Them or Us h-3

by David Moody

  “Wait,” I interrupt, “he disappeared?”

  “It was like someone flicked a switch, Danny. One minute he’s sitting in his office, giving out his orders, the next he’s loading up a car, clearing out the supplies, getting his people together, and getting the hell out of there. They killed the rest of us before they left, but I was one step ahead of the game. Locked myself in your old room, as it happens. Hid under the bed and waited there until I was sure they’d all gone.”

  “But the bomb … how did you get away?”

  “A combination of good luck and common sense,” he answers. “The area around the convent was empty, not a single person left there but me. Then, next day, crack of dawn, everything goes crazy. I hear fighting, then there’s this unbelievable noise and the army starts racing away from the middle of town. Didn’t take a genius to work out that the shit was about to hit the fan big-time. Sahota’s people had left a couple of cars behind. I had one of them ready, and I joined the convoy out of the city. I saw the explosion in the distance, but I was far enough away by then. I dug in with the military until they were attacked. Me and a couple of others managed to get away, and that was when we ran into Peter here and his people. ’Cause he’s like you he was able to keep up all the bullshit and pretense and keep us hidden. Now here we are, several months and several stops farther down the line. And here you are, too. Jesus Christ, Danny McCoyne, it’s good to see you! I can’t believe it’s you!”

  I can’t believe it’s him, either. I try again to make sense of everything I’ve heard today, to unweave the stories Mallon and Sutton have told me and try to find a logical explanation as to why I’m in a bunker buried under a farm with a bunch of foul Unchanged, but I can’t. It’s as impossible as it sounds. My overriding emotion right now, stronger even than anything I feel for either Mallon or the Unchanged, is anger toward Hinchcliffe and Sutton. Now, if what Mallon’s just said is true, then that anger spreads to Sahota, too, because after dispatching me and many others into the city to fight and sacrifice ourselves in the name of the cause, he turned tail and ran. Cowardly fucker.

  “I need help to look after these people,” Sutton says. I look into his face, but in the half-light his expression is impossible to read. Is he genuine, or is he just another manipulative shyster, out to use me and exploit me like everyone else? “This is their only chance. This is our only chance.”

  “You shouldn’t have brought me here.”

  “Yes I should. Please stay, Danny, I need your help. I can’t do this on my own anymore.”

  “Can’t do what exactly? You keep saying that.”

  “I can’t provide for all these people by myself. I was working in Southwold to try to get food and water, but there wasn’t enough, and…”

  The penny drops.

  “So that’s it? That’s why you really wanted me here? You think because of my connections with Hinchcliffe I’ll be able to sort everything out for you and keep you stocked up with supplies? Fuck off, Sutton. Go hijack one of those trucks you saw in Southwold.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” he backpedals quickly. “I didn’t even know you were connected to Hinchcliffe. If I had, then maybe I wouldn’t have asked you.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “Take a look around you,” he says, his voice intentionally louder, wanting to be heard now. “These people deserve more than this.”

  “Not my responsibility.”

  “Yes it is,” he shouts, loud enough to fill the whole shelter and stop all other conversations dead. “It’s our responsibility.”

  I shake my head with despair. What do I have to do to make this dumb fucker understand?

  “Not my responsibility,” I shout back equally loudly, then lower my voice again. “I’m not interested. What’s to stop me bringing Hinchcliffe’s fighters here and ending this bullshit today?”

  “You won’t do that, Danny,” Mallon says. “I know you’re better than that. I know what kind of a man you are. I saw it.”

  “You saw nothing.”

  “Yes I did. Back at the convent I saw a man who still had his priorities straight, even after all that had happened. You were still thinking about your family when all that everyone else like you wanted to do was kill. Tell me, did you ever find your daughter?”

  “What was left of her.”

  “Sorry, man. Was she…?”

