I guess he’s right. Days like today help me secure my place in Hinchcliffe’s empire. If it wasn’t for me, they’d never have found this nest of Unchanged. He’d had people out here looking for supplies, and the dumb fuckers couldn’t work out why the stuff they’d been stockpiling kept disappearing. It was me who set the traps and left the bait and tracked the Unchanged back to this place. It was me who told Hinchcliffe and Llewellyn where this shelter was and how best to attack it. I’m the one who spent the last couple of days underground with those foul fuckers, sitting on my hands, swallowing down the Hate like bile and forcing myself not to kill them until Hinchcliffe’s men were ready and in place. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened. My own self-preservation is all that matters now, and I have to stay focused on that. If that means playing Hinchcliffe’s games for a while longer and keeping him on my side, then so be it. The sooner every single last Unchanged is completely dead and buried, the sooner the war will be over.
There’s a sudden flurry of activity around the entrance to the Unchanged hideout again. The door flies open and Patterson, an enormously powerful man, drags a small Unchanged kid out by its long blond hair. The kid is only five or six years old, and she screams with panic and pain. Patterson is visibly struggling to stay calm and not kill her. He could snap her neck in an instant, but he’s under orders not to. His fear of Hinchcliffe and Llewellyn is even greater than his desire to kill this kid. Instead he simply picks the girl up and throws her into the back of another van. Hinchcliffe says that Unchanged kids are important. He says we need to understand them.
“Good result,” Llewellyn says, startling me. “I was starting to think this holding the Hate business was just bullshit you were using to get out of work and get yourself more food. I’ve just spoken to Hinchcliffe. He’s pleased.”
“Good.”
“How long’s it been since we last found any of them?”
“More than three weeks,” I tell him. “Three of them in the basement of that church, remember?”
“Whatever,” he grunts, obviously not really interested. “Anyway, get your stuff together. We’re heading back.”
He walks away, and I watch as the last Unchanged bodies are dragged out of the shelter and dumped on the fire beside me, the noise and smell of crackling, burning flesh making my stomach churn again. Scavengers are rifling through what’s left of the Unchangeds’ already ransacked possessions, emptying backpacks, crates, and boxes, looking for anything of value but finding next to nothing.
All that time those miserable bastards spent hiding in that godforsaken shelter … all those hours and all that effort, and for what? Why did they bother? Did they really think they’d be able to survive here indefinitely? They might have stayed hidden for another couple of days or as long as a few months, but they must have known that someone like Hinchcliffe or Llewellyn would have been waiting for them. It was inevitable. I guess that’s the one thing we all still have in common: We just keep going. Them or us, even when common sense says it’s time to stop struggling and roll over and play dead, we all still keep fighting to survive, whatever the cost. It would have been easier if these people had just given up a long time back. Same result, much less pain and effort.
2
NONE OF THE BASTARDS I’m out here with today trust me, and the feeling’s entirely mutual. Typically, the only space left in the convoy of vehicles returning to town is in the back of the van with the captured Unchanged kids. There are three of them being held in a padlocked wire-mesh cage that’s bolted to the inside wall of the van, and the only other thing in here with them is me. They cower away from me even though there’s an ocean of space and the metal barrier between us. They huddle together in the farthest corner of the cage, backs pressed against the wall, a lad in front and two younger girls behind him. He watches my every move, flinching whenever I change position, occasionally spitting and swearing at me when I get too close, too scared to look away. One of the girls is completely motionless, staring vacantly into space over the boy’s shoulder. I do all I can not to look at any of them, partly because I don’t know what Hinchcliffe’s planning to do with them, but also because looking at the children makes me remember the things I try hardest to forget.
The van driver treats me with as much contempt as he does the children. I’m literally stuck in the middle here, not belonging on either side, and at times like this I can’t help wondering what’s going to happen to me when the Unchanged have finally been eradicated and I’ve served my purpose. Until we found the group we just killed, there hadn’t been any sightings in weeks. For all I know these kids might well be the last three left alive and my “talent” for holding the Hate could soon be worthless. I’ve no doubt Hinchcliffe will chuck me back onto the underclass scrap heap just as quickly as he plucked me from it.
The van slows unexpectedly, the engine sounding like it’s on its last legs, and I’m immediately on guard. I get up fast, and my sudden movements are met with another volley of spit and swear words from the boy in the cage. I look out of the windows but I can’t see anything. The days are short and the nights long now, and the light’s fading rapidly. I’m guessing we’re well into January by now, but the days, weeks, and months seem to have all melted into one another and become a single dragging blur. No one even mentioned Christmas or New Year. I didn’t think about them until long after they’d gone.
The tired engine threatens to stall, but, with much cursing, the driver just about manages to keep it ticking over. He overaccelerates and steers up the curb, and I brace myself as the van lurches from side to side. There’s a body in the middle of the road behind us. Looks like it was a Brute. Haven’t seen any of them in a while. They’re a dying breed. The war was all they had, and they hunted for kills at all costs. My guess is most of them ended up back in and around the irradiated remains of the refugee camps, and those that survived are now just roaming what’s left of the countryside, looking for Unchanged that are long gone. This guy I know, Rufus, says the Brutes are a warning, that there’s a lesson to be learned from what’s happened to them. For what it’s worth, I think he’s right. I’m not sure what the lesson is though.
We’ve almost made it back to Lowestoft. It’s an almost bearable place to live (in comparison to everywhere else), but conditions have steadily worsened. I’m sure there are other places like this around the country, and I often wonder if I’d be better off elsewhere. I can’t bring myself to call this a community, because that word conjures up all kinds of nostalgic, old-fashioned images of people actually getting along and working together for a common good. Lowestoft is just a place where people with nowhere else to go have drifted together. The most aggressive fighters rule the roost now like some kind of prehistoric elite, propped up by the subservient underclasses who live off the scraps they discard. Lowestoft limps along from day to day for now, but the bottom line remains; those who can hit the hardest are the ones who benefit most, and these days no one has bigger fists than Hinchcliffe.
There’s definitely a problem with this van. No doubt it’ll be dumped as soon as we get back to town. The rest of the convoy has long since left us behind, and the driver constantly curses and overrevs the engine to keep it from dying. We swerve again, weaving between the wreck of a car and a pile of crumbling masonry from a battle-damaged building like we’re on a racetrack chicane. The Unchanged kids are safe in their cage, but I’m thrown around the back with every sudden change of direction. Eventually I wedge myself into position between the side of the van and the cage and stare out of the window, trying to stay focused on the barely visible glow of the moon behind the dense cloud layer. My guts feel like someone’s mixing them in a blender. If I don’t get out of here soon we’ll all be seeing more of the dog I ate earlier.