by David Moody
35
THE FIRST FLOOR OF the hotel is deserted, and it’s easy to see why. The carpet is soaked with water, and there’s a tidemark on the wall about eighteen inches off the ground. Wallpaper is hanging down in strips, and the whole place smells of rotting waste and untreated sewage. I thought there would be more people in here. I guess most of them were washed out with the floodwater that has obviously flowed through the building in the last couple of days. Others will have left when the fighting started. Am I too late? Has Lizzie already gone? Was she ever here at all?
I head back to the front of the hotel, feet squelching on the waterlogged carpet, then head upstairs. I climb the long, straight flight of steps to the second floor, knifing a fucker in the gut as he tries to barge past me and nearly sends me flying. I glance back and watch as he tumbles down the stairs, rolling over and over until he lands in a bloody, groaning heap at the very bottom.
I start checking the rooms on the second floor, but they’re empty. I’m halfway along the hall when a door flies open and three terrified Unchanged men come sprinting out, carrying as many bags and boxes of belongings as they can manage between them. They can’t see me over everything they’re carrying, and one of them knocks me to the ground. Instinctively I get up and start running after them, but it’s too late and they’re already gone. Doesn’t matter. Have to concentrate. Have to focus. Let them go.
The next three doors are open, and the rooms are empty. They’re foul, squalid places, full of the residue of the refugees who’ve been forced to live here together for weeks on end. The carpets are covered with a layer of waste and abandoned belongings, so deep that I don’t see the curled-up body of an elderly man until I feel the fingers of his outstretched hand crack under my boot.
Back out in the hall, I force myself to slow down. Need to try to apply some logic here. The hotel’s emptying, so there’s no point checking any of the vacant rooms. If any of the doors aren’t locked, I decide, there’s no one there.
I start hacking at the lock and hinges of the next door I find that’s still shut. I can already hear the bastards inside the room screaming with panic. I keep working on the door, shoulder-charging it open when I’ve done enough damage to loosen the latch. One of the occupants runs at me, brandishing a chair leg. I sidestep him, then shove him across the hall, sending him crashing into the wall opposite. There are three other Unchanged in the room, with a fourth trying to get out through an open window. The light’s low, but I see enough to know that I don’t recognize any of them and they’re of no interest. I turn and head back out to the hallway, pausing only to knife the fucker who comes back at me for a second go with the chair leg.
The lock on the door of the next room is broken, but it’s held on a chain. It opens just far enough for me to see inside. No sign of Lizzie. A gray-haired woman grabs hold of the door handle and pulls it shut, snatching it from my hands. Another room empties as I approach, and this time I just press myself back against the wall and let two more sobbing Unchanged stumble past.
Almost all of the third floor is empty, and Lizzie’s not in any of the rooms that are still occupied. In a room near the staircase on the fourth floor I find a small girl sitting alone in an armchair that dwarfs her tiny shape. In my haste and desperation I think for a second that it might be Ellis. It’s dark, the dull dawn light just beginning to seep in through the cracks between the wooden boards that have been nailed across the window. It’s only when I touch the girl and she slumps out of the chair that I see it isn’t Ellis, and it’s only when she lies at my feet and doesn’t move again that I realize she’s already dead, abandoned by whoever she was with.
The door to the last room on this floor is open slightly, but it slams shut as I run toward it. I shove it open before it’s locked. Three Unchanged women and a man begin shouting and screaming at me in a language I don’t understand. Sounds like Polish or Russian or something … I turn and leave, and one of them follows me back out into the corridor, still shouting. She grabs hold of my legs, pleading with me for help. I kick her off and keep moving.
Top floor. Running out of options.
There are more locked doors up here than I’ve got time for. I stop outside the first. I can hear voices inside, so I start chopping at the lock with my axe, my arms beginning to feel heavy and numb with effort. The rotten wood splinters easily, and the door flies open, but Lizzie’s not here, and I move on. I can feel their relief when I turn my back. The door slams shut, and I hear them shoving furniture up against it to seal themselves in.
