“You want to follow them?” I reply, surprised.
“They’ve done us a favor and cleared the road. Yes, I want to follow them.”
He’s right. There’s a clear line through the debris where the vehicles have just been.
“It’s a little farther, but yes, this’ll get us to roughly the right place.”
He nods and pulls away, and I can immediately see the sense in his actions. We’re able to move with more speed now, and the clear channel makes it easier to follow the direction of the road. I sink back into my seat and turn to face Paul.
“Are we safe out here?”
“Truth is we’re not safe anywhere,” he answers quietly, “but I haven’t seen much trouble here recently.”
“So what was all that about?”
“Looking for survivors, I guess,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.
“That’s what they’d say,” Carol interrupts, turning around to face us both and blowing out smoke through the corner of her mouth, “but there can’t be many of them left out here now. They just come here to take potshots at us.”
“Which way now?” Keith shouts, fighting to make himself heard over the noise of the engine. There’s another intersection looming, but yet again I’m struggling to work out where we are. In the distance I can see occasional flashes of red from the brakelights of the three Unchanged vehicles. They’re heading straight into the center of town, the last place we want to go. I glance from left to right and back; then I see a large, familiar-looking pub, and I know where I am again. The building appears intact at first, but I can see from here that the back of the structure has been almost completely destroyed, leaving the relatively undamaged frontage standing like something from the set of a movie. I went to a going-away bash for someone from work there once. Or was it a birthday party…?
“Straight ahead takes us closer to them, so do we go right or left? Come on, for Christ’s sake, we don’t have time to screw around like this-”
“Left,” I answer, biting my tongue, determined not to let my anger show. These people don’t understand how hard this is for me.
We follow a familiar route, and I realize this is the way I drove to the apartment with my father-in-law the morning of the day before I killed him. Retracing the last steps I took as one of the Unchanged is unexpectedly unnerving. The road runs past the front of a row of houses before swinging up and left over a bridge that spans the highway below. Keith stops the van when we’re halfway across. I press my face against the window and look down at the once-busy road below. One side of the highway is relatively clear-the debris no doubt brushed aside by heavy, but infrequent, Unchanged traffic. The other side is a single clogged mass of stationary vehicles. Some look like they’ve simply been abandoned, others like they’ve been picked up and hurled over the median strip. It looks more like a rusting scrapyard than a road.
“Busy tonight,” Carol says. I look up and see that she’s staring down the highway in the other direction. I follow her gaze, and for the first time I can clearly see the enemy-occupied heart of the city. Silhouetted against the last golden yellow light of the rapidly fading sun, the tall buildings in the center of town stand proud and defiant. Even from here, still several miles away, I can see that the refugee camp is filled with movement. Planes and helicopters flitter through the darkening sky like flies around a dead animal’s carcass. The fact that there are lights on in some of the buildings takes me by surprise. They still have power! Keith starts driving again. I keep my eyes fixed on the buildings in the distance, watching them until they disappear from view.
“All right?” Paul asks, watching me as I crane my neck to keep looking.
“Fine,” I answer quickly, hoping he doesn’t pick up on my unease. There must be tens of thousands of Unchanged here, and I know that every last one of them has to die before the war will be over. Seeing their city center stronghold makes me appreciate the enormity of the task ahead of us. It makes me realize that Chris Ankin might be right. We’re going to have to work together to defeat this enemy.
11
TAKE A LEFT, THEN straight to the top of this road,” I tell Keith, my voice so quiet I have to repeat myself twice before he hears me. We’re very close now. I used to walk this way when I came home from work at night. When we turn the corner I’ll be able to see the apartment building at the top of the hill. I brace myself, not looking forward to going back. Keith stops the van suddenly and waits. He’s finally been forced to use the headlights and the bright beams of light illuminate several flashes of sudden, darting movement across the road in front of us. We watch in silence as a pack of stray dogs streaks through the ruins in search of food. Once probably lazy, well-fed, pampered pets, they’re now nervous, thin, and savage creatures. One of them, a mangy fawn brown mongrel with protruding ribs and ragged fur, stops in the middle of the road and stares defiantly at the van, ears twitching, light reflecting in its eyes. The standoff lasts for just a few seconds before something more interesting causes the hound to turn and chase frantically after the rest of the pack.
The interruption over, Keith drives on again, and in seconds I can see the outline of the house I used to share with Lizzie and the kids. In the winter I was able to see the lights on in the windows from here, and sometimes I could see the shadows of the kids as they ran from room to room, aggravating their mom and each other. I’ve got to forget about all of that now, but it’s hard. As I get closer, each new wave of familiarity hits me like an undefended punch in the face. At the same time, I feel a nauseous disgust-shame almost-that I was ever a part of this place. I can’t believe I allowed myself to stay trapped in such a pathetic, restricted, and pointless life for so long.
“Lovely spot,” Paul grumbles sarcastically as he surveys the battered remains of the run-down development I used to call home. The sky’s clear tonight, and the moon’s severe but limited light illuminates all the details I was hoping not to see.
“It’s hardly changed,” I tell him, semiseriously. “It looked this bad before the fighting.”
Another helicopter flies overhead, the constant chopping of its rotor blades audible even over the rattling engine of this ancient van. The others watch anxiously as it banks high above us, then turns around and flies back on itself, but I pay it hardly any attention. I’m focused on the dark apartment building we’re fast approaching, wondering what the hell I’m going to find inside. I know Ellis won’t be there. I just want to find a trace of her, an indication, no matter how small or how slight, of where she might have been taken.
Keith stops the van in the shadows, nestling it up against a tall wooden fence, and switches off the engine. Two more helicopters drift overhead. Are they tracking us? None of the others seem overly concerned.
“You’ve got five minutes,” Keith says with a slight trace of urgency in his voice. “Spend too long screwing around in there and when you come back out you’ll find us gone. There’s a fair amount of activity around here tonight, and I don’t want to get caught in any crossfire. Understand?”
“I get it.”
I reach up to open the door, then stop when Keith speaks again.
“Just remember,” he warns, “we’re here to find other people like us, not just your kid. If she’s not here or at the other house, you forget about her. Is that clear?”
Who the fuck does he think he is, talking to me like a goddamn drill sergeant? I ignore him and get out of the van before anyone can say anything else. I slam the door without thinking, and it echoes around the desolate neighborhood like a gunshot.
I stand at the end of the path that leads up to the communal front door of the apartment building, carrying only my backpack, a flashlight, and a knife. Except for the broken window and the ragged curtains whipping in and out in the wind, the apartment looks just like it always did. Seeing this place seems almost to cancel out the last three months. It feels like only yesterday that I was last here…