Dog Blood

THE CAUSE OF THE Hate (as it had come to be known on both sides of the uneven divide) was irrelevant. At the very beginning, when the doubters had been forced to accept that something was really happening and that the troubles weren’t just the result of media-fueled, copycat mob violence, the usual raft of baseless explanations were proposed; scientists had screwed up in a lab somewhere, it was an evolutionary quirk, it was a virus, a terrorist attack, aliens, or worse… Thing was, people were quickly forced to realize, it didn’t matter. You could bullshit and postulate and hypothesize all you wanted-it wouldn’t do you any harm, but it wouldn’t do you any good either. Within days of the belligerent population finally beginning to accept that the shit had indeed hit the fan with almighty force, no one talked about the cause of the Hate anymore. Hardly anyone wasted time even thinking about it. The only thing of any importance to the non-Hater section of the populace now was survival. And the so-called Haters? The one-third of society who had changed? Those previously “normal” people who, without warning, had each become savage, brutal, and remorseless killers? The only thing that mattered to any of them was destroying every last one of the Unchanged (as they labeled their enemy) until none remained alive.

Before it had actually happened, the popular assumption in most apocalyptic films and books was that the population as a whole would immediately bind together against their common enemy and either stand united and fight back or take cover and hunker down when it became clear that something of Armageddon-like proportions was looming on the horizon. They didn’t. Whether it was because many of them simply chose to bury their heads in the sand through fear or denial until it was too late, or whether it was instead just their stubborn refusal to abandon their homes, material possessions, and daily routines, no one knew. No one cared. A cynic might suppose that the effects of the Hate had been camouflaged by an inherently bad-tempered, mistrusting, selfish, and greed-driven society, but the exact reasons for society’s lack of reaction were neither clear nor important. The bottom line was that the extent and implications of what was happening weren’t fully appreciated until it was far too late, and the repercussions were devastating. This, it was painfully apparent, was no ordinary war.

In many ways the situation the Unchanged found themselves facing was indefensible. This conflict wasn’t faction versus faction or army against army; it was individual versus individual, more than six billion armies of one. Beyond that, the Hate didn’t care who you were, where you were, or what you were. You were simply on one side or the other, your position in this new, twisted, fucked-up world decided without your involvement by unknown variables and fate. Within weeks command structures at every level were compromised. Organizations fell apart. Families crumbled. The Haters were everywhere and everyone, the whole world beaten up from the inside out.

The ratio of Unchanged to Haters was generally thought to have settled somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1. In spite of their enemy’s ferocity and apparently insatiable bloodlust, their greater numbers and preexistence gave the Unchanged an early advantage that was quickly squandered. With no time or inclination to look for a cure (could the condition even be reversed?), separation and eradication soon became the only viable option for survival. Conveniently ignoring lessons learned through history and any moral arguments, a halfhearted attempt to cull the Haters failed dramatically. Almost overnight the Unchanged plan of attack was forced to become a plan of defense, and their first priority was to make their people defendable. Civilians were herded together, major city centers quickly becoming swollen, overcrowded, undersupplied, understaffed refugee camps. Once they’d successfully separated “us” from “them,” the Unchanged theory went, they’d head back out into the wastelands and hunt the fuckers out.

Less than four months ago, when the last frosts of winter had finally thawed and the first green buds of the year’s new growth had tentatively started to appear, this public park had been a frequently empty and underused oasis of lush greenery buried deep within the drab gray concrete heart of the city. It was a place office workers used to escape to during lunch breaks or take a shortcut through on their way to or from work. A place where kids playing hooky from school would hide and drink stolen alcohol and smoke cigarettes and carve their names on wooden benches and tree trunks. A place where elderly shoppers with too much time and too many memories would sit and talk to anyone who’d listen about how the country had gone to ruin and how things used to be so much better back in their day… and it had to be said, they were right.

Tucked away in the long shadows of office buildings, shopping malls, convention centers, and multiplex cinemas, what used to be a vast and open expanse of grass was now covered in cramped rows of ragged, refugee-filled tents. Two soccer fields had become helicopter landing pads, constantly in use. The patch of soft asphalt where children’s swings, merry-go-rounds, and slides used to be had been commandeered to house heavily guarded and rapidly dwindling stockpiles of military equipment and supplies. The changing rooms on the far side of the park were now a hopelessly inadequate field hospital. Next to the small, square redbrick building, a tall wooden fence had been erected all the way around the park’s four concrete tennis courts. They had, until three weeks ago, been used as a makeshift morgue, but by then the number of stacked-up corpses awaiting removal had reached such a level that the cordoned-off area had become a permanently lit funeral pyre. There was no longer any other way of hygienically disposing of the dead.

Before his mother had tried to kill him and he’d been dragged screaming into the war he’d desperately tried to isolate himself from, Mark Tillotsen had sold insurance in a call center. He’d worked hard and had enjoyed (as much as anyone enjoyed selling insurance in a call center) the job. He’d liked the anonymity of the role, and he’d taken comfort from the safety of the daily routine, the procedures and regulations he hid behind, and the targets he worked toward. In his last development review, just a month or so before the Hate, his manager had told him he had a bright future ahead of him. Today, as he trudged slowly through the afternoon heat toward a convoy of three battered trucks bookended by heavily armed military vehicles, he wondered whether he, or anyone else for that matter, had any kind of future left to look forward to.

Mark hauled himself up into the cab of the middle truck and acknowledged the driver. His name was Marshall, and they’d traveled outside the city together several times in recent weeks. Marshall was a stereotypical trucker, more at home behind the wheel of his rig than anywhere else. His arms were like tree trunks, with fading tattoos hidden beneath a thick covering of gray hair. He gripped the steering wheel tight in his leather-gloved hands even though they weren’t moving. His head remained facing forward, his expression sullen and serious. To show no emotion at all was better than letting Mark see how nervous he really was. This wasn’t getting any easier.

“All right?”

“Fine,” Mark replied quickly. “You?”

Marshall nodded. “People today, not supplies.”

“How come?”

“Helicopter spotted them on infrared, about three miles outside the zone.”

“Many?”

“Don’t know till we get there.”

That was the end of their brief, staccato exchange. Nothing more needed to be said. Although it was widely believed that the Change was over and by now you’d know whether the person standing next to you was going to rip your fucking head off or not, conversations between strangers remained brief and uncomfortable and only happened when necessary. You constantly trod a fine line; to ignore someone was dangerous, to overreact was worse. You didn’t want to give anyone reason to believe you might be one of them. All that Mark knew about Marshall was his name, and that was how he wanted to keep it.

Time to move. Marshall started the engine of the truck, the sudden rattle, noise, and vibration making Mark feel even more nauseous and nervous than he already was. Remember why you’re doing this, he repeatedly told himself. Apart from the fact that going outside the so-called secure zone allowed him to escape the confines of the shitty, cramped hotel room where he, his girlfriend, and several other family members had been billeted, willing militia volunteers like him were paid with extra rations-a slender additional cut of whatever they brought back. More importantly, going out into the open and watching those evil bastards being hunted down and executed was as close to revenge as he was ever going to get. And Christ, he needed some kind of revenge or retribution. Through no fault of his own his life had been turned upside down and torn apart. Like just about everyone else, he’d lost almost everything and he wanted someone to pay for it.

The truck lurched forward, stopping just inches short of the back of the vehicle in front, then lurched forward again as the convoy began to move. Mark glanced back across the park as a helicopter gunship took off from its soccer-field landing pad before taking up position overhead, their escort and their eyes while they were outside the city.

A single strip of gray pavement weaved through the park from a central point, running through a large, rectangular parking lot (now filled with military vehicles), then continuing on as a half-mile-long access road with copses of trees on either side. As the track curved around, Mark shielded his eyes from the relentless afternoon sun and looked out across this bizarre militarized zone. How could it have come to this? He’d played here during school vacations as a kid; now look at it. The village of tents and trailers made it look more like a third-world slum than anything else. Or perhaps a badly organized humanitarian response to some devastating natural disaster-the aftermath of a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, or drought?-although nothing like that ever happened here. He forced himself to look up from the never-ending crowd of refugees that seemed to cover every visible square yard of land, forced himself to shut out their constant cries and moans that were audible even over the rumble of the truck, and forced himself to ignore the foul, rancid smell that filled the air. He concentrated instead on the tops of the trees that swayed lightly in the lilting early summer breeze. That was the only part of the world that looked like it used to in the days before the Hate.

It was a relief when they reached the access road and Marshall followed the other vehicles around to the right. Even here, though, there were people everywhere, crowded in and around the trees, desperate to find shelter and shade. There were more of them here than when he’d last been out with Marshall. He focused on one particular woman who sat cross-legged on the grass, desperately trying to hold on to a hysterical, squirming, screaming child. Surrounded by her few remaining possessions gathered up in plastic bags, she gently rocked her terrified, inconsolable little girl. He found himself wondering what had happened to this woman to bring her here. Had she had a partner? Had they turned against her? Had there been more kids? She looked up and caught his eye, and he quickly looked away. He forgot her almost immediately, suddenly preoccupied with his own insurmountable problems instead. Mark’s girlfriend, Kate, was pregnant. Much as he tried to deny it, he wished she weren’t.

The convoy moved away from the densely occupied heart of the city and out through the exclusion zone. This was a bizarre and unsettling place. In the wake of the panic and terror caused by the onset of the Hate, under military orders the authorities in cities like this had pulled the remaining population inward, housing them temporarily in stores, office buildings, high-rises, and anywhere else that space could be found. The exclusion zone (which was generally between half a mile and two miles wide) was an area of dead space, a desolate strip of no-man’s-land wedged between the hordes of overcrowded refugees and the city border, which was patrolled from the sky. It was a place that had been abandoned rather than destroyed and that now stood like a vast and dilapidated museum exhibit. They drove past the front of a modern-looking school, its buildings empty when they should have been filled with students, the knee-high grass making its athletics track look more like a field of crops overdue for harvest. At the front of the convoy a military vehicle that had been fitted with a makeshift snowplow-like attachment cleared the road of a number of abandoned cars that had been stuck in a frozen, unmoving traffic jam for weeks.

The closer they got to the border, the worse Mark began to feel. Desperate not to let his anxiety show (for fear of Marshall misreading his reaction), he leaned against the window and forced himself to breathe in deeply, frantically trying to remember the relaxation and stress-control techniques he’d been taught in the “Dealing with Customer Complaints” workshop he’d been sent to last December. Christ, it didn’t matter how many times he did this, he still felt woefully underprepared. No amount of relaxation methods and calming techniques would prepare him for what he was about to face.

“Couple of miles,” Marshall said, startling Mark. He sat up straight and readied himself, his heart thumping ten times faster in his chest than it should have been. They were well outside the exclusion zone now, and even though there were no signposts, physical boundaries, or other warnings marking the Change, he suddenly felt a hundred times more vulnerable and exposed.

“Did you say we’re out here for people today?” Mark asked, remembering their brief conversation when he first got into the truck.

“Yep.”

“Great.”

A double pisser. Excursions outside the city were always more risky and unpredictable when civilians were involved. More importantly, if they weren’t out here collecting supplies, there’d be nothing for them to take a cut from when they got back.

“Look on the bright side,” Marshall said under his breath, sharing Mark’s disappointment and almost managing to smile. “Loads more of those cunts die when the public are involved.”

He was right. As soon as the first civilians took a step out of their hiding place, hordes of Haters would inevitably descend on them from every direction. Maybe that was the plan? Easy pickings for the helicopter and the forty or so armed soldiers traveling with them in this convoy. He wondered what kind of state the survivors they rescued would be in. Would they even be worth rescuing? He couldn’t imagine how they’d managed to last for so long out here. Christ, it had been hard enough trying to survive back in the city. If these people thought their situation was going to get better after they were rescued, they were very wrong.

The road they followed used to be a busy commuter route into town, permanently packed with traffic. In today’s baking afternoon heat it was little more than a silent, rubbish-strewn scar that snaked its way between overgrown fields and run-down housing projects. Sandwiched between the first military vehicle and the squat armored troop transport bringing up the rear, the three empty, high-sided wagons clattered along, following the clear path that had been snowplowed through the chaos like the carriages of a train following an engine down the track. Still bearing the bright-colored logos and ads of the businesses that had owned them before the war, they were conspicuously obvious and exposed as they traveled through the dust-covered gray of everything else.

