Them or Us

26

SUTTON DROVE ME BACK to the house. True to his word, he left me there with barely any protest. He started to talk about ways I could find him again if I changed my mind, but I told him not to bother. I told him I didn’t want to see him again, and that if I did, I’d kill him. I told him I’d have to tell Hinchcliffe. He said it didn’t make any difference because the bunker’s secure. Unless Hinchcliffe’s got a few oxyacetylene burners or a tank lying around, he said, it doesn’t matter. No one’s getting in, and the Unchanged aren’t about to come out.

The house wasn’t where I needed to be, though. I waited there for a couple of hours longer and tried to pull myself together, hoping that the constant thumping in my head would stop and I’d start to feel better. I’d been telling myself it was just the aftereffects of the beer from last night, or the food I’d eaten yesterday, or the dog the day before that, or whatever I’d done the previous day or last week, but I knew it wasn’t.

This is serious. I can’t go on like this. I’m getting worse every day. I’m back inside the compound now, walking toward Hinchcliffe’s factory, about to do something I should have done a long time ago. I need help.

The snow’s stopped and it’s pissing down with rain now, adding to the misery. The late afternoon sky is filled with endless black clouds. The guard on the approach road recognizes me and lets me through. Other than him I see only one more guard. He’s standing just inside the entrance door at the end of the factory where the Unchanged kids are held, sheltering from the rain. I’m scared, and I lose my nerve before I get too close and walk straight past, heading instead toward the enormous, useless wind turbine that towers over everything. It’s a symbol of what this place once was and what it’ll never be again; the ultimate physical manifestation of all Hinchcliffe’s bullshit.

It’s no good. I can’t put this off any longer.

I walk back the other way, and this time the guard in the doorway sees me and yells at me to either “get over here or fuck off.” He’s wrapped up against the bitter cold, wearing so many layers that he looks grossly overweight. His mouth is hidden by a scarf and his upturned collar, and he has ski goggles covering his eyes. He has a rifle slung over his shoulder. I presume it’s there to stop escapees rather than to prevent anyone breaking in.

“What do you want?” he demands, his voice muffled.

“Rona Scott,” I answer. “I need to see her.”

“Says who?”

“Says Hinchcliffe.”

He lifts up his goggles and eyes me up and down, then pulls his scarf down a couple of inches, just enough to clear his mouth, making it easier to speak.

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?”

“Have you?”

“Yeah … ain’t you the one what finds the Unchanged?”

“That’s me,” I answer quickly, desperate to get out of the cold. It’s raining even harder now, the water bouncing back up off the pavement. “Look, is the doctor here? I need to see her.”

He stops to think again. This guy’s not the smartest, and that’s probably why he drew the short straw and ended up being posted out here on his own. I can’t tell whether he’s trying to psych me out with these long, silent pauses or if he’s just slow. I reach inside my coat, and he reacts to my sudden movement, swinging his rifle around.

“Don’t,” I tell him, raising my hands to show I don’t want any trouble. When he relaxes I take out a can of beer from my pocket, hoping to speed up this painfully drawn-out encounter with a little bribery. He halfheartedly tries to remain impassive and hard, but I can see a sudden glint in his eye. He’s like a kid looking in a toy store window.

“Inside,” he says as he takes the can from me. He glances from side to side before moving out of the way to let me pass. As if anyone else is going to have followed me out here. Fucking idiot.

The building is oppressively quiet save for a few muffled sounds in the distance, and it’s no warmer indoors than out. I’ve never made it this far in before. This end of the complex looks like it was mostly office space. I’m in an open-plan reception area, which has been turned into a checkpoint by Hinchcliffe’s guard, and it reminds me of the reception desk back at the housing project where I used to work. There are a couple of rooms filled with rubbish leading off from here, and a wide staircase that goes up to the second floor. There’s also another door into a corridor, long and straight and dark, which I presume leads into the rest of the factory. Curious, I walk toward it and try to peer in through a porthole-shaped safety glass window.

“Not that way,” the guard says, making me jump.

“Where, then?”

