Then there was the camera gear. Harry felt ashamed when he got his Nikon out and found the battery dead and that the most recent pictures on the memory card were taken on a Queensbridge trip to Washington, DC over a year earlier.

The deserted city might provide interesting photo opportunities, and Harry hoped that if he got busted and used the excuse that he was out taking photos for Vegas Local he’d get off with nothing more serious than a warning and a ride home in a cop car.

‘Best-a luck, guv’nor,’ Matt said, mocking Harry’s London accent.

Harry pulled a black pack with his camera gear up his arm, then put on a black baseball cap, the darkest pair of blue nitrile gloves he’d been able to find, and a yellow virus mask, over which he’d crudely stitched a rectangle cut out of an old black tank top.

The elevator came fast, because nobody else was using it. Only a couple of emergency lights were on in the lobby, but Harry dipped his face because there was CCTV. He’d not expected to find anyone behind the concierge desk and the revolving doors didn’t budge either. He could get out by pushing the bar on the fire door to the side. But he wouldn’t get back in that way and he decided to iron out that niggle by going downstairs to the basement parking.

There were more parked cars than usual, though since many apartments were second homes it was still barely half full. Harry’s building had installed full-height barriers on the vehicle entrances after zombies baseball-batted and robbed an elderly couple getting out of their car, so he had to grab an electronic remote control out of his Porsche to operate the rattling exit gate.

With his phone off, Harry had to memorise the route and the silence got eerie as he reached the point where he needed to cross the Interstate. Apart from The Strip and a few streets downtown, Vegas wasn’t a walking city. The only way for pedestrians to cross the freeway was a network of run-for-your-life foot crossings over on and off-ramps and a stretch of graffitied footbridge.

Ignoring the yellow pedestrian arrows, Harry scrambled up twenty feet of gravel embankment to the barrier at the edge of the freeway. The I-15 through the centre of Las Vegas had six lanes in each direction, plus extra lanes for cars peeling on and off.