Them or Us

Seven Weeks Ago

MCCOYNE STOOD OUTSIDE THE recently built cordon that had been erected around the very center of Lowestoft, jostling for position in the middle of a crowd of some fifty others. None of them wanted to be there, but had to. They kept themselves to themselves and barely spoke or acknowledged each other, but, given the unseasonably low temperature and biting wind, the shelter and warmth provided by having other people in close proximity was welcome.

In the days immediately after the bombs, if anyone had asked McCoyne if he thought things could possibly get any harder, he’d have said no. How could life get any worse? But that was before he’d reached Lowestoft. Sick and malnourished, he’d spent every day since then hunting and scavenging for little return, only to have the scraps he did manage to find immediately taken and added to Thacker’s “central store.” That was then, and Thacker was no more now. He’d been usurped and disposed of in a very public manner by one of his prize fighters, an evil fucker by the name of Hinchcliffe. The people on the streets called him KC. King Cunt. McCoyne had always harbored doubts that Thacker, and before him Johannson, had been bloody-minded and ruthless enough to cling to power in this screwed-up new world disorder. There were no such questions over Hinchcliffe’s suitability for the role. In the short time since he’d assumed power, Lowestoft had been transformed and McCoyne’s position (like that of every other nonfighter) had deteriorated rapidly. Now used to attacking first and talking second, those with the most strength ruled the place with their fists. The strongest fighters had, by default, assumed positions of authority, which they weren’t about to give up.

Hinchcliffe’s first move had been to blockade an area around the very heart of town where he and his army of several hundred fighters based themselves. Just half a mile square in size, it was more than large enough to house Hinchcliffe, his people, and all the supplies, vehicles, and everything else of any value that had been scavenged since Thacker and the others had first moved in. On one side was the ocean and on the other the main A12 road, which ran through the center of Lowestoft and was barricaded at either end of the compound. Two large metal gates had been erected across both the A12 and the A1144 at the northern edge of the town, with a single blockade-cum-checkpoint positioned across the full width of the road bridge that spanned the narrow channel of water at the mouth of Lake Lothing to the south. All other access points were sealed with row upon row of empty houses being boarded up along the remaining edges of the compound, and every minor road rendered impassable with piles of rubble, abandoned cars, and the like. The area was completely sealed off from the rest of the town, and no one came in or out without the KC’s approval. Many of the so-called Switchbacks were allowed inside if they were useful or could fulfill a particular function, but the rest of them could go to hell as far as Hinchcliffe was concerned. McCoyne, with no discernible talent or incentive, had become one of a thousand-strong underclass, living in the ruins.

The outskirts of Lowestoft had come to resemble a shanty town. Many of the underclass occupied abandoned houses; many more camped out on the streets or in the gaps between buildings in makeshift shelters, reminding McCoyne of what he’d seen in the squalid Unchanged refugee camps before they’d been nuked. The people here were different, but many of the problems they experienced were the same. Disease was increasingly becoming an issue, and violence frequently erupted in the outlying regions. Food was in desperately short measure, with Hinchcliffe occasionally deigning to provide essential rations to a fortunate few. A briefly burgeoning black market collapsed quickly. The commodities became the currency, and there was never going to be a good enough supply to satisfy the population’s constant demands.

Those who were in the best position outside Hinchcliffe’s compound were those who continued to volunteer to scavenge the wastelands. They were paid for their efforts with a meager cut of whatever they found. The terms were grossly unfair, but that was tough. For the most part, with nowhere else to go (and no means of going anyway), the ever-growing underclass population remained in and around the town, building up on street corners like drifting snow. Hinchcliffe tolerated them and used them when it suited him. He controlled the food supplies (carefully coordinating storage across numerous sites so that he was the only one who knew where everything was), and he controlled the fighters. Far more than his predecessor, Hinchcliffe had wormed himself into an apparently unassailable position. His foot soldiers were rewarded for their loyalty with a life that was more comfortable than many would have ever thought possible again when the war had been at its bloody peak. On the right side of the compound wall there was a supply of fairly clean water, enough food for all, and, occasionally, heat and power. On the other side: nothing.