No response. He looks at me expectantly. I dig down into the pockets of my coat again and this time bring out a packet of sweets. I don’t know where they came from or why I’ve got them. I found them in the house before I came out and thought they might be useful.

“This is all I’ve got,” I tell him, talking to him like I used to talk to my children. “Where’s the doctor?”

He points up the stairs.

“Up there there’s a load of offices. She’s in one of them. Second or third floor, don’t know which.”

“Thanks for your help,” I say sarcastically as I chuck him his sweets.

Dripping wet and exhausted, I start to climb up the metal steps, my boots clanging and filling the building with noise. At the top of the first flight of stairs is an open door and, beyond it, another narrow corridor with three doors along one side and one at the far end. Fortunately there are long rectangular windows in each of the doors that allow me to see inside. Rona Scott is sitting in the first room, slouched in a chair, staring straight ahead. This must have been some kind of meeting room or training area once. There’s no other furniture now except for a long gray desk beside her that’s covered with rubbish and clutter. I pause before trying to attract her attention, feeling undeniably nervous. Wait. She’s talking. Is someone in there with her?

Scott looks exhausted. Her face is flustered, her cheeks bloodred, and she’s smoking a cigarette, flicking ash onto the dirty terra-cotta-colored carpet. I’ve spoken to her (rather, she’s spoken at me) on a few occasions before today, and I don’t relish the prospect of having to talk to her again. She’s a foul-tempered woman at the best of times, and I’m tempted just to turn around now and go back to the house rather than face her. She suddenly gets up, moving unexpectedly quickly, and I step back to stay in the shadows, keeping out of sight but still able to see her through the glass. From my new position I can see that the room is actually double length, and the far end is in almost total darkness. There’s a concertina-like folding wall across the middle, which has been left half open. Scott strides purposefully through the gap and disappears out of view.

“Do something, you useless little prick!” she yells at someone unseen, her bellowing voice muffled but still clearly audible even through the closed door. “For god’s sake, come on!”

The hostility in her voice is unnerving, and I actually start to edge back toward the stairs before telling myself to get a grip. She reappears again and mooches through the clutter on the table. She picks something up—looks like an open glass jar—then moves back into the shadows.

“You know you want it,” I hear her shout. “Come on, react! Don’t just sit there, you pathetic piece of shit.”

She walks back this way, the jar held out in front of her; then she looks around. Damn, she’s seen me. I try to get out of the way but it’s too late. No backing out now. She angrily yanks the door open.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Sorry,” I stammer, immediately on the wrong foot. “I didn’t mean to disturb you—”

“Yes you did,” she bawls at me. “No one ever comes here unless they don’t have any choice. You didn’t come here by accident, so you did mean to disturb me.”

“Hinchcliffe said I should—”

“You McCoyne?”

“Yes, I—”

“He said you’d probably turn up at some point. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll be with you.”

When she stops talking I become aware of a faint whimpering noise coming from elsewhere in the room. Scott moves away from the door, and I follow her inside. At the far end, strapped to a chair by ropes tied across her tiny torso and around her ankles and wrists, is an Unchanged child. It’s one of the kids from the council depot nest we cleared out earlier this week, I’m sure it is. When she sees that someone else is in the room, she starts moaning in fear, tugging at her restraints to try to get free. The effort’s too much, though, and she gives up and slumps forward sobbing, letting her bonds take her weight, her long, greasy hair hanging down and covering her dirty face. Poor little shit. What the hell has Scott been doing to her?

“Interesting,” Scott says, watching both the girl and me, her eyes flicking between us.

“What is?”

“The way she reacted when you appeared,” she says.

“She recognizes me, that’s all. I helped catch her.”

“I just need one of these little cunts to show a bit of backbone and start fighting. Get Hinchcliffe off my back for a while. It wasn’t so bad when Thacker was in charge. Hinchcliffe’s got no patience. He wants results or he wants them dead.”

The little girl, shaking with cold, cries out again. In a sudden fit of rage that takes both me and the child by surprise, the doctor spins around and hurls the glass jar at her. It hits the wall just above her head and explodes, showering her with sharp shards of glass and sticky globules of food.

“Jesus, what the fuck are you doing?” I shout, forgetting myself.

