All Roads End Here

by David Moody

  Franklin doesn’t answer. Instead, he shoves the van into reverse and sends it juddering back. Into first gear again and he tries to drive around Sahota, but Sahota’s having none of it. The diminutive Hater sidesteps into the way again, oblivious to any physical danger. He’s reading Franklin like a book, anticipating his every move. It’s as if he knows exactly what he will, and won’t, do.

  “I’ll ask you once more,” Sahota yells, his temper showing now, “where are you going with my van?”

  Franklin knows he’s going to have to take Sahota out and he backs up again. But before he’s out of reverse, Sahota draws a pistol from a holster on his hip and fires a single shot with pinpoint accuracy. The windscreen cracks then shatters, and Franklin slumps over the wheel, dead instantly. His leaden feet slip off the pedals and the engine stalls. The silence in the grounds of the convent now is a thousand times louder than the chaos of seconds earlier.

  Joseph’s outside now. He looks from Sahota to Franklin, then back again. “What the hell? What have you done, General?”

  “What I should have done when I first arrived here. Don’t give me any reason to have to do the same to you.”

  Joseph backs away, struggling to compute. Sahota’s face is hard to read. Detached. Cold and clinical. Filled with hate.

  “Where’s the other one?”

  “Who?” Joseph stammers, terrified.

  “Franklin’s friend. Your friend.”

  “Who? Matthew?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t know … I haven’t seen him…”

  “Well he’s the one who opened the gate. Wily little bastard must have made a run for it.”

  “Want me to find him, boss?” one of the nearby guards asks.

  “No point. Not worth the energy. He won’t be a problem.”

  Matt can hear every word of this conversation, because he’s still in the convent grounds. They expected him to run, so he’s done the opposite and has stayed close. He’s crouching out of sight on the other side of the van now, watching Sahota’s feet under the chassis. He waits until he’s sure Sahota and the guard are looking in the opposite direction, then in one swift movement lifts himself up, opens the passenger door, then slides across the seat through the broken glass and shoves Franklin’s corpse out of the driver’s door. The dead man hits the ground like a sack of coal, and before Sahota, Joseph, or any of the soldiers can react, Matt restarts the engine and drives the van through the open gate and out into the camp.

  Disoriented, he goes the wrong way and drives across a patch of boggy parkland, only the debris left by refugees and the speed he’s traveling stopping his wheels from sinking into the mire. He keeps moving forward, sending the few refugees remaining around here scattering in all directions, refusing to slow down until he’s on solid ground again.

  Matt’s sense of direction is all at sea. Thankfully, Jayce’s isn’t. She sprints after the van, homing in on its chaotic noise, gesturing wildly for Matt to stop. When he sees her he brakes and willingly gives up the driver’s seat. In seconds she’s in and they’re gone.

  Matt looks back at the convent, expecting to see CDF soldiers rushing through the open gate after them, but there’s nothing. He sees the gate slide shut again.

  “He doesn’t care,” Jayce says. “You nicked his van, but that’s nothing in the scheme of things. Sahota’s got bigger fish to fry than you. You’re just one Unchanged nobody and he knows you can’t stop him. You’re no Hater. You’re just another face in the crowd, and it won’t be long before that crowd turns in on itself and starts ripping itself apart.”

  40

  The summer heat is suffocating, even as the light begins to fade at the end of the day. The back of the van is packed with people now, all of them under cover except for Matt. Still doing everything he can to keep out of sight, he watches through the grille which separates Jayce in the front from everyone else, his eyes watering in the wind now the windscreen has been shot out. He’s looking for Haters but, just as importantly, he’s also watching the road, committing the route to the hideout to memory. “It’s easiest to navigate by the landmarks that are missing now,” Jayce told him as they left the chapel. “It’s more about what’s not here than what is.” And she’s right. Across the whole swath of No Man’s Land, all taller buildings and any which were in any way distinctive have been pounded into oblivion. There was a business park here full of anonymous-looking redbrick buildings—all gone. A water tower dating back several hundred years—severed at half-height like a tree snapped in a storm. A black shell stands where a well-respected university used to be. A multiplex cinema reduced to a collection of roof-less, burned-out, amphitheater-like screens, open to the elements. It’s devastatingly sad, Matt thinks. All the things that used to matter have been ground down to nothing. All that’s left worth saving now is the people in this van and those still waiting to be picked up from the chapel.

