by David Moody
“Got it.”
* * *
The trouble at the arena last night has had a noticeable ripple effect throughout the camp, and walking the overcrowded, fractious streets today is almost as daunting as the prospect of heading out into the wilderness and hunting down Haters. Seven in the morning or seven at night, the levels of activity and uncertainty in the camp are constant now.
Got to stay one step ahead of the game. That’s Matt’s usual thinking, and it’s more important than ever today. He needs to take advantage of the moment and get as much food secured as he can, but that’s not the only reason he’s heading back to the CDF compound this morning. Something doesn’t ring true about what they’re doing. He knows full well that Franklin’s just using him, but he’s not entirely sure why. He figures as long as he remembers the CDF consider him disposable, he’ll be okay. Get more food before it’s all gone, and figure out what the hell the CDF are up to—one step ahead of the game.
What little structure and order there was in the camp is almost completely gone as a result of what happened last night. He skirts around the City Arena, which is predictably overrun this morning, people everywhere. The sign which proudly proclaimed food was available 24/7 has been felled.
The nearby school—previously home to the camp’s top brass—has also been ransacked, although not, it seems, by refugees. Whether it’s militia or CDF or a combination of both, he can’t be sure, but the gates of the school have been locked shut and there’s a heavy military presence behind them. A coup? Have the privileged few who sheltered in relative comfort here been forced out? A fire has ripped through the top floor of the building and most windows are now just charred black holes, scars contrasting starkly against the dirty whitewash. Papers drift in the wind. Many of the tables from the atrium have been stacked in front of the building and set alight. What used to be a kids’ playground is now a car park for tanks and trucks and heavy artillery. Matt almost turns back, but he keeps walking. He knows he has to see this through.
* * *
“You came back again? Jesus, you must be more desperate than I thought.”
“Morning to you too, Franklin,” Matt says as he enters the compound. “Were you not invited to the party in town last night? Looks like the rest of your military mates have taken over.”
“They don’t know we’re here and we’re doing our best to keep it that way,” he answers. “We’re doing our own thing here, have been from the start.”
“No shit.”
The convoy has been expanded today—two motorbikes riding alongside the usual vehicles—and in the van it’s a full house: Matt, Franklin, Priest (and Bandit), Graham Porter, Chris Greatrex, and Jayce. Matt finds himself crouched in the back of the van directly behind their driver. Jayce seems quieter than usual, not that she’s ever particularly vocal.
“Lots going on out there today,” Franklin explains. “Lots of activity around the airport, not far from where we’re heading.”
“The airport’s still operational?”
“To a point. It’s a CDF base. It’s where most of the military have decamped to, by all accounts.”
“So isn’t that a bad idea? Shouldn’t we go somewhere else, somewhere quieter?”
“Nope. We’ve been using military activity as cover on most of our trips out, or hadn’t you noticed? It’s a distraction. Gives the other side something to focus on other than us.”
* * *
It’s a standard enough operation. Weird, Matt thinks, how quickly he’s getting used to this new routine. Adapt to survive, he tells himself. Even when he was alone in the wastelands for all those weeks, day-to-day survival became second nature. Almost routine.
Somewhere nearby, the Hater hordes are taking a hell of a pounding, although from deep within this maze of crumbling suburban streets it’s impossible to know who’s doing the firing and who’s being fired at. Regardless, the constant noise and the jets which scream overhead are something of a comfort, camouflaging the crew’s ground-level movements. It’s reassuring, but the longer they’re out here, the more vulnerable Matt feels. There are no uniforms or flags in this war, just people. He hopes none of the CDF pilots flying overhead decide to take him and the others out, just in case.
Whatever it is that’s happening at the airport, it’s big. The shelling has been going on for as long as they’ve been on the wrong side of the border of No Man’s Land. Matt’s found plenty of signs of recent activity here, but there are no Haters, just the places they’ve been. Christ, a battle the magnitude of this one must be Christmas come early for those fucking freaks. It’ll draw them out into the open, just leaving the kind of shysters Franklin’s squad are looking for still scurried away.
But after searching for more than an hour, Matt finds nothing. This place is a ghost town, packed with clues and hints but nothing else. He thinks it’s time to pack up and ship out, and Franklin agrees and gives the order.
There’s a high-pitched whine followed by a rush of air and a presumably stray (or possibly well-aimed) missile hits a nearby house. It’s several streets away but the impact’s so violent it’s like the house next door has been hit. Then the house next door is hit, and it’s clear the pilots overhead reckon there’s something here worth firing at. The shock wave knocks Matt off his feet and he’s lying in the dirt, trying to work out what just happened before he’s even realized he’s down. Covered in grit, he picks himself back up and looks around, stunned. Franklin’s also staggering back to his feet. Bandit is suddenly straining at his leash, barking furiously. “Fuck’s sake, dog,” Priest curses, struggling to keep him under control.
The air is filled with dust and smoke, flooding through the gaps where houses used to be and drifting like a gritty fog bank. Bandit continues to bark. “Shut that fucking mutt up,” Franklin warns.
“He’s on to something,” Priest says, still wrestling with the dog.
