Them or Us (29 page)

“Behind you!” he shouts. I turn around and see a man, gaining on me fast. I must have lost track in the confusion; I didn’t think there were any left.

“Keep running and don’t stop,” I tell Chloe, shoving her away, and I turn around to try to fend off Ankin’s soldier, but I’ve misjudged his speed and he’s on top of me before I can do anything to defend myself. He’s got a riot baton, which he swings around and thumps into my gut. The incredible pain immediately makes me fold in two and I’m flat on my back in the mud before I know what’s happened. He drops down hard on my chest, forcing every scrap of oxygen from my lungs.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he screams into my face. “They’re Unchanged, you fucking traitor!”

My arms are pinned down by his knees, and there’s nothing I can do to protect myself when he punches me in the face. He spits in my eye, blinding me for an instant, and I don’t see his fist coming until he smacks me in the mouth again. My lip is split, and the pain is intense. Killing the Unchanged is more important to him than dealing with me. He springs up again and runs after them, but, more through luck than judgment, I manage to stretch out an arm behind me and catch hold of one of his feet. He trips and slams down face-first into the dirt. He’s far faster and far stronger than I am and he’s back up in seconds, shaking me off with ease but turning back and booting me in the right kidney for my troubles. I’m enough of a distraction to give Dean a chance to get closer. He steps forward and fires into the soldier’s face from point-blank range. The corpse drops on top of me, what’s left of his dead head smacking hard against mine, and I fight to stay focused and keep breathing through the sudden, all-consuming darkness.

44

I SIT UP QUICKLY,
but the pain’s too much and I immediately drop down again, my skull cracking back against the hard concrete floor. I open my eyes, but it’s dark and everything’s blurred. I can see someone standing over me, looking down. Unchanged. Something inside me instinctively makes me try to get up and fight before I remember what happened. I try to move again, but I can’t. Hurts too much. I can tell from the position of the light and the damp smell in here that this is the small room at the entrance to the Unchanged bunker. The person looking down at me moves closer, his features slowly becoming more distinct. Is that Joseph Mallon?

“Joseph?”

“Lie still, Danny,” he says, his face distressingly haggard and hollow but his voice immediately recognizable. He gently rests his hand on my shoulder. “Tracey’s done what she could for you.”

“Tracey?”

“Our doctor. She’s cleaned your wounds as best she can, but you’re in a bad way.”

I try to get up again, this time managing to prop myself up on my elbows. I slowly shuffle my broken body around and lean back against a wall. I lift my hands to my swollen face and pick dry blood from my eyes. I don’t know whether it’s the beating I’ve just taken, the drugs finally wearing off, or a combination of both, but I feel bad. Really bad. Worse than ever. There’s a woman watching me. Tracey, I presume. She storms out of the room.

“If the stupid bastard won’t listen, there’s nothing I can do to help him.”

Joseph acknowledges her, but I ignore her.

“What happened?” I ask him, having to concentrate hard to make each word.

“Peter knew something was going on out there. He heard all the engines and the planes and helicopters and saw the fighting in the distance. He’d been staying aboveground in the old farmhouse since yesterday, keeping a lookout. Then you showed up here, and all hell broke loose.”

“The children. I had two kids with me…”

“They’re safe in the back rooms with the others. Where did you find them, Danny? Are there more?”

“It’s a long story that you really don’t want to hear,” I answer, catching my breath as a wave of pain washes over me. “And no, they’re the last.”

“Well, maybe I would like to hear that story one day, but not today. Today we have problems to solve first. Really big problems.”

“Where’s Peter?”

Joseph moves to one side. Lying on the floor on the opposite side of the room is a body under a bloodstained sheet.

“Shit.”

“Poor bastard got caught in all that shooting. They got him before Dean could get them.”

Mallon passes me a bottle of water. I swill some around in my mouth, then spit it out to clear the blood. I drink a little, and its icy temperature seems to wake my body and makes me feel slightly more alive. I try to focus on my surroundings. The boy Jake is standing in the doorway watching me, hiding behind Parker.