Mark stared at the back of a row of houses they thundered past, convinced he’d seen the flash of a fast-moving figure. There it was again, visible just for a fraction of a second between two buildings, a sudden blur of color and speed. Then, as he was trying to find the first again, a second appeared. It was a woman of average height and slender build. She athletically scrambled to the top of a pile of rubble, then leaped over onto a parched grass verge, losing her footing momentarily before steadying herself, digging in, and increasing her pace. She sprinted alongside the convoy, wild hair flowing in the breeze behind her like a mane, almost managing to match the speed of the five vehicles. Mark jumped in his seat as a lump of concrete hit the truck door, hurled from the other side of the road and missing the window he was looking through by just a few inches. Startled, he glanced into the side mirror and saw that they were being chased. His view was limited, but he could see at least ten figures in the road behind the convoy, running after them. They were never going to catch up, but maybe they sensed the vehicles would be stopping soon. They kept running with a dogged persistence, the gap between them increasing but their speed and intent undiminished. He looked anxiously from side to side and saw even more of them moving through the shadows toward the road. Their frantic, unpredictable movements made it hard to estimate how many of them there were. It looked like there were hundreds.

Marshall remembered the place they were heading to from before the war, a modern office building in the middle of an out-of-town business park; as part of his job in his former life he’d made deliveries to a depot nearby on numerous occasions. He was glad he was following and not leading the way today. It was getting harder to navigate out here, and he’d convinced himself they had farther to go than they actually did. Everything looked so different out here beyond the exclusion zone, the landscape overgrown and pounded into submission after months of continuous fighting. A reduction in the number of undamaged buildings was matched by a marked increase in the level of rubble and ruin. There were more corpses here, too. Some were heavily decayed, sun-dried and skeletal; others appeared fresh and recently slaughtered. Christ, he thought to himself, not wanting to voice his fears and observations, what would this place be like a few months from now? There were already weeds everywhere, pushing up through cracks in the pavements and roads and clawing their way up partially demolished buildings, no municipal workers with weed-killer sprays left to halt their steady advance. Recent heavy rainstorms and the relative heat of early summer had combined to dramatically increase both the rate of growth of vegetation and the rate of decay of dead flesh. Everything seemed now to have a tinge of green about it, like mold spreading over spoiled food. The outside world looked like it was rotting, and the stench that hung heavy in the air was unbearable.

High above the line of trucks, the helicopter suddenly banked hard to the right and dropped down. Mark leaned forward and watched its rapid descent, knowing that the sudden change in flight path meant they’d reached their destination. Despite an irrational fear of heights, at moments like this he wished he were up there picking off the enemy from a distance rather than trying to deal with them down at ground level. Not that he was expected to fight unless he had to, of course. His role was simply to get as much food, supplies, civilians, or whatever they were out here to acquire into the trucks in as short a time as possible. He wasn’t stupid, though. He knew that these missions were often little more than thinly veiled excuses to stir up as many of the enemy as possible, draw them into a specified location, and blow the shit out of them. Their uncoordinated, nomadic behavior and apparently insatiable desire to kill made them surprisingly easy to manipulate and control. Any activity outside the exclusion zone would inevitably cause most of them within an unexpectedly wide radius to surge toward the disturbance, where they could be taken out with ease. And if civilians, soldiers, or volunteers like him got hurt in the process? That was an acceptable risk he had to get used to. Anyone was expendable as long as at least one Hater died with him.

The convoy swung the wrong way around a traffic circle, then joined the road that led into the business park. Once well maintained and expensively landscaped, it was now as run-down and overgrown as everywhere else. The snowplow truck smashed through a lowered security barrier, then accelerated again, bouncing up into the air and clattering heavily back down as it powered over speed bumps. Mark could see the office building up ahead, the sun’s fierce reflection bouncing back at him from its grubby bronzed-glass fascia. He tried to look for an obvious entrance, but at the speed they were approaching it was impossible. He clung to the sides of his seat and lurched forward as Marshall, following the lead of the driver in front, turned the truck around in a tight arc and backed up toward the building. He slammed on the brakes just a couple of yards short of the office, parallel with the other vehicles.

Mark didn’t want to move.

Marshall glared at him. “Go!”

He didn’t argue. The tension and fear suddenly evident in Marshall ’s voice were palpable. Mark jumped down from the cab and sprinted around to open up the back of the truck. He was aware of sudden noise and movement all around him as soldiers poured out of their transports and formed a protective arc around the front of the building and the rest of the convoy, sealing them in. More soldiers, maybe a fifth of their total number, ran towards the office building’s barricaded entrance doors and began to try to force their way inside. A burned-out car surrounded by garbage cans full of rubble blocked the main doorway.

“Incoming!” a loud voice bellowed from somewhere far over to his left, audible even over the sound of the swooping helicopter and the noise of everything else. Distracted, he looked up along the side of the truck toward the protective line of soldiers. Through the gaps between them he could see Haters advancing, hurtling forward from all angles and converging on the exposed building with deadly speed. Like pack animals desperately hunting scraps of food, they tore through holes in overgrown hedges, clambered over abandoned cars, and scrambled through the empty ruins of other buildings to get to the Unchanged. Mark watched transfixed as many of them were hacked down by a hail of gunfire coming from both the defensive line and the helicopter circling overhead, their bodies jerking and snatching as they were hit. For each one that was killed, countless more seemed to immediately appear to take their place, all but wrestling with each other to get to the front of the attack. Some of them seemed oblivious to the danger, more concerned with killing than with being killed themselves. Their ferocity was terrifying.

Mark heard the sound of pounding feet racing toward him. He spun around, ready to defend himself, but then stepped aside when he saw it was the first of a flood of refugees who were pouring out of a smashed first-floor window. He tried to help them up into the back of the truck, but his assistance was unwanted and unneeded. Sheer terror was driving these people forward, every man, woman, and child fighting with every other to get into one of the transports, desperate not to be left behind. After weeks of living in unimaginable squalor and uncertainty, and with their hideout now open and exposed, this was their last chance-their only chance-of escape.

The relentless gunfire and the thunder and fury of the helicopter overhead continued undiminished. Mark tried to block out the noise and concentrate on getting as many people as possible into the truck. Ahead of them, the soldiers were being forced back. Marshall revved the engine, his only way of letting Mark know he was about to leave. Terrified of being left behind, he ran forward and hauled himself up into his seat, leaving more refugees to try to cram themselves into the truck.

“This is getting shitty,” Marshall said, nodding over toward a section of the defensive line of soldiers that appeared dangerously close to being breached. “We’re going to-”

Before he could finish his sentence, a gap appeared in the line where a Hater woman took out a soldier as he reloaded. She knocked the soldier to the ground, leaped onto his chest, and caved his head in with a soccer-ball-sized lump of concrete. As the soldiers on either side tried to react and defend, one gap became two and then three and then four. In disbelief Mark watched as a huge beast of a Hater manhandled another soldier out of the way and smashed him up against a wall. The soldier continued to fire at his attacker, but the Hater seemed oblivious to the bullets that ripped into his flesh, continuing to move and fight until he finally dropped and died.

The speed and strength of the enemy were bewildering and terrifying. Marshall had seen enough. Following the lead of the truck to his right, without waiting for order or instruction, he accelerated. Unsuspecting refugees fell from the back of the truck and immediately began sprinting after the disappearing vehicle, but they didn’t stand a chance. Haters rushed them from either side, taking them out like animal predators preying on plentiful, slow-moving game on the savannah. In the distance the last few civilians spilled out of the building like lambs to the slaughter.

The third truck-the one that had been parked immediately to Marshall ’s left-hadn’t moved. Mark watched in the side mirror as Haters yanked the doors of the truck’s cab open and dragged the driver out, swarming over him like maggots over rotting food. Within seconds they’d enveloped the entire vehicle and were massacring the refugees who’d fought to get in the back to be driven to safety. As the distance between the truck he was in and the building behind him increased, all Mark could see was more refugees and stranded soldiers being wiped out in countless brutal, lightning-fast attacks. Above them all, the helicopter continued to circle and attack, its gunner’s orders now simply to destroy anything on the ground that still moved.

Those Haters who had escaped the carnage outside stormed into the building, looking for more of the Unchanged to kill. More than twenty of them moved from room to room, sweeping over every last square foot of space, desperate to kill and keep killing. One of them sensed something. In a narrow corridor he stopped beside an innocuous doorway that the rest of them had ignored. There were dirty handprints around the edges of the door, and he was sure he’d heard something moving inside. It was the faintest of noises, barely even audible amid the chaos of everything else, but it was enough. He grabbed the handle and pulled and pushed and shook it, but the door was locked. He took a hand axe from an improvised holster on his belt and began to smash at the latch. One of them was still in there, he was certain of it. He could almost smell them…

The short corridor was empty, and the noise of his axe splintering the wood temporarily drowned out the sounds of fighting coming from elsewhere. Ten strong strikes and the wood began to split. He hit the door hard with his shoulder and felt it almost give. Another few hits with the axe and another shoulder shove and it gave way. He flew into the dark, foul-smelling room and tripped over a child’s corpse that had been wrapped in what looked like an old, rolled-up projector screen. An Unchanged woman-the dead child’s mother, he presumed-ran at him from the shadows. Instead of attacking, she dropped to her knees in front of him and begged for mercy. He showed her none, grabbing a fistful of hair, then chopping his axe down into the side of her neck, killing her instantly. He pushed her body over. She collapsed on top of her child, and he looked down into her face, her dead, unblinking eyes staring back at him. He felt a sudden surge of power and relief, the unmistakable, blissful, druglike rush of the kill.

The room was filled with noise again as the circling helicopter returned. Taking cover behind a concrete pillar, he peered out through a small rectangular window and watched as more of the fighters still out in the open were taken out by machine-gun fire from above. Then, without warning, the helicopter turned and climbed and disappeared from view. He listened as its engines and the thumping of its rotor blades faded into the distance.

Danny McCoyne knew he had to get out of the building before they came back. He’d seen them use these tactics before. He knew what was coming next.

1

HAVE TO GET AWAY from here. It’s too dangerous to stay. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about our piss-weak, cowardly enemy, it’s that they always deal their deadliest blows from a distance.

The leaden feet of the woman’s corpse are blocking the door and stopping me from getting out. I drag her out of the way, then shift the kid’s body, kicking it back across the cluttered floor. The kid’s bloodstained projector-screen shroud unrolls, revealing his lifeless face. Jesus, he was one of us. I uncover him fully. His wrists and ankles are bound. Can’t see how he died, but he hasn’t been dead long, a few days at the most. Probably starved. Another pitiful example of an Unchanged parent refusing to accept their kid’s destiny and let go. Did she think she’d be able to tame him or find a “cure” or something? Dumb bitch.

Back out into the corridor. Most people have gone now, but I can still hear a few of them moving about, hunting down the last kills before they move on. I automatically head toward the back of the building, hoping I’ll find more cover going out that way. A small kid darts past me, moving so fast that I can’t even tell if it’s a boy or a girl, then doubles back when it can’t get out. I keep moving forward until I reach a T-intersection. There’s a fire door to my left, but it’s been blocked and I can’t get through. I follow three men and a woman the other way into a dank toilet that smells so bad it makes my eyes water. The sudden darkness is disorienting, and the man in front of me takes the full force of a clumsy but unexpected attack from an Unchanged straggler who’s hiding in the shadows under a sink. There’s hardly room to swing a punch in here, but between the five of us we get rid of him quickly. I smash his face into a cracked mirror with a satisfying thump. He leaves a bloody stain on the glass, just another mark among many.

In a wide, rectangular handicapped cubicle there’s a narrow window high on the wall above the dried-up, mustard-brown-stained toilet bowl. One of the men, a small, suntanned, wiry-framed guy, climbs up onto the toilet, then uses the pipework to haul himself up. He opens the window and squeezes out through the gap. We take turns to follow him, impatiently standing in line like we’re waiting for a piss. The fighter in front of me has a wide belly and backside, and I can’t see him getting through. I’ll be damned if I’m going to get stuck in here behind him. I push him to one side and climb past, knowing I’ll be long gone before he gets outside, if he gets out at all. I throw my backpack down, then force myself through the narrow window frame and drop down into a flower bed overrun with brambles and weeds. A pile of waste and emaciated corpses cushions my fall. I quickly get up, swing my pack back onto my shoulders, and start to run. Won’t be long now before they…

“Oi, Danny!”

Who the hell was that? My heart sinks when I look back and see Adam hopping after me with his ski-pole walking stick, his useless, misshapen, badly broken left foot swinging. I found this poor bastard trapped in his parents’ house a few days back, and I haven’t been able to shake him yet. He can hardly walk, so I could leave him if I wanted to, but I stupidly keep letting my conscience get the better of me. I tell myself that if I get him away from here he’ll be able to kill again, and anyone who’s going to get rid of even one more of the Unchanged has got to be worth saving. I run back, put my arm around his waist, and start dragging him away from the building.

“Thanks, man,” he starts to say. “I thought I-”

“Shut the fuck up and move.”

“Oh, that’s nice. What did I ever-”

“Listen,” I tell him, interrupting him midflow. “They’re coming back.”

I pull him deep into the undergrowth behind the office building. Even over my hurried, rustling footsteps and although the canopy of leaves above us muffles and distorts the sound, I can definitely hear another aircraft approaching. Whatever’s coming this time is larger, louder, and no doubt deadlier than the helicopter that was here before.

