Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

"Mierda!" Kelis said. "Soren – get in here!"

He gritted his teeth at her, more a grimace than a smile, but we all knew what he meant. "Go!" he shouted. "I'll hold them off and disable the other vehicles." He'd already dived behind one. Collapsed really, onto his knees. But he didn't let go of his gun and I knew that he wouldn't until we were clear.

"No way," Kelis said. "No fucking way are we leaving you behind!" Her hand released the key and reached for the door.

I grabbed her wrist, hard, wrenching her round to face me. "He's dead already, Kelis," I told her. "His body just doesn't know it yet."

She wanted to argue with me, but knew I was telling the truth. She looked back at Soren, face twisted in grief. Maybe she hadn't felt about him the way he'd wanted but she'd sure as hell felt something. Her eyes locked with his for a moment. His mouth opened but the only thing that came out was a gush of blood. He wasn't even going to get any parting words.

Kelis twisted the key and slammed her foot down hard. A bullet hit the back of the jeep, then another, but they were too far away to get a bead on us. Then we were gone.

None of us got to see Soren die. But we saw the explosion, the bloom of fire that would've taken out at least ten of Queen M's men along with any vehicles that the rest of them could have followed us in. A grenade, I guessed. He must have been holding it back, waiting for just the right moment. I wished I could find a tear for him, but I'd only known him a few weeks and the truth was he wasn't a very likeable guy. I saved my pity for Kelis. The numb expression on her face and the emptiness in her eyes were all I could see as we headed out of Miami and away.

It should have taken us two days to reach Las Vegas, but nothing ever goes according to plan. All those weeks I'd been wondering what the world looked like after the Cull and now I could see it for myself I was suddenly grateful for all those years I'd spent hidden away from it.

Florida was a breeze, a straight drive along land that was nothing more than a reclaimed sand pit. We saw people, ragged bunches of them guarding their orange groves and their fields. They didn't bother us and we saw no reason to bother them. We just held our guns out, high and obvious over the side of the jeep, and kept on driving.

Orlando was dreamlike in its weirdness, the city a ruin but Disneyworld itself entirely untouched. And there were people there, more than you would have thought. The only word I could seem to find for them was 'pilgrims'. Some of them had trekked by foot all the way down the Eastern Seaboard to get there, because vehicles were hard to come by and petrol harder still. There were whole families of them, starvation-thin parents with their skeletal kids, like the ghosts of the bloated coach potatoes who used to visit before the Cull.

I don't know why they came. When we asked they just looked blank, as if they hadn't thought about it themselves. I guess the place was a powerful symbol of something mundane but important. Of normality itself, I suppose. They sat on the silent rides, frozen in place among half-wrecked animatronic pirates, or waiting in vain for 'It's a Small World' to start playing as the little puppet children danced but they didn't go anywhere.

We hadn't wanted to stop there, but we needed electricity, a strong current, and this seemed like the best place to find it. We walked past the shambling tourists and into the workings of the rides, the machinery that made it all run. As I walked past the animatronic cowboys, bears and twirling teapots I felt obscurely guilty, like a kid who'd sneaked downstairs on Christmas Eve to confirm that yeah, Santa was just mum and dad. It all looked so shabby and second-rate.

It took Ingo five hours, before he finally got one of the generators working, jump-starting it with cables running from the car. Kelis didn't even flinch as he put the spitting cable against her leg. The force knocked her into the frayed, fungal wreck of what had once been a Mickey Mouse costume. She sneezed out spores when she finally came round, but didn't let out a murmur of pain or complaint. There'd be no more tracking by Queen M. All we had to worry about was every other damn thing on this continent.

The Gulf coast never had much in the way of a population and it had even less now. We drove past deserted wind-swept beaches and wooden houses half-blown away by hurricanes that no one could any longer predict. There was oil still out there, under the choppy waves, but no one had the means to find it. Queen M maybe, before she'd met me.

Biloxi had a population. We had a real good scrap there. It was entirely one-sided, small side arms against semi-automatics and Kelis' cool, trained aim. It could only have been desperation that sent them out against us but I didn't have time for pity. Kelis' face was blank and cold as she shot them all dead and I wondered if she was thinking about Soren as she did it. Probably not. She'd been a killer long before he died.

Then we drove onwards, and even a road trip through hell can take on a kind of monotony. The lowlands of Mississippi scrolled past us like the scenery for a video game that had run out of budget. We seemed to have talked ourselves out on the boat because we couldn't find anything to say in all those hours. I drove for a while, then Ingo. The rest leaned over the side, guns drawn, trying to stay tense and ready for action when really we were just bored. You can only live in fear of your life for so long before you lose the energy to keep caring.

We'd talked about skirting around New Orleans, avoiding the trouble that was bound to be living there, but we needed fuel and food, and we were reckless with tiredness by then.

The outskirts of the city were like a third-world slum. It was hard to say if that was the work of the Cull or the aftermath of Katrina, still unhealed after all these years. Vacant-eyed people came out of their hovels to stare at us. We ignored them and drove on past.

After a few miles we were into the older parts of town. We saw more people and, floating over them, the harsh scrape of live bluegrass. Then somehow, without even noticing it, we'd driven into the heart of a carnival. I didn't know what date it was, not exactly, but I knew for sure that this wasn't Mardi Gras.

"Join the party!" a tall black man in a bright red bird mask shouted out as we drove past. Others walked along beside the jeep, like they were following some kind of carnival float. A few tried to climb on board, but we pushed them back and they didn't seem to mind. There was a hallucinogenic quality to the whole thing that might have been a product of sleep deprivation, but I didn't think so.

I don't think that the party ever stopped here. I guess if you're a city surrounded by sugar cane fields then rum is pretty easy to distil, and after the Cull they probably couldn't see much reason for doing anything than drinking it. Everyone we saw there was at that stage of drunkenness where you're a heart-beat away from doing something extreme, but you can't be entirely sure what. Would they fuck, fight, vomit, kill? We didn't stick around to find out, just kept on driving. It was frantic but joyless. No one there was having fun, not even close, but they kept on doggedly going, like partying had become some kind of onerous duty.

Finally we found ourselves in the heart of it all, the old French quarter. Everywhere there was cast iron, brick facades and unlit neon signs for clubs and bars that hadn't been open in years. There were food stalls here, people barbecuing meat that was probably rat, but we took it anyway. We gave them bullets in exchange, one for each chunk of meat. It was red raw on the inside but I didn't care as I tore it away from the bone and swallowed without chewing. For the first time I appreciated what Queen M had done, saving her people from this. A man came up and kissed me as I ate, grabbing my cheeks and driving his tongue deep into my mouth. I pulled away as Kelis slapped him savagely back, but when he was gone he'd taken half the meat with him.