by David Moody
It’s time.
The boss hammers her fist against the window of the nearest vehicle, and its driver shoves his foot down and races away at a ferocious speed. He fights to keep control of the Volkswagen at first as he careers over grass and gravel. The other drivers form a loose arrowhead formation behind as they approach the service station, then split when they get close. They’ve been ordered to attack from different angles.
The Volkswagen driver steers hard left, cutting through a gap in a low fence and now aiming directly at the main building. There’s frantic movement up ahead as the Unchanged begin to react to the unexpected raid, and his heart swells with pride at the terror he’s causing. He’s filled with raw, barely contained emotion the likes of which he hasn’t felt in a long time, not since he last killed. Probably not since the night of the bomb, he doesn’t think. He knows this will likely be the last few minutes of his life, yet he keeps driving faster. The word suicide doesn’t feel appropriate (after all, there’s the slightest chance he might not die). His own mortality is insignificant, his survival unimportant. He’ll go out fighting, and he’s damn sure he’s going to take out as many Unchanged as possible with him.
He’s approaching ninety miles an hour when he reaches the trench. He plans to jump it, but the width of the channel here is such that he doesn’t quite make it. The Volkswagen’s nose drops and thuds into the trench wall opposite, wedged hard into the mud and rock. For a couple of numb seconds, the driver’s unaware what happened, disoriented. His head smacked against the wheel on impact, and he’s concussed. He comes around when the weight of the engine causes the precarious wreck to overbalance and fall forward, ending up nose-first at the bottom of the trench. Awake again now, conscious there are Unchanged all around him, he can’t get the door open fast enough. He’s ready to fight—desperate to fight—but he doesn’t get chance. The nearest Unchanged is an armed militiawoman, and she’s already realized that the time for keeping quiet here is over. She repeatedly shoots the Hater in the face.
A sniper takes out one of the other drivers from a distance, and the van he was driving comes to a slow and underwhelming stop in the middle of a muddy field, all the venom and fury of the frenzied attack whimpering out to nothing. The three remaining vehicles, however, all reach their intended destinations. Two more suffer the same ignominious fate as the Volkswagen—ending up half in and half out of the trench, driver stranded and unable to fight—but that’s okay. It’s what the boss ordered. Rile the enemy up. Put them under pressure. Terrify them. By filling parts of the trench with crashed metal, the attackers have already achieved two clear objectives: they’ve reduced the effectiveness of the Unchanged defenses, and they’ve sown the seeds of panic. By doing both these things, they’ve already made the outpost itself considerably easier to attack.
Through a combination of it being relatively light and maneuverable, the driver’s skill behind the wheel, and a slight rise just before the trench, the final car jumps the chasm completely. The driver’s as surprised as anyone when her front wheels make contact with the ground on the other side. She almost loses the back of the car, but she has just enough forward momentum to keep going. This was never part of the plan, but she intends on taking full advantage.
The first swath of Unchanged troops pour out of the entrance to the hotel alongside the service station. They’re running across the parking lot to the trenches when the Hater accelerates again and plows straight into them. The car skids in the wet, then crashes into the main hotel doors and comes to a thudding halt, buckling metal and shattering glass. Many of the soldiers who should have been heading for the front line are wounded. Others, far more than is necessary, immediately about-face and unload, focusing their fury on the Hater invader. The front of her car is wedged into what’s left of the doorframe and it’s not going anywhere, but she’s still trying to reverse so she can take more of them out. The fired-up CDF militia destroy her with Hater-like ferocity.
* * *
The last of the first wave of attacking vehicles has been neutralized, but inside the outpost, there’s utter pandemonium. Gridlock. Terrified civilians either try to look for shelter or get closer to the front of the building to see what’s happening.
Chappell and Estelle are up in the lookout. Their calm is in stark contrast to the civvies down below.
“It’s strange, I always thought we’d be the ones to strike first,” Estelle says.
