David Moody: Them or Us

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.