The crowd McCoyne had joined this morning was gathered in front of the larger of the two gates at the northern edge of the compound. Word had spread that a scavenging party was heading out west today into an area that had, until now, remained relatively untouched. Over the last couple of months it had been established that at least six cities (more precisely, six refugee camps) had been destroyed by the nuclear strikes last summer: London to the south, Edinburgh to the north, and several others, including Manchester and Birmingham. Without the means to measure pollution and radiation levels, it had been assumed that the bottom third of the country and a wide strip running the length of the land from the south coast right up into Scotland was most probably uninhabitable. Now, however, almost six months after the bombs, necessity had forced the foragers to start looking farther afield for supplies. A Switchback who’d once been a high school science teacher had done some basic research for Hinchcliffe in what was left of the Lowestoft library. She’d used reference works and other, less scientifically accurate books documenting what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and had eventually come to the unsupported conclusion that although the bomb sites were nowhere near completely safe, the risks involved in scavenging a little closer to them had probably reduced enough by now to be worthwhile. Hinchcliffe didn’t care. He wasn’t the one going out there.

The metal gate across the road was pushed open. Two trucks drove out of the compound, the nose of the first gently nudging through the crowd, which quickly parted. Once they’d driven out and the gate had been closed behind them, the trucks stopped again. A shaven-headed fighter jumped down from the cab of the second truck. People scurried out of his way, leaving a bubble of empty space around him, their sudden distance a mark of fear, not respect. This nasty bastard was Llewellyn, and he was one of the few fighters known by name to virtually everyone left in and around Lowestoft. With a military background and undoubted strength and aggression, he was Hinchcliffe’s right-hand man. His reputation was second only to that of his boss. He was older and quieter, but no less deadly.

“I’m looking for about fifteen of you,” he said. McCoyne squirmed forward, trying to squeeze through a gap that wasn’t there. The person on his right reacted and pushed him back the other way. He tripped over someone’s boot and landed on all fours at Llewellyn’s feet. Llewellyn grabbed his collar and pulled him up.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Volunteering,” McCoyne said quickly. Llewellyn screwed up his face and looked him up and down.

“Suppose you’ll do,” Llewellyn said, throwing him toward the back of his truck before reaching out and grabbing someone else, “and you, and you…”

McCoyne climbed into the empty truck and found himself a dark spot at the very back of the vehicle, where he could watch the others and keep all his options open. He pulled his knees up tight to his chest to try to get warm. Get out there, he told himself, get what you can, then get back.

* * *

The drive away from town was long, slow, and disorienting. Conversation in the back of the windowless truck was sparse, and the time dragged painfully. It reminded McCoyne of another journey he’d taken like this, many months ago now, almost a year. Back then his eventual destination had been a gas chamber, from which he’d barely managed to escape with his life. What the hell was he going to see when they opened up the back of the truck today? He felt bad—an uncomfortable mix of travel sickness and nerves. Or was it more than that? He knew that every mile they drove in this direction took them deeper into the deadlands with its poisoned, radiation-filled air.

The journey ended abruptly. There were sudden murmurs from the people all around McCoyne, some of whom he could hear getting up and moving about. He stayed where he was, fingering the hilt of one of the knives he always carried attached to his belt, just in case.

The roller-shutter at the back of the truck was thrown open, flooding the inside of the vehicle with unexpectedly bright light.

“Out,” one of the fighters ordered, and the volunteers did exactly as they were told. McCoyne was the last to move. He jumped down onto gravel, then looked around and grinned, caught off guard by his unexpectedly bizarre surroundings.

“What the hell’s this?”

In front of him was a picnic area and an iced-over, duck-free duck pond, to his right a children’s playground.

