David Moody: Them or Us

McCoyne quietly laid down his bag, unsheathed one of his knives, then crept slowly toward the bottom of the staircase. Whoever or whatever was up there, he knew it might be enough to help him avoid a battering. There was silence now, but he hadn’t imagined it. With his pulse racing and his mouth dry, he climbed the steep steps to the second floor. It was dark, but he didn’t need to see to know that there was someone up here with him. The smell gave it away—a pungent, inescapable whiff of sweat and fresh human waste. He needed to take his time and not screw this up. It was either someone like him who’d turned their back on what was left of society (and he’d come across several people like that before now), or it was one of them.

The room above the kitchen was empty. There was a bed that looked like it had been recently slept in, and a pathetically small store of supplies. Whoever had been staying here had shown some initiative and had been living off the vermin who were living off the food downstairs and next door. Three dead rats were hung by their tails from a clothes drier, and next to them was the deflated husk of something that had been either a cat or a small dog, he couldn’t tell. Regardless of what else turned out to be here, this pathetic stock of meat meant that McCoyne did at least now have something to give to Hook. He opened a pair of threadbare curtains, filling the room with dull morning light, and looked around for something to put his booty into.

As McCoyne walked back toward the top of the stairs to check the other rooms, he noticed that a wooden chest of drawers he’d just passed was in an unusual position. There was a gap of a couple of inches between the back of the unit and the wall. Curious, he leaned over the top of it, looked down, and saw that there was a small hole in the wall between this building and the next, just wide enough for someone to crawl through. Clever little fucker, he thought to himself as he carefully pushed the chest of drawers out of the way. Whoever he’d disturbed in here had got their escape route planned, and that was no doubt how they’d survived undetected for so long. By now they’d probably either have disappeared out through the back of the building next door or locked themselves away in some other equally devious hidden hideaway. He crouched down and looked through the gap but couldn’t see anything other than complete darkness on the other side. He leaned farther in and was about to crawl right through when he heard scurrying footsteps running up fast behind him. He tried to back out and turn around but couldn’t move quickly enough in the confined space. He heard someone give a grunt of effort, then felt sudden, intense pain as he was cracked across the back with a plank of wood. He screamed out in agony and managed to roll over in time to see a scrawny figure sprinting out through the bedroom door.

“Up here!” he yelled, hoping that someone outside would hear him and help. “Unchanged!”

He limped out of the room, legs weak and back throbbing, then staggered downstairs. By the time he got outside, Hook and another fighter had already caught and killed the Unchanged man. His body was spread around the front of the restaurant, bright bloodred splashes of dribbling color among the dust-covered gray. Hook was standing on the sidewalk, the euphoria on his face clear even from a distance.

“Bastard was hiding,” McCoyne said, groaning and stretching for effect. “Came up behind me and—”

Hook grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him against the side of the van. McCoyne, stunned, couldn’t move.

“You’re fucking useless, McCoyne,” Hook sneered. “Couldn’t even kill one starving Unchanged. You need to watch yourself, pal. Fuck up like that again on my watch and you’ll be the next one I kill.”

“I won’t,” McCoyne tried to say, his strangled voice barely audible.

“That Unchanged,” Hook continued, pointing at the man’s remains smeared up the window, “he had more backbone than you, you prick. At least he made an effort. You, you’re just a waste of oxygen. Completely fucking useless.”

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.