One

They followed the road past places Jane had never visited before, names he knew only because of the Tube map. Colindale, Hendon, Kingsbury, Dollis Hill. Aidan fell asleep in the wheelbarrow. Darkness was racing Jane home. He was tired too. He wondered at the irony of collapsing with exhaustion seconds from his doorstep. He glanced at Becky but she was a wraith, much too thin for the clothes she wore; a belt was cinched tight around her waist. She seemed to be fading into the grey of this north-west street.

Cricklewood. Mapesbury. Brondesbury. Kilburn. He didn't recognise anything. Buses and cabs and cars choked the road. Bodies were folded over each other as if they'd been competing to die first. It was fully dark by the time they reached the borders of St John's Wood and Maida Vale. Here were fall-back shops that he'd sometimes trolled out to if they'd been out of milk or bread and nowhere else had been open. Pubs he'd met friends in. Parks where he had taken Stanley on his scooter. Here came the roads he'd walked every day. The shape of things became known to him. The juxtaposition of trees and fences and street corners. He recognised a car that belonged to a friend and it shocked him so much that he thought he might be sick. Dead friends all over the country. Dead friends so much riddled flesh in the North Sea now.

At last he stopped. He was expecting the smell of dogwood and rosemary. The bark of Major at Number 9. Maybe a top-floor window open and a stereo playing music too loud: Interpol or Elbow or White Stripes. The hum of traffic. Female heels tapping on a pavement.

None of that. No street lamps. Just the grey trench of his street and dozens of dead sprawled up it, like procumbent weeds.

'Come on,' he said. He stopped outside Number 7 and shook Aidan awake. Jane could hardly speak for the pistoning of his breath, the hammer of his heart. 'Come on.'

He led them to the door, which was hanging off its hinges. Stanley used to pummel that door like a maniac whenever he got home. 'Stan?' he called, but it crumbled out of him, barely a whisper. He ushered the others inside, his eyes blurring, his fear mounting, his excitement hollowing him out until he thought he might float up the stairs. 'Stan?'

In the street, a dead thing twitched and sat up.

Part Two

LAZARUS TAXON

15. CITY OF CODE

Jane edged his way out of the alley, casting glances up and down a road that might or might not have once been called White Horse Street. Its sign had been prised off the wall years before. He checked windows and doors, rooftops, shadows. Shops here were long abandoned. Word had percolated through the city that the tiger had been seen in this area recently. He stopped outside a hairdresser's. Dust covered every surface inside. Hairdryers lay on counters like science-fiction weapons. Foxed mirrors reflected a throat of stairs to the rear of the shop that he did not investigate. His white breath measured a pulse rate of fear. Black snow lay in drifts against doorways that had lacked for years the wood meant to fill them. It formed a slush that ran and refroze in the roads, creating strange shining curds of pitch. It fell in soft obliques against the dun of the cloud ceiling: slow black bullets, every one of them hitting their targets. The cold reached fingers under the cuffs of Jane's coat and caressed his skin.

He couldn't keep his eyes off those backstage city shadows. It was like seeing a car crash occur in front of you, or a Skinner uncoil within its epidermal prison for the first time. What if? The question had died in him long ago. Maybe? Just think . . . All of it had withered like a basil leaf scorched by frost. The secret slots and pockets of the city were too dangerous for casual checks these days. Leave it to the flushers. If he crops up, he crops up. Old enough to look after himself now.

Ahead of him lay Shepherd Market, a tiny enclave with neighbouring pubs and an alleyway between them leading to Curzon Street, if memory served correctly. To the left, curving away from him, more restaurants, chichi fashion boutiques, jewellers and chocolatiers. People sitting inside a Polish-Mexican bistro at pretty tables waiting for a meal that would never arrive, time having drawn deep runnels into their superdried faces. Nothing moved. He made his way towards the alley, keeping an eye on the oily windows of the pubs.