Matt knows what’s coming next before it happens. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, those Haters who survived the blast are on the move.
There are only four of them at first, but that’s four too many. Scrawny, straggly fuckers. They clamber through the rubble then stop, shell-shocked, because the very last thing they expected to stumble across all the way out here was a group of Unchanged. Priest lets his dog loose. Bandit races ahead in a blur of teeth and fur and spittle, then leaps up and latches on to the arm of the nearest Hater.
They are a foul-looking, ragtag bunch; uniformly disheveled and unkempt as if everything which once made them human has been abandoned. A woman comes running at Matt screaming like a crazed banshee. The noise she makes is godawful: part rallying war cry, part ominous warning. To his relief Graham Porter fires off a shot, hitting her between the eyes. Her velocity is such that she keeps moving and smacks into Matt, deadweight. He goes down with her on top, fighting with the corpse all the way like she’s still a threat.
By the time he’s out from underneath the dead woman, the situation has deteriorated markedly.
There are more of them coming through the drifting smoke. Another three … four … seven. Two are quickly mowed down by gunfire. Someone grabs Matt’s arm and he turns around fast, ready to defend himself. It’s Chris Greatrex. “Go,” Chris says. “Run like fuck.”
A pained yelp from Bandit makes Matt turn back. A Hater has got the better of the beast. He has the dog in a headlock. A sudden, sharp twist and the deed is done. The killer casually drops the animal’s limp, lifeless body to the ground, neck broken. Priest cries out at the loss of his beloved animal and fires into the crowd. The noise he makes is enough to draw even more Haters this way.
Chris shoves Matt in the small of his back. “Fuck’s sake, man, did you not hear me? Run!”
This time Matt does move, racing after Chris, who pounds the street at an astonishing speed he has no hope of matching. Matt looks back and sees Haters coming after them. He finds a new burst of pace he didn’t know he had. He’s just about keeping up with Chris now, but C
hris has energy to spare. “Split and loop back to the van,” he shouts over his shoulder.
Chris goes one way and Matt the other. There’s a gap where a small corner supermarket used to stand, and through it Matt sees that there are even more Haters circling, coming from all angles. The majority of them are converging on the gunfight he’s just fled. Matt slips into survival mode again, figuring he can use the fighting as cover to keep himself alive. It doesn’t sit well—it never has—but he needs to put himself first. Jen’s depending on him. He has to make it home.
Getting out of the firing line is his priority, then looking for an escape route.
Matt kicks a flimsy-looking front door open and bursts into an empty house. He runs straight through and out the back, sprints the length of the garden, then vaults the fence. He breaks into the property backing on to the first and this time goes up instead of out. An upstairs room gives him a clear but relatively well-protected view of the street below where Franklin and the others are still fighting. They’re struggling to hold a flood of Haters back. Fortunately, all the aggression in the world is no match for the CDF firepower. Some of the enemy demonstrate a modicum of restraint and hold back, clinging to the shadows of the buildings which line this anonymous suburban street, waiting for gaps in the gunfire. Many more, though, run headlong into the carnage, desperate to kill despite the inevitable cost.
Priest and Graham Porter are dead. Franklin’s still fighting alongside several other CDF soldiers from the convoy. This is in danger of becoming a full-scale disaster as many more Haters pour into the area, fleeing one battle and stumbling into another. There’s a military motorbike on its side in the road, its rider lying dead alongside it. Matt thinks if he could reach the bike and get to the keys, he might have half a chance of using it to get away. As it stands, if he doesn’t make a move in the next couple of minutes, he’ll be stuck here for the duration.
One of the jeeps appears. It swerves around a corner and skids to a juddering halt in the mouth of the road, and a soldier on the back lobs a series of grenades over the heads of Franklin and the others and into the sea of advancing Haters. Matt turns away from the window and presses himself back against the wall as what’s left of the street outside explodes. Glass is blown in and the building he’s sheltering in shakes unsteadily like it’s about to collapse. He waits a second, then looks back outside. At first his eyes are drawn to the carnage below: a blackened crater in the road, a geyser of water from a burst main, and enough scattered limbs to reassemble double the number of bodies he thought were out there. Dust and debris. Slow-moving Hater survivors. Groans and screams and guttural roars of anger, frustration, and pain.
But then Matt’s attention is caught by something else. It’s Franklin and the others. They’re alive and they’re retreating. Some of them are piling onto the back of the jeep, others are scrambling to get to the van which has also now appeared. Franklin pauses to put a bullet in the brain of a wounded Hater who comes at him with a twitching stump where her left arm used to be, then scans the area one last time before disappearing.
Fuck.
Matt knows he has to move now, or he’ll be stuck here forever.
He crashes back downstairs and out through the front door. He knows he’s running straight into the vipers’ nest, but what option does he have? He sprints across the street, leaping over what’s left of the dead and swerving around those who are still somehow on their feet. Most of the Haters who are still alive are focused on the van and the jeep which are racing away, and they don’t realize Matt’s there until he’s gone. Drifting smoke provides him with a little more welcome cover, but he knows he’s going nowhere fast out here. When a couple of stragglers realize that he’s Unchanged and not like them, he becomes the sole focus of their collective ire.
