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reward. i love you mummy.
’ But the baby comes with me anyway, to humour me. I’ve a feeling it
would go anywhere I asked it to go.
    A railway line crosses the river here. There are footbridges attached to both sides. I limp across to the one that faces Westminster. Steps lead up to the bridge, but there’s also a
lift. I say a little prayer that it’s working and, what do you know, the gods are smiling on me for once.
    ‘Going up,’ I laugh as we ascend.
    Holy Moly looks the teeniest bit scared. I don’t think the baby has been in a lift before. I tickle the little one’s belly to distract it and it laughs with utter delight.
    The lift stops and we shuffle out. I pick up Holy Moly and stagger to the rails, to point towards the Houses of Parliament, then across the river to the gleaming London Eye, County Hall lying
just behind it.
    ‘There,’ I tell Holy Moly. ‘That’s where Mummy and her friends live. Isn’t it the most wonderful place you’ve ever . . .’
    My words tail off. It’s a sunny day in London. The rays pick out the Eye and the building to its rear. The pair of landmarks shine majestically, as if the daylight was created to highlight
their glory.
    But, with the help of my contact lenses, I can see other things just as clearly — mutants, zombies and scores of babies, each of the infants an exact replica of Holy Moly, only without a
hole in its head.
    Mr Dowling’s troops, gathered in their grisly might, have formed a ring around County Hall and are in the process of overrunning the complex. As I watch with stunned horror, they dash in and out of the entrances, smashing windows, killing anyone they find.
    The clown and his lethal posse have launched an attack on County Hall, the home of Dr Oystein and his Angels. And, by the look of things, the battle has already been decided. The good guys have
lost. The bad guys have won.
    I think of the vial inside my stomach. I stare at the sickening scenes across the river. I lower my head and make a weak keening noise, not cursing this twist of fate, not mourning those
I’ve probably lost, just thinking numbly — who the hell can I turn to now?

SEVEN
    Several corpses have been heaped in the middle of Jubilee Gardens, a small park between the bridge and County Hall. Furniture has been stacked nearby, and many mutants are adding to the pile,
racing in and out of the building with tables, chairs and bedding, which they deposit on the growing mound.
    As other mutants soak the pyre with petrol, one lights a torch, then steps forward and shouts a warning. The rest of them scatter and the torch is hurled on to the primed furniture. A
bonfire explodes into life. The mutants cheer and applaud.
    Then they start tossing the bodies of my slain comrades on to the flames.
    ‘
toasty
,’ Holy Moly murmurs approvingly, but I don’t react, reminding myself that the baby’s been brought up to see nothing amiss in atrocities like this.
    Despite my improved vision, I can’t see from here if the Angels being fed to the fire were some of my room-mates, Shane, Ashtat, Carl, or others I felt close to. And I don’t want to
know. Better the corpses remain faceless. That way I don’t have to mourn them.
    I spot an Angel climbing on to the roof in an attempt to get away. It looks like a girl but I can’t be sure. She stumbles off in the direction of St Thomas’s Hospital but
doesn’t get far. Babies follow and launch themselves in a deadly swarm at the helpless revitalised, dragging her down and ripping into her.
    I spy another Angel, a boy, in a pod on the London Eye. He must have been on watch when the attack commenced, so it can’t have been more than half an hour ago, which is roughly the time it
takes for a pod to complete a revolution.
    The Angel is gazing down on a group of mutants. They’re packing all sorts of weapons and howling gleefully, waving at the trapped boy, making crude gestures. Some begin
to climb up to the pod, impatient, eager to