“How much further?” Anna gasped, struggling to catch her breath.

She’s keeping up and not complaining.

Garrick stopped with his back to her as he scanned the open fields. Raising his binoculars, he switched them to night vision. Dark and quiet. No indication of alien activity. For now, anyway. They’d made it out of Magdon Down but now faced the open countryside in the rapidly approaching night.

He turned to her, his face set. “It’s about another mile to the TSV.”

“In English, please.”

“Tactical Support Vehicle. Giant jeep-thing with grenade launchers, ballistic protection, and a load of other useful stuff.”

“Ah.” She nodded and wiped a stray strand of hair from her eyes, then stood, straightening her back. “Well, as long as it has seats and an engine it’s a winner as far as I’m concerned. Anything else is a bonus.”

Garrick remained silent, reluctant to become involved on a personal level. He would escort her to safety, but that didn’t include conversation or in-flight snacks.

When he’d joined the survivors at the CB with Violet, he’d been willing to take on a new role helping to defend the base and find survivors and supplies in the broken landscape of southern England. But he was a changed man since the invasion. He was confident in his ability as a soldier, but that was where it stopped. He took in the sweeping honey-coloured hair and plump lips that begged to be crushed under his. The safest way to get her back is with my mouth shut.

There was one more field to cross before they hit the outskirts of suburbia. It stretched out in front of them like a huge, blank screen. Everything was silent, all the usual outside sounds absent. He was aware the chemical toxicity from Agent S had killed many of the indigenous animals within London, and that scavengers were pillaging further afield, but still, the silence was unnerving.

They jogged round the edge, hugging the boundary hedging for shelter, then cut through a derelict garden onto the residential streets. Garrick navigated without a wrong turn, feeling instinctively where he was going, quick and efficient on his feet.

Finally, they walked through red wrought-iron gates: a primary school. Here the lack of human life became more poignant. A small group of tricycles huddled under a bike shelter, waiting for children that were never going to come. Garrick wasn’t sure if a future remained for children at all. Once he had thought he wanted kids and had treasured the time he spent with his five-year-old niece. Hattie was gone now, along with her mother, Tom’s wife, dead in the first weeks. More lives he had not been able to protect.

He led Anna through a large brick arch between two of the school buildings into a small quadrangle. Classrooms faced into the square on all sides. Rainbows of handprints were Blu-Tacked to the windows, and books and beanbags piled up against the glass. A porch roof ran the perimeter of the buildings, sheltering the doors and windows from the weather, and on the far side, the dark shape of the TSVs was outlined. Garrick took the long route to the other side of the quad, keeping the porch roof above his head, and glanced up at the deceptive velvet of the night sky.

Anna followed. “Where now?”

“Here,” he answered.

She blinked. “What do you mean here? What’s here? There’s nothing…” she stopped.

“Is that what I think it is?”

He nodded and walked forward, securing his MP5 on his back. He pushed rigid hands across his head in frustration, locking his fingers behind his head so he didn’t punch something.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he swore into the damp night air. He turned and stalked across the quad in the opposite direction, this time in full view of the night sky.

Chittrix had trashed the TSVs. Had they followed the team here?

He stormed back across the square, no longer caring if anyone or anything saw him. He slammed to a halt in front of the incinerated vehicles.

Some metal was still a buff-sand colour, but that was where the resemblance to a functioning vehicle stopped. Both vehicles had been reduced to a twisted mass of blackened metal. One of the man-high tyres on the Coyote was still intact, and there was a vague turret-shape of what had been the weapons mount, but everything else looked like it had been roasted in an oven. The smaller Jackal was barely recognisable.

Anna squatted next to him, her fingers trailing in the gritty earth. She rubbed her eyes, her face weary with exhaustion. The adrenalin overdose from earlier combined with a panicked cross-country run in the dark had clearly drained her.

Her head drooped to her knees and her shoulders sagged with the enormity of their discovery.

“I’m done,” she said.

Garrick moved next to her in a gesture of comfort, reaching down and pulling her to her feet. She rose at his touch, his hand circling her wrist easily. She gave him a small smile but ducked her face as tears shimmered in her eyes. The sight of her trembling with emotion derailed his train of thought.

Her scent filled his brain, spicy and sweet at the same time, apples mixed with cinnamon. Distracting and compelling. An unexpected blaze of heat coursed through his belly and thighs as his breathing hitched, her scent disarming him for several seconds. What would it be like to bury his mouth on that creamy throat and breathe her in?

He stepped away, overwhelmed by the emotion she aroused in him. He couldn’t remember a woman ever having such an immediate effect upon him. Just take her to safety, Garrick. The last thing she needs a head case like you. He waited for self-control to reassert itself.

“Now what?” she asked, sounding strong again. Order restored.

His shutters came back down. “Let’s see what we can salvage from the TSVs. Then we need to find somewhere safe to rest.”