by David Moody
“Don’t, sweetheart,” I shout, trying to turn my aching body around and pull her back into the front. I manage to catch hold of her, but she wrestles herself free. “You can’t go out there—”
She squeezes through the gap between the seats again, pushing me back and lunging for the door. I lean across and cover the lock. She shakes the handle violently and screams with frustration.
“Ellis, don’t,” I plead. “You have to stay here with me. You can’t—”
A sudden round of gunfire from somewhere close interrupts me. I turn and look out of the window at my side and see that there are people out on the highway now. Hundreds of them. Mostly they look like our people, but there are Unchanged soldiers among them, too. Our fighters outnumber them. They’re hunting them down.
Ellis lunges at me, trying to get past. I wrap my heavy arms around her waist and try to pull her closer, but she kicks herself free. I’m too tired to keep fighting. She shoves me away, and the back of my head cracks against the window. Her constant, violent movements make the precariously balanced Land Rover shake and start to slip and lurch to one side.
“Please…” I say, cautiously trying to reach for her again. She recoils from my touch, scrambling away. She pushes against the windshield in frustration. When the broken glass starts to bulge outward, she does it again. And again. I want to stop her, but I don’t have the energy. There’s blood on her hands now, but she goes on thumping the glass regardless, desperate to get out. Finally, with a grunt of effort and anger, she breaks through the windshield and scrambles out onto the hood of the Land Rover. My door’s blocked by another crashed car, and all I can do is follow her out. I crawl over the front of the vehicle, the metal still hot, most of its paint scorched away, shards of glass grinding into my belly. I drop down onto the ground and lose my footing when it’s farther to fall than I think. I get up quickly, breathing hard. The air out here is bone dry and foul smelling.
Ellis darts away, and I follow her, moving out from the shadow of the crashed Land Rover and into the open. I look along the highway in both directions. It’s a single mass of stationary vehicles now. Many of the Unchanged drivers and their passengers are dead. I can see them wedged behind the wheels of wrecks, others with their bloody faces smashed up against windows. Some have survived. One of them emerges from the back of an overturned truck a short distance away. Before they’ve taken more than a couple of steps away, Ellis has attacked. She jumps onto a car, then leaps at the disoriented Unchanged man, landing on his back and smashing him down to the ground with incredible brutality.
A pack of fighters races past me. They’ve been waiting out here in the wasteland, and now they pick their way through the convoy like vultures, stripping the meat from Unchanged bones, hunting out the survivors and tearing them apart. Up ahead a Brute thunders along the road unchallenged, making kill after kill after kill. Any Unchanged resistance is quickly crushed. Even those who try to run are chased down and killed.
Ellis lunges at another one and disappears from view. I swallow hard and force myself to move. Leg hurts. I look down and see that there’s blood dribbling down from my right knee. My trouser leg and boot are stained wet-red.
“Ellis, wait,” I try to shout, my voice nowhere near loud enough. I find her on the ground beside a jeep, leaning down over another body. She looks up at me, and a chunk of bloody flesh drops from her mouth. Was she chewing it? I reach out and grab her wrist before she’s able to get away. “Too dangerous here. Need to get under cover. Come with me…”
She pries my weak fingers off and crawls away, searching for the next kill. She brings down a dazed, blood-soaked woman who’s already half dead. She pulls her down to her knees, grabs a fistful of hair, and smashes her face again and again into a charred car door, denting the paint-stripped metal more and more with each impact. I haul myself toward her, using other wrecks for support. Up ahead the towering mushroom cloud is beginning to fade and lose focus. That makes me even more afraid. Soon the air will be filled with poison if it’s not already. I throw myself down at Ellis again and wrap my arms tight around her. The pain in my bleeding knee is unbearable, but I have to ignore it. Ellis is all that matters.
“You have to come with me. We’ll both die if we stay out here.”