Adam yelps as his broken ankle thumps against a low tree stump. I ignore him and keep moving. His leg’s already fucked; a little more damage won’t matter.

“Sounds big,” he says through clenched teeth, trying to distract himself from the pain. I don’t respond, concentrating instead on putting the maximum possible distance between me and the office. Other people run through the trees on either side of me, illuminated by shafts of sunlight that pour through the odd-shaped gaps between leaves, all of them passing us. The noise is increasing, so loud now that I can feel it through the ground. It must be a jet. Christ, what did I do wrong to end up saddled with a cripple at a time like this? Maybe I should just leave him here and let him take his chances? I look up, and through a gap in the trees I catch the briefest glimpse of the plane streaking across the sky at incredible speed, so fast that the noise it makes seems to lag way behind it.

“Keep moving,” I tell him. “Not far enough yet-”

I stop and hit the deck as soon as I hear it: the signature whoosh and roar of missiles being launched. Adam screams in agony as I pull him down, but we’ll be safer on the ground. There’s a moment of silence-less than a second, but it feels like forever-and then the building behind us is destroyed in an immense blast of heat, light, and noise. A gust of hot wind blows through the trees, and then dust and small chunks of decimated masonry begin to fall from the sky, bouncing off the leaves and branches above us, then hitting the ground like hard rain. The thick canopy of green takes the sting out of the granite hailstones. The shower of debris is over as quickly as it began, and now all I can hear is the plane disappearing into the distance and both Adam’s and my own labored breathing. He sits up, struggling with his injuries. Crazy bastard is grinning like an idiot.

“Fuck me,” he says, “that was impressive.”

“Impressive? I could think of other ways to describe it. If you’d been any slower we’d have had it.”

“Whatever.”

He leans back against a tree, still panting heavily. We should keep moving, but the idea of resting is appealing. The Unchanged won’t come back here for a while. Even here in the shade the afternoon heat is stifling, and now that I’ve stopped, I don’t want to start walking again. I give in to temptation and lie back on the ground next to Adam and close my eyes, replaying the memory of today’s kills over and over again.

2

WE KEEP WALKING AS the daylight slowly fades, the darkness finally bringing some respite from the heat.

“What time is it?” Adam asks.

“No idea.”

“What day is it?”

“Don’t know that either.”

“Don’t suppose it matters,” he grumbles as we limp slowly down a long dirt track that curves around the edge of a deserted farm. He’s right-the time, day, date, temperature, position of the moon… none of it really matters anymore. Life is no longer about order and routine, it’s about the hunt and the kill and just getting through each day unscathed. When the war began, killing was all that mattered, but things feel like they’re changing now.

I would never tell him, but I’ve enjoyed traveling with Adam. Having someone like him to talk to has proved unexpectedly beneficial. Maybe that’s why I went back for him earlier, and why I’ve put up with him for the last few days. Without even realizing it, he’s helping me make sense of what’s happened to me since the onset of the Hate. Before I killed them, Adam’s parents had him locked in their garage, chained to the wall like a dog. He’d spent months there in total isolation. I’ve had to explain everything that happened to the rest of the world while he’d been locked away. Going over it all again has helped me to understand.

Adam’s first direct experience of the Hate was similar to mine, but in some ways the poor bastard had it even tougher than me. He was caught off guard when he realized what he was and what he had to do. He tried to kill his family, but, filled with the same fear and disorientation that I remembered feeling after I’d killed my father-in-law, his father managed to fight back and smashed his right hand and left ankle with a small sledge hammer. Rather than finish him off or turn him over to the authorities, though, Adam’s parents locked him up and locked themselves down. They didn’t have the strength to kill him, even though they knew he’d kill both of them in a heartbeat. I understand why they did it. It’s like the tied-up kid I found earlier today. The Unchanged just can’t let go. They hold on to the people that used to matter to them in the vain and pointless hope they’ll somehow be cured or change again. But how can we be cured? We’re not the ones who are sick. Adam’s parents had the whole thing planned out. They starved the poor fucker for days, then fed him drugged food to keep him subdued and under control. Finding him was like something out of a fucked-up Stephen King book. Wonder if Stephen King’s like us or like them…?

“Can we stop soon?”

“Suppose.”

“You got any idea where we are?” Adam asks. His voice is weak. I glance across at him. His face is white and his skin clammy.

“Roughly,” I answer. Truth is I’m not exactly sure, but for the first time in ages I actually do have a fair idea of where I am. For weeks I’ve traveled everywhere on foot. Like most people I’ve shunned cars and other similar means of transport-they make me feel conspicuous when all I want to do is disappear, and anyway, most roads are blocked and impassable now. I knew we were getting close, but it was yesterday afternoon, after we’d spent almost an hour waiting on the outskirts of a vicious battle for a kill that never came, when I caught sight of the Beeches on the horizon-a distinctively shaped clump of ancient trees perched on top of an otherwise barren and exposed hill. The trees are a natural landmark I used to pass on the highway traveling back home from rare day trips out with Lizzie and the kids. My best guess was that we were three or four miles short of them, and from memory they were another five miles or so from the edge of town.

“So where are we?”

“Close to where I used to live.”

“So why do you want to go back there?”

“What?” I mumble, distracted.

“Back home? Why do you want to go home?”

“I lost my daughter, and I want to find her again,” I tell him. “She’s like us.”

He nods his head thoughtfully. Then, from out of nowhere, a huge grin spreads across his tired, sweat-streaked face.

“So how many did you kill today, Dan?”

“Two, I think. You?”

“Beat you! I got three. You should have seen the last one. Speared the fucker on my stick. Took more effort to pull it out again than it did to skewer him!”

“Nice.”

“I tell you, man,” he continues, the tiredness gone and his voice suddenly full of energy and enthusiasm, “it’s the best feeling. When I first see them they scare the hell out of me, but as soon as I’m ready and I’ve got my head together, all I want to do is kill. Does that feeling ever go? Tell me it doesn’t…”

Adam’s still living off the buzz of sudden power and freedom that comes with understanding the Change and experiencing your first few kills. I felt the same when it happened to me. It’ll be a while before he comes down again. It’s like a drug, and we’re like junkies. I don’t get the same highs I used to anymore, just the cravings. The euphoria has faded, and life’s more of a struggle now. It’s getting harder to find food, and I’m tired. The gap between kills is increasing, and all that’s left to do in those gaps is think.

“The feeling doesn’t go,” I answer. “It just changes.”

“Wish I’d been there at the start…”

For a few seconds he’s quiet again, daydreaming about all the opportunities he’s convinced he’s missed. The silence is only temporary while he thinks of the next question to ask.

“So what are we?”

“What do you mean?”

“All I want to do is kill, man. I’m addicted. Am I some kind of vampire?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not, think about it…”

“Believe me, I have thought about it. We’re not vampires. We don’t drink blood, we just spill it. I like garlic in my food, I’m okay with sunlight, and I can see my reflection in mirrors.”

“You sure? You seen the state of yourself recently?”

I ignore his cheap jibe. He’s right, but he looks no better. It’s months since I cut my hair and weeks since I last shaved. I did manage to wash in a stream yesterday-or was it the day before…?

“What are we, then? Werewolves?”

I shake my head in disbelief. This guy’s relentless. What’s even more disturbing is the fact I’ve already had this conversation with myself and I’ve got my answers prepared. Truth is, at the beginning, there were times I felt more like an animal than a man. In some ways I still do, but now I scavenge more than hunt. Less like a wolf, more like a rat.

“We’re not werewolves. We don’t change when the moon comes out.”

“I know that, you prick,” he says, catching his breath as the toes on his broken foot drag on the ground. I stay quiet for a moment, wondering if I should tell him what I really think or whether it’s just going to pointlessly prolong this stupid conversation.

“Here’s what I reckon,” I say, deciding just to go for it. “You want to compare us to a type of monster? Look at the evidence-”

“What evidence?”

“Look at how we live and what we do.”

“I don’t get you…”

“We drag ourselves around constantly, looking for Unchanged to kill. It’s almost like we’re feeding off them. When you’re killing you feel alive, like you can do anything, but the rest of the time it’s like you’re in limbo. Just existing. Not really living, but not dead either…”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying we’re like zombies,” I finally admit. “Being out here is like being one of the undead.”

He doesn’t react. For a minute everything is quiet and deceptively peaceful, the only sound our slow, uneven footsteps on the dirt track.

“Do you know what I always used to wonder?” he eventually asks.

Do I really want to know?

“What?”

“I used to wonder what happened to the zombies after the end of the film. You know what I’m saying? When all the living have been infected and there’s no one left to kill, what happens next? Does the hunger ever go away, or is rotting all that’s left for them?”

3

ADAM IS STRUGGLING, HIS battered body a wreck, but he keeps moving. The light’s almost completely gone, and we need to stop. Apart from a single helicopter in the distance and a fast-moving truck a few miles back, we haven’t seen or heard anyone for hours. Things have changed-when the fighting first started there were people everywhere. Maybe it’s because I’m moving at a fraction of my normal pace that the world seems empty? Part of me still thinks I should just dump Adam and go on alone. We’ll find somewhere to stop and rest for the night. When I’m ready to get moving again I’ll decide whether I’m going to take him with me.

“Over there.”

“What?”

“There,” he says, pointing across the road with his badly broken hand. His fingers jut out at unnatural angles, and I can’t see what he’s gesturing at. “Look… through the trees…”

On the opposite side of the road we’re following is a dense forest. I squint into the semidarkness to try to see whatever it is he thinks he’s spotted. He shuffles around and hops away from me, moving toward a gap in the trees that stretches farther into the gloom. I look down and see that there are muddy tire tracks curving onto the road from the mouth of a barely visible track.

“What do you reckon?” he asks.

“Got to be worth a look. There wouldn’t be a track if it didn’t lead somewhere.”

“Might be more of them down there…”

He tries to speed up again, eager to kill, but I pull him back. I’m not sure. This doesn’t feel right. I can see the outline of a large building up ahead on the edge of a clearing, and I cautiously edge closer. The building is huge and box-shaped, like a warehouse-but why here out in the middle of nowhere? I take another few steps forward, and realization slowly begins to dawn. Shit, I know what this place is.

“What’s the matter, Dan?”

I don’t answer. Can’t answer. My mouth’s suddenly dry, and my legs feel like lead. I should turn around and walk away, but I don’t, and I keep moving forward on autopilot, my mind racing. We enter a dusty, gravel-covered yard, lines of mazelike wooden barriers making it look like a deserted, out-of-season tourist attraction. Up ahead the building’s doors hang open like a gaping mouth.

“What is this?”

“You don’t know?”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Should I?”

“Slaughterhouse.”

Adam leans against the nearest barrier and works his way along it toward the open door.

“You told me about these places, but I…”

“What? You didn’t believe me?”

“It’s not that…”

He stops talking and I stop listening. Like a character in a bad horror movie, I walk into the building. It’s almost pitch black inside, but I can see enough to know that we’re in a narrow corridor with a set of heavy double doors directly ahead. It’s musty and damp in here, the faint scents of the forest and wood smoke mixing with the heavy, acrid stench of chemicals and decay. I wish I had a flashlight. The gloom makes it too easy to remember the night I almost died in a place like this. Standing here in the dark I can still see the helpless, terrified faces of the people crammed around me as we were herded like cattle toward the killing chamber. I remember their lost and desperate expressions, the confusion, frustration, and pain so evident. I remember my own terror, convinced I was about to die…

“You okay?” Adam asks, finally catching up and nudging into me from behind. I hadn’t even realized I’d stopped walking. I feel like I’ve stepped out of my body and now I’m watching from a distance. It’s a nauseous, unsettling feeling, like the nervous relief you feel when you walk away without a scratch from a crash that’s just written off your car. You’re thinking, How did I get away with it? How close was I to biting the bullet? and then your mind starts with the “what ifs” and “if onlys”… I know that if I’d have been another hundred or so people farther along the line that night, I’d be a dead man now.

I lean up against one of the doors in front of me. It moves freely, and I shove it open and walk into what must have been the gas chamber. The dark hides the details of what I know is all around me. There are bodies here. I have no idea how many, but I can see their shapes stacked up in featureless piles. The cavernous room is filled with the buzzing of thousands of flies gorging on dead flesh, and I keep looking up to avoid looking down. There’s a hole in the roof three-quarters of the way down the length of the room, and I can just about make out metal gantries and walkways high up on either side. Wide-gauge pipework weaves in and out of the walls of the building, and an enormous exhaust fan has been mounted at the far end of the room, its blades still turning slowly in the gentle evening breeze.

“Let’s get out,” Adam whispers from somewhere close behind me. “Fucking stinks in here.”

