“Understand! How the hell can you understand? My five-year-old daughter is out there on her own somewhere!”
For the first time in an age he’s quiet.
“Do you really think you’re the only one who’s had it hard?” he finally says, his voice suddenly full of tension and previously suppressed emotion. “Think you’re the only one who’s been dealt a shitty hand by all of this?”
“No, I-”
“Because I’ll tell you, sunshine, you’re not. We’ve all had it hard. What’s happened has fucked everything up for every last one of us, and all we’re trying to do is put things straight.”
“I’m not saying that I-”
“You’ve never once asked me about my family, have you? About what happened to me? What brought me here? And do you know why? I’ll tell you, it’s because you don’t care, and you’re right not to. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important, none of it is. What’s done is done, and all that matters now is what we do from here on in.”
“I understand that, but if I can find Ellis, then I…”
I stop speaking because he’s stopped walking again. I carry on for a few more paces, then turn back to face him.
“It was a Wednesday night, about a quarter to ten, when it happened to me,” he says. “It was all so damn ordinary. I’d been watching soccer on TV. My girlfriend had just gone to bed, and I was on my own downstairs. I was just sitting there, staring at the walls, when everything clicked into place and started to make sense. It was like someone had switched a fucking light on, you know? Like I could suddenly see everything clearly for the first time in years.”
“What are you talking about?”
“So I sat there for a while,” he continues, ignoring me and wiping something away from the corner of his eye. “Then I went out to the garage and got myself a mallet and a saw, best things I could find. Then I went back inside, went upstairs, and killed Sharon. After I’d finished with her, I did the same to Dylan. He was awake in his crib when I went into his room. He was standing there, bouncing up and down on his mattress, grinning at me, but I did it just the same. I had to.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble quietly, feeling like a total shit and not knowing what else to say. He shakes his head and walks on, trying unsuccessfully to hide his anger.
“Thing is, since I heard the things Preston ’s been saying, I can’t help wondering what would’ve happened if I’d left him. Could I have made him like us?”
“Do you believe all that?”
“I don’t know what I believe. All I know is that you’ve got no fucking right to question whether I understand what you’re going through. You’ve got a kid who’s probably still out there fighting somewhere, and these days that’s as much as anyone can hope for. Now shut up, wise up, and get a fucking grip. Forget about her.”
16
WE WORK OUR WAY along the outermost edge of the Unchanged exclusion zone, either just inside or just outside the boundary depending on whose map you’re looking at. It’s been uncomfortably quiet out here, and we’ve seen only a handful of other fighters since splitting from the others back at the school. Here, though, things suddenly feel different. Paul and I make our way quickly through the ruins of a sprawling college campus, moving away from the collapsing, battle-damaged buildings, then climbing up a number of terraced soccer fields, stacked like hugely oversized steps. From the farthest edge of the uppermost playing field we’re able to look out over a huge swathe of the exclusion zone. In the distance I can just about make out the area of town where Lizzie’s sister lived, and I can see all the way across the wide stretch of no-man’s-land to the heart of the enemy refugee camp, too. But it’s what’s directly below us that is of more immediate interest. We’re overlooking what’s left of St. James’s Hospital, and it’s crawling with activity. Our fighters are all over it like ants over forgotten food.
“What do you reckon?”
Paul shrugs his shoulders. “Got to be a reason for them being here,” he answers, and before I can speak again, he crawls through a hole in a section of chain-link fence and starts running down a steep, grassy slope toward the hospital.
I try to resist for a second and force myself to concentrate on finding Ellis, but then I think about the fact that there must be Unchanged close by, and the temptation becomes too strong to suppress. My mouth begins to water as I sprint down the hill after Paul, desperate to get down to the hospital and start killing. I hear gunfire as I start to run, a sure sign that the enemy is close. Suddenly all I can think about is satisfying my hunger and ending Unchanged lives.
The main hospital entrance has been partially demolished, the automatic doors stuck midway through opening, their metal frames buckled. As I catch up with Paul he’s looking for a way around what’s left of this part of the site. It sounds like most of the heavy fighting is concentrated around the parking lots and the other buildings at the far end of the complex.
“Cut straight through,” I suggest as I squeeze through the gap in the doors. He follows me as we head down a long corridor that has somehow remained surprisingly white and clean and that even now still has the faintest tang of antiseptic in the air. The building feels vast and empty, and our footsteps echo as we run along the hard marble floor toward the battle. A huge, dark, zigzagging crack in one of the walls makes me question my decision to come this way momentarily, but it’s too late now and it’s worth the risk. We’re nearing the fighting. We’re closing in on the enemy.
I burst through a set of swinging double doors, then stop at a staircase. Instinct tells me to head down, but the way through is blocked by fallen rubble from a collapsed wall. Paul doesn’t wait, deciding quickly to head up and work his way around whatever damage he finds up there. I follow him through more doors, then along another, much shorter corridor, which ends with a sharp right-hand turn. We instinctively slow down when we enter a ward filled with corpses. I start to wonder whether these well-decayed people were just abandoned and forgotten when the war began, but a closer look at their injuries quickly tells me that wasn’t the case. A skeletal woman has been skewered with the metal support that once held her intravenous drip, the stained and tattered threads of her flapping nightgown still wrapped around her shoulders. Sitting on the floor to my left, the withered husk of an old man is slumped with his legs apart. There’s a vertical scar in the middle of his badly discolored chest, running in almost a straight line down from just below the level of his sagging nipples. At the bottom of the scar, right where his navel would have been, the wound has been forced open and his innards pulled out. This guy’s been disemboweled by someone with their bare hands. The ingenuity and brutality of whoever did this is breathtaking. These bodies are old, though. Why are people still fighting here today?
A huge hole in the ceiling and a corresponding hole in the floor farther down the ward force me to concentrate again. I follow Paul as he edges cautiously around the narrow ledge that remains around the dark chasm. I glance down and see a mass of rubble, beds, and bodies directly below, then look up. There are more holes in each floor above us all the way up to what’s left of the roof.
At the end of the ward we reach another staircase. I look down through a large safety-glass window over a vast crowd of people battling outside. Our fighters are swarming around a collection of outbuildings right out on the farthest edge of the site. Standing separate from the main hospital campus, they look like they might have been storerooms or boiler rooms. There are enemy soldiers in every visible window and doorway and more on the roof, all of them now firing relentlessly and indiscriminately into the surging crowd. On the other side of the wrought-iron railings that surround the hospital grounds are their vehicles, ready for them to beat a hasty retreat if we get too close.