“I came here with the family once,” a stooping, painfully thin man next to him whispered, grinning wryly. “Place has gone downhill since then…”

The group of volunteers and their fighter escort were stood in the first of several immense, interconnected, fieldlike parking lots. McCoyne shielded his eyes from the hazy sun and looked around. Behind him was a huge billboard covered with faded pictures of smiling kids’ faces, cartoon characters, roller coasters and rides, and other things he’d hadn’t thought about in what felt like an eternity. A theme park. He’d heard of this one. He’d even talked about bringing the kids here once with Lizzie, but he’d managed to get out of it because, as he’d told her at the time, it was too far from home, and the entrance prices were obscene, and then he’d have had to pay to feed them all, then the kids would have wanted to go to the gift shop and …

“Hey, you!” an angry voice shouted in his direction. McCoyne spun around and realized he was on his own. The others were already shuffling away along an overgrown path that led through a copse of bare trees, deeper into the park. “Stop fucking daydreaming,” the fighter yelled at him. “You’re here to hunt, not fucking sightsee.”

McCoyne ran after the others, legs already aching, struggling to catch up. He tried to focus on the job at hand, but it was all but impossible in these unexpectedly surreal surroundings. He crossed an artificially rickety wooden bridge over a murky stream, then caught his breath with surprise when he looked down and saw a frozen figure standing ankle deep in the water. It was a mannequin—a caricature of an old-time gold prospector with fading paint and exaggerated, cartoonlike features—but the plastic man still looked in better shape than he felt.

Ahead of the group, the silent heart of the theme park began to appear through the trees. Initially all they could see was the tops of the tallest, long-since-silent rides, the occasional scaffolding tower or the curving arc of a stretch of roller-coaster track. Being in a place like this was unexpectedly painful. It wasn’t so much that it made McCoyne think about who and what he’d lost; rather, it made him realize what he’d never get back again. When finding the basic necessities to survive each day was such a struggle, would there ever be a time when places like this fulfilled a useful function again? Playing, laughing, time-wasting … it had been a long time since anyone had done anything even remotely pleasurable, and he thought it would be another age before any of them did again.

The group stopped in an open courtyard at the edge of the theme park proper, crowding dutifully around Llewellyn as if he were their tour guide. There were numerous buildings around, small and insignificant beneath the erstwhile attractions, all done up in a mock gold-rush style. The prospecting theme felt strangely appropriate. Directly in front of them was a large, odd-shaped concrete building with a faux-rock fascia and a large sign hung across its frontage announcing simply THE MINE. Its door had been roughly boarded up, like the windows of the house in a zombie movie where survivors were hiding, gaps between the overlapping planks for undead arms to reach through. McCoyne couldn’t tell whether the boards were real or just there for effect.

Llewellyn, wearing a face mask and with a rifle now slung over his shoulder, flanked by similarly masked fighters on either side, addressed the volunteers.

“Hinchcliffe figures we’ll find good pickings here,” he announced, voice muffled. “Places like this have been overlooked, not looted over and over like the towns. If you don’t bring me back as much stuff as you can carry, then you will be officially designated as being fucking useless and I will leave you here to rot. Understand?” No response, but no arguments either. Llewellyn continued. “And the quicker you move, the less chance there is you’ll get sick. There’s probably all kinds of nasty shit still hanging around in the air here.”

Llewellyn’s second comment got more of a reaction than the first. Even the vaguest mention of radiation and poisoning was enough to cause concern in the underclass ranks. McCoyne couldn’t understand it. Why were they so stupid? He knew from what he’d seen and heard that Hinchcliffe certainly was no fool, so would he really have sent them here to collect poisoned food from a poisoned place? It was just scare tactics, designed to increase the tightness of the stranglehold grip he already had on the rest of the population. Was Danny the only one who could see him for what he was? Maybe they all realized but, like him, had chosen to keep their mouths shut rather than risk incurring Llewellyn’s wrath?