“What’s happening out there, Danny?” Mallon asks.

I look straight at him. “I didn’t tell anyone about you, if that’s what you think.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s nothing you haven’t heard before,” I tell him. “Just the same old same old.”

“What?”

“You were right, you know, back then at the convent. All those things you used to say about not fighting and making a stand and trying to break the cycle. I thought you were a fucking crank at the time, but you were right.”

“I don’t follow. What’s that got to do with today?”

“We’re imploding. What’s left of the human race is tearing itself apart up there, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. The last army in the country is marching on the last town in the country, and there’s probably very little of either of them left by now. It’s like you said, every man for himself. The thing is, the less there is left to fight for, the higher the stakes seem to get.”

“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing out here, or how you came to have these children with you.”

“I made a decision a while back, before I knew you were here in this place, in fact. I decided I’d had enough of fighting, had enough of everything. I was trying to get away. The kids were just a complication.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you like. I couldn’t leave them out there on their own, so I was just delivering them to you before I fucked off for good. That’s what I’m still planning to do.”

“Well, that might not be so easy now.”

“Why not?”

“Because of our position. They know where we are now, Danny. They’ve seen us here. We’re up shit creek without a paddle, and we need your help.”

Why can’t everybody just leave me be?

“I’m past helping. I’m tired of being used. It just gets me deeper and deeper into the mire and doesn’t do anyone any good. I’m sick and I’m dying, Joseph, and I just want to be left alone. There are enough of you here to be able to look after yourselves.”

“You know that’s not true. We can’t do it without help, and it’s up to you now that Peter’s gone. Jesus, Danny, if millions of us were wiped out by your kind, what chance do less than thirty of us have?”

“No chance at all,” I tell him, keeping my voice low so that Jake doesn’t hear.

“We’ve been down here for months. We’re weak and we’re tired and we know that everything’s stacked against us, but we’re not just going to give up.”

“You’ve got weapons, and it’s chaos up there. You might still have a slight chance.”

“We’ve got a handful of guns,” he corrects me, “but we’ve just used most of our ammunition saving your backside.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have bothered.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he says angrily. “Okay, I’ll rephrase that. We just used up half our ammunition helping Peter Sutton and saving the life of those two kids. Anyway, whatever we did and whatever we did it for, we need your help now. We’ve hardly got any supplies left. We’ll starve if we don’t—”

“You want supplies? I can tell you where to find supplies, but I’m not—”

“Listen, those fuckers up there are going to come back, Danny. Dean says at least one of them got away, and there are still bodies out there, remember? They’ve seen us. They saw Dean and they know we’re here. Even if they can’t get into the bunker, they’ll be waiting for us when we eventually come out. You think they’re just going to forget about us? Forget about you?”

“I’m nothing to them.”

“That’s not what I’d heard. That’s not what Peter told me.”

“With all due respect, maybe you shouldn’t have listened to everything Peter said.”

“He was a good man. He kept us alive, and I trusted him.”

“You call this living? Look around, Joseph. This place is no different from the mass graves I saw outside the gas chambers. You’re all just waiting to die.”

“What about you?”

“Me, too. You’ll probably all outlast me. I don’t have long left.”

“So why let it end this way? Do something with the little time you have, Danny. After all you came through to get here, how hard you fought to find your daughter, the things you managed to survive … I can’t believe you’re talking like this now.”

“Sorry if I’ve let you down,” I sneer, concentrating on another sudden cramping pain in my gut rather than anything Mallon has to say.

“It’s not just me, though, is it?” he continues, not giving up on the guilt trip. “It’s the rest of them. It’s everyone down here. You’re our last chance.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Is it? Way I see it, even if everything else has fallen apart up there, you can still help us. You, me, and everyone else down here, we might be all there is left now.”

