by David Moody
29
Approaching RAF Thornhill
Bryce can barely contain himself. This is his opportunity to prove his worth. Now that the tattooed prick Pinchy is out of the picture, there’s a chance he can fill the vacant spot at Johannson’s side alongside her other generals. He’s been waiting for a chance like this. He’s going to kill every last Unchanged, then load up their bodies and present them to the boss. She’ll realize how useful he could be to her. His giddy excitement makes it hard to stay focused. He salivates at the prospect of killing in huge numbers again, of being spoiled for choice, of hearing their screams and watching them die. It makes him feel nostalgic for those one-sided halcyon days at the beginning of this most beautiful of wars.
They reach the entrance to the base and block the open gates. “You sure this it?” Bryce asks. McCoyne’s in the passenger seat of the Subaru, wishing he were anywhere but here.
“Yeah, this is it. I told you, they’re hidden right in the center. Well out of sight.”
Bryce gets out. The rain is torrential, but nothing can dampen the spirits of this hunting pack. They gather around him, hungry for action. “Get in there and split up,” he orders. “Surround them. Form a perimeter. Block the exits, then start closing in. Don’t let a single one of those cunts get out alive.”
The men and women surge forward, desperate to hurt and maim. At times like this, they’re animals, little trace left of who any of them used to be before the war. Doesn’t matter. The old world is dead and gone. As polluted, battered, blood-soaked, and violent as everything now is, long live the new world.
Almost thirty of them pour into the RAF base. Bryce knows the relative isolation of this location was the reason the Unchanged managed to survive here for so long, but now that same disconnection will be their downfall; a bunker is a cell from a different perspective. These people have dug in deep, but all they’ve managed to do is bury themselves alive.
His pack splits up and forms ragged lines of attack that wrap around the main buildings. Bryce turns back and yells at McCoyne to come forward from his preferred position of avoidance away from the front line. “Best way in?” Bryce asks.
“Take your pick. It’s like a maze in there. Doesn’t matter as long as all the exits are covered.”
The massed Hater ranks are quiet now, the little noise they do make suppressed by the hissing rain. They wait impatiently for Bryce to give the word, desperate to pare Unchanged flesh from bone. Even now, after everything they’ve been through individually and collectively, this still feels so natural, so right, and so necessary. A year ago, all of this would have seemed impossible: the killing, the bombs, the final war. Yet now it’s the memories that are hard to believe. To have restricted themselves with needless order and routine. To have allowed themselves to exist in the pointless monotony of the old world.
These, now, are the moments the Haters live for.
Bryce gives the order, and they attack every entrance at once. They thunder through room after room, hunting for survivors. The musty air stinks of the enemy. To the attackers, it’s an all-pervading, cloying, noxious stench that’s exciting and repellent in equal measure. They work through each part of each building systematically, leaving no nook or cranny unchecked.
Bryce has reached a large assembly hall near the heart of the base. He kicks through the detritus, but there’s nothing and no one here. This place is silent as the grave. Other fighters burst in through different doors. Keller’s here. Furious, he corners Bryce. “What the fuck?”
Bryce pushes him away. “Where’s McCoyne?”
McCoyne tries to melt away into the chaos, but his way out is blocked by more fighters. Bryce is having none of it. He grabs the sickly man by the throat. “Where the fuck are they?” he spits, having to fight with himself not to squeeze tighter and choke the life out of this useless runt. McCoyne tries to reply, but he can barely breathe, let alone speak.
“I don’t know…”
“You tipped them off!”
“I didn’t, I swear.”
“Then what really happened here?”
“Someone recognized me,” he admits.
“Bullshit.”
“Not bullshit. Don’t know how. I’d never seen him before, but he reckoned he came from the same place I did, so it’s not impossible.”
“You’re a liar, McCoyne.”
“I didn’t know they’d gone. I’d have told you if I did, I swear.” He’s breathing hard. His voice is weak, and his chest rattles with sickness and fear. “They could only have gone to that other place I was telling you about. Somewhere east. On the road to Cambridge. It makes sense. Remember what Johannson was saying about people disappearing around Cambridge over the last few weeks? It has to be something to do with this lot, doesn’t it?”
Bryce thinks for a moment. It makes sense. Fact is, it’s all he has to go on right now. Okay, so they might not have found anyone here, but if McCoyne’s telling the truth, there might be an even bigger prize waiting for them elsewhere.
He walks deeper into the base and calls the rest of his people together. “Strip it and take anything worth keeping back to the boss,” he orders. “Not you,” he says to McCoyne, who’s already trying to creep away. “You’re staying with me.”
* * *
Matt and Jason are hiding behind the entrance doors many of the fighters just poured through, watching them race past just inches from where they’re standing. As soon as the last one’s deep enough into the base to be out of sight, the two men go the other way. Matt’s furious with himself for dropping his guard. In the short time he’s been here, he’s become complacent. He didn’t work out an escape route after he first arrived here, and he should have, because sooner or later, the shit was always going to hit the fan. He foolishly hoped it would have been later. Just goes to show, when you think things can’t get any worse in this fucked-up world, they inevitably do.
