by David Moody
Paul watches the evil creature floundering in the ice-cold murk. He thinks it won’t last long, and though it’s not particularly a threat, its relentless ire is terrifying. It sacrificed itself to try to kill the two of them. He says nothing to Matt, but his nervousness is increasing the closer they get to home.
30
Land eventually appears on the horizon. The miserable weather makes the distance hard to estimate, so there’s little time to assess and make plans before they’ve reached the shore. Matt cuts the outboard, letting the waves carry them the last few meters home. Other than for the lapping of the water, the world is deafeningly silent.
Drifting closer now, and they can see they’ve definitely made it back to the UK. That much is certain, but exactly where they are is as yet unknown. It’s a run-down seaside town: all lifeless promenade lights and boarded-up buildings. From out here it looks as dead as the island they left behind.
“We must look so conspicuous,” Matt says. “Look at the state of us. I’ve been wearing the same clothes since Monday. I look like I’ve aged twenty-five years in a week. I look like a damn ghost.”
“You think anybody cares? You’ll have plenty of chance to tidy yourself up before you get back home to her indoors. Now shut up and concentrate on finding us somewhere safe to land.”
But Matt can’t shut up. His stomach’s churning with nerves and his chattering becomes incessant. “What if we’re wrong?”
“What about?”
“Everything. All the trouble. The Haters … what if none of it happened like we were told. We made a lot of assumptions and filled in lots of blanks while we were away.”
“So?”
“All that killing … everything we did on Skek.”
“You think we’re going to be in trouble?”
“Maybe.”
“Bullshit.”
“How can you be so casual about it after what you did to Natalie? We were on the same side, for crying out loud.”
That clearly stings. “Don’t push me, mate.” Paul tightens his grip on the shotgun again. “All I needed you for was to get me home. Your usefulness is about to run out, so don’t give me an excuse to do the same to you.”
“You didn’t seem to need much of an excuse from where I was standing.”
“We all had a hand in what happened back there before the Haters turned up. I did what I had to do. It was Natalie or one of us. Deal with it.”
But Matt’s not sure he can.
The waves beneath the boat feel increasingly angry as they near the shore. The closer they get, the harder Matt’s finding it to keep the dinghy under control. He’s struggling to stay focused, not least because the scene that greets them is leaving him in no doubt that the mainland they’ve returned to this morning is a very different place to that which they left just over a week ago. It reminds him of the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan. He’s guessing that Paul’s thinking something similar because he’s quiet too, stunned into submission. He’s on his knees looking out over the front of the boat, staring at a scene of almost surreal devastation.
The first easily discernible thing Matt notices is a family car sticking out of the sand, nose down. It’s completely wrecked, and completely out of place. It’s like the driver had lost control and driven up and over the sea defenses at speed, then plummeted down hard. The doors are hanging open like broken wings, and clearly it’s been like this for several days because seaweed and sand drifts are everywhere. It looks as if it were being sucked down into the beach at marginal speed, steadily sinking inch by inch.
But that’s just the beginning.
Much of the rest of the beach for as far as they can see in either direction is littered with debris. The boat washes up on a narrow slice of shingle. Paul’s out quickly, but Matt waits a second longer, wondering if he should stow the dinghy somewhere or maybe just turn around and head back out to sea. No point, he decides. We’re not going anywhere.
Paul’s already reached the upturned car, trying to work out how and why it was left like this. A dead woman is in the driver’s seat, her body white and swollen, hair still wet. She’s anchored in position by her safety belt, hanging upside down. Matt taps Paul’s shoulder, startling him, and gestures farther along the long stretch of grubby yellow-gray sand to another body. What’s left of one. Its sex is impossible to distinguish because everything identifiable has been burned away. It’s completely black, charred to the bone. Wisps of smoke still curl up from brittle limbs. Its arms are clutched tight across its empty chest, and its legs both finish at the knee. Nearby a fresh crater is in the sand. Matt crouches down to inspect it and finds twisted shards of metal mixed with the pebbles and seashells. Way over to his right are several sets of tire tracks—deep grooves and vicious scars. Two realities appear to have collided in this place: family bucket-and-spade holidays meets all-out war. “What the hell’s happened to the world?” he asks. His question goes unanswered. Other than the waves, the gusting wind, and the constant cawing of scavenging seagulls, it’s ominously quiet. “Have you noticed? It sounds as empty as the island.”
Paul checks the horizon behind them, then looks inland, scanning left to right and back again. He’s looking for signs of life but sees nothing. A gull is sitting on the chest of another corpse, pecking at its flesh. “It’s got to give you some confidence though, hasn’t it?”
“What has?”
“All this? Everything we went through on Skek? We survived, mate. The world went to hell, and we survived. Means we’re made of tougher stuff than most.”
“Or that we were lucky.”
“Bullshit. No luck involved. Bring on the Haters.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
But he clearly isn’t.
Paul’s arrogance is astonishing. Matt thinks he’d leave him here on the beach, but being in the company of this deluded prick is marginally preferable to being on his own. He tries to walk on, but Paul stops him.
“You’ve got to start being more positive about this. It’s survival of the fittest, and it looks like we’re among the fittest left, you and me. The whys and wherefores aren’t important.”