45

AN HOUR PASSES, MAYBE
longer. The pain gradually subsides as long as I stay still, but I know the bastard who attacked me aboveground has done some serious damage to my already seriously damaged insides. The temporary relief the drugs gave me from the pain is definitely over. I can feel my body giving up and breaking down.

The Unchanged have left me alone in here. I don’t know whether they’re maintaining a respectful distance from the dead and dying (my only company is Peter Sutton’s corpse) or if they’re just afraid of me.

The door to the corridor that leads down into the main part of the bunker is open, and I can hear Joseph talking, addressing the group. Christ alone knows what he’s telling them. My guess is he’s trying to get them ready to leave, but doesn’t the dumb bastard realize what it’s like up there now? Surely Sutton would have told him? These people are almost certainly the last Unchanged left alive, and as soon as they put their heads above the surface they’ll be hunted down and killed. They might last a few hours or days, maybe a week if they’re lucky, but sooner or later they’ll be destroyed. Their fates are as certain as mine. Poor fuckers. My mind—tired and confused—fills with baseless, nightmare images of the girl Chloe being tracked and killed by my dead daughter Ellis.

The voices down the corridor are becoming raised, and I try to sit up to listen closer. The pain in my gut is too severe, and I have to lie back down and stretch out again. I roll over onto my front and gradually manage to lift myself up onto all fours, then slowly climb the wall until I’m standing up straight. I edge toward the door, then take a few unsteady steps farther down the sloping corridor, dragging my heavy feet. By the time I get close to the other end, Joseph’s in full flow again.

“We’ve talked about this before. We knew this day would come eventually.”

“We have to stay down here,” someone protests. “They’ll never find this place.”

“You think so? They know where we are now, that’s the difference, and they’ll keep on looking until they find us. We’ve all seen what they’re like. They won’t stop until they’ve forced us out into the open and killed us all, because in their stupid, misguided minds they still believe it’s them or us. That’s why we need to move from here now while we’ve still got a chance, before they come looking.”

“It’s suicide.”

“No it isn’t. Sitting down here in the dark, slowly starving to death, is suicidal. I agree it’s not much, but at least we do have
some
chance up there.”

“Where are we supposed to go? They’re everywhere,” Tracey, the doctor, asks, her voice full of anger. I can see her standing opposite Joseph, arms crossed, body language uncomfortably confrontational. I keep walking, gravity and the incline helping me to move. Almost at the far door now.

“Peter and I discussed that. You are right, but they’ve been hit almost as hard by this war as we have. Their numbers are massively reduced. Peter had a plan. He said we should head straight for the ocean, get on a boat, and get off the mainland. Doesn’t matter where we go after that, we just have to—”

“Where exactly do you think you’re going to get a boat from?” I ask, staggering a little closer, leaning up against the door frame for support, dripping with sweat.

Joseph turns around and shrugs. “We’re on the coast. There will be something somewhere.”

“You’re hoping. You’re going to need a better plan than that. There’s not much left undamaged up there, you know.”

“I didn’t think there would be.”

“So what are you going to do exactly? Just walk around all the boatyards together until you find something, all of you wearing hats and dark glasses, hoping no one notices you? Get real.”

A ripple of nervous conversation spreads quickly through the group. I can see them all for the first time now.

“Why don’t you just fuck off,” Tracey says. “Go back and—”

“We’ll manage,” Joseph insists, interrupting and trying to defuse her anger. “We have so far.”

“It’s thanks to him that Peter’s dead,” a badly burned man yells, gesturing at me accusingly.

“It’s thanks to Danny these two children are alive, Gary,” Joseph counters.

“There’s nothing left of most of the towns around here,” I tell them, feeling strangely obliged to be honest and let these people know exactly what’s what aboveground. “I was told that Lowestoft was the only place left, and that’s being torn to pieces as we speak. As far as finding a boat goes, you’ll be lucky to find anything still floating, never mind anything big enough to carry all of you.”

“Peter told me about a couple of places. Oulton Broad, does that sound familiar?”