I move forward again, dragging my feet along the ground so I don’t trip over anything I can’t see, convinced that the entire floor is covered with gore and bits of bodies. I kick bits of wood and twisted chunks of metal out of the way-remnants of the fallen section of roof-and finally reach the far wall, my pace almost as slow as Adam’s. I work my way along, trying to find a way out. In the farthest corner, hidden from view by another unidentifiable pile of rubbish, is a wide door that’s hanging off its hinges, half open. I duck underneath it, then turn back and prop it open fully so Adam can get through. His uneven footsteps and grunts and moans of effort make him sound like a monster in the shadows.

“We can’t stay here,” he says.

“Might be some other buildings around.”

As soon as he’s completely outside, I put my arm around him and support his weight. We’ve only taken a few steps when he stops.

“Fuck me,” he mumbles. “Would you look at that…”

At the side of the long, narrow building is another clearing, out of sight until now, and the ground is almost completely covered with bodies for as far as I can see. There are hundreds of them, thousands probably, stacked up in massive piles. I leave Adam again and move toward the nearest one. From a distance the gloom makes it look like a single, unidentifiable mass, only distinguishable as human remains because of the countless hands, arms, and legs that stick out from it at awkward angles. As I get closer, however, a level of sickening detail is revealed. These bodies have been dumped-not even laid out-and those at the bottom have been crushed by the weight of the rest, leaving them unnaturally thin, almost like they’ve been vacuum-packed. Higher up, countless squashed, frozen, waxy faces stare back at me unblinking. Their discolored flesh, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes give each of them grotesque, nightmarish, masklike expressions. Seeing them makes me think about my own mortality. I don’t feel anything for any of the people here-they’re just empty shells now, each of them a spent force-but I swear I won’t end up like this.

“Look on the bright side,” Adam shouts across the clearing.

“There’s a bright side?”

“’Course there is. You got away. That could have been you, that could. Could have been me…”

I ignore him and keep walking farther into the clearing, following a narrow pathway between another two fifty-yard-or-so-long piles of death. Distracted, I lose my footing when I reach the end of the rows, and the ground suddenly starts to crumble beneath my boots. I fall back and find myself sitting on my backside on the edge of a vast hole, at least twenty yards square and deep enough for me not to be able to see the bottom in some parts. I know immediately what it is-a mass grave filled with an incalculable number of people like Adam and me. I get up and carefully walk around the edge. There’s a bulldozer up ahead with a massive metal scoop. At first I think they must have used it to dig the pit, but then I see there’s a scrap of clothing caught on the teeth of the scoop and I realize they were using it to fill it. Directly below me there are corpses reaching almost all the way up to the surface, piled up where they were tipped out. They look like they’re climbing over each other to get out.

I jog back over to Adam, forcing myself to look away from the dead. How many sites like this were there, and are any still in operation? Even now as I’m wasting time here, are more of our people being killed elsewhere? Then another thought crosses my mind that makes me go cold: my daughter, Ellis. Did she end up in a place like this? Is she there now, waiting to die? Is she here? For a few desperate seconds I turn back toward the corpses and start looking through them, terrified the next face I see will be my little girl’s. Then, as quickly as sudden panic just took hold, common sense takes over again. If she’s here there’s nothing I can do. I have to believe she’s still alive. She’s all I’ve got left.

“So where are they all?” Adam asks.

“Who?”

“The fuckers who did this. Where’d they go?”

“I don’t know,” I answer as I lead him out behind the main building toward a group of three square-shaped, light-colored, prefabricated huts that look new in comparison to everything else. “Just abandoned the place, I guess. Maybe they were attacked?”

“Hope the bastards got what they deserved.”

Two of the almost identical shedlike buildings are locked. The corrugated metal roller door on the front of the third, however, is not. I open it fully and go inside. It’s small, cramped, and half full of bags of chemicals. Doesn’t matter. It’ll do for tonight. No one with any sense will come here, and even if they do, we’ll just play dead. I’d have fought side by side with any of the thousands of people who died here, but they’re just rotting meat now, and we’ll use them as cover.

Adam sits down on a pile of sacks, struggling to get comfortable and still talking nonstop about nothing of any importance. I close the door, then find myself a scrap of space in the far corner of the hard concrete floor and try to sleep, resting my head on another plastic sack full of Christ-knows-what. It could be poisonous or corrosive, but it doesn’t matter. I cover it with my coat and close my eyes, too tired to care.

4

I’M WOKEN BY A crash and a muffled cry of pain. I sit up quickly and look around the dark room, struggling for a second to decide where I am. The combination of the acrid chemical smell and the stench of decay helps me remember. Where’s Adam? I catch a momentary glimpse of him outside through the open door, hobbling back toward the main building. I grab a knife from my backpack and run after him. I’ve barely taken two steps out of the chemical storeroom when I hear other voices up ahead. There are people around the front of the cull site. I drag Adam out of the way, stopping only when we’re both pressed up tight against the outside wall at the back of the main killing chamber.

“It’s Unchanged,” he whispers, voice full of nervous excitement. “I saw them.”

“How many?”

“Don’t know. Heard engines.”

What the hell do I do now? Despite what Adam probably thinks, we can’t risk taking them on until we know how many we’re facing. There could be hundreds of them here, and if they’ve dared come out into the open like this then they’re probably armed to the teeth and ready to fight. What do they want? Maybe they’ve come to try to get this place restarted? Shit, maybe they’re here looking for us?

“Wait here,” I tell him, pushing him toward an alcove. “Keep yourself under control and don’t do anything until I come back, okay? I’ll try to get a better look.”

Adam nods and does as I say. I take a couple of steps away from the building and see that there’s a metal ladder running from ground level to an access hatch up high. Before I can talk myself out of it I start climbing, trying to limit the sound of my heavy boots on the metal rungs. I pause when I’m two-thirds up and lean over to one side to peer in through a grubby window. The early morning sun is blazing through the windows along one side of the slaughterhouse and the hole in the roof, filling it with light, uncovering every gruesome detail that was hidden in the darkness last night. The Unchanged are inside the building now. I can see a couple of them slowly picking their way through the bodies and debris.

At the top of the ladder I open the hatch and carefully ease myself inside. I’m on one of the narrow gantries running around the edge of the vast room, and I know I’m all too visible up here through the metal grilles. I move toward the side of the room that is still in shadow. I’m right above one of the intruders now. Looks like he’s wrestling with a corpse, trying to pry a rifle from the death grip of a decaying soldier. Fortunately he’s preoccupied, and I keep moving toward the front of the site undetected. Farther ahead I notice that this walkway’s loose. Several brackets and supports have come away from the wall, and it’s already feeling less secure. I’m less worried about my safety and more concerned that the creaking and groaning of the metal will cause one of the scavengers below to look up. They don’t look like typical Unchanged military or militia. They’re wearing odd, mismatched clothing, and they’re both weighed down with weapons, far more than they need. They look more like mechanics than soldiers.

A sudden noise makes me catch my breath. I look back over my shoulder and stare down, worried they’ve found Adam. It’s nothing, just another Unchanged helping himself to a dead man’s gun.

I turn around to try to get off this unstable walkway, but stop when I glimpse something happening through the large dust- and cobweb-covered window at my side. The reason for the enemy being here has suddenly become painfully apparent. Outside, under the protective gaze of five armed militia fighters, two young women and a white-haired, elderly man are working their way along the nearest pile of corpses, stripping them of anything of value. Inhuman bastards. There must be a hell of a black market somewhere for them to risk doing this, but the fuckers look well organized, and they know what they’re doing. Wearing yellow dishwashing gloves, the three of them move along the bodies at speed, each of them working at different heights, snatching rings and watches from the dead hands that stick out of the massive mound of rotting flesh, filling buckets with their stolen booty. A teenaged boy grabs each bucket when it’s full, replacing it with an empty one and carrying the stash away out of sight. What I’m watching makes me seethe with hate and anger, but what can I do? There are too many of them to risk taking on alone (and even though Adam’s with me, in terms of fighting I still think of myself as being alone). All I can do is wait for them to disappear.

Hang on, something’s caught the attention of the grave-robbing bastards below me. One of them stops scavenging and calls to his pals. Carrying several weapons each, they head toward the door in the corner we exited through last night. I run back along the gantry, but before I get to the hatch I know it’s Adam. I hear the stupid kid before I see him through the window. Should have known he’d struggle to keep himself under control. The Unchanged are outside now, heading straight for him as he limps aggressively toward them, the sharp tip of his ski-pole walking stick held out like a bayonet. Fortunately the rest of this gang are either unaware or too interested in their haul to get involved. I climb back out through the door and down the ladder. Adam and the Unchanged are out of sight now, but I can still hear them fighting. With half a dozen rungs left I jump down and run around the corner to help, knife in hand. Adam’s on the ground, taking a heavy beating from two of them. To his credit he’s already taken the other one out. The scrawny little fucker is slumped up against the side of the building, impaled with Adam’s metal stick.

I grab the shoulders of one of his attackers and slam him down onto the dusty ground. His body rattles with the impact, and the look on his face is one of surprise more than anything else. Before he realizes what’s happening I stab my knife into his chest, aiming for his heart. The blade’s stuck in his breastbone. No time to pull it out. I run straight at the other one, punching the side of his head with enough force to knock him over. He scrambles back up, shakes his head clear, and rushes at me, holding a rifle by the barrel and swinging it around like a club. I duck his first clumsy strike, then, while he’s still off balance, thump my axe into the base of his spine. I shove his face down into the dirt to muffle his screams until I’m sure he’s dead.

Need to get under cover. We’re out of sight and there’s no sign of them yet, but the others will come looking for their people before long. Adam’s out cold, and my already slim chances of winning this one-sided fight have just been slashed even further. All I can do now is get out of the way and wait for the rest of these fuckers to move on. Trouble is, I realize as I shove my arms under Adam’s shoulders and start dragging him back toward the chemical storeroom, when they find the bodies of three of their own they’re not going to go anywhere. Then, as I reverse through the door and look back, I realize the tracks Adam’s feet have left in the gravel and dust will lead them straight to us.

I dump his useless, groaning bulk in the space on the floor where I slept last night. There’s a dribble of blood running from the corner of his mouth, but I can’t tell if it’s just his mouth that’s cut or whether his injuries are more serious. The way they were laying into him, I wouldn’t be surprised if his insides were well and truly fucked.

I stand up to lower the roller door back down, but it’s too late. There’s already another one of them standing over the bodies, and this one looks like he actually knows how to use the powerful rifle he’s carrying. He’s calling for reinforcements, but he hasn’t seen me. I duck down behind more of the acidic-smelling chemical sacks and watch him through a narrow gap between two waist-high piles. All I can see is his boots. As I’m watching, another two pairs of feet approach. I don’t think they’ve seen the tracks in the dirt yet, but it’s only a matter of time. It’s not like there’s anywhere else around here I’d be hiding. I try to stay calm and prepare myself mentally for the fight, working out which one I should attack first and which way I should run. Maybe running is the only option? Sorry, Adam, I think this is where we say our good-byes. Can’t see any way of getting him out of here now. Poor bastard’s three-quarters dead anyway.

Another two of them join the first three. Five to one-those are bad odds in anyone’s book. I’d have been better off taking my chances and lying flat on a pile of corpses. Wish I’d thought of that sooner. Perhaps I can still get over to that open grave…?

Here they come. One of them starts to walk toward this building. Christ, I don’t even have my knife with me. It’s still buried to the hilt in the gut of one of them. Maybe I can reach my backpack from here…

Wait. They’ve stopped.

Something’s distracted them. Figuring I’ve got nothing to lose, I slide across the floor to try to get a better view of what’s happening. They’re starting to move back toward the front of the building now. Can’t see why, but their weapons are raised. This is my chance to make a break for it. I get up, grab my backpack, and run back outside, then stop when one of the enemy scavengers goes flying past the front of the chemical storeroom. He skids along the ground, thrown like a rag doll, eventually landing in a heap in the dust a few yards from my feet. Another one of them reappears, this one running backward, trying to fire his rifle and at the same time retreat and defend himself from whatever it is that’s attacking. I’m right out in the open again now, my curiosity and bewilderment forcing common sense to take a backseat, and I can finally see what’s happening. The cavalry have arrived. Halle-fucking-lujah. At precisely the right moment a van full of our people has turned up at the site, and they’ve got two powerful and incredibly aggressive fuckers in tow who are making short work of any of the Unchanged stupid enough to stand in their way. The way these two are fighting is savage and brutal in the extreme, and it’s awe-inspiring to watch. They move with an agility and speed that belie their otherwise ordinary appearance. Totally focused on the kill, they are oblivious to everyone and everything else around them.

The old man I saw stripping corpses is hobbling toward me, a look of absolute fear plastered across his weathered face. He runs straight at me, yelling for help, too terrified to realize I’m going to kill him.