He runs into another house on the opposite side of the road, then slams the door behind him and blocks it with a piece of furniture. He’s been ducking in and out of buildings like this all day but this time it’s different because he knows they’re on to him. He can hear them clamoring to get in, and over their noise he can also hear the engines of the van and the jeep fading into the distance.
Stop moving and you’re dead.
There are no more houses behind this one. No more streets. Just trees, as far as he can see. He goes out through the back door as the first Haters break in through the front, then vaults the waist-high fence between this building and its left-side neighbor to try and throw them off the scent. He drops to his hands and knees and crawls along the overgrown garden. He can hear them searching for him in the undergrowth next door.
Just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t fucking stop!
When he reaches the fence at the end of the garden, he scrambles up and over, using a plastic storage box to help him climb. He’s on top of the fence—straddling it with one leg either side—when one of them spots him. “Unchanged!” the woman yells, and the Hater stampede immediately changes direction, all of them coming his way.
Matt drops over the fence and hits the deck hard. He immediately starts running again, not knowing where he is or where he’s going. The increasingly distant engine noise is directionless and offers no clues. He’s in open parkland—a sea of knee-high, straw-colored grass—and he breaks right toward home, hoping he might still have the slightest chance of cutting off the van and jeep before they’re gone.
A frantic glance back. They’re throwing themselves over the fence, racing after him like the undead hordes in those shitty zombie movies he used to love. Hundreds of them, it looks like.
Voices up ahead. More Haters?
Matt rounds a corner and sees the snub-nosed military vehicle that’s accompanied them on every one of these hunting trips he’s so far been out on. It’s parked up on a patch of scrubland with Chris Greatrex and several CDF soldiers crowded behind it. Matt runs toward them with renewed vigor, and breathes a sigh of relief when one of the black-suited soldiers appears to have spotted him.
Except he hasn’t.
There’s another pack of Haters closing in from the opposite direction, and the soldier lets rip with a volley of automatic gunfire. Several of them go down, but the rest of the herd continue oblivious, jumping the bodies of their fallen comrades. Matt dives for cover in a thicket and flattens himself to the ground as more of the enemy thunder past. He lifts his head and watches Chris and the others intently through a gap in the weeds, waiting until it’s safe for him to move again.
What the fuck?
They’re loading two bodies into the back of the military truck. Hard to be completely certain from this distance, but they don’t look uniformed. Are they Hater corpses? This makes no sense, and is Matt imagining things, or are those bodies bound? And is that one still kicking?
Matt gets up again and runs. He flinches and ducks left as a CDF soldier hurls a grenade into one of the mobs of Haters. When he levels up and looks again, he sees he was right. The body now being bundled into the back of the vehicle has its ankles and wrists bound and its head is in some kind of restraint, but it’s still thrashing. The prisoner writhes and squirms until a vicious club to the side of the head knocks him out cold. He must be a Hater, but that’s insane.
There are two massive waves of attackers now converging on the military vehicle from different directions, and Matt’s trapped in the middle, running a line between the hordes. With their work done, Chris Greatrex and the remaining troops pile on board and speed away, and all Matt can do is watch them leave.
He’s stranded. Isolated. Screwed.
Or he would be if he hadn’t just spotted the other jeep abandoned over on the farthest edge of the parkland.
He runs as hard as he can on already tired legs, but before he gets anywhere near the vehicle, he knows he’s been spotted again. It was only a matter of time. He doesn’t have to look around to see, he can hear them changing direction and coming after him, can feel them almost. More than a hundred Haters, all of them desperate to be the one to kill the lone Unchange
d idiot dumb enough to be caught out in the open.
The driver’s door of the jeep is hanging open invitingly. Matt dives inside then reaches back and snatches the handle, pulling it shut behind him and doing everything he can to avoid looking into the waves of hate coming his way. He feels for the keys in the ignition—thank Christ—then starts the engine.
The fastest Haters are on him, swarming around his vehicle. Matt slams his foot down on the accelerator and drives, leaving the foul fuckers for dust. They scramble in the street after him, charging through exhaust fumes and falling over each other in his wake.
Which way now?
Yet another swarm of Haters spills out of the park like an oil slick, filling the road ahead. He swerves around them, clipping one and hitting another full-on, then mounts the curb. The jeep bounces up onto two wheels then crashes back down. The wheel is almost wrenched from his hands but he grips it tight and somehow manages to keep control.
Way up ahead Matt sees a cloud of dust being thrown up by tires. It can only be the others—no one else would be foolish enough to be out here. He keeps his foot down hard and throws the jeep around another corner, skidding out into the center of the long, straight road home.
He can see the taillights of the military transport into which the Haters were loaded. Matt races to catch up, not just because he wants to get out of here, but because he needs to know what the hell is going on. Franklin’s stories about hunting and killing rogue Haters were lies. They’re capturing Haters alive, for Christ’s sake. Are these people traitors? Hater sympathizers? Whatever their motives, Matt knows there’s something very wrong here. He feels it stronger than anything he’s felt since this whole fucking nightmare began.