The car changed direction suddenly. It was now heading for the village of Tadfield, in Oxfordshire. He could be there in an hour if he hurried.

Anyway, there wasn't really anywhere else to go.

The cassette finished, activating the car radio.

". . . Gardeners' Question Time coming to you from Tadfield Gar­dening Club. We were last here in 1953, a very nice summer, and as the team will remember it's a rich Oxfordshire loam in the East of the parish, rising to chalk in the West; the kind of place of say, don't matter what you plant here, it'll come up beautiful Isn't that right, Fred?"

"Yep, "

said Professor Fred Windbright, Royal Botanical Gardens, "Couldn't of put it better meself "

"Right‑First question for the team, and this comes from Mr. R. P. Tyler, chairman of the local Residents Association, I do believe."

"Ahem. That's right. Well, I'm a keen rose grower, but my prize­winning Molly McGuire lost a couple of blossoms yesterday in a rain of what were apparently fish. What does the team recommend for this other than place netting over the garden? 1 mean, I've written to the council . . ."

"Not a common problem, I'd say. Harry?"

"Mr. Tyler, let me ask you a question‑were these fresh fish, or preserved?"

"Fresh, 1 believe."

"Well, you've got no problems, my friend. 1 hear you've also been having rains of blood in these parts‑and 1 wish we had these up in the Dales, where my garden is. Save me a fortune in fertilizers. Now, what you do is, you dig them in to your . . ." CROWLEY?

Crowley said nothing.

CROWLEY THE WAR HAS BEGUN, CROWLEY WE NOTE WITH INTEREST THAT YOU AVOIDED THE FORCES WE EMPOW­ERED TO COLLECT YOU.

"Mm," Crowley agreed.

CROWLEY . . . WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. BUT EVEN IF WE LOSE, AT LEAST AS FAR AS YOU ARE CONCERNED, IT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. FOR AS LONG AS THERE IS ONE DEMON LEFT IN HELL, CROWLEY, YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD BEEN CREATED MORTAL.

Crowley was silent.

MORTALS CAN HOPE FOR DEATH, OR FOR REDEMPTION. YOU CAN HOPE FOR NOTHING.

ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL.

"Yeah?"

JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE.

"Ngk," said Crowley.

". . . now as keen gardeners know, it goes without sayin' that he's a cunnin' little devil, your Tibetan. Tunnelin' straight through your begonias like it was nobody's business. A cup of tea'll shift him, with rancid yak butter for preference you should be able to get some at any good Bard . . ."

Wheee. Whizz. Pop. Static drowned out the rest of the program.

Crowley turned off the radio and bit his lower lip. Beneath the ash and soot that flaked his face, he looked very tired, and very pale, and very scared.

And, suddenly, very angry. It was the way they talked to you. As if you were a houseplant who had started shedding leaves on the carpet.

And then he turned a corner, which was meant to take him onto the slip road to the M25, from which he'd swing off onto the M40 up to Oxfordshire.

But something had happened to the M25. Something that hurt your eyes, if you looked directly at it.

From what had been the M25 London Orbital Motorway came a low chanting, a noise formed of many strands: car horns, and engines, and sirens, and the bleep of cellular telephones, and the screaming of small children trapped by back‑seat seat‑belts for ever. "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds," came the chanting, over and over again, in the secret tongue of the Black priesthood of ancient Mu.

The dreaded sigil Odegra,

thought Crowley, as he swung the car around, heading for the North Circular. I did that‑that's my fault. It could have been just another motorway. A good job, I'll grant you, but was it really worthwhile? It's all out of control. Heaven and Hell aren't running things any more, it's like the whole planet is a Third World country that's finally got the Bomb . . .

Then he began to smile. He snapped his fingers. A pair of dark glasses materialized out of his eyes. The ash vanished from his suit and his skin.

What the hell. If you had to go, why not go with style?

Whistling softly, he drove.

* * * * *

T

hey came down the outside lane of the motor­way like destroying angels, which was fair enough.

They weren't going that fast, all things considered. The four of them were holding a steady 105 mph, as if they were confident that the show could not start before they got there. It couldn't. They had all the time in the world, such as it was.

Just behind them came four other riders: Big Ted, Greaser, Pigbog, and Skuzz.

They were elated. They were real Hell's Angels now, and they rode the silence.

Around them, they knew, was the roar of the thunderstorm, the thunder of traffic, the whipping of the wind and the rain. But in the wake of the Horsemen there was silence, pure and dead. Almost pure, anyway. Certainly dead.

It was broken by Pigbog, shouting to Big Ted.

"What you going to be, then?" he asked, hoarsely.

"What?"

"I said, what you‑"

"I heard what you said. It's not what you said. Everyone heard what you said. What did you mean, tha's what I wanter know?"

Pigbog wished he'd paid more attention to the Book of Revelation.

If he'd known he was going to be in it, he'd have read it more carefully. "What I mean is, they're the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right?"

"Bikers," said Greaser.

"Right. Four Bikers of the Apocalypse. War, Famine, Death, and­, and the other one. P'lution."

"Yeah? So?"

"So they said it was all right if we came with them, right?"

"So?"

"So we're the other Four Horse‑, um, Bikers of the Apocalypse. So which ones are we?"

There was a pause. The lights of passing cars shot past them in the opposite lane, lightning after‑imaged the clouds, and the silence was close to absolute.

"Can I be War as well?" asked Big Ted.

"Course you can't be War. How can you be War? She's War. You've got to be something else."

Big Ted screwed up his face with the effort of thought. "G.B.H.," he said, eventually. "I'm Grievous Bodily Harm. That's me. There. Wott're you going to be?"

"Can I be Rubbish?" asked Skuzz. "Or Embarrassing Personal Problems?"

"Can't be Rubbish," said Grievous Bodily Harm. "He's got that one sewn up, Pollution. You can be the other, though."

They rode on in the silence and the dark, the rear red lights of the Four a few hundred yards in front of them.

Grievous Bodily Harm, Embarrassing Personal Problems, Pigbog and Greaser.

"I wonter be Cruelty to Animals," said Greaser. Pigbog wondered if he was for or against it. Not that it really mattered.

And then it was Pigbog's turn.

"I, uh . . . I think I'll be them answer phones. They're pretty bad," he said.

"You can't be ansaphones. What kind of a Biker of the Repocalypse is ansaphones? That's stupid, that is."