Two doors facing each other are both shut. I jump the sprawled-out body of a Chinese man and press myself up against the first of them. I can hear a man’s voice ranting in Urdu or Punjabi or similar, so I immediately turn my attention to the other and start chopping at the wood around the latch. I stop for a second when I hear another deafening explosion outside, a flash of white lighting everything up like a strobe. It’s impossible to gauge the distance, but that sounded close. Too close. I can still feel the vibrations through my feet as I start chopping again. This door is more stubborn than most. It’s newer than the others, probably recently replaced. I guess I’m not the first person to have to try to break into a room here. I grunt with effort as I hammer the door again and again, desperate to get through.
viii
WITH HIS FACE PRESSED hard against the spyhole in the door, Mark stared in disbelief at the man trying to bludgeon his way into the room directly opposite.
“What is it?” Kate asked, trying to pull him away. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. How could this be? How had he found them? Was it just coincidence or the cruelest stroke of bad luck imaginable? Had he been looking for them? How could he have known they were here? He glanced back over his shoulder at Lizzie standing in the far corner, the stunned expression on his face obviously speaking volumes.
“Mark, what is it? What the hell’s the matter?” Kate demanded again, her voice now frantic. He ignored her and instead continued to stare at Lizzie. She moved closer, her pace quickening as she approached. Sensing that she already knew what was outside, she tried to push Mark out of the way. He stood his ground, turned his back on her, and pressed his eye up against the tiny glass button in the door again.
He hadn’t seen him for almost a year, and he was virtually unrecognizable, but it was definitely him, he was sure of it. Danny McCoyne. His cousin Danny. His mom’s sister Jean’s son. The kid he’d messed around with at countless boring family gatherings and parties when they were growing up. The miserable loser with the dead-end job who’d ended up saddled with too many kids in an apartment that was too small. The notorious slacker who other members of the family had frequently cited as a prime example of how not to do things. Lizzie’s partner. A murderer. A Hater.
Outside on the landing, McCoyne continued to hammer against the door. Mark was overwhelmed by the anger and hatred so visible on his cousin’s twisted face, shocked and appalled by what he had become. He’d always seemed awkward and gangly, uncomfortable in his own body, but that uncertainty had been replaced now with focus, ferocity, and a vicious intent. To Mark, Danny McCoyne now personified the previously faceless Hater menace, and he felt his legs weaken with nerves at the thought he might be forced to confront him.
Lizzie grabbed Mark’s arm and yanked him out of the way. She pressed her eye against the spyhole briefly, then staggered away from the door, recoiling in shock at the sight of the Hater in the hallway. The room around her was filled with noise—Kate’s panicked screaming, Gurmit Singh’s constant unfathomable tirade—but she didn’t hear any of it. How could this be? How the hell could he be here?
“Will someone tell me what’s wrong?” Kate pleaded, desperate for information.
“It’s Danny,” Lizzie mumbled, her voice barely audible.
“What? But how could he—?”
“Keep your voice down, Katie,” Mark warned.
“Let him have the kid,” Kate shouted, moving forward. Mark pushed her back
away from the door. “Come on, Mark, let him take her. Give her to him. Get the little bitch out of here. We’ll be safer if—”
He kept pushing her away, the noise from the hallway getting louder and louder. He shoved her back toward her catatonic parents, then ran to the spyhole and peered outside again. He watched as McCoyne finally forced his way into the room opposite. He disappeared inside but was back out again just a few seconds later, and this time there was no question as to where he was heading next.
“Get back!” Mark hissed as he stumbled back toward the others, sweeping them away from the door. He grabbed a baseball bat they’d kept in the room to defend themselves, then herded Kate, Lizzie, and Singh around the foot of the double bed, gesturing for them to get down and stay out of sight.