  Jayce throws the van around a sharp corner. Matt overbalances and thumps into the back of her seat. “The roads aren’t what they used to be,” she mumbles.

  The ride’s getting worse. Matt can see enough over her shoulder to realize her last comment was an understatement. “Fuck,” he says, “where is the road?”

  Jayce doesn’t reduce her speed in the slightest. She weaves between two swollen piles of rubble which used to be houses and uses a parallel street to keep moving in the right direction. Matt looks down and sees that they’re skirting perilously close to the edge of an enormous sinkhole.

  “It was a missile strike, early days,” she tells him. “I was close at the time. We were hunting out groups of stragglers.”

  Matt can’t help himself. It’s easy to forget what Jayce is. “What, like the group in this van?”

  “Yes, if you want to be an asshole about it, exactly like the group in this van. Don’t try and send me on a guilt trip because it won’t work. You can’t tell me you haven’t done things you regret.”

  “Too many things…”

  “Exactly. Shut up.”

  But Matt can’t shut up. The higher the stakes, the more he talks. And right now the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.

  “Wait, which way are you going? This is a hell of a long way around.”

  “It’s not just a case of putting the coordinates in your satnav anymore. You’re right, as it happens, and I can think of several faster routes, but they all involve driving right through the middle of outposts. I don’t have a particular problem with that, but I’m guessing you and everyone else will have, as will they.”

  “Point taken,” he says, and he bites his lip again.

  She pulls a folded-up map out of her jacket inner pocket and hands it to him through a gap in the grille. “I’m trying to keep us out of the red-hatched areas. That’s where most of them are waiting.”

  Matt opens up the map and holds it up against the wall of the van. It’s an old Ordnance Survey map of this entire area with the city front and center. It’s hopelessly outdated, but the detail doesn’t matter. Even in the shadows it’s clear that large parts of the area around the refugee camp have been crudely outlined and shaded in to show where a strong Hater presence has been observed. It strikes him there’s more red ink than anything else.

  “We’re using the main arterial out of town as a bearing,” Jayce tells him. “There are gangs blocking the motorways, tightening their chokehold on the city. The back streets are the safest option for now. Our place is just off the M42, a few miles farther on from the airport. We’ll have to drive close to a couple of decent-sized encampments to get there.”

  Matt doesn’t reply. Instead he finds himself watching Jayce with renewed caution. Until now it had been relatively easy to forget she was a Hater, but the reality of their situation is hitting home. He’s completely at her mercy. They all are. She could be taking them anywhere.

  * * *

  There are Haters everywhere—even in the spaces that looked clear on the map. It’s like they’
re being drawn here by a call to arms only they can detect, as if it’s the very smell of the desperate Unchanged masses in the camp which is bringing them to this place; an invisible, instinctive, unstoppable compulsion. They’re circling their prey, waiting with an audacious arrogance for the Unchanged camp to self-destruct. From where he’s sitting, Matt can see glimpses of the outside world reflected in a side-view mirror, and the constant movement he sees is unnerving in the extreme. This precarious journey is like a tightrope walk across the deepest chasm, and the thought of making this same drive twice more tonight feels like an impossible undertaking.

  “Get down,” Jayce shouts, and the borderline panic in her voice is clear. Almost as one the Unchanged refugees in the back of the van flatten themselves down and freeze, covered with blankets, duvets, and sheets, knowing that to give even the slightest indication they’re there might be enough to bring the wrath of an army of Haters bearing down on them.

