by David Moody
The wing of the truck clips the door of a weather-bleached Skoda that’s been left open, blocking the way. The sudden noise and impact drags Matt back into reality, and he remembers the importance of what he’s doing and forces himself to focus. Another wreck is straddling both lanes now, and another and another. He lifts himself up in his seat and sees that the clear section of the road ahead is narrowing noticeably, but he has no choice but to keep going.
The tired engine roar of the truck is amplified here, echoing off the buildings on either side, but Matt’s becoming aware of another noise now. Another engine. Different pitch and tone, but unquestionably moving in the same direction as he is. The space he’s driving through now is continuing to reduce, but he allows himself a momentary glance in the side mirrors.
It’s the red Subaru again. And behind it, more Hater-driven vehicles. There might only be a fraction of the number that originally followed him and the others away from the CDF base, but that doesn’t matter because he’s still hugely outnumbered.
Matt steers around the rubble of a battle-damaged building and out into a bubble of relatively clear space, and just for a second, he thinks there might still be a way through up ahead. The road curves, but any hope he had disappears in an instant. Until now, the unfinished exodus has been largely confined to one side of the road, but here the mass of cars abandoned trying to exit the city of Cambridge has blocked both sides of the road.
This is it. Time’s up. There’s no way through and no way back.
It looks as if a scrapyard has been dropped into this part of the city from a great height. Matt slams his foot down on the brake, virtually standing on the pedal, desperately trying to bring the truck to a controlled halt before he hits the sprawling mass of metal. His speed is such that he doesn’t make it, and the truck thuds nose-first into the endless sea of wreckage.
Finished.
Nowhere left to go.
He looks around and realizes that he’s come to rest among the ruins of the university. How tragic, he thinks, that a place that was a pinnacle of learning and achievement has been reduced to this. It’s symbolic of the deterioration of the world as a whole.
Matt wants to keep going. He wants to run, wants to get out and clamber over the mountain of twisted metal and get away, but he knows he won’t make it this time. Yet even though what’s coming is inevitable, he can’t just sit still and wait for them to kill him. His body is spent, filled with poison, but he still can’t stop. With the same determination that keeps the Haters killing, Matt wants to keep living. The red Subaru stops directly behind the truck, preventing any escape, and other vehicles block the road farther back.
He gets out and makes a halfhearted attempt to scale the closest of the countless wrecked cars. His legs are heavy, and he can’t see any way through, but he drags himself up onto the roof of a Mini, then half jumps, half falls across the gap, onto his truck. With considerable effort, he hauls himself up onto the roof.
He walks to the end of the truck and looks down. There’s just one Hater directly below him, yanking at the padlock that secures the roller door to get to what’s inside. Dumb fucker smashes his fists in frustration when it refuses to budge. Matt sees other fighters approaching on foot now. Hundreds of them, it looks like.
He takes the key to the padlock from his pocket and dangles it above the Hater’s head, waving it way out of reach and taunting the whole fucking lot of them. “Looking for this?” he shouts, laughing at their rage.
When the truck rocks slightly, Matt realizes he’s not alone up here. He turns around and finds himself face-to-face with the Hater he recognized from before.
“You’ll burn yourselves out in the end, you know that?” he wheezes, but Danny McCoyne’s not listening. He steps forward and snatches the padlock key from Matt’s hand, then pushes him over the side of the truck.
Matt drops onto a pile of metal and rubble. A metal rod has skewered his gut, and another sharp spike has lanced his right thigh. He tries to get up, but he can’t move. He feels blood pooling under his back. Warm. Strangely comforting.
“Give me that fucking key, McCoyne!” Bryce yells, gesturing wildly. He catches it and opens the padlock with hands that tremble with excitement at the prospect of finally killing the very last of the Unchanged. The lock clicks, and he looks over his shoulder, grinning wildly at the expectant hordes gathered right behind him.
He throws the door open and then staggers back, confused.
“What the hell…?”
The truck’s empty.
Lying on the ground, paralyzed and racked with pain, Matt starts to laugh. The expression on the Hater’s face is the most perfect thing he’s seen since this damn war began. It’s also the very last thing he sees. Another Hater permanently silences Matt with a boot to the side of the head.
A pissed off–looking fighter shoves Bryce angrily in the chest, smashing him into the truck. Bryce vents his frustration on McCoyne. He grabs his collar and pins him against the side of the empty vehicle. “You useless cunt,” he spits in his face, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the dissipating crowd and the engines of the rapidly disappearing convoy.
“How was I supposed to know? I don’t have fucking x-ray vision, Bryce.”
“They could be anywhere by now. Fucking miles away.” He jabs a finger into McCoyne’s face. “You’re going to help me find them.”
McCoyne pushes him away. “I’m not. I’m done. I quit.”
“You think you have any choice? You can hold the Hate and you give me an advantage. And with a new boss in town, that matters. Remember this: I’m the only one who knows what you can do, and I’ve got you over a barrel. You play ball, and I’ll make sure you’re looked after. You fuck me over, I’ll hand you over to Hinchcliffe myself and tell him you’re a sympathizer. I’ll tell him you helped them get away, that you tipped them off, and he’ll kill you in a fucking heartbeat. Whatever happens, I win. Stay in line and do as I tell you, and there’s still a chance you won’t lose.”
“Don’t you get it? I don’t have anything left to lose. It’s all gone already.”
“Melodramatic prick.” He gestures over his shoulder as the last of the other vehicles reverses and leaves. “Want me to call that lot back and have them deal with you right now?”
“Do what you like. I just told you, I quit. I don’t care anymore. Go fuck yourself.”
