Chokehold

by David Moody

  It takes less than a minute for the Bulldog’s crew to be completely overcome. Now under Hater control, it’s driven directly into another CDF vehicle, crippling both of them.

  Bullets and bombs, beaten by brute force.

  “It’s a fucking bloodbath,” Chappell says to himself.

  “And this is just the start of it.”

  He looks around and sees Matt standing just behind him.

  “Estelle’s out there if you’ve come up here to try to argue your point again.”

  “I haven’t. There’s no point. You should have realized that by now.”

  “I have. It’s the rest of them that need persuading.”

  The conversation is interrupted by sounds of more trouble downstairs as militiamen try to herd civilians toward the trenches. “But we’re not soldiers,” someone argues.

  “We’re all soldiers now, pal.”

  The group—there are maybe twenty of them—is pushed and shoved out toward the battlefield. Those who are given any weapons at all are handed basic, rudimentary weapons before being sent down into the trenches to defend the outpost. One man tries to climb back out, only for a CDF soldier to threaten him with the butt of his rifle. He tries again to escape and this time gets a boot in the face for his troubles.

  “If I didn’t think we were screwed before, I do now,” Matt admits, and Chappell’s silence infers his agreement.

  “What else can we do?”

  “Your chief has boxed everyone into a corner. I tried to warn her.”

  “Estelle’s always too busy talking to listen. I always thought—”

  He stops talking abruptly, distracted by something he sees outside, an unexpected reaction. Until now, there’s always been a degree of visible cohesion in the CDF ranks, but it’s like a switch has just been flicked—everyone for themselves. The soldiers who have been advancing alongside the tanks and heavy artillery start to split and double back. Then the rocket launchers that have any rockets left to fire erupt into life, and missiles begin racing through the cold, wet air, spears of white light streaking over the fighting in the muddy fields surrounding the base before hitting previously unseen targets on the border in several directions at once. More missiles are fired, a tumult of destruction, and in the rapidly reducing gaps between the wild detonations, both Matt and Chappell can now see what’s caused the sudden panic in the CDF ranks: there are hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of Haters now pouring onto the battlefield, converging on the outpost from every conceivable angle.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Chappell says, struggling to take in the enormity of what he’s witnessing. The enemy advance is like a flood, an unstoppable wave.

  “I tried to warn you,” Matt says pointlessly. “You wouldn’t bloody listen.”

  “She wouldn’t listen,” he snaps, pointing deep into the madness to where Estelle is still fighting on the back of her Wolfhound support vehicle.

  * * *

  Estelle gestures wildly, screaming orders at those soldiers still in shouting distance, struggling to compete with the unprecedented CDF bombardment of the Hater hordes.

  It’s all pointless, though she’ll never admit it.

  Whatever she does now, she’s lost.

  There are only two tanks left with any shells now, but there are too many targets. Individual soldiers try standing their ground and firing into the masses, but their impact is negligible. When they focus on shooting one Hater, by default they inevitably ignore many more who show them no mercy. Even the brief, few seconds’ pause to change an empty clip is enough time for Haters to attack and kill. The CDF out in the combat zone is catastrophically outnumbered, and the rapid Hater advance continues largely unchallenged. There’s no finesse to the way they fight, no tactics or control, just an unstoppable flood of sheer Hate coming from all sides. The attacking wave has become a tsunami. Multiple tsunamis.

  A sustained burst of machine-gun fire temporarily stems the flow of attackers surging toward Estelle’s Wolfhound. It’s Moira Kay. She’s fighting like a Terminator, bringing down Hater after Hater, cutting through the heart of them with her SA80. The Wolfhound is surrounded, too many bodies clustering around it for the crew to be able to drive forward in any direction. Moira unloads her weapon again, then runs through the channel she’s just carved through the crowd. She hauls herself up onto the back of the vehicle and grabs Estelle, who spins round, Glock pistol drawn and ready to fire.