“You reckon?”
“Absolutely. Look back at Skek … all those people, and we’re the only ones who made it home alive. A boat full of Haters and we got away. We’re fighters, mate, you and me. We’re survivors. We’ve earned our stripes and there’s nobody going to take that away from us now. Anyone gets in our way and we’ll fucking kill them.”
“But you saw them … you saw how vicious those bastards are, how driven?”
“Yeah, but they still go down when you fire a frigging shotgun at them.”
Paul marches on, unafraid. But when he reaches the high gray-stone seawall, he stops.
“What’s the matter?” Matt asks, immediately concerned.
“Listen. Can you hear it?”
Matt can’t hear anything. “Hear what?”
He strains, not sure what he’s supposed to be listening for, but then it starts to become clear. A faint noise in the distance that’s difficult to pick out. Voices. Machinery. Artillery? It sounds like a far-off battle. “Two sides fighting. One of them must be friendly. More people like us.”
Paul pushes him forward.
A quick scramble up a steep set of steps set into the stone wall and they’re off the beach and on land proper. After climbing up and over a grassy embankment, they cross an open patch of sandy scrubland. They pause at the highest point and take their first proper look at civilization in over a week.
Matt’s not sure what he was expecting to see, but it wasn’t this.
Over to their left, something resembling normality. It’s a small town. The streets appear ghostly quiet, but it’s otherwise unremarkable. Over to their right, a typically British holiday park has been almost completely razed to the ground. Instead of line after line of virtually identical caravans and holiday homes, there are now equally spaced rectangular black burn marks and bu
ckled metal skeletons. A fire has swept through the park unchecked, destroying plot after plot. “Why didn’t anyone put it out?” Matt asks. Parts of the sprawling site are still on fire. Was that a fairground? A helter-skelter? A high board next to a swimming pool? Even now a pall of black smoke hangs heavy in the sky overhead like a bad memory that refuses to fade.
They keep moving. Down another set of steps, and now they’re walking along a raised footpath, separated by metal railings and wire mesh from an ordinary-looking suburban street. Ordinary, that is, save for the ominous hole in the row of houses directly opposite. A detached house has half-collapsed, leaving an obvious gap like a missing front tooth. Where the garage and bedroom above used to be is an enormous pile of masonry. Matt’s distracted by what’s left of the upstairs bathroom. A toilet hangs precariously, suspended in midair like a trophy mounted on a hunter’s wall.
“Keep going,” Paul says, and he climbs over the railings and jumps down to street level. He hits the ground with a heavy thud, then gestures for Matt to follow.
Matt takes his time lowering himself down. “We should keep out of sight. Just until we know what’s what.”
Paul has no such concerns. He’s strolling down the middle of the street, taking in the sights as if it were just another Saturday afternoon in any old seaside town, still buoyed with questionable confidence. “What do you reckon the crosses are for?” His voice echoes off the empty walls.
“What crosses?”
Paul points the end of the shotgun at an uneven cross that has been daubed in white emulsion on the front door of an apartment block. He touches it and checks his fingertips to see if it’s dry.
“Looks like the plague,” Matt says.
“The plague?”
“Remember your history lessons? Didn’t they used to mark houses like this where there was infection? The Black Death, wasn’t it?”
“So d’you think they’ve found infection in every one of the houses in this street?”
Matt takes a step back and looks. Paul’s right. Just about every house has been marked with a cross.
“Don’t know.”
“Let’s have a look then, shall we?”
Before Matt can stop him, Paul’s already trying the door of another house nearby. It’s ajar, and he cautiously pushes it farther open, then sticks his head through the gap. “Hello. Anyone home?”
Nothing.
“Leave it, Paul. It’s not worth it. Let’s keep going.”
“There’s no one in here. You can feel it. It’s as cold inside as it is out here.”
He’s right, but it doesn’t sway Matt. “We should keep moving.” His unease is rapidly mounting.
“Don’t be such a fucking wimp. There’s no one here.”
He’s almost right.
They find a body in the lounge. The middle-aged man is wearing only a vest, boxer shorts, and a brutal-looking gunshot wound to the face. His jaw has been blown away, leaving his mouth an impossibly wide-gaping maw. What’s left of his throat is a vicious-looking, dried-up hole.
They swiftly check the rest of the house, looking for clues but finding nothing. They change into dry, reasonably well-fitting clothes they take from upstairs, then attack the kitchen. The cupboards are fairly well stocked and they waste no time. “Didn’t realize how hungry I was.” Matt stuffs his face with whatever he can lay his hands on. “I’m starving.”
There’s water too, but the gas supply has been cut. Paul’s visibly disappointed. He stands there with the kettle he’s just filled, trying to light the hob. “Bloody hell,” he complains, like everything that happened has been forgotten and this is the most important thing in the world. “I haven’t had a decent cuppa since Tuesday.”
A short time later they’re interrupted by something happening outside.
Paul rushes to an upstairs window at the back of the house and leans out, craning his neck. From here he can see between the homes on the street that backs onto this one. Unlike the road he and Matt walked down to get here, though, this one is swarming with activity.
