David Moody - Them or Us

I’ve heard rumors about what happens here. This is where Unchanged kids like the ones in the back of this van end up. I don’t know what they do to them, and I don’t want to know, either. A long time back I heard that they could be “turned” to be like us, but I don’t know if that’s true. More to the point, does it even matter, now the Unchanged are all but extinct? I look at the children in the cage—still cowering, still crying—and I wonder whether I should do them a favor and kill them now. Put them out of our misery. I must be getting soft. I don’t think I’d be able to do it.

We come to an abrupt halt in the middle of the road that runs parallel with the seawall, well short of the factory. The wind is fierce tonight, and immense waves batter against the sides of the wall, sending huge plumes of spray shooting up into the air, then crashing back down again. The noise and the water and the constant rocking of the van in the swirling breeze make me feel like I’m trapped in the eye of a hurricane, the full might of which is, for some reason, focused on me alone.

“Out,” the driver shouts, and it takes a couple of seconds before I realize he’s talking to me. I get up and move toward the back of the van. The kids panic again because they think I’m coming for them, but I’m the least of their problems tonight.

I jump out of the van and land hard on my weak right leg. My feet have barely touched the ground before the driver accelerates away again, the back door still swinging open. He swerves around to the right onto a narrow access road, then disappears away into the bowels of the factory complex.

Suddenly I’m alone: soaking wet and freezing cold, just me and the sea and no one else. I haul my backpack up onto my shoulders and start walking along the seawall back out of town, welcoming the isolation.

An enormous, motionless wind turbine towers above everything in this part of Lowestoft, and I gaze up at it as I pass. Hinchcliffe thinks he’s going to get it operational again one day soon, so the town will have a steady power supply rather than having to rely on generators and the like. I hope he’s right. For now it just stands here useless: one of its massive blades broken, its internal mechanics and wiring no doubt completely fucked. It’s a huge white elephant: a constant reminder of what this place used to be.

I pull my coat tight around me, put my head down, and walk. The house is still more than a mile away. I could live with the chosen few in Hinchcliffe’s compound if I wanted to, but I’d rather not. I prefer to remain at a cautious distance on the very outskirts of town, well away from everyone else. Out there I’m close enough to Lowestoft to be able to get in and take what I need, but still far enough away to stay out of sight and out of mind of everyone else.

3

OUT OF HABIT I follow the same route each day, using the footbridge to cross the empty road from town and get into the housing development. I’m out of shape. The steep steps are always that much steeper than I remember, and I have to stop halfway across to catch my breath.

The world is dark tonight—no streetlamps, house lights, or lines of traffic producing the ambient glow of old—and the center of Lowestoft behind me is easy to make out. In the midst of the darkness of everything else is a clutch of blinking lights and burning fires, their brightness concentrated around Hinchcliffe’s compound. It’s hard to believe that this is what passes for a major center of population now. The same thing has no doubt happened around the country: minor towns becoming major towns by default because they’re the only habitable places left. It reminds me of a medieval settlement. I remember watching TV documentaries when I was a kid about social experiments where people stepped back in time and tried to live in anything from Iron Age settlements to Tudor houses. This place feels like that but in reverse. Today it’s as if people from the past have moved in and taken over the ruins of the present. Hard to believe that all those towns and cities I remember are gone, either abandoned or destroyed. All those places I used to know … London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff … all reduced to piles of toxic ash. I only have hearsay, unsubstantiated rumor, and common sense to go on, but if what I’m hearing is true and all those places really are dead, then out here on the east coast is probably as safe a place as any to be. I’m guessing that it’s only areas like Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, and here—the extremities of this small, odd-shaped island—that are still livable.

Down off the bridge again and within a couple of minutes I’ve been swallowed up by the darkness of the deserted housing development where I’ve based myself this last month or so. This place feels like a shadow-filled tomb at the best of times, little more than a maze of twisting, interconnecting roads, avenues, and cul-de-sacs. It was probably a perfectly decent, comfortable, relatively affluent, middle-class area before the shit hit the fan and everything went to hell last year, the kind of place Lizzie said she always wanted us to end up in. Now it’s just like everywhere else, and the ruins are welcome camouflage.

I use landmarks to guide myself through to the very center of the development, things that no one else would give a second glance. I walk across a deserted children’s playground, catching my breath when the wind rattles the chains of an empty swing, turn left at the road where three of the houses have collapsed on each other like dominoes, then turn right and right again to reach the roadblock. I often wonder who built this. Whoever it was, they were obviously determined to defend themselves. There are four cars wedged across the full width of the mouth of a cul-de-sac, nose to tail, almost like they were picked up and dropped into place. When I’m on foot like this I have to climb over the cars to get through, and I always cringe at the noise I make even though there’s never anyone else here. Was this the site of a group of Unchanged survivors’ desperate last stand? A family like the one I used to be a part of, perhaps? Were they cowering here together in terror like the Unchanged I helped drive out of their hideout today, doomed to inevitable failure but unable to do anything else but keep trying to survive? I’ve freaked myself out before now, convincing myself that they might still be here, watching me from an upstairs window just like I watched the military advancing ever closer toward my home all those months ago.

At the other end of the cul-de-sac I slip through a narrow alleyway between two large, empty houses. I cross another road, go through the side gate of yet another house, straight down a well-worn path I’ve trampled along the full length of its overgrown garden, then duck down through a hole in the back fence and I’m there. Home sweet fucking home.

I check around, making sure I haven’t been followed or seen. I could have gone for something bigger and more secure, but I deliberately chose the smallest, most inconspicuous house I could find so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself.

It hasn’t always worked. Something’s not right tonight.

I can see from here that the side door of the house is open slightly. I draw my favorite knife from its sheath and creep across the road. It’s bound to be scavengers again. Thieving bastards. I really can’t be bothered with this. I feel sick and I just want to sleep. I hope they’ve already gone. I’m not in the mood to fight, but I don’t have any choice.

It’s hard keeping the house secure without blatantly advertising the fact I’ve got stuff inside worth taking, so I keep most of my things hidden and locked away. I need to take my time and be careful here. If the thieves are still here and they’ve found anything worth having, then I need to try to deal with them before they can get out with any of my stuff. I can afford to lose the house, but not what’s in it.