“You sound disappointed.”
“Not at all. Whoever hits first, the end result will be the same. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”
“Do you not think we’re underprepared? Moira and I have discussed tactics, but we’ve not been able to war-game. I’m worried that the longer we’ve been stuck here, the less battle-ready we’ve become.”
“Grow some balls, Greg. The enemy are dangerous, certainly, but they’re just animals. They’re no match for us.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“Are there as many of them as we were expecting, do you think?”
“Looks that way, ma’am. Fucking hundreds of them. Pretty much in line with what our scouts told us to expect.”
There’s a mass of Haters gathered out there in numbers the likes of which haven’t been seen in an age. They’re advancing like a shifting scab on the landscape. It looks like an army from another age.
“And how long before they reach us?”
“No time at all. An hour if we’re lucky.”
“Lucky?” she says, looking at him quizzically.
“Figure of speech.”
She returns her attention to the hordes outside. “Luck’s got nothing to do with it, Greg. It’s time to bring out the big guns. Now they know where we are, there’s no need to stay quiet.”
“Absolutely.”
Estelle is smiling. “This is going to be a good day, I can feel it. It’ll be hard, and it’ll cost us, but it has to be done. We’re entering a new and decisive phase, the last battle of the final war. We just need to make sure that when the dust settles, we’re the only ones left standing.”
* * *
Estelle’s orders are communicated down the ranks, and the CDF soldiers pour from the outpost exits in massive numbers, spilling out through the gaps between long-unused vehicles like a flash flood, heading for the military hardware that has been tucked away alongside the abandoned construction traffic and civilian vehicles.
The CDF fighters—both those who have been military trained and those who are new to war but who’ve volunteered to fight on the front line—feel an impossible mix of emotions. After months of waiting, can this really be it? A glance over at the chaos around the front of the hotel where the Hater-driven vehicle just hit is enough to leave no one in any doubt that what’s happening here this morning is very real.
The heavy artillery is wheeled out first. Massive machines are woken from their noise-enforced hibernation. A number of self-propelled guns are moved into position along the length of the trenches, with battle-worn Challenger and Warrior tanks also advancing but remaining some distance away from the front line for now. The CDF have a half-dozen howitzers, which are towed out of storage and moved to predefined locations around the front of the hotel and service station. Finally for now, a years-old M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System is driven into a prominent position overlooking the battlefield. The CDF is out of rockets and the weapon hasn’t been used in battle for more than a decade (it came from a museum), but the enemy doesn’t know that. The launcher is completely useless, but it looks fucking fearsome.
There’s been an unlikely silence around here for an age, but now that’s been shattered with the ugly noise of war. The roar of individual engines combine to deafening effect, and if there were any of the enemy in the surrounding area who were somehow still oblivious to the presence of the Unchanged, they won’t be now.
CDF support crews rush through the vehicle maze to get to their assigned positions, the sudden surge of adrenaline helping them keep
their nerves in check. For many people, this feels like a cathartic release after so much nervous inactivity. For the dyed-in-the-wool CDF militia, it’s still second nature. For the fresh civilian volunteers, though, this is a new and terrifying experience for which many of them now feel totally unprepared. It’s not as if they haven’t wanted to learn, but they’ve had to remain out of sight and utterly silent throughout the entirety of their incarceration at the outpost. In this volatile yet delicately poised environment, spending time familiarizing themselves with the military gear they’re about to be using has never been a viable option.
One of the Challenger tanks is manned by a crew of experienced CDF pros. They roll into position a short way back from the trench, directly facing the Hater hordes now charging at them across the churned fields on this side of the outpost. The crew sit and wait with an arrogance that matches that of their enemy, safe in the knowledge that it doesn’t matter how many of those bastards are coming, they’re not going to get anywhere against this weapon with its impenetrable armor and deadly munitions. There’s an ordered chaos inside the tank, but to anyone watching from outside, its movements appear deceptively relaxed, almost balletic. Its turret swings gracefully around, and the main gun is angled slightly skyward. A single shell is fired with a sonorous boom and thud the likes of which haven’t been heard since the morning of the bomb. The force of the blast rocks the tank back on its tracks, and before the echoing noise has even begun to fade, the shell hits the oncoming wave of Haters, obliterating scores of them.