“Get out of here,” he tries to warn me, barely able to breathe. “They’ll-”

I end his sentence before he has a chance to. I grab his shock of white hair, yank his head back, and punch him hard in the throat. He collapses at my feet, choking. I snatch a knife from my backpack and finish him off. Suddenly feeling fired up and alive, I sprint down toward the battle that’s raging at the front of the building, desperate to kill again.

By the time I get there it’s over, the suddenly one-sided fight ended with incredible speed, force, and brutality by seven other people like Adam and me. None of them questions me. There’s an immediate, unspoken trust between us, and within minutes I’m helping them dump the bodies of the Unchanged with the thousands of others already here.

5

THESE PEOPLE ARE SURPRISINGLY well coordinated. There are seventeen of us here now including me and Adam, another group having just arrived on foot through the trees to the east of the cull site. I’ve stumbled into the middle of a preplanned rendezvous, and I’m going to take advantage of it while it lasts. They won’t be here long. Sticking together in large numbers is dangerous. It leaves us exposed.

They work quickly, hiding their vehicles in the shadows of the building and stripping the site of weapons and anything else of value. Guards patrol the perimeter constantly; others watch from the roof. The two most aggressive fighters are positioned one at either end of the building. As I walk toward the chemical storeroom with a short, stocky man, I notice that the fighter out back is shackled. She has a heavy-duty chain padlocked around her waist that’s anchored to a metal stake driven deep into the ground.

“What’s all that about?” I ask quietly, not wanting her to hear. He takes off his glasses and cleans the one remaining lens on the bottom corner of his shirt.

“You’ve not come across Brutes before?”

“Brutes?”

“That’s what we call them.”

“Them? You make it sound like they’re different from us.”

“Not really,” he sighs, like it’s an effort having to explain. “They’re the same as us, but extreme.”

“Extreme?”

“Are you the guy who was hiding here?”

“I wasn’t hiding, I just-”

“Why didn’t you attack?”

“What?”

“When those thieving bastards first turned up this morning, why didn’t you attack them?”

“Because I didn’t know how many of them there were. I didn’t know what weapons they had and-”

“Exactly,” he interrupts, replacing his glasses. “You knew there was a good chance you’d have been killed if you’d tried anything.”

“It wasn’t worth the risk.”

“Don’t blame you,” he says, leaning up against the side of the chemical storeroom and shielding his eyes from the climbing sun. “I’d probably have done the same.”

“So what’s your point?”

“The point is a Brute wouldn’t have held back. They can’t. They catch a scent of Unchanged and they’ll hunt them down and attack, no matter what the odds are.”

“Bloody hell…”

“Useful, though. They make good guard dogs! Always on the lookout. Just look at her.”

He nods over in the direction of the woman tied up at the back of the killing chamber. She’s almost constantly straining against her shackles, trying to break free and go after the enemy she knows is still out there somewhere. I’m transfixed by her face, flushed red and full of rage, and yet, in a different light, she doesn’t look like a killer at all. When she relaxes, her features are surprisingly soft, gentle, and feminine.

“She could just be someone’s mother.”

“She was. Her name’s Pat. She had someone with her when we first found her, someone who knew her before the change. She was a teacher in an elementary school. Hard to believe, isn’t it? A well-respected pillar of society, cornerstone of the community, great with kids, wouldn’t hurt anyone… you get the picture.”

“Incredible…”

“My brother was a Brute,” he continues. “From sheet metal worker to a killer like that overnight.”

“What happened to him?”

“We lost him.”

“Sorry, I…”

“Oh, he’s not dead, I don’t think. When I say we lost him, I mean we lost him. Clever bastard slipped his chains and got away. Christ knows where he is now. Don’t suppose it matters as long as he’s still killing. Your friend in here, is he?”

He slaps the wall of the chemical storeroom.

“What?” I mumble, still thinking about this guy’s missing brother and forgetting what we came out here for. “Yeah, sorry. He’s in the back.”

By the time we clear the doorway and are ready to move him out, Adam’s just about regained consciousness. He’s still in a bad way-pale, clammy, and barely able to move. We fashion a stretcher from wood stripped from the walls of the main building, and between us we carry him back to the others.

6

MY NAME’S PRESTON,” A disarmingly confident, oily man says, grabbing my hand and shaking it vigorously. I already know I don’t like him. He’s too loud and in-your-face. He reminds me of the senior managers I used to despise at work; the higher up the corporate ladder they managed to climb, the more arrogant, obnoxious, and smarmy they became. He’s wearing a bizarre combination of military garb and civvies. His clothes make him look like someone’s dad going to a costume party as a World War II general.

“Danny McCoyne.”

“Good to meet you, Danny. You had some food?”

“Yes, I-”

“Excellent. Have you been introduced to anyone?”

“I’ve met a few people. I don’t know if-”

“Great,” he says, interrupting me again. Irritating little shit. Apparently he’s the self-appointed leader of this cell and I’ve been granted a personal audience (as, I’ve learned, are all new “recruits”). We’re sitting in the back of a beaten-up van, just him and me. The heat is suffocating. He’s propped the doors open.

“Look, I-” I start to say.

“So what have you been up to, Danny?” he asks, his hat trick of interruptions complete.

“What?”

“Since the war started. What have you been doing with yourself?”

Is this a trick question? What does he think I’ve been doing? I’ve fought whenever I’ve been able, done all I can to get rid of the maximum number of Unchanged. Does this guy think I’m just some lazy shyster, hiding out here in the middle of nowhere, waiting for the war to end?

“Fighting.”

“Good. On your own?”

“Generally traveling on my own, fighting with others whenever I’ve had the chance. Look, what’s all this about?”

“You killed many?”

Now he’s beginning to annoy me. Idiot. I’ve a good mind just to leave. His questions make me feel uneasy, inadequate almost. I don’t think I could have fought any harder, but how does that stack up against everyone else? For the first time it occurs to me that I don’t know how “good” a fighter I actually am. Is my tally of victims higher or lower than average? Does it matter? As long as we’re all killing, does anyone care how quickly, enthusiastically, or effectively we do it? I suddenly feel like I’m in one of those pointless personal progress review meetings I used to have at work. Have I hit my agreed Unchanged corpse target for this month?

“Plenty,” I answer, “but I haven’t been keeping count.”

“Too many to keep track of, eh?” He grins. Patronizing bastard.

“Something like that.”

“Have you noticed their numbers are dropping off? That there’s fewer of them around to kill?”

“Yes.”

“And do you know why that is?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Could be any one of a number of reasons,” I reply, suddenly feeling like a little kid put on the spot in class. I’m being deliberately vague, not wanting to give this joker an opportunity to make me look stupid, playing cat-and-mouse games with the truth like I used to with my supervisor and managers back at the council. “I know it’s not because we’ve killed them all.”

“If only that was the case. The real reason is that they’re continuing to concentrate themselves together, completely pulling out of areas like this. Tell me, have you heard of Chris Ankin?”

I stop and think. The name sounds familiar. Then I remember, Chris Ankin was the politician who recorded the message I heard when the war first began. After I got away from the slaughterhouse that night, his was the voice that finally explained what was happening to me and why. I kept a copy of that message on a phone I found and replayed it again and again until the battery died and I threw it away.

“I know him. I thought he was dead.”

“He wasn’t last time I saw him.”

“And when was that?”

“About ten days ago. Have you been following his messages?”

“Haven’t heard anything for weeks.”

Preston turns around and searches behind him. He pulls out a laptop from under one of the front seats and turns it on. I watch as it boots up, staring at the start-up screen graphics and messages as if I were watching a Hollywood blockbuster. It makes me feel unexpectedly nostalgic and empty, remembering things I haven’t seen or thought about since my old life ended. After several minutes the machine is ready. With the speed of a computerphobic two-fingered typist, he logs on and opens a video file. At the bottom of the screen a number of small icons and speech bubbles appear, then disappear, as programs try pointlessly to search for updates via networks that no longer exist. A haggard and tired-looking, pixelated face (Chris Ankin, I presume) appears in a small window, which, after much cursing, Preston manages to enlarge to fill the screen. By the time he passes the laptop over to me, the politician’s already in full flow. His voice is distorted by the tinny speakers but is still recognizable and strangely reassuring.

“When your enemy’s tactics change, you have to reassess your own tactics, too,” he explains. “From the earliest days of this war, fate and circumstance have combined to make us underdogs. We are, however, underdogs in numbers only.”

I glance across at Preston, but he doesn’t look back. His eyes are glued to the screen. Even though he’s probably heard this a hundred times already, he’s still hanging on Ankin’s every word.

“Since day one, our enemies have been retreating. The way we’ve fought this war put them on the back foot from the beginning, and it’s a position from which they’ve struggled to recover. The fact that our two opposing sides were so closely intertwined before we realized we were two opposing sides has made it all but impossible for them to isolate themselves and defend against us. We’re practically invisible to them, and that has strengthened our hand dramatically. But now, now that we’re months into this campaign, the position is beginning to change.

“With every day that passes, our people have become more and more diffuse. We each move from fight to fight, from battle to battle, going wherever we’re needed. As a result our numbers are increasingly spread out, and the enemy has taken advantage of this.”

“What’s he talking about?”

Preston glares at me. “Just shut up and listen.”

“They’ve pulled back into the hearts of their remaining cities, pulling their people closer together and drawing them in from the outside. There’s strength in numbers, and we need to do something similar. We need to stop fighting as individuals and form a coordinated attack force, an army if you will.”

“But they’ll hunt us out. If we start grouping together in large numbers, they’ll find us and-”

Preston sighs and pauses the video. He rubs his eyes and shakes his head.

“This is so much bigger than you and me, Danny,” he says. “We’re just cogs in a machine, and we’re expendable. Ankin’s not talking about setting up a military force with sergeants and captains and the like. He’s just trying to get us to work together and coordinate our efforts.”

“I understand that, but-”

“We have to start making better use of the people and resources we’ve got, and start hitting the enemy where it hurts. If we can do enough damage to start them off, they’ll destroy themselves. You heard about London, didn’t you?”

“No. I haven’t heard anything for weeks.”

“It happened incredibly quickly. We lost thousands that night but they lost many, many more.”

“How? What happened?”

He seems surprised that I don’t know.

“The mother of all battles,” he explains. “We came at them from all angles, caused so much panic and confusion that they lost control. In the end the only option left for them was to destroy it completely.”

“Jesus…”

“And we can make the same thing happen again and again if we learn to fight smarter. We don’t have any choice. Our only alternative is to wait out here in the wastelands until they decide to come out into the open again and hunt us down, but by then it’ll be too late. We have to act now.”

“So what do you want from me?”

He looks straight at me and puts down the laptop, giving up on the video. This feels ominous. He’s going to ask me to sign up and join his happy brigade of killers, I know he is. Thing is, apart from Adam, I’ve spent weeks fighting alone. Do I really want to go back to being one face in hundreds again? I’ve never been any good at taking orders.

“We want you to fight with us,” he says, unsurprisingly. I bite my tongue. “The more of us there are, the better our chances will be. Tell me about yourself, Danny. What your skills are, where you’re heading…”

“Don’t know where to start.”

For a moment I truly am flummoxed. No aspect of my former life has any bearing on me today, and as far as skills are concerned, what does he expect me to tell him? That I’ve got a Certificate in Dismemberment? A PhD in Asphyxiation Techniques? The sudden protracted silence is uncomfortable.

“Well, what did you do before all of this?”

“I worked in an office.”

“Okay, what line of business?”

“Processing parking fines.”

Preston pauses to try to get his head around the banality of my prewar existence.

“Not much call for that these days,” he sighs without a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Any special skills? Military or police experience?”

I feel suddenly inadequate. What we do is instinctive, not taught. My answer is automatic and stupid.

“I was in the Scouts for a while.”

“Don’t screw around,” he warns. “I’m serious.”

“No, nothing.”

“So now you’re just drifting without a purpose? Spending your time hiding behind the corpses of our people?”

“I wasn’t hiding,” I snap quickly, annoyed by his tone. “We were just passing through.”

“That’s what they all say.”

Truth is, I have been as directionless as he’s implying-but now I’ve got a reason to keep moving.

“Actually,” I announce, “I’m heading home.”

“Home? Why the hell would you want to do that? What possible reason could you have for wanting any connection with your past life?”

“I want to find my daughter.”

He looks up, his interest suddenly piqued.

“Why?”

What do I tell him now? Have I made a mistake admitting I want to look for Ellis? Does he think I’m less of a man because of it? A weaker fighter? That I’m in league with the enemy even? Do I even know why I want to find Ellis? What am I hoping to achieve? Life with her could never be like it used to be again, so why am I bothering? As much as the thought of who and what I used to be now disgusts me, I wonder if that’s the real reason I want to be with her again. Maybe I’m just trying to bridge the gap between today and all that happened in the years before now. This uncomfortable silence seems to last forever. I open and close my mouth to speak, but no words come out. Then Preston speaks for me.

“She’s like us, isn’t she?”

