Them or Us

40

AT THE END OF another corridor, a broken sign hanging from the ceiling points toward a fire exit hidden behind an untidy stack of boxes and crates, most of them empty. I fight my way through the rubbish, then force the door open and get out of the building, desperate to disappear before Hinchcliffe comes looking for me or the sudden violence outside escalates further. I follow the metal railings around the side of the courthouse, passing Llewellyn’s impaled corpse, running through the massive puddle of blood that’s seeped out of his body and not giving the stupid fucker a second glance. I pause at the back of the building to check that no one’s around, then sprint away. Once again I’m thankful for the steroids that Ankin’s doctor pumped me full of earlier today. If I hadn’t been drugged up, I’d never have been able to run like this. No doubt I’ll pay for it eventually when the effects wear off, but right now it doesn’t matter.

I try to follow the main road down toward the south gate, keeping the ocean to my left, but another sudden swell of trouble in a side street forces me to change direction. I’m close to the redbrick shopping center, one of the sites where Hinchcliffe stockpiles food and supplies. It’s in the process of being ransacked. Fighters scramble through debris, desperate to get their hands on whatever they can before someone else takes it. Some of them are attacked as they fight their way back out into the open. A gang of Switchbacks corner one. He manages to batter one of them, but three more take him down, blades flashing in the early morning light, bludgeons pounding him into a pulp. Men still loyal to Hinchcliffe try for a while to stop the looting, but they’re soon overcome and are either battered into submission or forced to switch sides. I get a glimpse inside one of the food buildings through an open door as I run past. It’s virtually empty now. Has everything already been taken, or was there never anything there?

Lowestoft is falling apart around me—splintering and fragmenting as I watch. Until now the specter of Hinchcliffe has loomed large over this place, and everyone has been in his shadow, too afraid to do anything that might risk incurring his wrath. Today his dominance has been challenged without even a single shot being fired between the fighters in the compound and Ankin’s army outside the town, and everything is rapidly beginning to fall apart. The ease with which it’s happened is terrifying. It’s almost as if Ankin wanted it to be this way.

Another left turn leads me back toward the coast and the main road again. The streets are filling with activity, and word of what’s happening seems to have spread with lightning speed. The people I see are uniformly panicked and scared, unsure what they should do. Some are simply barricading themselves into the buildings where they live, blocking up those doors and windows that are still accessible from outside. Others are preparing to defend themselves. Most have resorted to the language of the moment: violence and hate. More small mobs have appeared on street corners armed with clubs and blades and whatever else they can find. Some of these groups of people merge; others turn on each other in sudden, desperate fights over territory and weapons.

I can finally see the south gate up ahead, but there’s already a large crowd there trying to get out. A couple of fighters still loyal to Hinchcliffe try to push the bulk of the people back into the compound, but several more of them are doing the exact opposite—frantically trying to get the gate open. A couple of smaller, more athletic-looking people are scrambling up the sides of the trucks that form the barrier and are throwing themselves over.

A fight breaks out in the middle of the crowd in front of the gate. One man—a young, aggressive bastard I’ve taken a beating from before now—is warding off several others with a pistol and a knife. He’s gesturing desperately toward the metal barrier, but his words are being drowned out by increasing levels of noise coming from the other side. He lashes out at the one-legged guard, who can’t get away, slashing a line across his chest with the tip of his blade. He then fires his pistol several times, killing two more, before throwing it into the crowd when he’s out of ammunition. The gunshots are enough to force the people to scatter momentarily, and the brief distraction gives him enough time to get the access door in the gate open and get out. I can’t see much—several other fighters race to the barrier and close it again within a few seconds—but I see enough, and so does much of the rest of the crowd. The young fighter runs down the road, arms held high in surrender. Coming toward him, coming toward the heart of Lowestoft, is one of Ankin’s tanks. Behind it, for as far as I can see, the road is filled with more people and vehicles. As the gate slams shut again the crowd on this side reacts with increased anger and fear, and another fight erupts, which spreads rapidly.

I need to find another way out of town. If Ankin’s this close and he has anything like the manpower he’s boasted of having, then the entire compound must surely have been surrounded by now. I double back, now running away from the ever-expanding riot and moving back toward Hinchcliffe and the courthouse again, seriously lacking anything resembling a coherent plan of action. In the space of just a few minutes the streets have begun to fill with even more chaos and confusion, wanton violence flooding the entire compound.

I’ve run out of options. All the major routes north and south are blocked now, and everything to the west will be impassable before long if the panic and rioting continue to increase. The beach is the only sensible route left to take. It’ll take me much longer to get away, but at least it should be clear. Providing the tides are kind and the violence here is contained to the half-mile square around Hinchcliffe’s base, I should be able to follow the shingle and sand until I’m level with the development, then get back up onto the roads again and reach the house.

I turn and head down toward the ocean, my body still fooled into thinking it’s healthy by the drugs. I know I can keep running at this speed if I don’t push too hard. The noise of the waves increases steadily as I approach the sea, but then I become aware of another, even louder noise. Ankin’s plane again? I look up and see a helicopter flying low and fast toward the town. For a second I stop dead in my tracks, transfixed as I watch the machine crawl along under the dark gray clouds, taillights blinking through the gloom. It’s been so long since I’ve seen anything like this … and now it’s directly over the center of Lowestoft, flying this way toward the ocean. My brain is screaming at me, trying to make me understand that whoever’s flying the chopper isn’t interested in me or even capable of attack, but common sense has gone out of the window and now I’m running like I think the pilot’s about to machine-gun me down. It seems that everyone else feels the same level of paranoia, because the arrival of the helicopter has whipped the crowds behind me into an unpredictable frenzy, herding many of them in this direction. Fuck, are we being rounded up? I’ve almost reached the beach now, but there are other people swarming nearby, and with the perceived threat of attacks from the air it suddenly seems a dangerously exposed place to be. I need an alternative. I look up again and then I see it: a place that’s out on a limb, isolated and alone; a place where I can shelter until the chaos dies down; a place where no fucker in their right mind would go.

I put my head down and start sprinting toward Hinchcliffe’s factory.