“Haters?” Matt asks, anxiously watching over Paul’s shoulder.
“Don’t think so.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because they’re running, not fighting.”
He’s right. Matt goes to another window to try to get a better view. A mass of people are being herded down the street. They move quickly and quietly, arms loaded up with bags and boxes—clothes, food, and possessions. An evacuation? A mass exodus? Matt can’t tell, but from the expressions on the few faces he can make out from this distance, these people look completely fucking terrified.
And now he can see why.
There are far fewer of them—maybe only half as many, perhaps even less—but Haters are hunting this crowd of people down. They move with the familiar ferocity and intent, and seeing them immediately takes Matt back to Skek and fills him with the same helpless terror he felt when the pack of Haters landed on the island. The steely determination scares him most, that he knows they won’t give up, no matter what. He knows that if he were the only Unchanged man left alive and a hundred of them were on his trail, they’d kill one another to be the one to kill him.
The fastest Haters quickly reach the slowest Unchanged, and both Matt and Paul are glad that the worst of what’s happening down at street level is now obscured from view.
The noise outside increases as the killing continues, and now they can hear gunfire too. It’s not the dull staccato crack of a shotgun like the one Paul still clings onto; this is the noise of far more deadly weapons. Machine guns and pistols.
From up here, they can’t tell who’s firing and who’s being shot at.
There are noises at the front of the house they’re hiding in. Paul goes to see what’s happening, and Matt follows, concerned Paul will do something stupid and advertise they’re here. He finds that Paul’s only made it as far as the top of the stairs. He can see down to the front door from here. Light and dark outside. Flickering shadows. The street out front is now full of movement too. Matt tiptoes through the empty upstairs rooms and presses himself against the wall next to a bedroom window. He can only see a fraction of what’s happening outside, but it’s more than enough to be able to work out what’s going on. He watches as a number of crazed Haters corner a young woman and set upon her like a pack of fighting dogs. They tear her limb from limb. He’s thankful he can’t properly make out what they’re doing, but the copious amount of blood now running down the gutter leaves little to the imagination.
He and Paul stand together in absolute silence as the carnage continues below.
“We can’t stay here,” Paul announces.
“Well, we can’t leave. Not yet.”
“We have to.”
“And go where? Are you fucking crazy? Take one step outside and we’ll end up dead.”
“You think we’ll have any better chance waiting here? Come on, get a grip.”
The roar of a heavy engine arrives quickly and stops abruptly. Shouted orders. A loud thump, a second of silence, then the belly-rumbling thud of a devastating explosion nearby, close enough to shake the bones of this house and make cascades of plaster dust rain down from the bedroom ceiling.
Outside, the Haters are sent running for cover.
A tank is in the street in front of the house. It trundles slowly forward, then stops again and fires a shell at another large group of Haters. The sick bastards are so preoccupied attacking more Unchanged that they don’t realize the strike is coming until the shell hits them. A corner of a house is obliterated, and though the precariously balanced remains of the building hold steady at first, another strike brings the whole damn lot crashing down. Those people not killed by the first hit are wiped out by the falling debris from the second. The mangled bodies of Haters and Unchanged alike are everywhere, shredded. Indistinguishable from one another in death.
The front door bursts open downstairs and a man rushes inside, looking for cover. Paul and M
att edge out onto the landing and look down. Whoever he is, he looks fucking terrified. He’s covered in dust and breathing hard. For the moment all he’s interested in is escaping what’s happening outside, and he doesn’t see them watching. Soldiers in the street are advancing in a wave, firing indiscriminately at anyone who shows any sign of being about to attack.
Paul looks at Matt, and Matt looks at Paul. Neither of them dare speak, but their panicked expressions both ask the same unanswerable question: Unchanged or Hater? Us or them?
The man downstairs can hear them now.
Paul runs for cover and shuts himself inside a wardrobe with louver doors like a kid playing hide-and-seek for impossibly high stakes. He pushes himself back against the wall inside the closet and drags clothing along the rail, wrapping long coats and dresses around himself so he can’t be seen. Only his eyes remain uncovered. Through the gap he can see the entire length of the landing.
Matt’s gone in the opposite direction. He’s in the bathroom at the other end of the house, wedged into a narrow gap between the toilet and the wall, hiding behind the half-closed door and watching through the crack. He can see the intruder from here. The way his behavior has changed now he knows he’s not alone in the house is terrifying. There’s no question which side he’s on because all thoughts of his own safety have been forgotten now that he senses the prospect of an Unchanged kill.
He’s a Hater.
He creeps upstairs, the noise of his movements camouflaged by the continuing chaos of the fighting outside, then pauses at the top of the landing. Matt’s so scared he doesn’t even allow himself to blink. He knows that one mistake is all it’ll take. He doesn’t swallow. Barely even breathes.
The Hater pushes the bathroom door and looks inside. Empty bath. Empty shower. Wash basin opposite. It’s only seconds, but it feels as if he were standing there forever. Matt’s struggling to stay still, his already narrow hiding space reduced still farther as the door is pushed closer to the wall. He has all his weight on one foot. Body twisted and contorted.