I know the place he’s talking about. From what I understand, it was a base for pleasure cruising and family boating vacations in the days before the war. It’s close to Lowestoft, but far enough away from the very center of town to have remained relatively overlooked and ignored. It’s weeks since I’ve been anywhere near the water there.

“Oulton Broad’s a possibility, but even if you managed to find a big enough boat, you’ve still got a massive problem to deal with before you start.”

“Such as?”

“It’s inland. If you’re planning on heading for the ocean, you’re going to have to sail right through Lowestoft to get there. Oh, and I might not have mentioned,” I add sarcastically, “there’s a bit of a war going on up there right now.”

“Well, that could work in our favor,” Joseph says optimistically. “A distraction.”

“You think? I’ll tell you something, fight or no fight, if anyone gets so much as a sniff of just one of you, then everything else will be forgotten and the hunt will be back on. All the infighting will stop and you’ll be the only targets again.”

Another frightened murmur spreads quickly through the group. Many of the Unchanged are staring at me now. I make momentary eye contact with Chloe. Perhaps she doesn’t fully follow the conversation, but I can tell from the expression on her face that the implications of what she’s hearing are clearly understood. Jake, sitting on a desk and swinging his legs, lifts his hand and points a finger at me.

“I bet he can show us a better place to find a boat,” he says, his voice initially quiet but steadily gaining in confidence. “He knows where to go,” he tells the others.

“He’s already told us he’s not interested in helping,” Tracey says.

Jake’s not listening. “Then make him do it.”

“We can’t.”

“You can show us, can’t you?” he says again, looking straight at me. “We were by the sea when you found us. You must know where the boats are.”

Joseph looks back at me again. “Well?”

“I know of a couple of places, but you’re not listening to me, are you? It’s going to be hard enough for any of you to get anywhere near Lowestoft. Then, if by some chance you do manage to find a boat, there’s the little question of getting it going. I don’t know anything about boats or engines—”

“We do,” he interrupts. “You think we haven’t planned for something like this? Do you think we’ve just been sitting down here twiddling our thumbs and staring into space for weeks on end feeling sorry for ourselves? We knew this day would come eventually. As good as it was, this place was never going to last. Where’s Todd?”

A man emerges from the gloom at the back of the group. A gangly, awkward-looking guy with an Einstein-like shock of gray-white hair, he acknowledges Joseph and nods at me.

“Who’s this?”

“My name’s Todd Weston,” he answers, stepping over and around people to get closer to the front. “I know my way around boats. You get me to it, I’ll sail it.”

I lean back against the wall and look up at the ceiling. How the hell am I going to get through to these people?

“Do you really think you’re just going to trot along to Lowestoft, pick yourselves up a boat, and sail it away into the sunset? Didn’t you hear me, the place isn’t full of tourists anymore, it’s a fucking war zone. Plus there’s so much smoke and shit in the air that you can’t see the fucking sunset anymore, never mind sail away into it.”

“Where exactly is the fighting?” Joseph asks.

“Want me to draw you a fucking map?”

“Don’t be facetious. I just want to know if the fighting’s near the boatyards,” he says, his voice annoyingly calm, bordering on patronizing.

“I don’t know for sure. It seemed to be concentrated in and around the compound in the center of town from what I saw of it, but—”

“So theoretically we could get in and out again without anyone noticing?”

“Hardly. What are you planning? Are you going to bus people in?”

“Lose the sarcasm and change your attitude, Danny,” he snaps, his voice suddenly harder. “We’re talking about people’s lives here. Stop looking for excuses and try to find a way out. That’s what the old Danny McCoyne would have done.”

