David Moody - Them or Us

“He found us,” she said, pointing at the man in the corner again.

“That was just luck,” Winston argued. “He’s like us, Sally. He found this place the same way we did.”

Sally shook her head in despair and walked far enough away into the shadows that no one could see her. She leaned against the wall and massaged her temples. Maybe Winston was right. She’d overreacted, and not for the first time, either. Every day the pressure of being cooped up in here was getting harder and harder to handle. A year ago, all she’d had to worry about was getting the kids to and from school and getting to work on time. Hiding in a disused highway storage depot with strangers, eating cold food from a can, shitting in a bucket in full view of the others, fearing for her safety every second of every minute of every hour of every day … if she’d known what her life was going to become, she’d probably have ended it when the troubles first began.

* * *

They tried to make the food last, but they were starving and much of it was gone within an hour, empty stomachs finally satisfied after weeks of being drip-fed scraps. It didn’t matter. Eating was a distraction that helped reduce the tension in the shelter for a precious few minutes. Sally looked around at the few faces she could see in the low light. Eight-year-old Charlotte stared back at her from the corner where she always sat, surrounded by a barricade of traffic cones she’d built around herself, her face as pale as ever. The two other children sat close by, Chloe fast asleep, eleven-year-old Jake dutifully sitting beside her, drawing shapes in the dirt with a stick. On the opposite side of the room, Jean Walker and Kerry Hayes spoke together in hushed whispers about nothing of any importance. Sally had thought Kerry beautiful when she’d first met her, but her young body had been ravaged by hunger since they’d had to lock themselves away in here. Her full figure had wasted away to nothing. She looked anorexic now: all protruding bones, stretched skin, and strawlike hair. In the opposite corner, Brian Greene did his best to disguise the fact that he was crying again …

A packet of stale cookies (what luxury, Sally thought to herself dejectedly) was being passed around. She took one, but stopped before she ate it, distracted suddenly by a low rumbling in the distance.

“Did anyone hear that?”

“Hear what?” Kerry asked, immediately concerned, yellow eyes bulging in the light.

“Thought I heard something,” she said, already beginning to doubt herself. “Sounded like an engine.”

“There’s nothing,” Fisher said quickly, scowling at her. “Just them moving around up there. Either that or your imagination…”

He was probably right. She couldn’t hear anything now. Sally passed the packet on to the man sitting next to her—the new arrival. He’d hardly spoken since he’d gotten here, but it was obvious he was as desperate as the rest of them: a scrawny bag of skin and bones, a haunted expression etched permanently onto his weary face. He took the cookies from Sally, then passed them on without saying a word.

He waited for a few minutes longer before quietly getting up and slipping farther back into the shadows. He stepped over a couple of bodies—one sleeping, one dying—then made his way to the part of the cramped storage depot they used as a toilet.

Sally tried to block out the foul noise of the man pissing from a height into a metal bucket, and was relieved when it finally stopped. She waited for him to come back, but became concerned when he didn’t immediately return. The rest of the shelter was almost pitch black, but she got up and felt her way along the cold, damp walls until she found him by almost falling over him. He was lying on the ground on his back, trying to force open the roller-shutter. A chink of light spilled across the floor where he’d managed to get his fingers under the shutter. With a grunt of effort he lifted it up another six inches.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sally asked, standing directly behind him. He didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at her. Instead he kept working, shoving his hands farther under the shutter and forcing it up another couple of inches at a time. He rolled over onto his front and was about to try to slide through the gap when she grabbed the heel of his boot and yanked him back.

“Don’t panic,” she pleaded with him, keeping her voice low so the others didn’t hear. “Please don’t do anything stupid. I know it’s hard being trapped in here, but don’t—”

He scrambled back and stood up fast. Catching Sally off guard, in a single sudden movement he spun around and reversed their positions, pushing her up against the wall. He covered her mouth with his left hand, barely needing to use any force, then sank a knife deep into her belly.

“I’m sorry,” Danny McCoyne said, keeping her mouth covered to stifle any noise. “It’s better for all of us this way. Trust me.”

He laid Sally’s body down, waited until he was sure she was dead, then wiped his bloodied hand clean on her jacket and slid out under the roller-shutter.

In stark contrast to the desolate silence an hour or so earlier, the road outside was now full of movement. Several battered vehicles and a group of eight armed figures had gathered a short distance from the storage depot doors. McCoyne picked himself up, brushed himself down, and wearily walked over to talk to Llewellyn, who marshaled the movements of the fighters from the back of a pickup truck.

“Had fun in there, McCoyne?”

“They’re fucked,” he grunted. “They won’t give you any trouble.”

“How many?”

“Eleven of them left. Three kids. Few basic weapons. All of them are pretty weak. A couple of them are virtually dead already.”

Llewellyn nodded, then gestured for his soldiers to take up their positions. Five men armed with blades, bludgeons, and the occasional gun stood on either side at the doorway and waited. A van reversed back into the gap. The driver got out and moved around to the back.

“Wilson,” Llewellyn bellowed at him, “let them go.”

On his command, Kevin Wilson, chief kid-wrangler, yanked the van doors open and dragged two small children out on leashes. Naked and covered with grime, they struggled to escape, one of them trying to bite through the lead. When a terrified Unchanged face appeared under the roller-shutter for a split second, the children both lunged forward and threw themselves at the gap with furious speed. It was all Wilson could do to untangle himself from the leather straps and let go before he was dragged inside with them.

Exhausted, McCoyne leaned back against Llewellyn’s pickup and waited for the inevitable. Barely half a minute passed before the other door into the shelter flew open and a crowd of terrified Unchanged was flushed out, running straight into the arms of the waiting Haters. He looked on as fighters starved of enemy kills for too long vented all their anger and frustrations on the helpless refugees now flooding out into the open. One of them—Kerry, he’d heard her called—managed somehow to escape, weaving around two fighters who both threw themselves at her at the same time. She’d barely made it another twenty yards before they caught her. One tackled her halfway up the grassy bank, grabbing hold of her spindly legs and thrashing feet. The other thumped an axe into the small of her back, brutally severing her spine. She was already dead, but they continued to fight, overcome with the euphoria of the kill and not wanting it to end, slicing and hacking at the woman until what remained of her body had been spread across an area several yards wide; a bloody swathe of violent red in the wet yellow grass.

1

THE BONFIRE OUTSIDE THE ransacked Unchanged shelter is burning out of control. The morons who were supposed to be watching it have been distracted, squabbling over food. There’s a momentary flash of flame and a sudden loud explosion and they scatter, running for cover like frightened kids on Bonfire Night. Probably just an aerosol can or something similar lying too close to the heat, but whatever it was, Llewellyn’s not happy. He grabs hold of one of them and kicks his legs out from under him, then he drags the scrawny little bastard nearer to the fire and pushes his face into it, screaming and shouting at him. Sobbing, the little man reaches into the embers and attempts to salvage some of the meat that’s been roasting to pacify Llewellyn, who yells at him again, then kicks him in the side of the head, knocking him out cold. The way the fighters treat the others makes me feel sick to my stomach. I look at the man lying flat on his back and I think, That used to be me.