‘If I pay now, you’ll be back for more,’ Vern said, ‘but the girls look dehydrated. I’d be happy to fetch some bottled water.’

A zombie girl shouted cockily from the pick-up’s passenger seat. ‘There’s only two of ’em, Tony. Just kill ’em and get on with it.’

The superhero made an animal grunt and shook his fist at the girl. ‘It’s two-inch-thick steel,’ he shouted, rattling the gate. ‘Shut your hole.’

Suddenly a shot cracked. Harry flinched as the boulder splintered, less than three feet from the superhero’s head. As he looked back, another bullet whizzed overhead, obliterating the door mirror of the lead truck.

‘That’s two warning shots,’ Rosie yelled from her top-floor window. ‘You got thirty seconds to clear out, or the next one cleaves your skull.’

The superhero shielded his eyes, looking into the glare to see where the shots had come from. He had greater numbers, but his vehicles were trapped behind a gate that hadn’t figured in his plans, and Rosie’s sniper position meant they’d take heavy casualties if they tried crossing the open ground between the boulders and the houses on foot.

‘Back on the trucks,’ the superhero growled to his crew. Then he fired a monstrous wodge of spit into the dirt between his boots and pointed at Harry.

‘This isn’t over,’ he warned.

‘We’ll be waiting,’ Harry said, shuddering as he looked the superhero in the eye.

61 WHIPPED CREAM

Charlie came out of the quarantine box inside her coffee shop, this time carrying a plastic bag full of little carbon dioxide cylinders.

‘Ta-da!’ she told Gwen cheerfully.

The barista was nearing the end of a ten-hour shift and disappointed Charlie with a tired, ‘Where’d you get ’em?’

‘There’s a shuttered coffee shop over on Sands. I’ll be reopening it in a couple of months, but I remembered seeing a box of CO2 cartridges when I met with the construction manager who’s gonna fix it up.’

‘Another store,’ Gwen said, managing a slight smile. ‘You’ll be running Starbucks outta town before you know it.’

Charlie ran up to the office and put a million dollars out of her $1.2 million modding fee in the safe. She split the rest, pocketing a hundred thousand for expenses back at the house, and the remainder into a cash register tray containing the shop’s morning takings.

After a phone consultation with a potential modding client over her encrypted phone, Charlie headed down to the shop. She was in a decent mood and her plan was to catch a city bus back to where she’d parked the Porsche, then drive home and help Harry make dinner.