmoving, as if he was a statue of a time that neither of them could remember.

*