‘You gonna pay for this morning, wasteman.’ It was Kenton, looming out of the melee with a grin on his ugly, tattooed face, casually swinging his club in the air. Was it Kenton who’d hit him? He picked up the axe Kyle had dropped so that he was now holding two weapons, one in each hand.

‘And you gonna pay for the other day an’ all.’ Josa had come up behind Kyle. ‘That car was ours.’

‘Well, I ain’t got my wallet on me,’ said Kyle, manoeuvring for space. ‘So I can’t pay you right now. How about I just kick your arses?’

‘How about you try?’ said Josa and she lifted her sword. It glinted in the afternoon sun. It was two against one and Kyle was unarmed.

The sensible thing to do would be to run. You can’t argue with a blade. Stab wounds were bad. Hell – any wound was bad. He didn’t want to end up bleeding to death in some stinky bed like Macca, as his poo leaked out of his punctured guts.

Trouble was, Kyle wasn’t a bolter. He had too much bloody pride. To run now would be a loss of nerve, a loss of face. Fighting was his thing. The only thing he was good at. The thing that made him who he was.

An idiot, sure. But a fighter too.

Well, if it meant dying with his boots on.

Bring it on …

Kenton certainly looked impressive with his two weapons. Like some ninja, kung fu warrior, or a badass World of Warcraft dude. But Kyle remembered him at Slough, twirling that damned shotgun. How easily Lewis had taken it off him. And two weapons at once were hard to control, especially when one was as heavy and hard to control as Brain-biter. Kenton wasn’t the worry, though. Josa was.

Kyle badly needed something to defend himself with, give him an edge. What could he do? His arm still hurt like hell. He doubted he’d be able to use a weapon even if he could get hold of one. There wasn’t time for that anyway. If he switched his attention to look for something, Josa and Kenton would be on him like dogs on a bone.

A thought came to him. All sorts of things can be weapons.

He moved.