Them or Us

we’re marching on Lowestoft tomorrow, you included. Go on ahead and talk to him for me, pave the way for us, and I’ll guarantee your safety.”
    “Just how are you going to do that?”
    “Leave it to me. Llewellyn will travel with you. He’ll get you in, then he’ll get you out again. After that, the time you have left is your own, I promise. A few more hours, one meeting with Hinchcliffe, then I swear you’re free to go.”

 
    35
    IT’S PITCH BLACK AND rain is coming in through the broken window when Llewellyn barges into my freezing-cold room and hauls me up onto my feet. Christ, it must be the middle of the night. He drags me downstairs, ignoring my protests and hardly saying a word, then shoves me out through the museum door. With my right arm held in his viselike grip, he leads me through the muddy quagmire outside.
    “Time for your checkup,” he says, virtually throwing me into the back of a long red and white truck, then slamming and locking the door behind me. It’s as dark inside the truck as it is outside, and I work my way along its length looking for another way out. It’s some kind of medical vehicle, laid out like a makeshift mobile clinic. On closer inspection, it looks like one of those blood donation units that used to come to the offices back home every so often. I used to give blood just for the free cup of tea and an hour off work.
    I’m drenched and shivering. The windows are welded shut, and there’s no other obvious way out. There’s a skylight above me, and that looks like my only viable means of escape. Groaning with effort, I manage to drag a metal box across the floor and try to get up, but it’s not high enough and the tips of my fingers barely reach the ceiling. I’m looking around for something else to stand on when the door flies open again. The noise startles me, and I look around to see a balding, willow-framed man climbing the steps up into the back of the unit, using the handrail to both support himself and haul himself up. He looks at me with a mix of bewilderment and disinterest, then calmly closes the door again and hangs his light from a hook on the ceiling.
    “Danny McCoyne?” he asks as he removes a scarf and two outdoor jackets, then puts on a heavily stained white overcoat.
    “Yes.”
    “Sit down, please, Mr. McCoyne, and stop trying to escape. There’s really no need; I’m actually trying to help you. It’s bad enough that I have to come here at this hour, so let’s not make things any harder than they need be.”
    With little other option, I do as he says, taken aback for a moment by being called Mr. McCoyne for the first time in as long as I can remember. He takes off his half-moon glasses, which have steamed up, and cleans them on his grubby lapel. He’s tall and thin, and something about his manner and the way he carries himself suggests he’s well educated. In comparison to Rona Scott he’s a bloody angel. That foul woman is a butcher: brutal and rough. I visualize this man standing amid the carnage on the battlefield, carefully dissecting Unchanged rather than just hacking them apart like everyone else.
    “Mr. Ankin has asked me to have a look and see if there’s anything we can do for you. How long have you been sick?”
    “I don’t know when it started. It’s only over the last few weeks that things have gotten really bad.”
    He nods thoughtfully, then starts to carry out a very brief physical examination. He checks the same things Rona Scott checked, but he makes me feel like a patient, not a slab of meat. He checks my pulse, listens to my heart, looks into my eyes, asks me about allergies and medication and all the other questions doctors used to ask back in the day. I’m feeling nervous suddenly, and without thinking I start asking questions back—pointless small talk to calm myself down.
    “Have you been with Ankin long?”
    “Several months.”
    “Where have you been based?”
    “In this unit, mostly,” he answers as he prods and pokes at my gut with freezing, spindly fingers.
    “Have you seen much of the rest of the country?”
    “Too much,” he says, obviously in no mood to chat.
    “Ankin was telling me about Hull. Were you there?”
    “For a while, until the fighting.”
    “What fighting? Ankin said—”
    “Look, I know you’re anxious, Mr. McCoyne, but I’m trying to work. Please shut up and stop asking questions.”
    The doctor shoves his hand down the neck of his sweater and pulls out a bunch of keys