“Is he—” Lizzie started, the sound of the first flurry of blows from the axe against the door rendering her question obsolete before it had even been fully asked. The door rattled and shook in its frame. Mark glanced back at Kate, who cowered alongside her parents, then turned and faced the door again, desperately trying to give the impression he was ready to fight when all he wanted to do was run.
The Hater in the hallway booted the badly damaged door open, sending it clattering back against the wall, splinters of wood flying in all directions. He charged into room 33, straight into Mark, who ran toward him to try to head him off, baseball bat held high. He clumsily swung the bat at his cousin’s head but missed by a mile, wrong-footed by the sudden speed of events, the close confines of the cluttered room, and the utter terror that he felt in every nerve of his body. McCoyne grabbed the end of the bat on its fast upward arc, yanked it from his grip, and threw it out of reach across the room.
The Hater stopped.
He thought he recognized the man in front of him. Mark? Mark Tillotsen? Was it really him?
The unexpected appearance of a face from his old life caught him completely off guard. For a split second he stood there in numb silence and simply stared at the other man, his head suddenly filled with memories and emotions that had been suppressed and long-forgotten since he’d first tasted the Hate. He rocked back on his feet, hardly even blinking as another explosion outside shook the entire building. Then, as Mark lunged at him again and someone else screamed something unintelligible from the far corner of the room, he snapped himself out of his sudden trance and remembered Ellis and Lizzie and why he was there. He caught Mark as he leaped forward, grabbing his collar, spinning him around, and smashing him up against the wall to his left, then dropping him onto the floor in a crumpled heap. He rolled over onto his back and lay groaning at the Hater’s feet.
He sensed more movement. Another one of them was attacking.
McCoyne looked up as Lizzie ran toward him. Her face was tired, old, and drawn, her cheeks and eyes sunken and hollow, but he knew immediately that it was her.
“Lizzie, I—”
She swung the baseball bat around and smashed him in the side of the head.
36
I HEAR THEM TALKING, but I keep my eyes shut. My hands are bound and strapped to radiator pipes behind me, and my ankles are tied together. There’s blood in my mouth, trickling down the inside of my throat. Someone trips over my feet, but I force myself not to react. I half-open one blood-caked eye and see Mark trying to drag a pregnant woman away from me. She sees that I’m awake, then squirms free from him, turns back, and boots me in the gut. Can’t defend myself. I take the full force of her foot right in the middle of my stomach, and I’m suddenly doubled up with pain, gasping for air and choking on the semicoagulated blood in my nose and mouth. Christ, that bitch is wild. It takes two of them to pull her away from me and hold her down. If I didn’t know better she could almost pass for one of us. Maybe she is. Maybe she’s been conditioned to fight like I’ve learned not to.
Mark and an Asian man keep the pregnant woman away at a distance. Lizzie catches my eye, then strides across the room toward me, grabs my shoulder, and pulls me over until I’m sitting upright opposite her with my back against the radiator. She looks straight into my face, then slaps me so hard I almost fall back down.
“You killed my dad, you fucker,” she spits. “I loved you and you killed my dad!”
What am I supposed to say? She’s right, and I don’t regret any of it. I could kill everyone in this room and not give any of them a second thought. Except Lizzie, perhaps. I can’t take my eyes off her. It’s suddenly like we’ve never been apart, and for a single brief and foolish moment the irrevocable difference between us seems trivial and unimportant. She slaps me again. I try to turn away, but she still hits me with full force. The pain’s good. It wakes me up. I start trying to get my hands free of the plastic ties they’re using to hold me.
“We should kill him,” the pregnant woman snarls, holding her swollen belly.
“That’d make us as bad as him,” Lizzie answers quickly before turning her attention back to me. She’s nervous. Scared. She forces herself to talk to me. “Why are you here?”
“Looking for you,” I answer quickly.
“Haven’t you hurt me enough?”
“Not about you. Ellis. Need to know what happened to her.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? She’s like me. She should be with me.”