  “Order a withdrawal, Estelle. We can’t win this.”

  “We have to,” Estelle says, and she pushes Moira out of the way, then shoots dead a Hater who’d almost made it up onto her vehicle.

  “There are too many of them!” she yells, voice hoarse as she struggles to make herself heard over the cacophony of noise.

  Estelle fires several more shots. More and more Haters are converging on the Wolfhound. Moira sidesteps and drenches a section of the crowd with another round of automatic gunfire.

  “They’ll kill us all, Estelle.”

  Estelle pulls Moira close, faces just millimeters apart. “You’re a soldier. Keep fighting.”

  “But, Estelle—”

  “Don’t question orders! Fight on!”

  Moira looks into her commanding officer’s face. Fear? Delusion? Sheer fucking terror? She’s not sure what she sees in Estelle’s eyes, but it’s clear she has no intention of giving up the fight.

  Moira swings the butt of her weapon into the face of an attacker who grabs at her ankle, then fires off several shots and takes two more out. The dead drop down into the clambering crowds below, and Moira jumps down after them. She keeps her finger on the trigger, killing herself a path away from the stranded Wolfhound.

  Estelle’s oblivious to the scale of the ever-growing battle. She reloads her Glock and fires into as many hate-filled faces as she can, but even if she had ten times the number of bullets, it still wouldn’t be enough. The Wolfhound is surrounded by a crowd twenty or thirty deep for the most part, their numbers increasing as more of the CDF is overcome. When the bullets finally run dry, the attackers advance with renewed enthusiasm. Estelle is tackled and dropped to the ground. She’s buried under bodies, hopelessly outnumbered.

  * * *

  Now watching from outside the outpost, Chappell finally loses sight of his commanding officer. When the Haters swarming over the Wolfhound lose interest and start looking for other Unchanged to kill, he knows for certain that she’s dead.

  “That puts me in charge. I’d order a retreat, but I doubt anyone would make it back.”

  The last remaining armed tank fires another shell, the force of the blast jerking it back on its caterpillar tracks. Knowing it’ll take time to reload, Haters immediately begin to climb over it like maggots feasting on rotten meat. The driver tries to shake them off, and the gunner moves the gun turret and barrel wildly from side to side, but it has no effect. In desperation, either because the crew is going to try to clear the attackers from the top of the vehicle or because they’re going to make a break for it, the loader’s hatch at the rear pops open. The first soldier does not even get his head and shoulders free before he’s hauled out and killed. His rifle is yanked from his hands and used to kill the remaining crew.

  Whether it’s down to beginner’s luck or some previous military experience, the Haters who’ve taken control of the Challenger tank manage to load, aim, and fire its remaining arsenal of shells, destroying two more tanks. The turret turns a graceful one-eighty, and the final shell is fired directly at the outpost itself. Matt and Chappell run for cover, then throw themselves to the ground as the hotel next door is hit.

  Chappell picks himself up, pushing past scores of panicking civilians now swarming back the other way. He stares at the bloodbath in front of him in disbelief. Countless people are dead, and the front of the hotel has been decimated. There’s broken glass, crumbled concrete, and body parts everywhere. When the whistling in his ears starts to fade, Chappell realizes that even though he can still hear gunfire, it sounds more ra
ndom now, less controlled, far more sporadic. The noise washes and fades. There are brief pauses … silences, almost. “Is that it?”

  “Nope,” Matt says. “Not even close. That’s objective one complete, I think. Estelle’s precious CDF is finished.”

  “It hardly took them any time.”

  “You’re right, and I reckon it’ll take them half that time again to finish the rest of us off.”

  There are great swarms of Haters sprinting toward the outpost now, almost completely unopposed. Hundreds that look like thousands running as one, closing in and choking the very life out of the faltering Unchanged resistance. It’s a stampede. Matt thinks it’d be impressive if it were not so completely fucking terrifying.