  Matt buries himself alongside the others, his face pushed hard against the soles of someone else’s boots. It’s pitch black under here. Muted sounds. Hard to know what’s happening. The van slows to a gentle, controlled halt. He’d braced himself for an emergency stop, and he can’t decide if this is reassuring or more concerning? Someone stirs on the ground next to him and he thumps them hard. “Shut up. Not a damn sound. Don’t fucking move!”

  Inside the van now there’s a deathly, fragile quiet. The only noise comes from the idling engine and then the door as Jayce gets out. There’s movement alongside the van. Footsteps. Voices. Matt screws his eyes shut and waits, knowing that anything could be happening out there. There could be a huge mass of Haters gathered around the van, there could be just one. That’s all it would take—if a single Hater gets even the faintest sniff of him and the others, it’ll all be over. There’s no chance of running this time, no hope of escape. And it’s not just him who’s at risk now … it’s everyone in the van here with him, and all those waiting in the chapel, too. And Jen and Jason. The pressure is immense and intense, and there’s not a fucking thing he can do but wait.

  Matt takes an unexpected kick to his face, a boot catching his cheekbone with a painful crack. He bites his lip to stop himself yelling out. The man he’s lying alongside is reacting to the pressure. Is he on the verge of cracking completely? Matt has to do something—not least because he knows that no one else will—and he grabs the man’s belt and drags him closer. The man fights back, kicking out at Matt and writhing furiously, but all that does is make Matt hold him even tighter. He wrestles a hand free and clamps it down over the man’s mouth, hissing in his ear, “Stop fighting or you’ll get us all killed.”

  Outside there are voices now. Several of them, clearly distinguishable. Jayce is talking to at least two others. Matt strains to hear what’s happening, but the panicking survivor he’s holding on to is still making too much noise and Matt can only make out intermittent snatches of the conversation outside.

  “So you bailing out?” a Hater man is saying to Jayce.

  “No.”

  “You’re driving away from the city, though.”

  “I’ve been on a supply run. I’ve heard it’s all starting to kick off in there.”

  “Yeah, we heard the same. Won’t be long before it all comes to a head.”

  The refugee Matt’s got hold of hears this too and reacts badly. He knows as well as Matt just how close to danger they are, but this is new territory for him and he bucks and kicks and shakes himself free from Matt’s grip. He stands up, and though the Haters outside don’t immediately hear him, Matt knows it’s only a matter of time before they do. Exposed and visible now, he clambers over the other Unchanged refugees who are still under cover as he tries to get to the back of the van. Darren—leader-elect of this bunch—starts to move. Matt stops him. “Don’t. I’ll sort it.”

  Outside, Jayce realizes something’s not right. “You got any food you want to trade?” she asks, voice deliberately loud enough to disguise the noises coming from the van.

  “Thought you said you’d been collecting supplies?” one of the Haters says.

  “Yeah … bedding, firewood, and stuff. Didn’t find much in the way of food. I’m starving.”

  “Ain’t got a lot myself,” the man she’s talking to says. “There’s a Tesco about a mile back, though. It’s been pretty well done over but you might find something there.”

  “Show me?”

  Matt knows she’s trying to distract the others, doing what she can to draw them away. He crawls over to the panicking man who’s now trying to get the back door open. “For fuck’s sake, you’re going to get us all killed.”

  “We’re all dead anyway,” the man spits back at him, feeling for the lock.

  Going against Matt’s orders, Darren is uncovered. “Come on, Jake,” he says. Matt spins around.

  “I told you, keep your fucking head down,” he hisses. “Stay out of it.”

  “Jake’s a good man,” Darren says. “Come on, Jake, don’t fuck things up now.”

  But Jake’s not listening to anyone. He finds the latch and clicks the door open slightly, letting in a sliver of fading evening light. He hesitates, but Matt doesn’t. He knows what he has to do and he shoves his fellow refugee out of the van.