She puts the soles of her bare feet against the misshapen car door and straightens her legs, pushing me away. Overbalanced, and with one leg already weakened, I fall back. She bites down onto my hand, drawing blood, and I let go. She stands over me, one foot on either side of my body. I look up at her, covering my eyes against the fine dust and ash, which is falling faster now. I reach up and snatch her hand again as she sees another Unchanged and tries to run. I won’t let go. I can’t let go. She screams and pulls and kicks at me, but I won’t let her go.
“Stay with me, please…”
Ellis drops down onto my chest and stares into my face. What’s she thinking? Does she understand any of this? Another Unchanged trying to drag itself to safety distracts her, and she starts to move. I grip her wrist even harder.
“Don’t go.”
She clenches her free hand into a fist and hits me. I try to stop her, but she hits me again, then again and again and again until my face is numb and my eyes are almost swollen shut. Too tired. Can’t fight back.
I feel her get up.
There’s so much I need to say, but I can’t get even the first word out. I’m aware of her looking down at me, breathing hard, my blood on her hands.
“Ellis—” I start to say, but she isn’t listening. She looks up, then sprints away. I turn my head and watch as she disappears into the maze of crashed vehicles, searching for her next kill. All I can do is watch her go.
41
COLD.
Body shaking.
Breathing in dust.
The fighters are long gone. Ellis is long gone.
Empty.
Everything’s lost.
Still lying in the road, curled up in a ball. Stomach churning, legs and arms aching. Head pounding. Throat dry, lungs scorched. Warm wind gusting. Swirling sky black above me. Light’s fading. Stench of burning meat is everywhere. Been here for hours, facedown on the asphalt.
Heavy footsteps.
Someone standing next to me. A soldier? Stay still. Don’t move.
“Found one,” he shouts, face hidden, voice muffled by a gas mask.
“Worth taking?” someone shouts back.
“Not sure.”
He kicks me in the gut to see if he gets a reaction, forcing air out. I look up but don’t move. I feel the Hate rising.
“Well, has it still got two arms and two legs?”
“Yes.”
“And is it breathing?”
“Think so.”
“Then chuck it on the truck.”
He bends down, grabs hold of my shoulder, and picks me up. He hauls me across the road, feet dragging in the dust.
Have to try to fight. It’s all I’ve got left. Everything else is lost.
With what feels like my last breath, I straighten my legs, stand tall, and wrestle myself free. Unarmed and uncaring, I shove the soldier away with all the force I can manage. Caught off guard, he slams face first into a wreck. I spin him around and rip off his face mask. I need this fucker to know how much I hate him when I kill him.
He throws me back. Much stronger than me. I fall, my injured knee giving way. I wait for him to attack, but he picks me up again.
Is this how it ends? Is he going to kill me now?
Wait. He’s like me. One of us.
“Easy, tiger,” he grunts, pushing me forward again. “Save it for the Unchanged.”
Too tired to protest. Filled with relief, anger, and pain.
He leads me through the highway chaos, then picks me up and puts me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes when my legs buckle again. Can’t fight. Can’t react.
I open my eyes and lift my head. Hard to see anything. More soldiers wearing gas masks, all of them dragging o
r carrying people over this way. We reach a flatbed truck, and he pushes me up. Grabbing hands reach down and help me. I scramble up, then fall back against the side of the truck, struggling to breathe. Dust and dirt grind into my cuts and burns, but I’m too tired to care. Too tired to feel the pain.
Empty.
For half a second I try to look for Ellis, but I know she’s long gone. I look around at the faces of the people crammed into the back of this truck. They’re all like me. They’re all fighters. No longer people, just fighters. All of us conscripted into what remains of Ankin’s army or another force like it.
I was stupid to believe I could sidestep this war, that I could escape from it with Ellis. What’s left of the world is now entirely governed by the Hate, and I have to be ready to fight and to kill until the last trace of the Unchanged is wiped from the face of the planet. Only then will the situation change.
My daughter is gone, lost long before I found her. Now all I have left is the Hate.
Exhausted, I close my eyes and let the darkness swallow me up.
Need to rest and recover and be ready for what’s still to come. No choice. No option. The hardest battles loom large on the horizon.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part II
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part III
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part IV
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part V
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part VI
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part VII
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part VIII
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