Rona Scott leans back and looks at me disapprovingly. “Looks like someone’s been spending too much time around these things.”

“It’s not that. I just—”

Scott’s not interested. She runs toward the girl again, grabs her shoulders, and yells into her face. The child screams back at the top of her voice, tied tight but still straining to get away. “That’s better,” Scott says, taunting the kid, slapping her cheek. “Now that’s more like it.” She turns her back on the still-screaming child and looks at me. “Right this way.”

She shoves me out of the room and locks the door, muffling the little girl’s cries but not blocking them out completely. She stops in the middle of the corridor, preventing me from going any farther, waiting expectantly. I realize what she’s waiting for and reach into my inside pocket and pull out a half-full packet of cigarettes I’ve been holding on to for a while. She studies the packet for a moment, checks how many smokes are inside, then grunts her approval and heads for the staircase.

We climb another flight of steps up to the third floor, which looks identical in layout to the second. She takes me into the room at the far end of the corridor, double the size of the others. There’s a wide window on one wall that gives Scott a virtually uninterrupted view out across Hinchcliffe’s compound. On the opposite wall, a smaller window overlooks the sea. Driving rain clatters constantly against the glass. There’s more light in here than in any other part of the building I’ve been in so far, but that’s not a good thing. This is Rona Scott’s clinic–cum–living-quarters, and I’d have preferred not to be able to see anything.

“Over there,” she grunts at me, pointing across the room. I walk across the cluttered space, picking my way through the rubbish that covers the floor. There are unpleasant stains and used swabs and dressings everywhere, crusted hard and brown. Discarded strips of bandage lie around the place like gruesome, blood-soaked paper-chain decorations. This place makes me realize just how much the role of a doctor (if Rona Scott ever really was a doctor) has changed. No longer concerned with the ongoing well-being and general health of their patients, they’re now here just to patch people up and keep them fighting as hard as possible for as long as they can. As with any war, countless numbers of people have suffered horrific injuries over the last year. Fortunately for them, most died quickly on the battlefield or later as a result of radiation sickness, infection, or malnutrition. Doctors like Rona Scott are rarely bothered by people like me, and it shows. This room, although still having the faintest smell of antiseptic, now has all the dignity and class of a back-street vehicle repair shop.

Scott walks over to where I’m standing, drops her cigarette, and stubs it out on the carpet. I’ve never been this close to her before, and I pray I never am again. She looks even worse than I do, as if she’s been personally collecting samples of all the diseases and conditions she might still have to treat. Her breath is foul. The bottom of one of her earlobes is missing and has been patched up with adhesive tape that’s covered with blood. I hope that little girl downstairs did it.

“Okay, make it quick. What’s wrong with you?”

“Where do I start?”

“What hurts most?”

“Everything hurts,” I answer honestly. “No appetite, lost a load of weight, fucking awful cough, sometimes there’s blood when I piss…”

“You look bad.”

“Thanks.”

She picks up a flashlight and shines it into my eyes, sighing with effort every time she moves. I don’t know whether she’s as unfit as I feel or whether she just resents every second of time she’s wasting on me. Is she like this with everyone? Is it because I’m not a battle-scarred soldier or one of Hinchcliffe’s precious fighters?

“Strip to the waist,” she orders, and I immediately do as I’m told, starting to shiver even before I’m done. I catch a brief glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror in the corner, and I have to look twice to be sure it’s really me. I stare at my skeletal reflection. Christ, I can see every individual rib. I’m hollow chested. My chest goes in instead of out like it used to …

“Stand still,” she says but I can’t stop shaking. She peels off her grubby fingerless woolen gloves and starts touching me. I recoil from her unforgiving, icelike fingers. She roughly pushes and prods at my skin, working her way around my kidneys and belly with the bedside manner of a butcher working in an abattoir. I wince when she jabs her fingers into me, just below my rib cage, then wince again when she pinches my gut. Is she actually doing anything or just using me for stress relief? Finally she unearths a stethoscope from under a pile of papers and used dressings on a window ledge and presses it against various different parts of my back and front. Examination over, she tells me to get dressed.