“Yeah, and the new Danny McCoyne wouldn’t bother at all. Look at me, for Christ’s sake. I’m a dead man walking. I’m riddled with cancer, I’ve just had seven shades of shit kicked out of me, and—”

“And you’re still going. You’re standing here helping, whether you realize it or not. You continually underestimate yourself. Don’t forget, Danny, you’re the man who managed to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. When the whole country was falling apart and going to hell around you, you were the one who managed to find his daughter and save her. I don’t know of any other father who could have done that. If it wasn’t for you, she’d have been—”

“I didn’t save her,” I interrupt angrily, doing all I can not to think about Ellis.

“What your daughter became and what happened to her wasn’t your fault. You did all you could, more than most. You fought your way into the heart of the biggest fucking battle of all, then managed to get yourself and your girl back out again before it was too late. I don’t know anyone else who’s done anything near comparable. Peter Sutton was in awe of you, you damn fool.”

“Then he was the fool, not me.”

“Can’t you see, you’re our only option, Danny. Without you we’re screwed.”

“I’m screwed anyway.”

“I know that, and I’m truly sorry, but what else are you going to do with the time you have left? You’re not the kind of man who’ll just crawl under a rock and wait there to die, are you? You’re better than that. Go out with a purpose. Give people something to remember you by.”

I know he’s being deliberately overdramatic and playing to his captive audience, but the thing is, there’s a part of me that knows he might be right. I
am
different from the rest of the useless, brain-dead fucks that inhabit this poisoned, dying country. My problem is I’ve always struggled to accept responsibility, and I don’t see why I should start trying to change things now. Surely it’s too late? Joseph looks at me expectantly for an answer, and I do all I can to look anywhere else. Tracey glares at me. Parker and Todd are a little less vicious but no less hopeful. Dean holds his rifle, looking like he’s about to point it at me to try to force me to help. I look from face to face, then find myself looking straight at Chloe and Jake again.

Deep breath.

“Okay, I’ll ask you once more, how do you think you’re going to get everyone onto a boat? Assuming you can find one, that is.”

“No one said that was what we were planning,” Todd says. “When Pete, Joseph, and me first started talking about this, we ruled that out right away. We knew that if we had to get away fast, we’d end up bringing the boat to the people, not trying to take the people to the boat.”

“What, here? Are we close to a river or…?”

He’s shaking his head at me. Joseph explains.

“We were going to split up. Peter and I were going to find the boat with Todd. Everyone else was going to head to a prearranged point farther down the coast and wait for us.”

“What prearranged point?”

“We hadn’t got that far,” he admits.

“Great.”

Every nerve in my body that still feels anything is screaming at me to shut up and get out of here, but there’s something screaming equally loud at me not to. As hard as it is for me to accept, Joseph’s right. When I think about everything I’ve seen and been a part of in Lowestoft these last few days, I know I can’t just turn my back on these people. There’s more decency and civility here in this cramped bunker than there is in the rest of the country combined. Besides, I’m just fooling myself if I think I’m going to get far on my own. My body is well and truly fucked, and I’m living on borrowed time. My choice now is simple and stark: Whether I’m left down here or I manage to crawl back up to the surface, I can either die alone or try to do the right thing by these Unchanged. The last Unchanged.

There’s a hushed, expectant silence throughout the bunker.

“Southwold,” I eventually say.

“What?” Joseph asks, looking confused.

“That’s where you need to go. That’s your ideal meeting point, ten miles south of Lowestoft. Get everyone down there, then get a boat from one of the yards in town and sail it down the coast. With a little luck you’ll find something near the ocean. Southwold is a dead place now. It’s your best option. Probably your only option.”

“So will you help us?”

I pause again. Am I completely sure about this?
Think carefully.

“I’ll do what I can,” I hear myself answer, regretting the words before they’ve even left my mouth.

“We’ll need supplies. We’ve got nothing.”

“There’s a house I was using. It’s more than a mile outside Lowestoft. I’ve got a load of stuff there I’m never going to need. If we’re careful we can collect it on the way through to the boatyard.”

“We need to get moving, then,” he says. “Let’s clear this place out and be ready to get out by morning. We should move fast, while they’re still distracted with their damn infighting and before they start looking for those corpses up there.”