7

PRESTON STARES AT ME intently. What the hell is he thinking? So he knows that Ellis is one of us, so what? Why should that make any difference to him? Whatever the reason, his tone has definitely changed. He’s suddenly more serious and direct. He left the van momentarily to speak to someone, then came back and pulled the door shut. It’s suffocatingly hot in here now.

“Tell me about her, Danny.”

I don’t like this. I’ll drip-feed him information and find out why he wants to know. Years of living in the old world have taken their toll, and my guard is up. Part of me can’t help wondering whether I’ve managed to stumble on the last remaining pedophile ring in existence. When I don’t answer he asks another question.

“How old?”

“Just turned five.”

“And you think you know where she might be?”

“Possibly,” I answer quickly. I can afford to give him some vague details. Even if I knew exactly where Ellis was, I could tell him anything. He doesn’t know anything about her. He doesn’t know what she looks like. Christ, I haven’t even told him her name.

“She somewhere near here?”

“Might be.”

Preston leans over to the front seat and picks up a map, which he unfolds.

“Show me.”

“I’m not telling you anything until you tell me why you’re so interested in my daughter. What are you, some kind of pervert? A kiddie-fiddler?”

His face remains impassive and serious. There’s not a flicker of emotion.

“It’s not just your daughter we’re interested in,” he finally starts to explain. “Our belief is that children are key to our future. They’re important now, and they’ll be even more crucial when this war’s won.”

“Go on.”

“Have you ever seen a child fight? They’re fast, strong, agile… completely uninhibited. They’re not burdened with years and years of memories of the old way of things; all they know is now. They accept what they see and experience today, and they accept it without question. This is their normality.”

What he says makes some kind of sense, but I don’t trust this guy. His slimy, slick way of speaking immediately gets my back up. He comes across like a politician, a subpar spin doctor. I know we’re both fighting on the same side, but how different are our aims and objectives?

“You talk a lot, but you’re not actually saying anything. Why should I tell you anything about my little girl?”

“Kids are true fighters, Danny, perfect fighters even. Brutes are strong and aggressive, but children are something else entirely. I think-”

He stops speaking suddenly, almost as if he’s not sure I can be trusted. I press him, keen to hear what he has to say. He runs his fingers through his greasy, slicked-back black hair.

“I think the line between us and the Unchanged starts to blur when you’re looking at very young children. Like I said, they don’t carry the baggage and the memories we do. Given the right stimulation and provocation, I think even an Unchanged kid could be taught to fight like us.”

There’s another silence as we both think about what he’s just said. My initial reaction is that it’s probably bullshit, but he might just have a point. A young kid growing up surrounded by all this madness wouldn’t know any different. They’d have to learn to fight to survive, whatever their initial allegiance.

“I got separated from my family when the Change happened to me,” I tell him, deciding I’ve got nothing to lose from opening up a little more as long as I’m sparing with the details. I take the map from him and tap my finger on the area where I used to live. “I last saw them here, but my partner managed to get away with the kids.”

“Kids? More than one?”

“Two sons and a daughter. It’s only Ellis I’m interested in.”

“That’s your little girl?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be so quick to write off the other two.”

I slide my finger across the map, then stop.

“I think Lizzie would have gone to her sister’s house. What are these marks?”

Two circles have been drawn on the map, both centered on the main part of town. Both my apartment and Lizzie’s sister’s house are just outside the outermost circle. Preston explains.

“Like Ankin said, the Unchanged have withdrawn into city centers. Our information’s a couple of weeks old, but we think the first circle is the extent of their occupation.”

“What about the second line?”

“The outermost edge of their exclusion zone. It’s a strip of empty land smack between them and everything else, pretty well defended. Makes it that much harder for us to get through unnoticed. It’s not impossible, just a little more difficult.”

“So how does Ankin plan to march an army through no-man’sland without being noticed?”

“He’ll find a way,” Preston answers. He’s not filling me with confidence. I try to steer the conversation back toward Ellis.

“So that’s my plan,” I tell him. “Check the apartment first, then look for Ellis at Lizzie’s sister’s house.”

“And if she’s not there?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I don’t want to.”

Preston folds up the map and thinks for a moment.

“What if I said we could help you?”

“Help me? How?”

“We’ve got a group of people heading out that way later today, looking for more recruits. You could go with them. You’ll have more chance if you go with our support.”

“And what’s in it for you?”

“There are just two conditions,” he announces ominously. “First, if you don’t find your girl, you forget about her and come back here and fight with us. Second, if you do find her, you both come back to us and fight.”

8

I COULD’VE HAD ALL three of them,” Adam says, his voice weak and frail but somehow still filled with adrenaline-fueled enthusiasm and excitement. “I didn’t need your help. I’d have been perfectly fine if you hadn’t come back-”

“Sure you would,” I interrupt. “You’re full of shit, do you know that?”

“You’re the one who’s full of shit.” He laughs. “You were the one hiding up a ladder!”

“I wasn’t hiding-”

He coughs and laughs again, showering his bare chest with speckles of blood. There’s no two ways about it, he’s on his way out. His breathing is increasingly shallow and uneven. He was already severely weakened by the injuries inflicted by his dad and the subsequent untreated infections, and the brutal beating he took this morning did more than enough damage to push his broken body into total submission. He’s covered in bruises and swellings. He’s hardly moved in hours, and his condition is continuing to steadily worsen.

It’s another swelteringly hot day. The air is dry, and the relentless heat makes the smell of thousands of badly decayed corpses even harder to stomach. The insect population is flourishing. It’s hard to take a breath without sucking in a lungful of buzzing little fuckers. We’re not heading into town until after dark, so there’s nothing to do for the next few hours except try to relax and ready myself for the next fight.

“Need a drink,” Adam gasps. I grab a half-empty plastic bottle of water and hold it up to his chapped lips. He tries to swallow, but most of it runs down his chin. He coughs again and winces with sudden pain, but he doesn’t complain. Unbelievably, he’s still fired up by the rush of battle. Poor bastard’s completely oblivious to the fact he’ll probably be dead before the morning.

“Next time,” he says, every word an effort, “I’m gonna aim straight for the head, know what I’m saying?”

I nod. I don’t have the heart to tell him there’s not going to be a next time.

“I know,” I lie.

“See,” he continues, trying to prop himself up on his elbows but immediately dropping back down again, “they’ll look at me and think that because my arm and leg are fucked, I’ll be a pushover. But they’ll be wrong…”

His eyelids flutter closed, and just for a second I think he’s gone. I reach out to check his pulse, but he bats me away when I touch his skin and mumbles something unintelligible. He’s like an animal, blissfully unaware of his own mortality, convinced he’s going to go on and on and on. In a way I can’t help but envy his ignorance. He fades into unconsciousness.

“He dead?” a woman asks, her voice uncomfortably loud. I stand up and try to usher her away from Adam, but she stands her ground. Her name’s Julia. She’s coordinating the group of us heading out, and, from what I’ve heard from some of the others, she’s a hard bitch who doesn’t stand for any bullshit. She has a strong Irish lilt to her voice, and I can’t help thinking of the IRA and the Troubles when she speaks. It’s wrong of me, but who cares. Equality, diversity, and political correctness are all things of the past now, condemned to history by the Hate-the great leveler. All the name-calling, insults, and discriminatory language we used to avoid using have lost their impact now.

“Not yet. He’s still hanging on.”

She nods, her stern face devoid of any emotion. “There’s more food in the van. Make sure you eat before you leave. Don’t know when you’ll get the chance again.”

What with the heat, the flies, and the smell, the last thing I want is more food.

“Poor bastard,” I say quietly. “Just look at the state of him.”

Now that I’ve taken a step back from Adam I can see just how bad his condition really is. He has open, weeping wounds all over his body, and his shattered bones haven’t been properly looked at since his father first broke them. It makes me feel uneasy; this is a harsh and unforgiving world we’re suddenly all living in. This man is going to die before the day is done, but none of his wounds are truly life-threatening. The medicine, the expertise, and the means to save him exist, but they’re all out of reach. Julia seems to second-guess what I’m thinking with uncomfortable accuracy.

“Don’t bother beating yourself up about it,” she says. “There’s no point. Face facts, he’s useless to anyone like this.”

“I know, but-”

“But nothing. We don’t have time to waste patching up people like this who aren’t going to be able to fight again. It’d take him months to recover, and even then he’ll still be next to no good. And who’s going to look after him? We don’t have the people to spare. Right now there’s no such thing as doctors and nurses and surgeons and the like. At the end of the day we’re all fighters, and that’s all there is to it.”

I feel like I should protest, that I should try to say something in defense of my fallen friend and fight in his corner, but I know there’s no point. She’s right. Christ, it was only this morning that I was thinking about walking out on him anyway.

“A fighter who can’t fight,” she continues, preaching at me, “is just a corpse. If you want to do something to help him, then find yourself a gun and put a bullet in his head.”

9

I’M AWAY FROM THE slaughterhouse and the corpses and the flies and the stench now, and the land stretches out in front of me forever. The sun-bleached, knee-high grass shifts lazily from side to side in the warm wind like waves on a gently rolling sea. The world is suddenly absolutely beautiful, calm and almost completely silent. I feel strong and relaxed, revitalized and ready for the next fight. It’ll be time to leave soon.

I take a few steps forward, the blazing sun blinding me and burning my skin, my boots trampling down the long grass and leaving a flattened trail behind me. Considering how close to the cull site this place is, it’s remarkably tranquil and clear. Ahead of me there’s nothing, the land from here to the horizon barely even undulating, only a handful of distant, parched trees daring to stretch up from the yellow-green ground into the intense blue sky above.

Wait. What was that?

I hear something. The rustle of grass. Footsteps? I’m starting to think it was just the wind when, a few yards ahead of me, a childlike figure appears, emerging from the long grass where it had been hiding. Virtually naked and desperately thin; I can’t even tell from here what sex it is. It slowly stands upright, watching me intently, swaying slowly. I don’t care who or what it is. I know that I have to kill it.

I start sprinting, totally focused on catching the small figure up ahead and nothing else. He runs (I can tell from the way he moves it’s a male) and makes a sudden, darting turn to the left, moving far faster than me. The gap between us increases, and I follow his trail through the flattened grass, around and around in a lazy arc until I end up back where I started. The child disappears momentarily, and as I scan the horizon I see that up ahead of me now are the ruins of my hometown. It’s been weeks since I’ve been here, but it’s almost exactly as I remember, just a little dirtier than before. The dark, ugly buildings are in stark contrast to the beauty of everything else. There’s a steady haze of smoke, wisps of white climbing up between the tallest buildings and clouds of dirty gray lying at street level like a heavy fog.

I’ve completely lost sight of the child now, but the trail of trampled grass will lead me straight to him. I start running again. The chase is getting harder now. The air is scorched and dry, and I can feel the fierce sun burning the skin on my bare back. I force myself to keep moving forward, driven on by the thought of killing again. My mouth salivates at the prospect of tearing Unchanged flesh from bone…

A thin strip of brittle hedge marks the farthest edge of the grassland. I crash through, ignoring the spiteful branches and thorns that slash at my skin, then keep running along an empty street I don’t recognize. There are buildings rising up on either side of me now, dilapidated and skeletal but still tall and imposing enough to finally block out the sun. It’s hard to see anything in the sudden change from light to dark, and it’s ice cold in the shadows. Disoriented, I start to slow down. The child I’m chasing is long gone.

I hear footsteps again-more than one person this time, and they’re behind me. I turn around and see a huge crowd of people charging up the long straight street after me. There’s enough of them to fill the entire width of the road, but their true numbers are masked by the worsening gloom. I start to run again, willing myself to keep moving faster. My energy levels are dropping now that I’m the one being chased, and every step takes ten times the effort it did before. My hunger has been replaced with fear, and the crowd’s getting closer. Every time I look back over my shoulder they’re nearer still. There’s a gap in the row of buildings to my left-leading to another even straighter, even narrower road-and I take it, my heavy boots and aching feet pounding the concrete, shock waves shooting the length of my tired frame. All my strength and energy have gone. Can’t keep going…

I stop halfway down the second street, unable to go any farther. I look back, and the crowd is still surging after me like a herd of stampeding animals, close enough that I can see their faces now. They suddenly stop, maintaining an unexpected, cautious distance. I sense they could attack at any moment, and I’m scared. For the first time in months I feel genuinely afraid. I look at the people at the front of the hunting pack, and I see that they’re like me, but I sense they’re going to attack. Why? Do they think I’m one of the Unchanged? I open my mouth to try to explain, to try to make them understand, but I can’t force out even a single word. I feel crushed, devastated, and humiliated, wishing I were like them again. They look at me with total hatred…

I turn around to run and find myself facing Ellis. In disbelief I move closer toward her. She backs away from me, matching every step forward with a single step back, then stops again when I stop.

