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"Wait a minute," the Cracker protested. "What what what what what?"

"Never you mind," the Moll said. "I’m the getaway driver, remember?" She turned back to the phone. "We just have to get out past the zombies swamping the mall," she said. "Any suggestions?"

"You’ve got booze, right? Pour it on them and set it on fire." With a snort the Billain ended the call.

"Philistine!" the Moll said, casting an anguished eye on the rows of bottles filled with the precious fluid. "It’s bad enough that we’ve got to leave it behind, and he wants us to –"

"What else can you do with it anyway?" the Cracker said. He picked up a bottle and looked at the label. "Seventy proof. Should burn well, don’t you think?"

"Damn it," the Moll muttered, and grabbed hold of as many bottles as she could manage to hold in her small hands. "Let’s get down to the car."

They walked out of the bar. There were only a few zombies as yet on this level of the mall, and they were far away, right on the other side of the huge building. None of them looked across as the intrepid duo made their way to the lift. "Moll?" the Cracker asked. "What do we do if there’s a zombie inside the lift?"

The Gangster’s Moll hefted a bottle of rum and sighed with regret. "We bash it over the head with this, I suppose. What a waste of booze." The lift sighed to a stop and the door slid open, so she raised the bottle high, and then lowered it again. No zombie. "Right," she said. "Down we go."

So down they went. There were groans and moans at several levels, but they got to the basement parking lot with no greater scare than something tapping on the outer lift door as they passed the ground floor. Then the door slid open and...

"Gasp!" the Gangster’s Moll gasped.

"Gasp," the Cracker agreed.

The basement parking lot, which should have been crawling with zombies, was almost empty. Except for a few wandering around among the parked vehicles, there were none to be seen. One saw them, started in their direction, bumped into a vehicle, and staggered off in another direction again.

"Why aren’t they all over this place?" the Gangster’s Moll asked petulantly. Her blood was up, and she was itching to bash someone over the head with a bottle, just to work off her frustrations. "What are they all upstairs for?"

"Probably nothing to eat down here," the Cracker diagnosed. "It’s all cars, after all." He followed the Moll to her car, which was parked several rows away. The zombie which had tried to walk towards them saw them again, began walking towards them, bumped into another car and staggered away once more. "Hey, Moll?"

"Yeah?" The Gangster’s Moll reached for her car keys and dropped several bottles, which didn’t improve her temper any. "What do you want?"

"Nothing," the Cracker said. "Forget it." He got into the seat beside the Moll, whose car was big and intimidating enough to scare people out of the way under normal circumstances – at least when taken in conjunction with how she drove. But these weren’t normal circumstances. "Moll," he tried again, as she steered for the exit ramp, "what do we do if they’re jamming the exit?" His eyes widened. "Forget it," he added. "Stupid question."

"Gangway," the Moll yelled, and stamped her foot hard on the accelerator. The zombies wandering around the exit weren’t even fortunate enough to find time to get out of the way. There was thudding and thumping on the bodywork, and a crack magically appeared in the windscreen in front of the Cracker’s face. And then they were through, and the street lay before them.

And the street was blocked. Abandoned cars lay here and there, with zombies wandering among them, occasionally raising their arms and moaning something that almost made sense.

"Moll," Cracker asked, quite reasonably, "what do we do now?"

"Hold on to your seat," the Gangster’s Moll snapped. "I’ll show you why I get to be the getaway driver, and not you." The Cracker never quite found out what she did next, because he had his eyes screwed up as tightly shut as he could, but the next thing he knew they were roaring down the pavement, bowling over abandoned hawkers’ stalls like fruit carts in a Hollywood action movie. The only thing they needed was a police car chasing them.

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