  The civvies still down in the trenches start climbing out and running for cover, and the snipers and other gunners have all deserted their posts.

  Chappell gestures at a nearby howitzer, its barrel pointing down at the ground, dejected-looking. “Going to see if I can’t take a few more of them out,” he says.

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  He shrugs. “Probably.”

  The shell-damaged hotel begins to collapse in on itself, filling the air with unimaginable noise and suffocating clouds of grit and dust. The crowds of retreating civilians are forced back toward the service station, but the main entrance is already gridlocked, no way through. The foyer is packed solid with backed-up people trying to get through the revolving door.

  Matt knows there’s no way through. He can barely stay standing, but the combination of the drugs the doctor gave him and the fear of being torn apart by the advancing pack of killers is enough to keep him moving. Crowds of people come at him from all angles as they herd toward the building behind him, seeking refuge. He’s pushed and shoved, inadvertently fighting against the flow. One man collides with him head-on, and the two of them grasp each other instinctively, desperate to stay upright.

  It’s Darren.

  It takes both of them a second to recognize the other.

  “Help me, Matt.”

  “Nothing I can do. Nothing any of us can do.”

  And Darren pushes himself away without another word. Staggering zombielike toward the outpost entrance.

  Matt stumbles on, half walking, half falling down the side of the service station building, holding on to the wall to keep himself upright. Everywhere he looks, he sees more and more Haters advancing from all directions, encircling the outpost and severing every escape route, cutting the base off from the rest of the world. Part of him wants to look for somewhere quiet to hide, to take advantage of all this suffering and disappear like he always does, but this time he knows there’s no point. Dr. Tracy was economical with her words earlier, but he doesn’t think he has long. If the Haters don’t get him, the sickness will.

  So this is how it ends.

  But not for everyone.

  Jesus Christ, these people don’t know when to give up.

  Joseph, Aaron, and a couple of other men are still at it, leading civilians out from an exit at the back of the main building and loading them into trucks. Joseph looks up and sees Matt approaching. “We’re leaving,” he says.

  “I doubt that very much, mate.”

  “Well, we can’t just give up.”

  “I don’t think you have any choice.”

  Matt looks into the back of the nearest truck, and a crowd of pallid faces stare back at him. All the kids. People from the RAF base and others he remembers from the printing house before that. The kind of people whose suffering he used to hide behind to stay alive. The kind of people he’s sacrificed on far too many occasions to keep himself safe. He looks for Jason, then remembers he’s gone. Christ, even he managed a vaguely heroic death. In comparison, Matt feels himself coming to a miserable, inglorious end. Jen would be so disappointed …

  Sick. Injured. Exhausted. Finished.

  “You going somewhere?” Aaron asks, spotting Matt, who’s hardly able to support his own weight. He’s breathing heavily, leaning against the side of a helicopter that’s never going to fly again.

  “Not going anywhere. No one is.”

  “Help us?”

  “We’ve already been through this. It’s too late.”

  “It’s not. I can help,” another voice says, taking everyone by surprise. Matt turns around and finds himself looking at a tall, wiry, bespectacled, blood-soaked strip of a man.

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s Peter Sutton, and I—”

  Joseph pushes himself between Matt and Peter, brandishing a wicked-looking knife. “He’s one of them! He’s a Hater!”

  “Joseph, please…”

  Aaron gets to him first. Peter puts his hands up in submission, but he’s on the ground with Aaron on top of him before he can react. Aaron holds the tip of a blade against Peter’s throat.

  “Hater scum.”

  “Wait,” Peter says, desperate, “please. I’ve never hurt any of you, and I never will. I know how to hold the Hate.”

  Matt edges forward, struggling to stay standing. “Don’t listen to this bullshit. Kill him. Joseph used to breed freaks like this, but they can’t be tamed. You can’t control them. They talk the talk when it suits, but when their backs are against the wall, they’ll kill you without hesitation. I know. I’ve seen it happen again and again.”