  I shake my head, but I can’t bring myself to explain. It hurts too much. I look deep into Mallon’s dark, staring eyes and wish with every fiber of my being that I’d never met either him or Sutton. Then again, I remind myself, without Mallon I’d never have been able to get back into the city and I’d never have found Ellis and shared those last few moments with Lizzie. They’d have died together in the bomb blast, and I’d have been none the wiser. Strange how important, in retrospect, those last few seconds we had together were. I think about them every day. Lizzie gave up everything she had left for Ellis. The memories of what happened to her and what my daughter became still fill me with unbearable pain.

  I can’t take this.

  I can’t do it.

  I push past both of them and run for the exit. Mallon tries to hold me back, but I shrug him off and keep moving.

  25

  THE COLD AIR OUTSIDE hits my chest like a hammer blow, but I keep moving. I run back toward the farm, but I’ve scarcely made it to the top of the rise before I’m doubled over with pain, coughing so violently I can hardly breathe, making so much foul noise that the solitary cow bolts and runs for cover again. I make it back to the buildings, stumbling down the slope. In a momentary gap between painful convulsions I manage to suck in a lungful of air and spit a lump of sticky, dribbling phlegm against a wall. I watch it as it slowly drips down to the ground. My spit is red-brown and streaked with blood, and there’s a foul metallic aftertaste in my mouth. Fuck. What’s happening to me? I’m falling apart, physically and mentally. I slump back against the wall of the burned-out farmhouse, too weak to stay standing, sobbing with the pain. Christ, it hurts.

  Peter Sutton slowly approaches. I wish he’d fuck off and leave me alone, but I’m too tired to fight or argue.

  “I’m sorry,” he says pathetically. “There was no other way.”

  “You should never have brought me here,” I tell him again, still wheezing badly.

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I’m desperate, Danny. I didn’t have any choice. When I saw you in Southwold and realized you were like me…”

  I slide farther down the wall and land hard on my backside on the ice-cold dirt.

  “You did have a choice. You still do. You can just walk away from this place right now and not look back. Just forget about them.”

  “Is that what you’re going to do?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” I tell him, pausing midsentence to clutch my chest as another wave of cramping pain takes hold. It’s snowing hard now, and I can feel my face and hands starting to freeze.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he says, standing over me and looking down. He helps me sit up straight again.

  “Why not? What’s stopping you? Why not just leave them down there to starve to death? It’ll be easier on them in the long run. Better than being forced out into the open and killed, and that’s what’s going to happen eventually. They can’t stay down there forever.”

  “Those people down there are more human than most of what’s up here.”

  “Then maybe it’s time to redefine ‘human.’”

  He shakes his head and crouches down in front of me. I gasp for breath as the painful cramps return yet again. I’m shivering now. Shaking. Freezing cold. Sutton continues to watch me, but I can’t read his expression. Can barely even focus on his face through the snow.

  “You’re in a bad way. Listen, there’s a doctor here. One of the women back there, Tracey, she used to be a GP. She might be able to do something to help you.”

  “You think I’m going to let one of the Unchanged touch
me? Jesus Christ—”

  “Come on, rise above this, Danny. I really need your help.”

  “The best way I can help is to bring Hinchcliffe here and finish this today.”

  “You won’t do that, I know you won’t. I understand why you’re feeling this way, and I’ve listened to everything you said, but you know as well as I do that I can’t just abandon these people. I can’t give up on my own flesh and blood.”

  I have to tell him. Have to try to make him see.

  “After I met Mallon,” I explain, speaking slowly, trying to conserve energy, “I went into one of their refugee camps. We were sent there to kill, but I was looking for my family. I needed to find out what had happened to my daughter ’cause I knew she was like us.”

  He looks confused.

  “But if she was like us…?”

  “I knew her mother would have done everything she could to try to keep the kids together. I managed to track her down, and I was right. She had Ellis drugged and locked up.”

  There’s an awkward silence. He’s knows there’s no happy ending to my story because of the comment I made to Mallon earlier, and because there are no happy endings anymore.