“Well?” I ask as I quickly pull my clothes back on again.

“Not a lot to say, really.”

“So what’s wrong with me?”

She groans and plumps her heavy frame down into a chair, which creaks with surprise under her sudden weight. She rummages around on top of a desk and fishes out a half-smoked cigarette, then spends a few seconds picking dirt off the filter and flicking ash off the end before lighting up. Bitch is doing this on purpose, I’m sure of it. She’s tormenting me, dragging this out unnecessarily. She’s probably enjoying the feeling of power. She’s probably heard what I can do with the Hate, and now she’s showing me who’s in charge.

“Were you close to any of the bombs?” she eventually asks.

“Which bombs?” I answer stupidly.

“The bombs. Remember? Great big friggin’ explosions? Bright light? Mushroom clouds?”

“I was about ten miles from one of them. Might have been farther. Why?”

“Don’t suppose it matters really, but it probably didn’t help. We’ve probably all had enough of a dose by now. How long were you exposed for?”

“Exposed?”

“How long were you out there?”

“I don’t know. I passed out for a while. I was picked up on the highway, but I don’t know how long.”

“Wouldn’t have made much difference anyway,” she says, drawing on her cigarette and looking past me at the rain running down the window. “No doubt we’ll all end up going the same way in the end. Christ, they threw enough of that shit up into the atmosphere to do us all in.”

“So what’s wrong with me?” I ask again, although I think I already know the answer. I think I knew it before I came here. I’ve suspected for a while, but I didn’t want to accept it.

“Cancer,” she finally says, before adding a disclaimer, “probably.”

For a second all I can think about is the way she said “probably,” as if we’re still in the old world and she’s covering her back in case she’s made a misdiagnosis and I sue. The fact she’s just confirmed my worst fear goes almost unnoticed at first, but then it slowly starts to sink in. Cancer.

“Where?”

“What?”

“The cancer, where is it?”

“I’d do an MRI scan, but the power’s down,” she says sarcastically. “Hard to say for certain,” she finally answers. “You’ve got something big in your gut, probably in your stomach, too, but there are bound to be more. Those are secondaries, I think, but I’m no expert. Truth is you’re probably riddled with it by now.”

I stare at her, my mouth hanging open, knowing what I want to ask next but not knowing if I can. She looks up at me, makes fleeting eye contact, then looks away again, anticipating the question that’s inevitably coming.

“How long?”

There, I finally managed to spit the words out. Scott smokes again and pauses before answering.

“Don’t know. No accurate way of telling anymore. Could be weeks, could be months. Maybe a year at the absolute outside if you’re lucky.”

“If I’m lucky?”

“Figure of speech.”

“But isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Like what? The National Health Service is falling apart at the seams, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are no spare beds anywhere. Come to think of it, there are no beds.”

“There must be something.”

“You know the score, McCoyne. You’ve been around here long enough to know what it’s like. There probably used to be a cure, or some surgical procedure that might have given you a little more time, but things have changed. If there was a drug, your chances of finding a good enough supply now are pretty much zero, and even if you did, it’d probably be contaminated and you wouldn’t know how to administer it. No point wasting the little time you’ve got left worrying about it, if you ask me. And you did ask me, so I think you should listen.”

“But there must be something,” I say again.

She shakes her head. “Only thing you can do,” she starts, giving me hope for that briefest of moments, “is take control and finish it sooner rather than later. Save yourself the pain.”

“You’re joking,” I hear myself instinctively say, my brain completely failing to process everything I’m being told. “Tell me you’re joking.”

She just looks at me with disdain, then gets up and walks toward the door. She holds it open and waits for me to leave.

“Do I look like I’m joking? When was the last time you heard me laughing? When was the last time you heard anyone laughing? Tell you what, here’s a good one for you: Find yourself a gun and shove it in your mouth. Take one bullet tonight before bedtime. Caution, may cause headaches and drowsiness.”

Her insensitive comment goes unanswered. Suddenly the room is painfully quiet and empty, the only noise is the rain as it continues to hammer against the windows.

“Just go,” she says. “There’s nothing I can do for you. There’s nothing anyone can do. Live with it till you die from it.”