They’re out in the open now, exposed. Matt carries a wrench he found as a weapon, but he doesn’t know how effective it’ll be or even if he’ll be able to use it. He’s scared that his nerves will stop him attacking if he needs to. He knows the Haters have no such qualms. By the time he’s thought about it, they’ve already done it.
Thankfully, the draw of the kill is such that all the Haters have now disappeared inside. “We need to run,” Matt says to Jason. “You ready?”
“Run where?” Jason says, answering without answering.
“Over there.” He points toward the group of vehicles blocking the main entrance to Thornhill.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope.”
“You want to steal one of their cars?”
“Yep.”
“But what if—”
Jason’s question remains unfinished and unanswered, because Matt’s already gone. He races across the empty space between the buildings and the gate. He’s fucking terrified, because he knows that at the end of this sprint, he’ll either be dead or on his way away from here—he can see no other outcomes.
Many of the vehicles still have the keys in the ignition, abandoned at haste. He pushes Jason toward a Ford Transit, telling him to keep out of sight of anyone who might be looking out from the base. Jason watches for signs of movement, peering through the windows of the van back toward the entrance door they’d just escaped through.
Matt walks along the line of cars and other assorted vehicles, deciding which one to take. There are some relatively decent cars here, a fancy-looking Subaru that sticks out a mile, as well as others that are less impressive. He finds a couple of smaller cars at the back of the line—a Ford Focus and a boxy little black Fiat Panda, and he almost laughs out loud at the ridiculousness of these killers turning up for battle in a fucking Fiat Panda.
He stops and thinks.
He’s naturally gravitated toward the smaller vehicles, less noticeable. But is that really the best option? What’s most important here? Maneuverability? Speed? Power?
�
�Come on, Matt. What are we doing?” Jason whispers, startling him.
“Trying to make things difficult for them.”
“I don’t understand. Just pick a car and go.”
“One of those trucks,” he says, pointing across the way.
“But they’re massive.”
“I know. And without one of them, they’ll be ten seats down or more. They’ll struggle to get all their people away.”
Matt slides silently into the driver’s seat of one of two flatbeds. He pulls the door shut, waits for Jason to get in the other side, then composes himself. Jason’s getting agitated.
“What are you waiting for now? Just go!”
“You do realize the second I turn this key, all hell will break loose?”
“Yes! Fucking do it. Now!”
He starts the engine, and it splutters into life, sounding rough as a smoker’s cough. It almost dies, and without thinking, Matt revs the motor hard to keep it ticking over, filling the air with belching fumes and far too much noise.
There’s a lone fighter left outside. Matt sees him run out from behind a wooden outbuilding, doing up his fly after very obviously taking a piss. When he catches sight of Matt behind the wheel and Jason alongside him, the Hater’s insatiable bloodlust is immediately ignited. He runs at the cab of the truck, and Matt knows what he has to do. He puts his foot down and plows into the Hater head-on, sending him flying through the air like a doll. He smacks against the wall of the building he’d just pissed against with a satisfying crunch, then drops to the ground, a heap of broken bones.
The rest of them are coming.
Matt can’t hear them or see them yet, but he knows it won’t be long. One sniff of him and Jason and the entire pack will be on their tails. He accelerates hard and careers away, almost losing control as the back of the truck fishtails in the standing rainwater. The exhaust is blowing so loud it’s as if it’s calling back to its owner to come save it. Two of the enemy appear in the doorway, and even though they only get a fleeting glimpse of Matt and Jason, it’s more than enough. They know they’re Unchanged, and two fighters become four become ten become even more. A trickle, then a flood of blood-starved killers pours out of the base, all of them racing back toward their vehicles.
“What do we do now?” Jason demands, voice full of mounting panic.
“We find the main road, look for signs to Cambridge, then keep driving.”
“Then what? All we’re gonna do is lead them straight to the outpost. This is a shitty plan, Matt.”
“It’s not a plan. I’ve planned fuck-all of this.”
Jason keeps babbling, but Matt’s not listening. He’s trying, and failing, to think rationally because Jason’s right: the one thing they can’t afford to do is lead the Haters to the CDF. He visualizes the alternative—disappearing into the wilderness—and he remembers the days, weeks, and months he’d spent out there trying to get home to Jen. The grim reality of their situation is sobering, the prospect of wandering directionless terrifying. At least last time, he had something to aim for.
As if the thoughts rattling ’round his head weren’t bad enough, Matt glances into the rearview mirror and sees the rest of the Hater convoy pulling out onto the road behind them. Jason picks up on the expression of wide-eyed panic on his face. “Jesus, we’re dead. We’re fucking dead!”
“You will be if you don’t shut up,” Matt snaps. “I’ll kick you out the door if you’re not careful. They’ll focus on you and forget about me.”
Matt glances across at him and feels the slightest pang of guilt because he knows that right now, if push literally comes to shove, he’ll do it.
The roads here are straight and long with barely any exits. This truck is practical, not designed for speed, and the chasing pack is gaining fast. “We need to think creatively,” he tells Jason, but Jason’s too busy watching the crowd of killers behind to respond.
