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HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2014
Copyright © Richard Kadrey 2014
Cover Illustration © Crushed Creative (www.crushed.co.uk)
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Richard Kadrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007446087
Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007446094
Version: 2017-11-14
This book was finished on William S. Burroughs’s one-hundredth birthday. This one is for you, Bill.
They stood on the far shore of a river and called to him. Tattered gods slouching in their rags across the waste.
—CORMAC MCCARTHY, THE ROAD
“I’m very brave generally,” he went on in a low voice: “only to-day I happen to have a headache.”
—LEWIS CARROLL, THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Richard Kadrey
About the Publisher
YOU’D THINK THE end of the world would be exciting, but this apocalypse is about as much fun as dental surgery.
Take the current situation. Sitting at a dead stop in traffic, as lively as a stone angel over a tomb. Not one car has moved in ten minutes. It’s bumper to bumper on Sunset Boulevard, which is nothing new, but this kind of traffic is 24/7 these days, as it seems like half the city is hightailing it out of Dodge all at once. And the rain. It’s been coming down nonstop for two weeks. It’s like L.A. lost a bet with God and the old bastard is pissing his Happy Hour whiskey all over the city. Which, when you get down to it, isn’t far from the truth. This isn’t how I figured I’d ring in the apocalypse.
“Any time now, Jeff Gordon,” says Candy from the passenger seat. “I thought this was supposed to be a car chase.”
“By current L.A. standards, this is a car chase.”
“Current L.A. seriously blows. And I think my boots are starting to grow gills.”
We’re in an Escalade I stole in Westwood. I