Them or Us

45

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s suicide.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I didn’t think there would be.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Such as?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We can’t.”

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

Joseph looks back at me again. “Well?”

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

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

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

“Who’s this?”

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

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

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

“Where exactly is the fighting?” Joseph asks.

“Want me to draw you a fucking map?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then he was the fool, not me.”

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

“I’m screwed anyway.”

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

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

Deep breath.

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

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

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

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

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

“What prearranged point?”

“We hadn’t got that far,” he admits.

“Great.”

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

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

“Southwold,” I eventually say.

“What?” Joseph asks, looking confused.

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

“So will you help us?”

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

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

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

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

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