Redevelopment

Katherine hauled at the heavy controls. The hydraulics, older than her and almost as well traveled, creaked like a rack then groaned like the sinner upon it but, eventually, responded however grudgingly. She was doing the work of four men but that, at least, she was used to. She sat back, sweating in a shirt two sizes too big. Though the tank was ridiculously heavy, pathetically underarmed and dangerously ill armoured, the driver’s seat remained surprisingly comfy. Sometimes she wondered if Rolls Royce wouldn't have been better advised to go into the luxury cars market.

She halted the lumbering leviathan and risked a peak through the turret. A line of abandoned cars had been trashed and smoke still curled from a few shattered windows but all in all the gentrification was proceeding apace. A movement caught her eye for a moment, her trigger finger tensed then relaxed as, pleased as punch, a crow hopped with its prize into the sturdy lower branches of a bizarrely intact tree. The sun flashed on the wedding ring on the mangled, severed hand. Katherine slipped back down and kicked the engine into gear. Clouds of black diesel belched out the back and she trundled on down Downing Street. In her experience the future was routinely underrated.