The group split up. McCoyne kept his distance from everyone else, deliberately keeping to himself. If he didn’t collect enough stuff today, he was a dead man.

“One hour maximum,” Llewellyn shouted, his voice echoing eerily across the empty theme park. “Tear this place apart, then let’s get out of here.”

* * *

More than three-quarters of the allotted hour gone and McCoyne knew he was in trouble. His bag was only slightly less empty than when he’d started hunting. He’d wasted time mooching around an abandoned zoo, trying to work out what each of the various piles of odd-shaped, oversized bones and mangy scraps of fur had once been. For a place Hinchcliffe had assumed would have provided rich pickings, there was hardly anything here. He had been right in one respect; the theme park hadn’t been trashed and torn apart like everywhere else. It was as if the food and supplies here had simply disappeared.

Use your brain, he told himself, trying to stay calm and not panic. Think logically. He walked under a dried-up log flume, heading for a long and narrow wooden hut that spanned the space between where people would have lined up to get on the ride and where they would have gotten off—the place they’d have been slowly channeled through to buy low-quality, overpriced souvenir photographs of themselves screaming, and presented in tacky cardboard frames or printed onto mouse mats, key rings, hats, and mugs. None of this was helping. Put yourself in their shoes, he thought. Try to remember what it used to be like. I’d have gotten off this ride and I’d have been cold and wet and hungry … He looked around and noticed the side wall of another shack facing out onto a lake with dark green, almost black water, which, he presumed, would have supplied the flume. Was this a café or something similar? There was no one else scavenging around here. This was his last chance. Christ, he hoped he’d open the door and find a previously undiscovered stock of food in this hut. Anything would do. Just something for him to hand in to Llewellyn …

McCoyne was about to force the door of the building when he stopped. He could smell something. It stank like raw sewage. Was it just the stagnant lake? He leaned over an ornamental wall and peered down. On the muddy bank below him he could see (and smell) a glistening heap of shit being slowly washed away by the lapping water. It made his sensitive stomach turn, but he managed to keep control and not throw up. This didn’t make any sense. It looked like human waste, and there was far too much of it to be from just one person, so was this from an emptied-out slop bucket? Judging by the height it had been dropped from and the splatter pattern, that was the only logical explanation. Would one person have repeatedly used the same bucket? Wouldn’t they have just come here to shit and saved themselves the hassle? So, he decided, unless Llewellyn has passed around a communal bucket for everyone to crap in while I’ve been out here alone, this is probably from another group of people—and if they’re hiding in a place like this, then there’s every chance they’re Unchanged.

“Ten minutes,” Llewellyn bellowed from the courtyard. McCoyne had to move fast.

“Found anything?” a voice asked, startling him. He turned around and saw it was the stooping man he’d spoken to earlier.

“Nothing,” he answered.

“Anything in there?” the man asked, gesturing at the shack McCoyne had been about to investigate.

“Empty,” he answered quickly, lying to protect his potential find. “Look, do me a favor, will you. Go tell Llewellyn that I think there have been Unchanged here.”

“Unchanged? Are you out of your fucking mind? Don’t you think we’d have found them by now?”

“Don’t bother, then. Suit yourself.”

The other man turned his back on McCoyne and walked away, shaking his head and mumbling under his breath. “Fucking idiot…”