“What, so you can let her loose outside to kill? So you can let her run wild and…?”
I shake my head and stare into her face again, still trying to get my hands free behind me.
“I want to take her with me. I want to look after her and take care of her. I don’t want her out there fighting on her own.”
“I don’t want her fighting at all. She’s just a kid…”
“I just want her with me, Lizzie. I want to keep her safe.”
Lizzie slumps back and drops to the floor opposite me, head held in her hands. The Asian guy is still mumbling and cursing at me from the corner of the room. The pregnant woman watches my every move, not daring to look away. Mark tries to appear collected and in control, but I can sense his terror. I feed off their collective fear. It’s empowering. Even together they’re no match for me.
“He’s here to kill us,” Mark says. “Katie’s right, we should have just got rid of him. This was a bad idea.”
I shake my head and spit a lump of bloody phlegm onto the carpet.
“Not interested in any of you. Just Ellis. Let me know what happened to her and I’ll go.”
“Don’t listen to him. Let him go and the fucker will kill us.”
I shake my head again.
“I won’t. I can control it. I’d never have got this deep into the city if I couldn’t. I can hold the Hate. They taught me.”
“Who did?” Lizzie asks.
“People like you.”
“This is bullshit,” the pregnant woman yells. “Why you?”
“Not just me. Others, too…”
“But why…?”
“Haven’t you heard what’s happening outside? It’s a coordinated attack,” I explain, suddenly desperate for Lizzie to understand. “I came here with other fighters, but I broke away to try to find you.”
“I don’t understand…”
“I’m not interested in killing any of you. I just want to know what happened to Ellis. Tell me what happened to her and I’ll go and you’ll never see me again—”
“Let him take her,” the pregnant woman says. “Get the evil little bitch out of here—”
“Shut up, Katie!” Mark yells.
What did she just say? I can’t believe what I’m hearing. This must be bullshit. She can’t really be here, can she? How could they have kept her hidden and stopped her from attacking for so long? I look from face to face in search of an explanation.
“Ellis is here?”
“In the bathroom,” she shouts, trying to get up again, pointing at a door in the wall opposite me as Mark pushes her back down and tries to cover her mouth.
“Here? But how…?”
Still slumped on the floor in f
ront of me, just out of reach, Lizzie starts to sob.
“I couldn’t let her go. I knew she was like you, but it didn’t matter. Even when she killed the boys I couldn’t bear to let her go…”
Her words dry up as tears take over. I keep trying to move my wrists and bend and stretch my legs to break my binds. Got to get up and get to Ellis …
“He can take her,” says the pregnant woman. “Let him take her.”
“We can’t trust him,” Mark snaps at her.
“Does it matter? Throw the pair of them out the door and let them take their chances—”
Another thunderous explosion interrupts her. They’re getting closer and more frequent now. At this rate the city will have fallen long before 6:00 a.m.
“She’s right,” I tell Lizzie, begging for her to listen and understand. “I promise I won’t hurt you. I’ll take Ellis and you’ll never see either of us again.”
Mark moves forward and picks up the bloodied baseball bat.
“As soon as we let him go he’ll turn on us,” he says, sneering atme.
“For fuck’s sake,” I scream at him in frustration, “will you just listen to what I’m saying? I don’t want to kill any of you—”
“Come on, Lizzie,” the pregnant woman says, calmer now, lowering herself down and kneeling on the floor next to her. “You said yourself you can’t help her. This is the best option for all of us.”
“She’s right,” I agree, as if they’re going to listen to anything I say. Lizzie glares at me. She’s in an impossible situation—whatever choice she makes, she loses. No matter what she is and how I feel about her now, I’m surprised that it still hurts me so much to see her like this. She’s shaking her head.
“I can’t. I just can’t let her go…”
“You don’t have long,” I tell them. “The city doesn’t have long. I can get her to safety. Get her out of here before it’s too late.”
