Them or Us

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.”