David Moody - Them or Us

This Brute is old and female. She swaggers slowly toward me like a drunk, unable to move in a straight line, still several hundred yards away. Far removed from the strong and vicious fighter she probably once was, this woman is now a grotesque physical wreck. She’s completely naked and blue with cold; her bare flesh is a mottled gray-brown and is covered with dirt and countless cuts and abrasions. There are traces of blood around her mouth. Her heavy, pendulous breasts swing from side to side with every clumsy, lumbering movement. Loose flesh hangs down from her arms and her gut like she’s wearing a dirty, oversized skin-colored coat. Poor bitch. She’s probably starving.

“Sorry,” Sutton says, scrambling back down the rise. “Should have warned you about that one. She’s usually wandering around here somewhere. Damn strong, she is, but slow. You’ll easily outrun her if she gives you any trouble. Don’t know how she keeps going after all this time. Sheer contrariness, I guess.”

He stands and looks at the barely human woman in the distance with an expression on his face that seems to almost approximate pity. I’m surprised by his reaction. Most people, me included, wouldn’t give a dying Brute a second thought. Christ, I’ve seen people carve up their carcasses and spit-roast them before now. It’s all meat, they say as they shove them on the fire.

Concentrate, I tell myself. You’re getting distracted. This could still be a trap.

The Brute’s speed is negligible, but she’s still a very real threat. Sutton nudges me to start moving again, then scampers back up the steep bank, following the meandering track. Still holding my knife (and telling myself repeatedly that I will use it if he crosses me), I follow him. The gradient’s steeper than it looks, and the ground beneath my feet is increasingly uneven. I climb the hill like an old man, bent over double and pushing down on my knees to keep myself moving forward. Sutton has to wait for me at the top. I stop to catch my breath and look down over the other side. There’s a crumbling, low-roofed redbrick building at the edge of the track a little farther ahead. Looks like a bungalow. What is this? His fucking holiday cottage?

“Almost there now,” Sutton says, and before he can move away again, I grab his arm.

“You’d better not be fucking with me,” I warn him. He shakes his head, then pulls himself free and walks on. “I’ll kill you if you try anything,” I shout after him.

“No you won’t,” he shouts back as he disappears into the ruin of the building up ahead. Is this safe? I’m not convinced. The exterior walls might still be standing at the moment, but they look like they’d fall down if anyone leaned hard enough against them. The mortar between the damp, moss-covered bricks is powdery and fine. The farthest corner of the cramped, rectangular-shaped house has been overwhelmed by ivy, brambles, and other crawling weeds.

Sutton leans back out of the building. “This is it, McCoyne. In here.”

22

“ARE YOU SURE THIS is safe?” I ask as I tentatively follow him inside. It’s surprisingly light in here. There’s still some semblance of a roof overhead, but it’s patchy. In places the remains of rotten rafters stretch up into the air, leaving nothing but empty sky above us. Sutton kicks his way through the debris toward a rotten wooden door frame (no door, just a frame) midway along the single remaining interior dividing wall. It’s pitch black on the other side, and I stop, refusing to go any farther.

“Whatever you’ve got in there, just bring it out into the open. This place is about to collapse.”

“It’s a lot stronger than it looks. I used to work in construction and I’ve checked it all out. Anyway, most of the building’s buried.”

His assurances don’t make me feel any better, but I continue to follow him into the darkness. I grab onto the back of his coat with one hand, my knife still held ready in the other.

“Careful here,” he says, dragging his feet along the ground. He inches forward slowly, then seems to suddenly drop down a few inches. I instinctively try to steady him, but he’s okay. “Staircase,” he tells me. “Five steps down.”

I follow blind down the steep and narrow stairs, my shoulders brushing against walls that have suddenly closed in on either side. At the bottom of the steps Sutton stops and I walk into the back of him, unable to see anything. He gently pushes me over to one side, and I stand next to him in a narrow alcove of space.

“What is this place?” I ask, whispering because I’m worried if I speak too loud I’ll cause a cave-in.

“Just give me a second…”

He drags one of his feet along the ground again and makes contact with something heavy. I can’t see anything, but I hear it scrape along the floor. Almost completely blind, I stretch my arms out in front of me and feel my way along a cold, damp wall until the surface under my fingertips changes from brick to metal. I stop and feel back to the point where the change occurs and run my fingers down an uneven edge, eventually reaching something that feels like a hinge. Another door?

Sutton pushes me out of the way again. I’m not expecting it, and I stagger back a couple of paces and tense up, ready for him if he comes for me. My eyes are adjusting to the dark a little and I can just about make out his shape as he bends down to pick something up. Is it some kind of weapon? If he wanted to kill me (and I don’t know why he would) then surely he’d have done it back at the house and spared us both this damn day trip to the farm? Sutton lifts what looks like a length of metal pipe, then bangs it against the door three times. The sound of metal on metal reverberates loudly around this small enclosed space, filling my head.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Shh…”

He leans forward to listen, and the silence when the noise finally fades is all-consuming. Is he crazy? Nothing happens for an age. I’m about to turn and get out when I hear it—a steady thump, thump, thump coming from the other side of the wall. Shit, there’s someone in there. I have a sudden deluge of questions poised on the very tip of my tongue, but I don’t ask anything because Sutton starts banging again. Five times, this time. I stay silent and wait. Then I hear five knocks back in quick reply.

“Sutton, what—”

“Shh,” he hisses at me, resting a hand on my shoulder. He waits, and I eventually hear a single knock coming from the other side. He hits the door once more with the metal pipe, then carefully drops it down and shuffles back out of the way.

“Who is it?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. “Sutton, who’s in there?”

I hear another series of sounds now: metal scraping on metal, bolts and latches being undone. Then, with a groan and the high-pitched squeak of stiff hinges, the door slowly opens inward. There’s light in there. Faint, artificial light, visible only because everything else is so dark.

Before going through, Sutton stops and positions himself directly between me and the door. His face is slightly illuminated now and I can see his eyes behind the lenses of his glasses, searching my face and trying to gauge my reaction. He seems suddenly anxious again, like he was when he arrived at the house first thing this morning. Christ alone knows what he’s got himself mixed up with here. He looks over his shoulder, then back at me again. I try to push past him, but he’s fast and he blocks me.

“Just be calm and be patient,” he whispers ominously. “Like I said, this changes everything.”

“Spare me the bullshit, you overdramatic prick.”

Sick of all the waiting, I push forward again, and this time he stands aside to let me through. I find myself in the middle of a room no more than a couple of yards square, much more solid and secure looking than the rest of this place, whatever this place actually is. There is a load of empty boxes and crates scattered around, and the light comes from a single dull lamp resting on a wooden trestle table on the other side of the room. From the very little I can see, this looks like a bunker of some kind. A remnant from World War II, perhaps? A forgotten relic of the Cold War, from those times when paranoid government departments and local councils drew up pointless plans and contingencies for running the charred remains of the country from numerous ill-equipped underground sites like this one, out in the middle of nowhere. For a moment I’m gone, transfixed by my bizarre surroundings, staring at the pale gray walls mottled with mildew and remembering a time when it was countries and superpowers that fought each other, not individuals …