  “I’m different,” Peter says, tears streaming down his face now. “I swear. My grandson’s in the truck. I’m not going to do anything that puts him or any of you in danger.”

  “Last one of his kind I was stupid enough to trust turned on me when I needed her most.”

  “I don’t want to fight. That’s why I hid here with you for so long. If I was going to kill anyone, I’d have done it already.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Aaron asks, tightening his grip on Peter’s throat and pricking the skin under his chin with the knife.

  “Because you’re outnumbered and surrounded. You’ve barely got any time left. You don’t stand a chance without me. Do you think I’d have come back if I didn’t want to help? I could have waited until it was all over.”

  For the briefest of moments, the conversation stalls, and all any of them can hear is the noise of the rapidly advancing enemy tightening their grip on the outpost. All eyes are on Aaron and the Hater.

  “Finish him,” Matt urges.

  But he doesn’t.

  Peter’s face is filled with fear, waiting for the pain that doesn’t come. Aaron stabs the knife into the ground next to his head instead and gets up.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Matt demands, too weak to do anything himself. “Get rid of him. Deal with him.”

  “No,” Aaron says. “We can use him.”

  The Hater is lying curled up in a ball now, sobbing.

  “What? This piece of shit?”

  “Yes, him. I believe him.”

  “Then you’re deluded—”

  “He’s right—why would he have come back? Why would he not be fighting?”

  “Because he doesn’t want to die? You really believe that?”

  “Right now, I don’t have anything else to believe. Half a chance is better than no chance at all.”

  “It’s on your head,” Matt says, and he goes to walk away, but Aaron stops him.

  “Don’t, please. There’s still a way we can do this.”

  56

  There must be more than a hundred Haters for every single Unchanged left alive now. Chappell keeps firing into the endless crowds for as long as he can. He knows it won’t make any difference, but this is all he has left. He takes a small crumb of comfort from the fact that his seems to be the only weapon still firing. Could these be the last bullets fired by human hands?

  In the distance, the CDF advance has been permanently halted. From his slightly elevated position, Chappell is aware of an eerie lack of movement out there now. Dirty smoke belches upward from ruined, useless fighting machines. There are bodies everywhere. A handful of Ha
ters move from corpse to corpse, finishing off those unfortunate CDF soldiers who are somehow still breathing, but the majority of enemy fighters are now advancing toward the outpost, forming part of the storm surge of Hate that’s rolling toward what’s left of the human race.

  Chappell shoots again, hitting one man in the leg who drops to the ground and is immediately trampled by a horde of his kill-hungry brethren.

  He shoots another square in the chest and takes a perverse pleasure in watching him being blown off his feet and back into the crowd, knocking several more of them out like pins at the end of a bowling alley.

  The next one he kills is nearer; close enough for Chappell to see the hate writ large across her face and close enough for him to take her out with a satisfyingly clean head shot.

  The next are nearer still. More and more and more of them. Too many. He’s overcome, but Chappell fires shot after shot until the gun clicks empty. And now there isn’t even room to swing and aim. They’re on him, all over him. Grabbing his clothes and tearing his skin. He kicks out and swings his fists, yelling out in rage, but his dogged resistance lasts only seconds longer before being brought to a brutal end.

  * * *

  Near the rear of the bottleneck of people still trying to get clear of the fighting and into the service station, Darren tries to worm his way through the tightly packed bodies, terrified he’s going to be the last to get inside. He’s pushing and pulling the people around him, shoving them out of the way, but then stops momentarily when he becomes aware of a sudden change. Other people have noticed it, too. Now that the last guns have stopped firing, an eerie calm has descended. It feels like a vacuum. Darren looks around and wishes he hadn’t, because all he can see now is so many Haters that they’re individually indistinguishable, their movements agitated and excited and almost too fast like an overcranked film. It feels like the whole damn lot of them are coming directly for him alone.