Them or Us

gaps between rows of silent gaming machines. He ducks and weaves around one-armed bandits and video-game cabinets with smashed screens, trying to keep us moving at a speed I can barely match. He heads for another open door at the far end of this large, high-ceilinged room and I follow him through, out onto the pier. The wind out here over the sea is ferocious. The slatted wooden walkways are slippery as grease, the snow and ice turned to slush by the salt spray from the water below. There are several narrow buildings up ahead, stretching up along the center of the pier. A door at the front of the third one along is being held open.
    “Get inside,” Joseph says, shoving me into what used to be a gift shop. There are still rows of dust-covered souvenirs on shelves on the walls. The Unchanged are cowering in every available space. Wherever I look I see their frightened faces staring back at me, most of them desperate for help and reassurance. I’m in no position to provide either. Others of them are armed and ready to fight.
    “Where are Parker and Charlie?” a man crouching down next to me asks. Joseph shakes his head.
    “They didn’t stand a chance,” I tell him. “None of you do.”
    “What the hell happened, Danny?” Joseph asks. “What about Todd and Dean? The boat?”
    “We never made it as far as the boatyard,” I explain. “He was waiting for me back at the house when we got there. He waited until they’d loaded up the jeep, then killed them both while I was out of the way. I didn’t know he was going to be there, Joseph, I swear. Fucker was on to me.”
    “Who is he?” someone else asks.
    “Hinchcliffe.”
    “Peter told me about him,” Joseph says. “Said he was the worst of the worst.”
    “That’s about right.”
    “But there must be something we can do?”
    Tracey, the doctor, gets to her feet. “I know exactly what we can do,” she says, picking up a bludgeon. “We kill the fucker.” She has to get past me to get out. She tries to push me aside, but the shack’s so narrow and tightly packed that she can’t get through. I try to hold her back, but she shoves me away.
    “You don’t understand—”
    “No, you don’t understand,” she yells at me. “There are almost thirty of us and just one of him. We get out there now and we kill him.”
    “Then that will make you just as bad as him.”
    “So? It’s a necessity, McCoyne. We have to do it to survive. There’s a world of difference between killing just one man to save us and all the thousands of innocent deaths that people like him are responsible for.”
    “Is there?”
    “Of course there is.”
    “So what do you think I am?”
    “What?”
    “Me and Peter Sutton, how do you think we managed to survive aboveground for so long?”
    “Peter told us,” she answers. “He said he could fake the anger and make them think he was like them. He said you were the same. Peter risked everything for us.”
    “There’s no disputing that, but he wasn’t completely honest with any of you.”
    There’s a ripple of discontent when I dare say something negative about Sutton.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “We’re like them,” I tell her. “Me and Peter, we’re the Haters, just like Hinchcliffe out there, and all those other bastards that have hounded you and made your lives hell for the last year.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “It’s true,” Joseph says. “I saw it for myself before I found Peter. I knew Danny from way back. He was a killer. He learned how to suppress the urge to fight.”
    The space around me grows in size, and I sense people pushing themselves back against the walls to put the maximum possible distance between us.
    “Then as soon as we’ve finished with this Hinchcliffe, we’ll come back for you,” Tracey sneers.
    “Probably not worth the effort. I’ll be dead soon anyway.”
    “Good.”
    I’m about to speak again when someone screams. I turn around and look back along the pier toward the shore. I can see Hinchcliffe just inside the arcade building now, coming this way.
    “Thing is,” I tell them, “whatever it was that caused the divide between us, it doesn’t matter now. I don’t know why it happened, and I doubt any of us ever will. All that matters now is what happens next. We’ve got to abandon all this us-and-them bullshit, because we’re all that’s left of the human race. You can either put a stop to the killing today or keep going at it until we’re all