Them or Us

that day is enough to keep me moving toward the center of Southwold. I might still be able to help the rest of the Unchanged get away. More than that, I don’t want to die out here on my own.
    I stagger into the village, feeling myself fading with every slow step I take forward. Everything looks different here today, so much so that I’m not entirely sure this is Southwold at all. The dusting of snow makes everything look featureless and plain, but that’s not the real reason for my confusion. The tips of the wreckage of those buildings destroyed by Hinchcliffe’s fighters peek out through the ice, almost as if they’re ashamed to be seen, and the pointless devastation is incredible and heartbreaking. Parts of the village have been virtually demolished; all of it now appears uninhabitable. There are row after row of burned houses, almost every building ruined, and my disorientation continues to increase until, at last, the distinctive outline of the lighthouse appears up ahead of me. Perhaps one of the only buildings left undamaged, its outline is blurred by another flurry of snow. Using its tall, tapering shape as a marker, I head straight for it, alternately looking up at its unlit light, then down at the undisturbed snow lying all around me, desperate to find more tire tracks or footprints. They’ll be hiding inside. No Unchanged with any sense would risk being caught out in the open.
    I cross the intersection and walk past the ruins of the hotel from where John Warner used to run this place. The building has been completely gutted by fire, as have many of the surrounding buildings. There’s a mound of charred, snow-covered corpses in the middle of the village square, blackened limbs entwined, burned faces staring into space. I force myself to look away, and I remember this place as it was when I was last here. John Warner had genuinely good intentions, but he was wasting his time, I realize that now. What’s left of my side of the human race is fucked: doomed to repeatedly beat itself into oblivion until there’s nothing left of it but ashes and a handful of empty, hollow men like me.
    I take a wrong turn through the side streets and have to double back and follow my own footprints to get back on track again. Exhausted, I eventually reach the lighthouse and lean up against the curved outside wall of the building for support, slowly sliding around it until I find the door. I half step, half fall inside, relieved to finally be out of the biting wind. The building is silent like a tomb, and I catch my breath with surprise when I step back and trip over the outstretched arm of a corpse. I look down, and, bizarrely, I feel real relief that it’s someone like me and not one of the Unchanged. Judging from the stink and the discoloration of his skin, this guy’s been dead for a while. Probably one of Warner’s lookouts killed by Hinchcliffe’s men.
    I stagger to the foot of the stairs that spiral up inside the lighthouse and listen hopefully, but I don’t hear anything other than my own labored, panting breaths. Maybe they’re hiding at the top of the tower?
    “Joseph,” I shout, my voice echoing around the confined space. I wait for an answer, but none comes. “Joseph, it’s Danny.”
    Still nothing.
    I start to climb, knowing I have no choice but to check every inch of the building to be sure, and wishing we’d agreed on a meeting place with fewer stairs. I have to stop after every third or fourth step, and psych myself up to climb higher. I crane my neck upward, searching for movement in the shadows way above me. Where the hell are they? With each step I take, the more obvious it becomes that Joseph and the others never made it to Southwold. Anything could have happened to them once they’d left the bunker. Those tracks in the snow, they could have been made by anybody. With Lowestoft imploding and much of its surviving population leaving the town, this area might well have been crawling with people who would have killed the Unchanged in a heartbeat—massacred every last one of them before they’d even stopped to question why they were there or how they’d managed to survive for so long—and if the refugees didn’t get them, it was even more likely that Ankin’s troops would have. With hindsight, trying to get away from the bunker now seems the most stupid and sacrificial of moves. Even so, they had to try. They couldn’t just sit there and wait to die. I shout out a couple more times as I