Whether he told Llewellyn or not wasn’t important. As soon as he’d gone, McCoyne opened the door of the small wooden building and disappeared inside. He’d been right: It was some sort of café, as empty as everywhere else. It had been stripped clean. A deep-fat fryer in the small kitchen was filled with rancid, congealed oil, but the cooler cabinets and vending machines were empty. Even the packets of sauce and other condiments had been taken. He found one small packet of mustard, which he ripped open and sucked clean while he continued to investigate. There was another door at the back of the kitchen. It opened outward six inches, but no farther. It was chained shut from the other side. He quickly took off his pack, then dropped to his hands and knees, lay on his side, and squeezed through the gap. It was tight, but he was desperately thin now, and once his shoulders were through, the rest of him followed easily. On the other side he pulled his backpack through, then picked himself up and looked around. He was in a triangular-shaped patch of open space with the shack behind him and another similar-sized building adjacent. On the third side was a wire-mesh fence and, beyond that, another part of the forest they’d walked through to get here. He headed for the other hut but paused before going inside, sure he could hear movement. Probably another one of the scavengers, he told himself. He lifted his hand to pull the door but then staggered back with surprise as it was kicked open from the other side. An emaciated man came at him with a knife. Similar in height and age to McCoyne, clothes flapping around his wiry frame, McCoyne knew immediately that he was Unchanged. He felt himself tensing up inside and reached for the knife in his belt but then stopped at the last possible second. Hold the Hate, he silently ordered himself, there might be more of them. He lifted his hands in mock surrender. The Unchanged man, obviously terrified, took a couple of steps back. It occurred to McCoyne that the longer this unexpected standoff continued, the less obvious it would be that he was going to rip the fucker’s head from his shoulders any second now. He could almost see the man’s mind working behind his frightened, constantly moving eyes. If he hasn’t killed me yet, he was thinking, then he can’t be one of them.

Turn this around, McCoyne told himself. Play the victim.

“Help me,” he said quietly. “They’re here. If we don’t get out of sight they’ll kill us.”

“Who are you?” the man croaked, his voice barely audible. “How did you get here?”

McCoyne was struggling to come up with a plausible response when he heard Llewellyn shouting again, calling them back to the trucks. He didn’t have long.

“They’re coming,” he said. “Loads of them. Two trucks full. They followed me here. We need to get under cover.”

The man stood his ground for what felt like an eternity, eyeing McCoyne up and down and trying to make sense of the situation. McCoyne forced himself to stay still and not react, all the time knowing that he should finish this Unchanged bastard now and that if anyone found out he’d been standing here talking to one of them like this, they’d probably kill him as fast as they’d kill them.

“This way,” the man said suddenly, turning around and gesturing for McCoyne to follow him inside. He led him into the hut (a gift shop with shelves still well stocked with teddy bears, toys, and other assorted rubbish), through an interconnecting door and into yet another similar building, then out through another rear exit and across a narrow strip of asphalt. Hidden behind garbage cans and a mud-streaked golf cart emblazoned with the theme park’s logo was a door in the side of a large brick building. McCoyne followed him through, making sure to shut the door again behind him and block it to prevent the Unchanged from doubling back and getting away. They tripped down a tight and steep staircase, then squeezed down a narrow, twisting corridor before emerging into a huge, dimly lit space. McCoyne struggled to make sense of what he was seeing for a moment. The room was a vast and clearly artificial cavelike structure, with fake stalagmites and stalactites bolted to the floor and ceiling, and pools of foul-smelling, dripping water. Light came from a number of lanterns dotted around the room, just enough illumination for him to see at least another eight Unchanged, wide-eyed and mole-like. He shuffled back until he reached the nearest wall, eager to stay out of sight, and his foot kicked against a heap of dummies like the one he’d seen standing in the stream. Then it dawned on him, this was the Mine—the huge building he’d stood outside earlier.

He could hear the man who’d led him down here talking.

“He was outside by the kitchens,” he explained.

“For Christ’s sake, Jeff, they’re outside. Are you fucking stupid? He’s with them!”

“He’s not, I swear. He’s like us. Would I be standing here now if he was one of them?”

McCoyne slid along the wall, watching the small group beginning to splinter, listening to the arguments develop and the volume of their voices increase.

No time for this. Got to act.