* * *
Jason and Matt watch from up on the fuel station canopy. They pass Matt’s binoculars between them, trying to work out what’s happening and, more importantly, where. When the noise of engines is replaced by fighting, and when ominous clouds of dirty gray smoke begin to drift high into the already dirty gray air, they’re finally able to begin to orientate themselves.
“Has to be Estelle and the others, doesn’t it?” Jason says.
“Has to be.”
“They’ll be all right. Fuck, listen to that fighting. Guns and bombs and shit. The Haters are probably using sticks and stones.”
“You assume. Even if they are, chances are the Haters have an even bigger army, made up of soldiers who don’t show fear and who don’t mind dying if they think they’ll be able to take a few of us out in the process.”
“I’m not saying it won’t be bloody, I’ve just got more faith in our people than you have.”
“You certainly have.”
Matt watches Jason, who’s staring at the smoke in the distance like a kid watching a firework display on Bonfire Night. Jason senses he’s being watched and puts down the field glasses. “What’s the problem?”
“You haven’t realized, have you?”
“Realized what?”
“If that is Estelle and the CDF, then we’re not where we thought we were.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Come on, Jason, it’s not that difficult. We walked east to get here, yes?”
“Yes. So?”
“We came from that direction,” he continues, pointing back along the road. “This fighting is the other way.”
Jason looks at him blankly. Matt has a folded-up tourist map in the back of his jeans that he’d taken from the Travelodge reception. He opens it out and lays it on the wet canopy.
“Here’s the RAF base,” he explains, tapping the map, “and here’s the hotel where we are.” He traces his finger along the road. “And here’s where I think the fighting is.”
The penny drops. “Shit,” Jason says. “We’ve gone past the outpost. We were following the wrong bloody road.”
40
Near Longstanton
When the human race was first torn in two, both Hater and Unchanged alike had to react fast to stay alive. For most Haters, while the impact of the change was fresh and the wounds were still raw, to attack was their defense. As a result, the natural Unchanged presumption was that once they’d started killing, the Haters were unable to stop. For a good number of them, that proved to be the case; their default setting being to fight and to kill. But for many more, the ability to show restraint, to think and then to act, gradually returned. And regardless of the ferocity of the Hate that drove them in the first place, for many, the desire for self-preservation has remained their overriding concern. They struggle continually with an emotional conflict: wanting to kill yet not wanting to die. This morning, as the first shots were fired in a battle that both sides know to be pivotal, this internal struggle has tested Johannson’s fighters like never before.
She knew this would happen. Counted on it, even. Those who’ve died on the battlefield so far today are heroes, but those who’ve turned tail and returned to base aren’t cowards; they’re fighters who’ve realized they can’t compete with artillery fired at them from a distance by an enemy who is brave only because they’re out of range. The fighters now returning are those who realize that in order to be able to do the things they want to do—need to do—to the remaining Unchanged, they’re going to need to bide their time and choose their battles.
But it doesn’t sit well with any of them.
Johannson knows she has to explain this to the battle-starved masses who’ve just been a part of something they never thought would happen: a Hater army in full retreat from the Unchanged.
The boss holds court in the middle of a vast concreted area where some kind of factory once stood close to the village of Longstanton, about five miles from the battlefield. It’s almost an island with nothing but water on two sides of the concrete. This area was well known for its wetlands and nature reserves before the war. Post-bomb, because of the relentless rain, there’s now more water here than anything else. The factory ruin is accessible only from a single-lane road that twists and turns through the submerged countryside. Nearby—ten minutes’ walk at most—there’s a half-sunken housing estate with enough space to billet all the fighters and room to treat the wounded. Those whose injuries can be treated are being patched up. Those who are beyond hope have been left to die. No sense wasting time and resource on anyone who’s not going to make it.
