Did you consider anything like the Infected?' Simon had asked.'Not quite. But some of our other contingency plans might help us out with this particular mission.

Every scrape, site, range and page; every game, download, hack, song, movie and virrie on the Web. Everything on your phone. Everything on your 'puta. Even the content directories of your cupboards. Almost every system has been brute-forced; passwords cracked, firewalls breached. Nothing has been left untouched.

The military operation swiftly became one of disaster management and damage control, search and rescue.

On the TV he found cartoons and movies, music videos and game shows, repeat broadcasts and reruns, but there was nothing current, and no news. Many channels were just blank, or displayed brightly coloured test cards.

Yes' Simon nodded. 'This would suggest that these patterns grow inside the batteries until a critical point is reached, when the shapes develop no further, and the phone ceases to function.

She stared at Raven in a long second of shocked silence, before sagging to the floor.

His desire for this to be a joke was quickly replaced by a desire for whiskey.

...while the stony bones of the world tore past and the air grew dark and howling. The last thing he saw as the gulley became a torrent of dust and rock was the Jeep, plucked backwards into space.

Simon shook his head. 'I don't want to be a hero. I'd rather abandon the technology altogether, sit on a hill and speak to my neighbours by smoke-signal.