Them or Us

rendezvous with the others at Southwold. I hold out very little hope of ever getting there, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to hide my pessimism.
    It’s another icy-cold day, and the fact that the windshield of this jeep was shot out in the fighting yesterday isn’t helping. Everywhere is covered with a half inch of snow this morning, the white on the ground making the sky look dirtier than usual, and there’s been a severe frost. The bodies of Ankin’s soldiers were frozen solid when a couple of the men tried to shift them earlier. The layer of snow makes it easy for anyone to follow our tracks, but we don’t have any option. Although the three sets of tire marks led away from the farm in the same direction initially, they split at Wrentham. With a little luck anyone trying to track our movements will follow the jeep back toward Lowestoft and leave the others alone.
    I’m still in constant pain, but I have to drive. Dean and Todd are in the back of the jeep, both of them armed and ready to fight if they have to, but remaining hidden under blankets because if anyone sees them, we’re all dead. I keep telling myself that I must be out of my fucking mind to be a part of this madness. At least the fact we’re in one of Ankin’s vehicles with its unsubtle red and white circle markings should make us appear less conspicuous if we’re spotted. Unless Hinchcliffe somehow won yesterday’s battle royal, that is. If he’s still in charge, the paint job will literally become a target.
    It’s not long before I can see Lowestoft up ahead. I can’t make out any of the buildings yet, rather just a dark haze where the gray smoke of battle is still drifting up into the sky, and the faint orange glow of several fires lighting up the underside of the heavy cloud cover. Is there anything left of the damn place? Even today, months after everything began to fall apart, after all the endless killing and bombing and wanton destruction I’ve witnessed, the sight of the dying town in the near distance makes my cold heart sink like a stone. It might make our mission simpler, but it was all so fucking pointless. I don’t even know who fired the first metaphorical shot yesterday, and I doubt Ankin or Hinchcliffe does either.
    I drive back down the A12 toward Lowestoft. I’ll turn off shortly, about a mile and a half before we get anywhere near the center of town, then I’ll use back roads to get into the development. Wait. There’s movement on the road up ahead. I slow down, and Dean immediately reacts behind me.
    “What’s wrong?” he asks, starting to shuffle nervously under the blanket.
    “Now’s not the time to be looking up,” I tell him. “There are people coming.”
    “What kind of people?”
    “What do you think?”
    Stupid question—but who the hell are they? They’re as drab and gray as everything else, and they blend colorlessly into their surroundings, making it hard to accurately gauge their numbers. I can see perhaps as many as twenty of them now, dragging themselves wearily away from Lowestoft, carrying their few remaining belongings in bags and boxes, moving alone or in pairs, large gaps opening up between them. They don’t even look up when I pass, instead keeping their heads bowed with either exhaustion or fear, maybe both. They look like refugees. That would make sense, I suppose, as much as anything makes sense today. If the fighting continued after I got away yesterday, there’s probably hardly anything of the town left, and therefore no point staying anywhere near Lowestoft anymore. This may well be the beginning of an exodus. Or maybe it’s the tail end of one? Are these few people all that’s left?
    “Who is it?” Dean asks, only daring to speak when I change direction and pull off the main road, then accelerate again toward the development.
    “Refugees. As lost as the rest of us.”
    *   *   *
    The house looks just as I left it as I pull up outside, the remains of the door that Hinchcliffe kicked in still swinging to and fro in the wind. I reverse down the drive and park next to the side door, then get out and peer in through the living room window, shielding my eyes from the snow’s glare. Doesn’t look like anything’s been disturbed. Place looks like a fucking bomb site, but it’s the same bomb site I left earlier in the week. There are no footprints in the snow but mine. I check up and down the road, and then, once I’m sure it’s safe, I open the back of