The atmosphere is fractious and tense. Johannson is perched on the remains of a wall, flanked by Myndham and Ullah. One of the crowd, a particularly difficult and vociferous bastard called Shenton, mouths off in protests at their tactics. He knows he’s risking his neck, but equally he knows his life is already on the line. Everyone’s is.
“What the fuck just happened, boss? What kind of tactic is this? Turning and running from the fucking Unchanged.”
“We’ve already been through this,” Ullah says, attempting to answer for his chief and trying to sound calmer than he feels. “The intention was never to fully engage this morning.”
“Then what was the point?”
“To see what they’re capable of. To see what they’d throw at us. And, as it happens, that’s quite a fucking lot. Johannson’s already explained this … we didn’t want to turn up and find they’ve got a fucking tactical nuke. Which, for the record, they might still have.”
“So we’re supposed to pussyfoot around them, just in case?”
“Look, mate, I know how this feels. We’re all sick to our stomachs at the idea of those fuckers still being out there, but what would you rather do? We go in there full-on and find out they’ve got enough in their armory to wipe us all out, or we wait a couple of days longer and make sure we get it right?”
“So have you seen enough?” Shenton asks.
“I have,” Johannson announces, and the volume of her voice silences all others. “They’re already bringing out the big guns. They’ve been waiting for this. I don’t think they’ve got much more than we’ve already seen.”
Shenton’s still not convinced. “You reckon? And you think we stand a chance against fucking tanks?”
“Yes.”
“Against fucking tanks?” he says again.
Johannson leaps up, grabs Shenton, and slams him
back against a pile of rubble. With her face just inches from his, she hisses at him, “Yes.”
Shenton holds his hands up in submission, and she lets him go. He scuttles away, leaving her alone center stage.
“You know why we won the war?” she asks the crowd, talking like it’s a memory, all done and dusted. When no one volunteers a reply, she answers herself. “People power. Now I know that might sound soft, but just think about it. Think about all the battles you’ve been involved in and how you managed to stay alive.”
She looks around at the countless faces staring back at her, hanging on her every word. At moments like this, in some quarters, her following borders on the devotional.
“I was in this one fight, way back when their extermination camps were operating. Those evil bastards had thousands of our people held in cages, ready to kill, and they were being held there by more fucking military machinery than you’ve ever seen in your life. Hundreds of tanks and helicopters and jets and guns and whatever.
“Now I was with a group of a couple of hundred, and we were watching all this going on from a distance. We knew we didn’t have any option but to go down there and get involved. It looked like suicide, but back then, back when all this started, you, me, and everyone like us knows we’d have done anything to be fighting and killing, no matter what the risks.
“So the charge begins, and hundreds of us are running toward thousands of them, and the combined power we were feeling was just fucking unbelievable. The Unchanged start firing everything they’d got at us, and though our people were dying left, right, and center, they couldn’t hit everyone. Too many targets.
“Those of us still standing made it to the death camp and pulled down the fences, and then hundreds became thousands. I remember running at a tank—at a fucking tank, for Christ’s sake!—and it was firing right over my head into the crowds, but the fuckers operating it didn’t even know I was there. Before I knew it, I was right on top of the damn thing, and then there was twenty of us all over it, and then someone opened the hatch and got inside … you see where this is going, don’t you? We took control of the tank and turned it against them, and that night we ran riot and killed more of them than you could imagine. We don’t need the kind of stuff they’ve got, because we are the weapons. Those Unchanged back there, they’re thinking big, so we go the other way. Small scale. Low-fi. Individual attacks, fucking hundreds of them, same time from all different directions. Confuse the hell out of them, then tear the fucking heart out of their shelter.”
