“Stay still,” I tell her, not knowing if she can hear me or if she understands. “Please, sweetheart…”
The train track cuts through the projects, then runs parallel with one edge of the parkland. I’ve never seen it from this angle, but this place used to be Sparrow Hill Park, I’m sure of it. It’s unrecognizable today. The sprawling expanse of well-tended grass I remember is now a vast, cluttered mass of abandoned tents and trailers. Once obviously filled to overcapacity with refugees, much of it now is conspicuously empty. Huge swathes of the camp have been washed away, and now several stagnant lakes where floodwaters have swept relentlessly through the site are all that remain.
There are people fighting on the track up ahead. I run down the embankment and begin to weave through a dense copse of brittle-branched trees to try to get closer to the park. Already I can see movement on the other side of the trees, and I hold Ellis even tighter as she tries to get away again. Her rage seems to increase the closer we get to the Unchanged. She wants to fight, but I won’t let her. It’s too dangerous here.
Through the trees and I hit a wire-mesh fence. Something’s different here. Can’t put my finger on it, but I sense something’s wrong.
As I work my way around the wire-mesh fence looking for a way through, the penny drops. The Unchanged troops are evacuating. It’s their stock response when they realize they’ve lost control of a building, an area, or even a city-withdraw as many of their people as they can to a safe distance, then bomb the hell out of what’s left. I saw it at the hospital, at that office building with Adam, and a hundred times before that. Christ, now I know exactly what happened to London. They lost control, the same way they have here. And their response then? They leveled the fucking place. More than ever, I have to get us away.
Ellis manages to free one of her hands and slashes at my face. Blood dribbles down my cheek, and when I lift up my hand to wipe it away she shoves both her fists up under my chin and pushes my head back, then knees me in the gut and breaks loose. She runs along the edge of the park, and I sprint after her toward where a section of fence has collapsed up ahead. A truck has crashed through and come to a sudden stop wrapped around the base of a tree trunk. It can only just have happened. The half-dead driver is Unchanged. He’s hanging out of the door, and when he sees us he starts groaning and begging for help. Ellis jumps up at him, the force of her sudden attack throwing him back across his cab. By the time I get up to her he’s already dead, but she continues to kick, punch, and slash at his lifeless body, her aggression and instinct taking hold. I grab her hair and pull her back toward me, then manage to get a grip under one of her shoulders and drag her back out into the open.
“Off!” she yells, her voice guttural and hoarse, sounding more like a warning howl than a properly formed word.
“We have to go, Ellis. Can’t stay here. Too dangerous.”
I drag her behind me into the park. She’s still kicking and thrashing furiously, but her short arms can’t reach my hands to break my grip. I run across the boggy grass toward the chaotic activity up ahead. There’s a bottleneck at the single exit, where jeeps, huge trucks, and other armored vehicles are all vying for position to get onto a track that’s barely wide enough for any of them to get through. All around the vehicles, refugees and soldiers on foot try to escape from the park. People fight with each other to get away, but there are no other people like us here. This is Unchanged versus Unchanged.
A khaki-colored Land Rover pulls away and skids through the mud before coming to a sudden halt at the back of the ever-growing line of vehicles. No one pays us any attention as I run toward it. The driver tries to weave through the stationary line and push his way in, his only concern getting away from here before the inevitable carpet bombing begins. But there’s no way through for anyone. A helicopter hovers overhead, broadcasting a pointless announcement that is all but inaudible over the strain of so many impatient, overrevved engines.
The driver of the Land Rover is distracted, arguing with one of the other soldiers in the back. This is our chance. I haul Ellis up close and whisper in her ear.
“Kill them, honey.”
I yank open the back door of the mud-splattered vehicle and literally throw her inside. I slam it shut again and wait for several anxious seconds until the bloody face of one of the soldiers is smashed up against the window, cracking the glass. I pull the front door open, drag the driver out onto the grass, and stamp hard on his face until he stops moving. I jump into his still-warm seat and lock the doors. Behind me Ellis stands on the chest of one of the dead soldiers, ripping out his throat with her bare hands.
“Good girl,” I tell her. “Now sit down and hold on.”
The way ahead is still impassable, and there are more soldiers running toward us now, more interested in the vehicle than in either their fallen comrades or us. As the nearest one reaches for the door I shove the Land Rover into reverse, skidding back across the grass and knocking one of them down, clattering over his broken legs. Into first gear and I accelerate. We struggle to get traction on the wet, greasy ground for a second, but the soldier’s body helps the wheels to finally get a grip, and we career away.
“Hold on,” I tell Ellis again as we slip and slide through the mud. I follow the curve of the boundary fence, looking for the way we used to get in here and hoping I’ll be able to squeeze around the other side of the truck and get out again. There it is. I accelerate up over the collapsed wire-mesh fence, the side of the Land Rover scraping along the side of the beached truck. I steer hard right, then hard the other way, then change direction again as we weave through the trees. Behind me Ellis is thrown from side to side, the soldiers’ bloody corpses providing her with some cushioning.
“Put your belt on.”
She doesn’t react. I wrench the steering wheel hard over again, then grip it tight as we burst out through the trees, crash through a low picket fence, then swerve onto a narrow residential road that’s swarming with people who scatter as we power toward them. Ellis slams herself up against the window, beating her hands against the glass, desperate to get outside and kill.
There’s a traffic island up ahead, and the rest of the traffic that’s managing to escape from the park is driving around it. I accelerate the wrong way around the island, then force my way into the line of fast-moving vehicles. We hurtle along a wide road that’s virtually clear on one side, more refugees diving out of the way as we approach. The road climbs up over a high flyover supported on huge concrete struts, and now I know where we’re heading. This was obviously the Unchanged military’s main route in and out of their refugee camp. In less than a mile we’ll reach the highway. I’m distracted as the truck in front smashes into a person trying to sprint away, sending them spinning over the crash barrier at the side of the flyover and tumbling down a sixty-foot drop. Our speed is such that I dare only look down for a fraction of a second, but I see that the area of town below us now resembles a vast battlefield. Escaping refugees have collided head-on with an army of our fighters marching into the city. They’re no match for our people. I look down over a bloodbath of unprecedented scale and brutality.
The front of the Land Rover clips a lump of concrete, and I almost lose control. I try to focus again as we start to descend toward the highway, Unchanged military vehicles ahead of us and behind. Ellis starts throwing herself at the door, trying to get out, oblivious to the danger.
“Sit down,” I shout at her, reaching into the back and trying to grab her arm. I manage to catch her wrist, but she won’t budge. Christ, she’s strong. She straightens her legs against the back of the front seats. The harder I try to pull her forward, the more she resists.