  “I tried to take her with me and get out of the city, but it was impossible. She wasn’t my little girl anymore. There was nothing left of her but Hate. Christ, Peter, you should have seen her. She didn’t even know me. I had to fight with her just to try to get her to safety. The city was tearing itself apart all around us, but all she wanted to do was keep killing. I managed to get us just out of range of the bomb blast, but even then, even after what had happened and what we’d been through, she still kept on fighting. Her Hate wasn’t like the Hate that made you and me fight, it was a thousand times worse than that. It had poisoned her to the core.”

  “So where is she now?”

  “Dead, probably.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  I slowly manage to drag myself back up onto my feet, my legs heavy. I clear my throat, spit again, and take a few slow, painful steps.

  “You need to understand that you’re not helping anybody by doing this. I’ve come to a conclusion, and I think you need to do the same. This world is dying. It’s sick to the core and there’s no hope left. You and me, we’ll grow old and die or we’ll get ourselves killed, and in the end there will only be people like Hinchcliffe, his fighters, and the worst of the children left. If you’d seen the things I’d seen, then you’d know that your grandson back there doesn’t stand a chance. None of the kids do, and without kids, there’s no future. You should just block the bunker door and bury the lot of them. Now get me back to Lowestoft.”

  I start to walk away but stop again, sensing that he hasn’t followed. Every extra movement takes ten times the effort it should, but I slowly turn back around.

  “I think you’re wrong,” he says.

  “Well, I know I’m right.”

  “Just answer one question for me, Danny. Why did you bother?”

  “What?”

  “Looking for your daughter and wife … why did you bother?”

  “Because I didn’t know what Ellis had become. Because I had this fucking stupid idea in my head that she’d be just as I left her and we’d stay fighting side by side together until the war was over. I thought some kind of normality might eventually return, but it won’t. The world is dead.”

  “Not yet it isn’t.”

  “Jesus, Peter, my own daughter didn’t even recognize me.”

  “You said you had other kids. What happened to them?”

  “Ellis killed them.”

  “How many?”

  “Two boys.”

  “Both Unchanged?”

  “Yes.”

  I go on walking back to the car. He goes on talking.

  “So tell me,” he shouts after me, “knowing what you know now, if I’d taken you down into that bunker today and you’d seen that one of your Unchanged sons had survived, would you still be turning your back on them?”

  26

  SUTTON DROVE ME BACK to the house. True to his word, he left me there with barely any protest. He started to talk about ways I could find him again if I changed my mind, but I told him not to bother. I told him I didn’t want to see him again, and that if I did, I’d kill him. I told him I’d have to tell Hinchcliffe. He said it didn’t make any difference because the bunker’s secure. Unless Hinchcliffe’s got a few oxyacetylene burners or a tank lying around, he said, it doesn’t matter. No one’s getting in, and the Unchanged aren’t about to come out.

  The house wasn’t where I needed to be, though. I waited there for a couple of hours longer and tried to pull myself together, hoping that the constant thumping in my head would stop and I’d start to feel better. I’d been telling myself it was just the aftereffects of the beer from last night, or the food I’d eaten yesterday, or the dog the day before that, or whatever I’d done the previous day or last week, but I knew it wasn’t.

  This is serious. I can’t go on like this. I’m getting worse every day. I’m back inside the compound now, walking toward Hinchcliffe’s factory, about to do something I should have done a long time ago. I need help.

  The snow’s stopped and it’s pissing down with rain now, adding to the misery. The late afternoon sky is filled with endless black clouds. The guard on the approach road recognizes me and lets me through. Other than him I see only one more guard. He’s standing just inside the entrance door at the end of the factory where the Unchanged kids are held, sheltering from the rain. I’m scared, and I lose my nerve before I get too close and walk straight past, heading instead toward the enormous, useless wind turbine that towers over everything. It’s a symbol of what this place once was and what it’ll never be again; the ultimate physical manifestation of all Hinchcliffe’s bullshit.

  It’s no good. I can’t put this off any longer.