He ran forward and splashed through an unexpectedly deep puddle, his boots sinking into several inches of silt. Off balance and running almost blind, he tripped over a rocky mound and fell, then picked himself up again and carried on. The Unchanged panicked in response to the sudden movement and noise. Several of them ran after him. They were close behind, and he could hear their footsteps echoing off the walls and low ceiling. He kept moving, unable to see much more than just the occasional shadow, focusing more on the fact that Llewellyn and the others were about to leave than anything else. The ground beneath his feet began to slope upward. He ran up a long access ramp, then hit a wall, bounced off, and glanced over to his right, where he saw the faintest chink of light. It had to be the way out. One of the Unchanged dived for his legs and caught hold of one of his boots. McCoyne kicked out at him and managed to get free and keep moving, running now with arms outstretched. Another sharp bend and up ahead he could see the boards across the entrance that he’d seen earlier, shards of brightness pouring through the gaps between them. He slammed against the wood and peered through. The others were leaving, walking back to the trucks dragging their semifilled bags of supplies behind them.

“Llewellyn!” McCoyne yelled. “Back here!”

Someone lagging behind turned around and looked for him, but when he couldn’t see anything he turned back again and carried on. One of the Unchanged reached McCoyne and tried to pull him away from the door. He managed to force one of the smaller boards free. He shoved his arm through and grabbed hold of another piece of wood so they couldn’t pull him back.

“Unchanged!” he screamed.

McCoyne didn’t know if the others had heard him. With two Unchanged now trying to drag him away from the entrance, he closed his eyes and clung on. The Unchanged, desperate but, incredibly, even weaker than him in their pitiful, malnourished state, couldn’t break his grip. He could feel a third one hanging on to the back of him, tugging at his shoulders, and now the fingers on his right hand were starting to slip off the wood. He tried to stand his ground, but it was impossible. With a barely coordinated yank, he was wrenched from the entrance and dragged down onto his back. One of the Unchanged came at him with a knife, its blade glinting momentarily in a narrow shaft of light. As the terrified man dropped down and lunged for him, McCoyne managed to roll over to one side. Another one rolled him back, then another grabbed his kicking feet while others grabbed his thrashing arms.

The wooden boards across the door began to splinter as someone outside struck at them repeatedly with a heavy axe. The Unchanged scattered, and as soon as a big enough gap had been forced open, fighters and scavengers alike began to pour through. Suddenly free, McCoyne scrambled up onto his feet and pressed himself flat against the wall until the flash flood of bodies coming in had dried up, then got down on his hands and knees to avoid the fighting and crawled out into the open. He sat on his backside in the dust, panting hard, listening to the screams coming from the Mine, and waited.

* * *

All talk of radiation levels and other such threats had been forgotten in the euphoria of the kill. Three-quarters of an hour later and the theme park courtyard was still a hive of activity. Scavengers searched the den and collected piles of supplies the Unchanged had hoarded. Fighters dragged the bodies of their enemy out into the open and stripped the corpses of anything of value. Eleven kills. More than the last ten days combined.

Llewellyn marched over to where McCoyne was working, piling food into the back of one of the trucks that had been driven in from the parking lot.

“What’s your name?”

“Danny McCoyne.”

“Lucky find, McCoyne.”

“Suppose.”

“So what happened? Did you just stumble into their nest? Take a wrong turn and find yourself surrounded?”

“Something like that.”

“Talk me through it.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t I’ll break your fucking legs.”

McCoyne sighed and threw the bag of food he’d been carrying into the truck.

“I found one of them while I was scavenging. I made him think I was like him and that you others were looking for me, then I got him to take me to the rest of them.”

“And it was that easy?”

“Yep, that easy.”

“So how’d you manage that, then?”

“Just something I picked up.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep.”

Llewellyn grinned at him. “You devious little bastard, you can hold the Hate, can’t you?”

McCoyne looked away and picked up another bag. Did he really want anyone to know?

“So what if I can,” he said nonchalantly. “Not a lot of call for it these days, is there? Hardly any of them left.”

“When we get back to Lowestoft,” Llewellyn said, leaning over him until their faces were just inches apart, “you’re coming with me to see Hinchcliffe. He’ll be interested to know we’ve got a freak like you in town.”