  Jake lands on his backside in the dirt, stunned. The door’s only open for a couple of seconds before Matt pulls it shut again, praying no one out there has seen or heard him. He holds the door tight, hanging on to the handle to make sure it can’t be opened from outside.

  The lone refugee picks himself up from the road. It takes him a second to fully realize what’s happened and to appreciate how much danger he’s now in. He staggers away from the van disoriented, stumbling farther into the open, then starts hammering on the metal door to be let back inside. There’s a campfire nearby. A Hater who looks more like a college lecturer than a killer is the first to look up and see him. “Jesus. What the hell’s this?”

  Jayce knows she has no choice but to react. “Unchanged!” she screams, and she throws herself at Jake with all the venom and anger she can muster, tackling him to the ground and dragging him away from the van. She knows she has to throw the others off her scent, so slams him into the dirt again then snatches a shiv from her belt and hammers it into his heart. The blood which pumps and flows over her hands is warm and comforting. She feels no guilt or remorse. No nerves. No right or wrong. Just hate.

  Killing this dumb Unchanged bastard feels good—too good—and it’s all Jayce can do to swallow down the fire now burning in her belly and suppress it like she’s been forced to for weeks on end. For a few long, uncertain, unsteady, and indecisive seconds, the rush is such that she considers throwing the back of the van open and letting the other Haters have their fill.

  But she doesn’t.

  She pushes the stunted blade deeper into the man’s flesh again and twists it, then lets him go. She wipes her hands and staggers back from his corpse.

  “Where the hell did he come from?” a woman asks, looking down at the blood-soaked body with disdain.

  “Little bastard must have been hanging off the back of the van,” Jayce answers quickly. “He’s dead now, though. That’s all that matters.”

  “Couple of days and there won’t be any of them left alive,” the woman says. She looks around, perhaps hoping she’ll see others like the dead man, then gives a disinterested shrug and returns to the campfire.

  Jayce prolongs the illusion, watching the van from the corner of her eye should any of her other passengers decide on making a similarly misguided suicidal bid for freedom. She talks to the other Haters and lets them show her where to find food. She joins in with the talk of killing and of winning the war, of the battles which have been fought and those which are still to come. She feels alone. A traitor to both sides. Stuck in the middle, straddling the divide. Neither one thing nor the other.

  A while longer and she’s done enough to demonstrate her allegiance. The last thing these fighters suspect is tha
t she has another seven Unchanged in the back of her van. She gets back behind the wheel, briefly catching a glimpse of Matt’s pallid face in the rearview. “Least you know you can trust me now,” she tells him.

  Darren glares at Matt. “We can trust you more than we can trust him, Jayce.”

  “I did what I had to do,” Matt replies without hesitation. “Jayce and I both did. I’ll do it again if I have to.”

  “Maybe I’ll throw you out first…”

  “Cut the fucking posturing, Darren,” Jayce yells from the front, slamming her fist against the wheel to silence the argument before it gets out of control. “You listen to me and you listen to Matt if you want to stay alive. He knows how to survive out here, you don’t. You need him a lot more than he needs you.”

  41

  There’s no celebration when they near the hideout, just subdued relief. It’s maybe ten miles from the city, fifteen at most, but it’s taken the best part of an hour and a half to get here, each mile a slow slog. Once Jayce gives the word, the refugees in the back finally risk lifting their heads and looking out into the open; their first glimpse of the fucked-up ruin of a world where they’re destined to spend what’s left of their lives. The low light seems apt for people who are to spend their foreseeable futures underground, getting accustomed to living mole-like.

  “Back down. Stay under cover,” Jayce barks aggressively as she wrenches the steering wheel of the van around, making a sudden change of direction. Then she stops. “Trouble ahead.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Matt asks, knowing he can’t risk looking himself.

  “My kind.”

  “Haters?”

  “Yep.”

  “Many?”

  “Enough. I’ll draw them away. Give it a couple of minutes until it’s clear, then get this lot to safety.”