“Ellis,” I start to say, my parched voice barely audible, “I thought you’d…”

She throws herself at me, leaping up with lightning speed and grabbing hold of my throat. I’m down before I know it, my face slammed hard into the ground…

10

BAD DREAM, SLEEPING BEAUTY?” the man sitting next to me asks. I nod but don’t answer. I rub my head where it just thumped against the window of the van and immediately remember where I am. It’s late in the day, I’m on my way back home with three other fighters, and I’m feeling travel sick. Can’t remember the last time I went anywhere by road like this. Is it safe? The confidence of the rest of the people in the van makes me feel out of step with everyone else.

The cocky, sour-faced guy next to me is Paul Hewlitt, and he seems to have a far higher opinion of himself and his own abilities than anyone else does. In the front of the van are Carol and Keith, who’s driving. As far as I’m aware there’s nothing between them, but they bicker, fight, and argue like an old married couple. I feel like I don’t belong here. I think I’d rather be doing this alone. Maybe I’m just not used to being with groups of people anymore?

“Will you put that damn thing out?” Keith moans as Carol lights up a cigarette. She blows smoke in his direction, deliberately antagonizing him.

“No,” she snaps abrasively, her voice dry and harsh.

“Don’t know where you keep getting them from.”

“You don’t want to know,” Paul pipes up.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I saw you,” he says, “checking the pockets of corpses.”

“Well, they don’t need them anymore,” she argues. And she’s got a point. But does that make her any different from the Unchanged I saw fleecing bodies earlier?

“You’re disgusting,” Keith sighs.

“I’m addicted,” she answers back quickly, “and I don’t want to quit. Cigarettes are one of my few remaining pleasures. Where else am I supposed to get them?”

“At least open the window, then. Last thing I want to do is be breathing in your secondhand smoke all night.”

“Hold your breath, then,” she grumbles, begrudgingly winding down her window. The cool, relatively fresh air that floods into the van is a relief, and I breathe it in deeply.

I look around at the three people I’m traveling with tonight, and I can’t help but feel concerned. I haven’t seen any of them in action yet, but I don’t hold out much hope. Keith looks like he’d be more at home in his garden than on the battlefield. Carol appears permanently angry. She has bulging eyes and short, dark hair that obviously used to be colored (the dye’s grown out, leaving a brassy red tidemark). She has long nails that probably used to be filed and painted but that now look more like talons or claws. She reminds me of a woman I used to work with-a bitter, drink-addled ex-publican. She has the ruddy complexion of a heavy drinker and looks like she’d be happiest either behind a bar or propping one up. Paul, on the other hand, at least looks like he’s ready to fight. He’s an arrogant fucker. Since we’ve been driving he’s already told me several times what a great fighter he is and how he’s lost count of the hundreds of kills he’s made. I can see straight through him. His bragging and aggressive talk are there to hide his insecurities. He’s struggling just as much as the rest of us.

So, all in all, not a great team. Still, if they help me get closer to finding Ellis, I’ll put up with them.

“Give us a clue then, friend,” Keith says, glancing back at me over his shoulder. I lean forward to try to get a better view of where we are. The van vibrates intensely and lurches from side to side as we move quickly down a wide, rubbish-strewn road, and it’s difficult to see very much from where I’m sitting. The fact that Keith’s driving without lights on doesn’t help, but when the ominous black shape of a huge enemy helicopter crawls across the early evening sky just ahead of us, taillights flashing in the gloom, I’m thankful that we’re hidden.

There’s a road sign up ahead. Keith stops the van, and all four of us stare up at it, trying to make out the place names and directions. Much of the sign is covered in a layer of green-brown dirt and moss.

“This is Chapman Hill, isn’t it?” Paul says. I look in front and behind, trying to get my bearings. He’s right. I bought my last car from a garage close to here, but I didn’t recognize the place. Now that I know roughly where I am, though, everything slowly comes into focus, and the streets and buildings begin to regain some semblance of familiarity. This is bizarre-everything looks basically the same, but it’s all changed, too. The landmarks and structures I used to know are mostly still there, but absolutely everything seems to have been indelibly scarred by the war. A long line of once-thriving shops is now a crumbling, blackened ruin, almost completely destroyed by fire. The front part of the garage I remember has collapsed, flattening the few dust-covered cars that remained unstolen and unsold. Next to the garage an office building now stands at barely half of its prewar height, surrounded by mounds of rubble that used to be its top five floors. In the fading light it looks like every road and sidewalk for as far as I can see is covered with a layer of dust and debris. The bodies are the only shapes that are easy to distinguish among the chaos. Just ahead of us a skeletal hand is sticking up from a pile of fallen masonry as if its dead owner wants to ask us a question or hitch a ride.

“Well,” Keith says impatiently, “you just here to sightsee or are you gonna tell me which way to go?”

“Sorry,” I answer quickly, forcing myself to snap out of my trance. “Keep going straight for another mile or so, then it’s a right. I’ll tell you when we get closer.”

Keith’s about to pull away again when Carol stops him, leaning across and grabbing his arm.

“Wait. Something’s coming…”

There’s an intersection up ahead. She watches it intently.

“There’s nothing,” Keith whispers, instinctively lowering his voice. “You’re just overreacting again. It’s like the time-”

He immediately shuts up when a short but powerful and fast-moving convoy races across the crossroads in front of us. It’s just three vehicles long: a huge, military juggernaut at the front followed by a battered single-deck civilian bus, then a heavily armed jeep bringing up the rear. They move with reckless speed-far too quick to notice us. Keith waits. He glances over at Carol, who remains perfectly still. Eventually she nods. On her signal he moves off again.

“Can we get through that way?” he asks, slowing down at the point in the road where the convoy crossed our path.

“You want to follow them?” I reply, surprised.

“They’ve done us a favor and cleared the road. Yes, I want to follow them.”

He’s right. There’s a clear line through the debris where the vehicles have just been.

“It’s a little farther, but yes, this’ll get us to roughly the right place.”

He nods and pulls away, and I can immediately see the sense in his actions. We’re able to move with more speed now, and the clear channel makes it easier to follow the direction of the road. I sink back into my seat and turn to face Paul.

“Are we safe out here?”

“Truth is we’re not safe anywhere,” he answers quietly, “but I haven’t seen much trouble here recently.”

“So what was all that about?”

“Looking for survivors, I guess,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.

“That’s what they’d say,” Carol interrupts, turning around to face us both and blowing out smoke through the corner of her mouth, “but there can’t be many of them left out here now. They just come here to take potshots at us.”

“Which way now?” Keith shouts, fighting to make himself heard over the noise of the engine. There’s another intersection looming, but yet again I’m struggling to work out where we are. In the distance I can see occasional flashes of red from the brakelights of the three Unchanged vehicles. They’re heading straight into the center of town, the last place we want to go. I glance from left to right and back; then I see a large, familiar-looking pub, and I know where I am again. The building appears intact at first, but I can see from here that the back of the structure has been almost completely destroyed, leaving the relatively undamaged frontage standing like something from the set of a movie. I went to a going-away bash for someone from work there once. Or was it a birthday party…?

“Straight ahead takes us closer to them, so do we go right or left? Come on, for Christ’s sake, we don’t have time to screw around like this-”

“Left,” I answer, biting my tongue, determined not to let my anger show. These people don’t understand how hard this is for me.

We follow a familiar route, and I realize this is the way I drove to the apartment with my father-in-law the morning of the day before I killed him. Retracing the last steps I took as one of the Unchanged is unexpectedly unnerving. The road runs past the front of a row of houses before swinging up and left over a bridge that spans the highway below. Keith stops the van when we’re halfway across. I press my face against the window and look down at the once-busy road below. One side of the highway is relatively clear-the debris no doubt brushed aside by heavy, but infrequent, Unchanged traffic. The other side is a single clogged mass of stationary vehicles. Some look like they’ve simply been abandoned, others like they’ve been picked up and hurled over the median strip. It looks more like a rusting scrapyard than a road.

“Busy tonight,” Carol says. I look up and see that she’s staring down the highway in the other direction. I follow her gaze, and for the first time I can clearly see the enemy-occupied heart of the city. Silhouetted against the last golden yellow light of the rapidly fading sun, the tall buildings in the center of town stand proud and defiant. Even from here, still several miles away, I can see that the refugee camp is filled with movement. Planes and helicopters flitter through the darkening sky like flies around a dead animal’s carcass. The fact that there are lights on in some of the buildings takes me by surprise. They still have power! Keith starts driving again. I keep my eyes fixed on the buildings in the distance, watching them until they disappear from view.

“All right?” Paul asks, watching me as I crane my neck to keep looking.

“Fine,” I answer quickly, hoping he doesn’t pick up on my unease. There must be tens of thousands of Unchanged here, and I know that every last one of them has to die before the war will be over. Seeing their city center stronghold makes me appreciate the enormity of the task ahead of us. It makes me realize that Chris Ankin might be right. We’re going to have to work together to defeat this enemy.

11

TAKE A LEFT, THEN straight to the top of this road,” I tell Keith, my voice so quiet I have to repeat myself twice before he hears me. We’re very close now. I used to walk this way when I came home from work at night. When we turn the corner I’ll be able to see the apartment building at the top of the hill. I brace myself, not looking forward to going back. Keith stops the van suddenly and waits. He’s finally been forced to use the headlights and the bright beams of light illuminate several flashes of sudden, darting movement across the road in front of us. We watch in silence as a pack of stray dogs streaks through the ruins in search of food. Once probably lazy, well-fed, pampered pets, they’re now nervous, thin, and savage creatures. One of them, a mangy fawn brown mongrel with protruding ribs and ragged fur, stops in the middle of the road and stares defiantly at the van, ears twitching, light reflecting in its eyes. The standoff lasts for just a few seconds before something more interesting causes the hound to turn and chase frantically after the rest of the pack.

The interruption over, Keith drives on again, and in seconds I can see the outline of the house I used to share with Lizzie and the kids. In the winter I was able to see the lights on in the windows from here, and sometimes I could see the shadows of the kids as they ran from room to room, aggravating their mom and each other. I’ve got to forget about all of that now, but it’s hard. As I get closer, each new wave of familiarity hits me like an undefended punch in the face. At the same time, I feel a nauseous disgust-shame almost-that I was ever a part of this place. I can’t believe I allowed myself to stay trapped in such a pathetic, restricted, and pointless life for so long.

“Lovely spot,” Paul grumbles sarcastically as he surveys the battered remains of the run-down development I used to call home. The sky’s clear tonight, and the moon’s severe but limited light illuminates all the details I was hoping not to see.

“It’s hardly changed,” I tell him, semiseriously. “It looked this bad before the fighting.”

Another helicopter flies overhead, the constant chopping of its rotor blades audible even over the rattling engine of this ancient van. The others watch anxiously as it banks high above us, then turns around and flies back on itself, but I pay it hardly any attention. I’m focused on the dark apartment building we’re fast approaching, wondering what the hell I’m going to find inside. I know Ellis won’t be there. I just want to find a trace of her, an indication, no matter how small or how slight, of where she might have been taken.

Keith stops the van in the shadows, nestling it up against a tall wooden fence, and switches off the engine. Two more helicopters drift overhead. Are they tracking us? None of the others seem overly concerned.

“You’ve got five minutes,” Keith says with a slight trace of urgency in his voice. “Spend too long screwing around in there and when you come back out you’ll find us gone. There’s a fair amount of activity around here tonight, and I don’t want to get caught in any crossfire. Understand?”

“I get it.”

I reach up to open the door, then stop when Keith speaks again.

“Just remember,” he warns, “we’re here to find other people like us, not just your kid. If she’s not here or at the other house, you forget about her. Is that clear?”

Who the fuck does he think he is, talking to me like a goddamn drill sergeant? I ignore him and get out of the van before anyone can say anything else. I slam the door without thinking, and it echoes around the desolate neighborhood like a gunshot.

I stand at the end of the path that leads up to the communal front door of the apartment building, carrying only my backpack, a flashlight, and a knife. Except for the broken window and the ragged curtains whipping in and out in the wind, the apartment looks just like it always did. Seeing this place seems almost to cancel out the last three months. It feels like only yesterday that I was last here…

Keith angrily blasts on the horn, the uncomfortably loud sound forcing me into action. I walk down the uneven path and push the door. It sticks at first but opens when I shove it hard, making the same loud, ear-piercing creak it always did, except it sounds a thousand times louder tonight because everything else is so deathly quiet. I step inside and shine the flashlight around. The shared lobby has been trashed, and the ground beneath my feet is covered in bits of broken furniture and other rubbish. I recognize some of these things. They used to belong to me and my family. The kids used to hate being out here.