  I walk back the other way, and this time the guard in the doorway sees me and yells at me to either “get over here or fuck off.” He’s wrapped up against the bitter cold, wearing so many layers that he looks grossly overweight. His mouth is hidden by a scarf and his upturned collar, and he has ski goggles covering his eyes. He has a rifle slung over his shoulder. I presume it’s there to stop escapees rather than to prevent anyone breaking in.

  “What do you want?” he demands, his voice muffled.

  “Rona Scott,” I answer. “I need to see her.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says Hinchcliffe.”

  He lifts up his goggles and eyes me up and down, then pulls his scarf down a couple of inches, just enough to clear his mouth, making it easier to speak.

  “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”

  “Have you?”

  “Yeah … ain’t you the one what finds the Unchanged?”

  “That’s me,” I answer quickly, desperate to get out of the cold. It’s raining even harder now, the water bouncing back up off the pavement. “Look, is the doctor here? I need to see her.”

  He stops to think again. This guy’s not the smartest, and that’s probably why he drew the short straw and ended up being posted out here on his own. I can’t tell whether he’s trying to psych me out with these long, silent pauses or if he’s just slow. I reach inside my coat, and he reacts to my sudden movement, swinging his rifle around.

  “Don’t,” I tell him, raising my hands to show I don’t want any trouble. When he relaxes I take out a can of beer from my pocket, hoping to speed up this painfully drawn-out encounter with a little bribery. He halfheartedly tries to remain impassive and hard, but I can see a sudden glint in his eye. He’s like a kid looking in a toy store window.

  “Inside,” he says as he takes the can from me. He glances from side to side before moving out of the way to let me pass. As if anyone else is going to have followed me out here. Fucking idiot.

  The building is oppressively quiet save for a few muffled sounds in the distance, and it’s no warmer indoors than out. I’ve never made it thi
s far in before. This end of the complex looks like it was mostly office space. I’m in an open-plan reception area, which has been turned into a checkpoint by Hinchcliffe’s guard, and it reminds me of the reception desk back at the housing project where I used to work. There are a couple of rooms filled with rubbish leading off from here, and a wide staircase that goes up to the second floor. There’s also another door into a corridor, long and straight and dark, which I presume leads into the rest of the factory. Curious, I walk toward it and try to peer in through a porthole-shaped safety glass window.

  “Not that way,” the guard says, making me jump.

  “Where, then?”

  No response. He looks at me expectantly. I dig down into the pockets of my coat again and this time bring out a packet of sweets. I don’t know where they came from or why I’ve got them. I found them in the house before I came out and thought they might be useful.

  “This is all I’ve got,” I tell him, talking to him like I used to talk to my children. “Where’s the doctor?”

  He points up the stairs.

  “Up there there’s a load of offices. She’s in one of them. Second or third floor, don’t know which.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I say sarcastically as I chuck him his sweets.

  Dripping wet and exhausted, I start to climb up the metal steps, my boots clanging and filling the building with noise. At the top of the first flight of stairs is an open door and, beyond it, another narrow corridor with three doors along one side and one at the far end. Fortunately there are long rectangular windows in each of the doors that allow me to see inside. Rona Scott is sitting in the first room, slouched in a chair, staring straight ahead. This must have been some kind of meeting room or training area once. There’s no other furniture now except for a long gray desk beside her that’s covered with rubbish and clutter. I pause before trying to attract her attention, feeling undeniably nervous. Wait. She’s talking. Is someone in there with her?

  Scott looks exhausted. Her face is flustered, her cheeks bloodred, and she’s smoking a cigarette, flicking ash onto the dirty terra-cotta-colored carpet. I’ve spoken to her (rather, she’s spoken at me) on a few occasions before today, and I don’t relish the prospect of having to talk to her again. She’s a foul-tempered woman at the best of times, and I’m tempted just to turn around now and go back to the house rather than face her. She suddenly gets up, moving unexpectedly quickly, and I step back to stay in the shadows, keeping out of sight but still able to see her through the glass. From my new position I can see that the room is actually double length, and the far end is in almost total darkness. There’s a concertina-like folding wall across the middle, which has been left half open. Scott strides purposefully through the gap and disappears out of view.