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behind them for whatever it was that seemed to be stalking them.
    Now that they were moving slower, George’s brain had room for more than just terror and the hard job of breathing despite the stitch in his side. Thoughts tumbled into his head, hopping in on top of each other before he could really focus on them, like watching TV while someone else held the remote and speed-hopped the channels. He thought of Killingbeck. He thought of home, the empty house where his mother would not be there to miss him yet. He wondered if and when she’d notice. He flashed a horrible image of the pterodactyl crawling toward him over the stationary traffic. He thought of his mobile phone, stuck in his backpack, unclaimed in the dark recesses of the museum cloakroom. He saw the stone salamanders writhing into a strike in front of him, ready to kill.
    And then he was sick.
    As the Gunner tried to pull him on, he kept his hand on a thin plane tree and bent over and was sick. Twice. Then his stomach tried for a hat trick, but there was nothing left but a hot prickling sensation all over the back of his neck, and a tremor that calmed as the Gunner put a big hand on his shoulder.
    “All right now?” he asked.
    George shook his head.
    “You done well there. Didn’t get any on your shoes or anything. Hold on.”
    He suddenly hoisted George into his arms and stepped over a low wall on the edge of the park. George opened his mouth, but then the lurching sensation of falling into a deep space took the words out of him unsaid. There was a jolting instant of rushing vertigo before the Gunner’s boots crashed to the concrete. George looked around to see that they had jumped over the wall into a fifteen-foot drop, that ended on the ramp, into an underground parking garage. The Gunner set him on his feet and walked him very quietly down the ramp into the subterranean space.
    The parking garage was empty of people and full of cars. Somewhere in the distance came the lonely sound of a tire shrieking in protest, but right now the Gunner and George were the only figures among the bonnets and windshields stretched out below the fluorescent lights. The Gunner walked between two cars, found a shadow behind a concrete pillar, and hunkered down again.
    George looked at him. “What are we doing?”
    “Waiting.”
    “What are we waiting for?”
    “For it to go away.”
    “What is it?”
    “Dunno. Want to go back up there and have a look-see?
    George didn’t.
    “Besides, you’re run out. That’s why you just chucked it all up. There’s a point of exhaustion, and you just ran through it. S’ like horses. You just need to lie up for a bit. … I was good with horses.”
    George noticed that the Gunner had a bridle chain tucked into his belt, under the cape. The Gunner noticed him looking.
    “Horse Artillery. We pulled the guns through the mud and tried not to kill the old nags doing it. Lose a horse, lose the guns. Lose the guns, lose the battle. Lose enough battles, and well—”
    He seemed to catch himself. George thought it looked like he was pulling himself back into the here and now from somewhere a long way off.
    “Anyhow. This ain’t about that. Get your breath.”
    The Gunner retrieved his part-smoked butt and fired it up.
    George looked at him, then at the fire sprinklers in the ceiling. The Gunner’s eyes stayed on George’s through the smoke curling roofward from the cigarette.
    “What?”
    “I don’t think …” began George.
    “Yeah?”
    “I don’t think you can smoke in here.”
    The Gunner’s eyes held steady, but something rippled under his dark bronze skin, something near his mouth. Despite himself, George felt an answering twitch on his face. The last thing in the world he felt like doing was smiling, but as the Gunner’s face cracked, he felt his face going with it. And like the small crack that signals the dam is going to burst, as the Gunner began to laugh, so did he.
    “Can’t smoke? Can’t smoke!”
    The Gunner