The front door of the apartment is open. It swings to and fro slightly in a gentle breeze. The wood is splintered and cracked across its width, and there are several dirty boot marks, most probably left by the soldiers who were forcing their way in as I was trying to get out when I was last here. With trepidation I push it open and go inside, and immediately I’m sucker-punched by the familiarity of everything again. I kick my youngest son’s upturned stroller out of the way and move farther down the hall. The first room I reach is the kitchen. I go inside, and I can smell my father-in-law’s corpse before I see it. He lies exactly where I left him, still covered in his blood-soaked duvet shroud, decay having deflated his lifeless bulk down to half its former size. Hard to believe that this rancid, shrunken, germ-filled mass is all that’s left of Harry. When I think of him I still remember the man who used to look after the kids and who always gave me such a hard time, a crotchety, white-haired old bastard who did all he could to make my life difficult. In spite of everything that’s happened it’s hard to look at him in this state.

I look up and shine the flashlight back across the room toward the doorway, suddenly remembering the screams and the terrified faces of my family when they saw what I’d done. I remember Ellis’s frightened face clearest of all, desperate for answers that I didn’t yet know I could give her.

I retrace their steps, moving back along the hallway until I reach the living room, the small circle of light from the flashlight providing more than enough illumination, and step over what’s left of the furniture Lizzie stacked up here to keep me out. It’s cold and damp in here, the broken window having left the room open and exposed to the elements for weeks on end. There’s black mold on the walls, and the paper’s peeling. The apartment has been ransacked, but I don’t think Lizzie did this. Our things have been trashed by scavengers looking for food, weapons, and valuables. They were wasting their time here. We never had anything worth taking.

A missile or jet roars through the air above the apartment with a piercing scream. Silence returns in seconds, but Keith blasts the horn again, and I pick up my pace. I don’t bother with Edward and Josh’s room. Instead I go into the bedroom Lizzie and I shared, and I look down at our bed. The thought of being so physically close to her makes my skin crawl. Surprisingly, the thought of being so far from her now makes me feel equally bad. I grab a change of clothing from the wardrobe (all of Lizzie’s clothes are still here-proof that she never came back), then run through to Ellis’s room. I shove some of her belongings into my backpack-a doll and a rainbow-colored sweater she used to live in-figuring that the familiarity will help when we’re together again. Didn’t matter what she was doing or where she was going, when we asked her to get dressed, this sweater was what she always chose. I hold it to my nose and sniff it, hoping to remember her scent. It just smells of the apartment, damp and musty.

I take one last look around, then make my way back out to the others, knowing that whatever happens, I won’t be coming back here. Keith hits the horn again as I run through the lobby. I push my way back out into the open and take a deep breath as soon as I’m outside, relieved to be out of that foul-smelling, claustrophobic hellhole full of reminders of the person I used to be. I hear gunfire nearby, followed by a scream that could be either rage or pain. I throw my bag into the van, then climb in and slam the door.

“Any sign?” Paul asks.

“Nothing.”

Yet another helicopter hovers nearby, this one using a searchlight to illuminate the ground below.

“We’re not going anywhere else for a while,” Keith announces as he starts the engine and pulls away. “This place is too damn busy for my liking tonight. Anywhere close where we can hole up until it quietens down?”

All eyes are on me, and the pressure is unwelcome. The only thing I’m sure about is that I’m not going back into the apartment. I try to think of other places nearby that might still be standing. Through a gap between two houses at the very bottom of Calder Grove I see the tall, dark outline of a high-rise that looks reasonably intact. That’ll do.

“Turn left at the bottom of the road,” I tell him. “I know somewhere.”

12

KEITH STOPS THE VAN behind a row of overflowing garbage cans, almost directly beneath the high-rise apartments. We each grab our individual bags of weapons and supplies and head for the shelter of the building. The front doors are missing, and the entrance foyer is as trashed as everywhere else. Like an idiot I instinctively press the button to call the elevator. Old habits die hard.

“Don’t think that’s going to do anything, my friend,” Paul whispers sarcastically. I push past him and follow Carol, who’s already heading up the stairs, the glowing orange tip of another cigarette illuminating her route through the darkness. There’s a woman’s badly decomposed body at the very bottom of the first flight of steps, her neck snapped and her decayed face wedged against the wall. She was like us, and that immediately puts me on edge. I step over the corpse and start to climb, wondering pointlessly if she fell or if she was pushed.

For a few minutes we do nothing but climb, our footsteps echoing up and down along the entire length of this dark and otherwise silent stairwell. We move quickly, most of us climbing two steps at a time. It’s hard work, but the pain is easy to ignore. It’s a perverse reality of my situation: I eat scraps, survive out in the open, and live from day to day, but I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been. The others are the same. Carol races ahead like a woman half her age. I feel strong and powerful, my body lean, toned, and efficient. Makes me wonder how, when everything was available to me on a plate and all I had to worry about was my family and my piss-easy job, did I manage to fuck everything up so badly? The memory of who and what I used to be is embarrassing. I wish this had happened to me years ago.

“How far?” Carol shouts down from several flights up.

“Just keep going,” I answer. We’re more than halfway up now. The higher we go, I think, the safer we’ll be.

“Wait,” Keith yells. I stop climbing and turn back. He’s still a floor below me. “Look at this.”

“Look at what?” Paul grunts breathlessly as he pushes past and starts heading back down again. I follow him back to floor eight (of eleven or twelve, I think). This floor is different from the others. I passed it too quickly to notice, but the doors leading from the staircase to the rest of the building here have been boarded up. There’s plenty of broken glass and other debris around here, but it doesn’t look like the barrier has been breached.

“This has been done from the inside,” Keith says, stating the blindingly obvious.

“So there might still be someone in there,” Carol adds, equally pointlessly.

“Must be Unchanged,” Paul says under his breath as he runs his hands over the large sheets of plywood that have been nailed to the inside of the door frame, pushing and prodding in different places, trying to find a weak spot. He finds one near the bottom right-hand corner where the door frame is rotten. He brushes away shards of broken glass with his feet, then sits down on his backside and pushes the board with his boot. When it moves slightly he beckons for me to help him. I position myself directly between him and the handrail of the staircase so he can’t move backward, then brace myself as he starts to kick at the wood. The noise is massively amplified by the confines of our surroundings, but in the moments of silence between kicks, everything else remains reassuringly quiet. He’s barely forced open a wide enough gap when he turns around, drops his backpack, and scrambles through. Once on the other side he pulls at the plywood and manages to yank away a piece about a yard square. I slide his bag through, then follow him.

We’re standing on an empty, relatively uncluttered landing. There are three apartments on this floor, two doors on one side of the landing, one on the other. Two of them are open. I quickly check one over. Its three main rooms are empty and fairly undamaged. There’s even the stale, mold-covered remains of a final untouched meal on a table in front of a lifeless TV. The owner of the apartment must have left (or been dragged out) in a hurry. Keith disappears into the other open apartment and reappears on the landing after a few seconds.

“Nothing,” he says quietly, “just a corpse on a bed.”

“On a bed?” Carol says, surprised.

“Someone’s laid out their missus or their mother or something. Dressed her up nice and brushed her hair. Still looks fucking horrible.”

“Very touching,” Paul mumbles as he presses his ear against the closed door of the remaining apartment. He pushes it gently, but it doesn’t move.

“Smash it?” I suggest, my axe ready in my hand. He thumps it pointlessly, then nods his head and moves to one side. I lift the axe and thump it down, the clang of metal on metal filling the air as I mis-hit and catch the Yale lock. I lift my arm again. Keith grabs my wrist before I can bring it down.

“Listen.”

I do as he says, but I can’t hear anything. I try to pull my hand free, but he tightens his grip and glares at me.

“I hear it,” Carol whispers. Then I do, too. A quiet, muffled voice shouting at us from deep inside the apartment.

“Not my…” it shouts, the third word unclear.

“Not my floor?” Keith suggests.

“Not my fault?” Paul offers, shrugging his shoulders. “Get the door open, man, and let’s get him killed. It’s just some nutter.”

I do as he asks, smashing the blade down again and again until the weak wood splinters and the lock gives. I kick it open and peer into the gloom. A well-timed explosion outside bathes everything in ice white light like a camera flash for a fraction of a second, just long enough for me to see that there’s someone standing at the far end of a short hall on the other side of the door. I catch a glimpse of his motionless outline, or hers, directly ahead. The door slowly swings shut again.

“How many?” Carol asks.

“Just one that I can see,” I answer. “Pass me the flashlight, Keith.”

Keith switches on the flashlight, but before he can pass it to me, the door flies open and the figure throws itself at me. The force of the sudden, unexpected attack takes me by surprise. I trip over my own feet as I stagger back, and before I know what’s happening, I’m lying flat on my back with a foul-smelling fucker right on top of me. He grabs the collar of my coat and lowers his face until it’s just inches from mine. His breath is so bad it’s making me want to puke.

“Not my fight,” he shouts, peppering me with spittle. “Not my fight-”

Keith smashes the side of his head with the flashlight, sending him reeling.

“Not my problem,” he sneers, trying not to laugh at his own joke. The man who attacked me rolls over and gets up and stupidly starts walking back toward Keith again.

“Not my fight,” he says, blood running down his face. “Leave me alone. It’s not my fight. Get out of here…”

Keith lunges forward again, flashlight held ready to strike, sensing the kill.

“He’s one of us, Keith,” Carol warns, but it’s too late. He swings the flashlight around and smashes it into the man’s face again. He drops to the ground, and this time he doesn’t get up. Keith shines the light down. Christ, Carol’s right. He was one of ours. Keith looks at him with disdain, then steps over the corpse and goes into the apartment.

The small, squalid place is like a cocoon. The door I broke down hadn’t been opened for weeks. The air is musty and stale, and the rooms are filled with boxes of supplies. On closer inspection, we find that almost all of the supplies have been used up. The dead man on the landing hardly had any food left.

“He’d done well to last this long,” Paul says, watching me as I check through more empty cartons.

“If you ask me,” Keith says, wiping the flashlight clean on a floral curtain, then opening a door into another room and glancing around it, “people like that are as bad as the Unchanged. Not fighting with us is almost as bad as fighting against us. You don’t have a choice whether or not you want to be a part of this war. There’s no opt-out clause for anyone.”

“That was his wife, you know,” Paul says, following me out onto a small veranda that overlooks what’s left of my hometown. I’ve been out here for a while, just getting some air.

“What?”

“The guy Keith did in, that was his missus lying on the bed next door.”

“How d’you know?”

“Found a photo of the pair of them together. Lovely couple,” he murmurs sarcastically.

“Was she like us?”

“Nah, one of them.”

“But he couldn’t let go?”

“Looks that way. Probably killed her, then regretted it. True love, eh?” he jokes. “Never runs smooth.”

“You’re not wrong. My other half was…”

“I know. Bad luck, man.”

“What about you?”

“Good question.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’ve been with my girlfriend for three years now. Then all this happened…”

“Was she Unchanged?”

“No, nothing like that. We stuck together for a while after the Change, then just drifted apart. Just didn’t need each other like we used to.”

I glance across at him. He’s hanging his head out over the high balcony next to me, staring into the distance.

“I guess relationships and stuff like that have had to take a backseat with all this going on.”

“You’re not wrong,” he sighs. “You know, I was thinking the other day, I haven’t had a hard-on for weeks.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

“I’m not complaining,” he says quickly. “It just hadn’t occurred to me before. I’ve stopped thinking about sex, stopped looking at women… hope to God this is just temporary.”

I’m the same, although I don’t bother telling him. It’s just a question of priorities, I expect. When the fighting’s over, things will get back to normal again.

I look out toward the city center in the distance, glowing like the embers of a dying fire. There’s a strange beauty to the devastation tonight. This place always seemed ugly and oppressive to me before, but these days I see wonder and detail in things I used to look straight through. The Hate has opened my eyes. The area immediately around this high-rise-the place I used to call home-is dark and largely silent, just a few small fires and the odd flash of movement visible through the early evening gloom. From up here tonight the world seems vast and never-ending. There are clouds looming on the horizon, swallowing up the stars. There’s rain coming.

“What’re you thinking?” Paul asks after a couple of minutes have passed. “Not still thinking about my dick, I hope!”

“Just how massive the world feels tonight,” I answer honestly as I watch a lone helicopter leading a distant convoy of Unchanged vehicles across their so-called exclusion zone. “First time I’ve been back here in months. From up here I can see where I lived and where I worked and everything in between. Can’t believe I used to spend virtually all my time in the same few square miles of space. Kind of makes you feel insignificant, doesn’t it?”

“The best thing about this life of ours now,” he tells me, “is how open it’s made everything. All the walls and barriers that used to hold us back have gone.”

“I’ve been thinking about my apartment. It was just barely bigger than this place, and there were five of us living there. Five of us! How the hell did we ever manage to cram that many lives into such a small space?”

“That wasn’t living, that was just existing.”

“I can see it now, but when you’re in the middle of it you just make do, don’t you. You try to make the most of what you’ve got…”

Paul nudges my shoulder, and I look across at him. He gestures out over the city.

“All of this, my friend,” he says, “is ours now.”