There’s a turnoff ahead, the first in a while. Matt shifts down a gear, then accelerates again, hoping to coax a little more speed out of the truck, knowing that every meter might make a difference. He pulls off onto the off-ramp at the last possible moment, almost clipping the curb and losing control, still not sure where he’s going or what he’s trying to achieve other than staying alive. The chances of them walking away from this feel like they’re reducing by the second.
At the end of the off-ramp is a traffic roundabout. “Go the other way,” Jason suggests. “Go all the way around, then drive back through them.”
“That’s not as dumb as it sounds,” Matt says, imagining the chaos when the bunched-up vehicles all try turning in the opposite direction at the exact same time. “We might be able to loop back around without them seeing. Sneak around the back of them and go back to Thornhill.”
“That’s the last place they’d look.”
“Exactly.”
But all their planning and plotting count for nothing, because they’re not even halfway around the roundabout when Matt skids to a halt behind the wreck of a bus lying on its side, blocking the entire width of the road. The remains of some long-forgotten accident or ambush, it’s rusted, crumpled, partly burned out, and going nowhere.
“Now we’re fucked,” Jason says, stating the obvious.
“Not yet,” Matt tells him.
* * *
Bryce signals for some of the vehicles to keep going to the next junction and for others to block the far side of the road, and then he steers his Subaru down the off-ramp slope. The remains of his pack splits in two, driving both clockwise and counterclockwise around the roundabout, converging on the bus that blocks the road like a dead whale on a beach. The stolen truck is quickly boxed in—no way out—and within seconds, there are Haters crowding around the abandoned vehicle like a pack of hunting dogs.
The driver and his passenger are nowhere to be seen.
“Where the fuck did they go?” Bryce demands. “Fuckers must have made a run for it. Spread out and find them.”
The fighters do as they’re told without hesitation, because all any of them want is to be the one who does the deed and kills the Unchanged. “They can’t have gotten far,” a woman with a scar running from the corner of her eye to the curl of her mouth says to Bryce.
“Find them and kill them. They won’t get away from us. Fuckers have backed themselves into a corner.”
* * *
The Haters’ assumption that Matt and Jason are currently running for their lives through the forest is way off the mark. They’re actually only a couple of meters away, hiding in the luggage space at the back of the crashed bus. The vehicle came to the abrupt end of its final journey in an awkward position with its tail end jammed open, and Matt and Jason have crawled into the gap and hidden. “What now?” Jason whispers, their faces just inches apart.
“We wait. Now shut up before you get us both killed.”
Matt wishes he were alone. Everything would be easier without Jason to babysit. He keeps reminding himself that Jen liked him. Christ knows why.
There’s much activity outside still. Matt’s flat on his belly now in the most awkward and uncomfortable of positions, but he can see the road, and he can see feet.
He’s expecting to be there all day and all night, but it’s only a short time later when he and Jason unexpectedly catch a break. Something happens nearby—a noise in the forest, perhaps … a tree falling or an animal attacking?—but whatever it is, it’s enough. There’s a sudden stampede, and all the feet Matt can see start running in the same general direction. He grabs Jason and drags him toward the light. “Move. Now!”
“You’re fucking kidding me! I’m not going out there.”
“Well, I am,” Matt tells him, and he crawls out into the open. Jason follows, not wanting to be left behind, and the two of them crawl along the suddenly empty tarmac, keeping out of sight. “Ready?” Matt asks, and he gets up and runs without waiting for an answer.
There are a handful of Haters still close, but they’re staring into th
e trees to try to see whatever it was that caught the attention of all the others, and with their backs turned, Matt takes the opportunity to go the opposite way. He slips around the front of the bus wreck, Jason on his shoulder, and runs across the roundabout, looking for a way out.
That bloody Fiat Panda.
It’s the last car in the world he’d have chosen, but it’s their only option. The dumb bastard who was driving has left the door open and the engine running. Matt and Jason jump in and disappear before any of the enemy realize what’s happening. They’re too busy scrapping and arguing and looking for him in places where he isn’t.
“Can’t believe we got away with that,” Jason says. His heart’s hammering, and he’s shaking like a leaf.
“We haven’t yet.”
It’s no performance motor, but the little black Fiat is surprisingly responsive. It might just be that it seems quicker because it’s a fraction of the weight of the flatbed he was driving previously, but Matt suddenly feels like he can outrun anything. He can’t, of course, and although they’ve opened up the slightest of margins, they’re already being followed.
“We should dump the car,” Jason says.
“I was thinking the same thing. Fake our deaths.”
There’s a building up ahead. Looks like it was a gym. Matt slams on the brakes, throwing Jason forward in his seat. “Jesus, Matt, what the hell?”
“Get out and get out of sight.”
Jason runs across the narrow gravel parking lot at the side of the building and ducks down behind a stinking trash can. Matt accelerates again and yanks the steering wheel hard over. The Fiat bumps up the curb and then skids across a yellowed grass shoulder, carving deep, furrowed tire marks in the mud. Matt opens his door and dives out, the car still moving at speed. It clips the corner of the gym building, then ricochets into the side of a BMW.
