Them or Us

came at him with a knife, its blade glinting momentarily in a narrow shaft of light. As the terrified man dropped down and lunged for him, McCoyne managed to roll over to one side. Another one rolled him back, then another grabbed his kicking feet while others grabbed his thrashing arms.
    The wooden boards across the door began to splinter as someone outside struck at them repeatedly with a heavy axe. The Unchanged scattered, and as soon as a big enough gap had been forced open, fighters and scavengers alike began to pour through. Suddenly free, McCoyne scrambled up onto his feet and pressed himself flat against the wall until the flash flood of bodies coming in had dried up, then got down on his hands and knees to avoid the fighting and crawled out into the open. He sat on his backside in the dust, panting hard, listening to the screams coming from the Mine, and waited.
    *   *   *
    All talk of radiation levels and other such threats had been forgotten in the euphoria of the kill. Three-quarters of an hour later and the theme park courtyard was still a hive of activity. Scavengers searched the den and collected piles of supplies the Unchanged had hoarded. Fighters dragged the bodies of their enemy out into the open and stripped the corpses of anything of value. Eleven kills. More than the last ten days combined.
    Llewellyn marched over to where McCoyne was working, piling food into the back of one of the trucks that had been driven in from the parking lot.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Danny McCoyne.”
    “Lucky find, McCoyne.”
    “Suppose.”
    “So what happened? Did you just stumble into their nest? Take a wrong turn and find yourself surrounded?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Talk me through it.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if you don’t I’ll break your fucking legs.”
    McCoyne sighed and threw the bag of food he’d been carrying into the truck.
    “I found one of them while I was scavenging. I made him think I was like him and that you others were looking for me, then I got him to take me to the rest of them.”
    “And it was that easy?”
    “Yep, that easy.”
    “So how’d you manage that, then?”
    “Just something I picked up.”
    “Is that right?”
    “Yep.”
    Llewellyn grinned at him. “You devious little bastard, you can hold the Hate, can’t you?”
    McCoyne looked away and picked up another bag. Did he really want anyone to know?
    “So what if I can,” he said nonchalantly. “Not a lot of call for it these days, is there? Hardly any of them left.”
    “When we get back to Lowestoft,” Llewellyn said, leaning over him until their faces were just inches apart, “you’re coming with me to see Hinchcliffe. He’ll be interested to know we’ve got a freak like you in town.”

 
    Today
    THE TWO MEN SKULKED silently through the filthy streets like starving rats, skin deathly pale, eyes blinking wide, both of them looking from side to side in constant, never-ending fear of attack. They ran frantically through the collapsed ruins at the edge of the town, arms overloaded with the food they’d unexpectedly managed to scavenge, fear and adrenaline driving them on, temporarily masking their physical pain. Their bodies were wrecked: exhausted and underfed. It was the first time either of them had been out in the open in more than two weeks, but, weak as they were, as the physically strongest members of the last remaining group of Unchanged in the area, this was something Fisher and Winston had had no choice but to do. Including the straggler who’d found them a few days back, there were only thirteen of them left now. They both knew that none of them would last much longer if they didn’t have food.
    Fisher froze. “Up ahead. Top of the road. Two hundred yards.”
    Winston grabbed his arm and pulled him back against the wall of the nearest building. He watched the Hater in the distance. Was it alone or part of a pack? His eyes were failing and it was hard to tell anything from here, but it looked like a young boy, probably one of those feral kids like the one that had killed his dad last summer. It paused on the dotted white line in the middle of the road, sniffing at the air like a hunting animal trying to catch a scent. Winston forced himself to remain completely motionless and prayed that Fisher would do the same. Even the slightest movement or noise might give them away and that’d be it—months of constantly struggling to survive ended in a heartbeat (maybe that