Bryce is livid, but before he can react, McCoyne snatches a knife from his belt, lunges forward, and thumps it hard into the other man’s gut. Bryce staggers back, looking down at the blood spreading across his chest. McCoyne snatches the knife back and stabs him again. And again to be sure. And again. Then one more time just because he feels like it.
Blood spills down onto the tarmac.
“I’m nothing special. Just one of the crowd,” McCoyne says, standing over Bryce, who’s dropped to his knees now, clutching his eviscerated belly. “No one needs to know what I can do.”
And he waits until he’s sure the other man’s dead before getting behind the wheel of his Subaru and following the rest of the pack back to the fallen CDF outpost.
60
The Outpost
It’s nightfall before the Haters have finished here. Under orders from Hinchcliffe, the outpost has been broken down and stripped of everything of value. Now the remains of Thacker’s army, their numbers swollen by the survivors of Johannson’s brutal regime, are ready to begin the journey back to their leader’s stronghold in the town of Lowestoft on the east coast. There’s a seemingly endless queue of vehicles snaking away from the silent, skeletal buildings, the only lights in an otherwise completely dark landscape. Diggers and JCBs drive alongside civilian vehicles as well as the remaining CDF military machines. So what if they’re all out of ammo? Hinchcliffe doesn’t care, and neither will Thacker.
The last vehicle in the line has a sun-bleached image of a long-dead woman’s flawless face on its side. The last trip this truck made was to deliver something
inconsequential to somewhere that didn’t matter before the war: shipping tons of makeup and beauty supplies from the manufacturer’s warehouse to a distribution center. Frozen and unblinking, the woman’s face on the side of the vehicle gives nothing away, no indication of the cargo being carried today.
The drive to Lowestoft takes the best part of two hours tonight through icy, pouring rain. When they’re close—somewhere between ten and fifteen miles away, the driver at the back estimates—he kills his lights, slows down, and drops away. He waits until the rest of the pack has disappeared around a gentle curve in the road.
The Hater behind the wheel waits a while longer until he’s sure the others are long gone. He’s glad to have finally put some distance between him and the rest of the pack. He helped strip the outpost and played his part in collecting up and burning the Unchanged bodies, but it was all just for show. Peter Sutton is a Hater. He knows he’s like the others, but he also knows he’s nothing like them, too.
He guarded the keys to this particular truck with his life and made sure he was the one who ended up behind the wheel. Before he secured the roller door, he told Joseph about a place he knows not far from Lowestoft. He remembered a friend telling him about it before the war began: a decommissioned nuclear bunker near a farm. The world aboveground remains filled with Hate. For now, staying buried is their only option.
To Hinchcliffe and his cronies, Peter’s a rank-and-file killer; just another member of the pack, just another driver in the line. To the remaining Unchanged he’s carrying in the back of this truck, though, he’s everything.
Their last and only hope.
ALSO BY DAVID MOODY
All Roads End Here
One of Us Will Be Dead by Morning
Them or Us
Dog Blood
Hater
Autumn: Aftermath
Autumn: Disintegration
Autumn: Purification
Autumn: The City
Autumn
About the Author
From the UK, DAVID MOODY first self-published Hater on the internet in 2006, and without an agent, succeeded in selling the film rights for the novel to Mark Johnson (producer, The Chronicles of Narnia film series) and Guillermo del Toro (director, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth). With the publication of a new series of Hater stories, Moody is poised to further his reputation as a writer of suspense-laced SF/horror, and “farther out” genre books of all description. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter 1. Fifteen Miles East of Cambridge
Chapter 2. Cambridge University
Chapter 3. Underground
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6. The Hunt
Chapter 7. Exposed
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10. The Car Hypermarket
Chapter 11. The House by the Road
Chapter 12. Freedom
Chapter 13. Exposed
Chapter 14. On the Road
Chapter 15
Chapter 16. RAF Thornhill
Chapter 17. The CDF Outpost Near Cambridge
Chapter 18. Approaching Fordham
Chapter 19. RAF Thornhill
Chapter 20. Approaching Bury St. Edmunds
Chapter 21. RAF Thornhill
Chapter 22
Chapter 23. The CDF Outpost Near Cambridge
Chapter 24. RAF Thornhill
Chapter 25. Cambridge
Chapter 26. RAF Thornhill
Chapter 27. On the Road
Chapter 28. RAF Thornhill
Chapter 29. Approaching RAF Thornhill
Chapter 30. Cambridge
Chapter 31. The CDF Outpost
Chapter 32. Nowhere
Chapter 33. The Travelodge
Chapter 34. The CDF Outpost
Chapter 35. The Travelodge
Chapter 36. The CDF Outpost
Chapter 37
Chapter 38. The Travelodge
Chapter 39. Half a Mile from the CDF Outpost
Chapter 40. Near Longstanton
Chapter 41. The CDF Outpost
Chapter 42. The Travelodge
Chapter 43. Outside the Outpost
Chapter 44. The Outpost—Several Hours Later
Chapter 45
Chapter 46. The Travelodge
Chapter 47. The CDF Outpost
Chapter 48. Cambridge
Chapter 49. The CDF Outpost
Chapter 50. Longstanton
Chapter 51. East of the Outpost
Chapter 52. The CDF Outpost
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58. The Road Heading East
Chapter 59. Cambridge
Chapter 60. The Outpost
Also by David Moody
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Griffin, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
CHOKEHOLD. Copyright © 2019 by David Moody. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.stmartins.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-22951-9 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-10846-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250108463
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First Edition: November 2019
