His espersense tracked Kendric, who was still patrolling the slough channels. They couldn't go back, and the blast would turn the confined gardens into a death-trap of flying masonry.

"Through there." Greg pointed ahead. The row of houses in front of them were virtually identical to the ones behind, only in slightly better condition. Gabriel moved like an automaton.

Greg kicked at the panel fence, tearing through it like tissue paper. There was a fruit cage on the other side, a box made from galvanised steel poles wrapped in a tattered cobweb of black nylon netting. The sight of it sparked an idea.

He reached up to one of the crossbeams with his right hand and began to tug. The pole was held in place between the uprights by two moulded plastic sockets at each end, both of them fractured and bleached by the decade-long torrent of UV-infested sunlight. One of the sockets crackled at the pressure he applied, then snapped abruptly. Greg yanked the other end of the pole out of its socket with a burst of ebullient strength, tearing the netting as it came free. The pole was three metres long, in good condition; the zinc coating had whitened down the years, but it'd protected the steel from rust.

"What's happening?" Gabriel asked.

"I'm improvising a little present for Toby." There was no longer any vindictiveness at the prospect, nor even malice.

This was an intrinsic fight for survival now, nothing more. His mind had relegated Toby to an obstacle which had to be tackled. Hatred was all the other man's problem.

Greg clamped the pole between his knees and tied on a strip of the ripped nylon mesh. It was a laborious job, he had to use his teeth to grip the end of the strip while his fingers formed the knot. Spears didn't come any more primitive, but the rudimentary tail ought to keep its trajectory stable for a few metres.

They slogged towards a narrow alleyway between the two houses ahead, the disturbingly concave walls had so many bricks missing they looked like two vertical checkerboards. There was an unstable aggregation of brick chunks and sandy earth in the gap, rising half a metre above the algae. Greg had lost his shoes somewhere in the slough channels; his feet were unrecognisable, lumps of gummy tar which ached abominably.

If he stood on anything sharp they'd go completely numb as the pain breached the cortical node's threshold. When they reached the small front garden they were knee-deep in the greasy mire again.

The street they found themselves in was virtually intact. Greg could almost believe he'd walked out into a pre-dawn autumn morning of fifteen years ago. Rusted, windowless hulks of petrol-driven cars were parked along the road. Barren trees stood tall, low brick walls were topped by fanciful wrought-iron railings, the lampposts were still vertical. It was a well-ordered slice of middle-class suburbia. Only the algae-matted water shattered the illusion of normality.