Them or Us

immediately concerned, yellow eyes bulging in the light.
    “Thought I heard something,” she said, already beginning to doubt herself. “Sounded like an engine.”
    “There’s nothing,” Fisher said quickly, scowling at her. “Just them moving around up there. Either that or your imagination…”
    He was probably right. She couldn’t hear anything now. Sally passed the packet on to the man sitting next to her—the new arrival. He’d hardly spoken since he’d gotten here, but it was obvious he was as desperate as the rest of them: a scrawny bag of skin and bones, a haunted expression etched permanently onto his weary face. He took the cookies from Sally, then passed them on without saying a word.
    He waited for a few minutes longer before quietly getting up and slipping farther back into the shadows. He stepped over a couple of bodies—one sleeping, one dying—then made his way to the part of the cramped storage depot they used as a toilet.
    Sally tried to block out the foul noise of the man pissing from a height into a metal bucket, and was relieved when it finally stopped. She waited for him to come back, but became concerned when he didn’t immediately return. The rest of the shelter was almost pitch black, but she got up and felt her way along the cold, damp walls until she found him by almost falling over him. He was lying on the ground on his back, trying to force open the roller-shutter. A chink of light spilled across the floor where he’d managed to get his fingers under the shutter. With a grunt of effort he lifted it up another six inches.
    “What the hell are you doing?” Sally asked, standing directly behind him. He didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at her. Instead he kept working, shoving his hands farther under the shutter and forcing it up another couple of inches at a time. He rolled over onto his front and was about to try to slide through the gap when she grabbed the heel of his boot and yanked him back.
    “Don’t panic,” she pleaded with him, keeping her voice low so the others didn’t hear. “Please don’t do anything stupid. I know it’s hard being trapped in here, but don’t—”
    He scrambled back and stood up fast. Catching Sally off guard, in a single sudden movement he spun around and reversed their positions, pushing her up against the wall. He covered her mouth with his left hand, barely needing to use any force, then sank a knife deep into her belly.
    “I’m sorry,” Danny McCoyne said, keeping her mouth covered to stifle any noise. “It’s better for all of us this way. Trust me.”
    He laid Sally’s body down, waited until he was sure she was dead, then wiped his bloodied hand clean on her jacket and slid out under the roller-shutter.
    In stark contrast to the desolate silence an hour or so earlier, the road outside was now full of movement. Several battered vehicles and a group of eight armed figures had gathered a short distance from the storage depot doors. McCoyne picked himself up, brushed himself down, and wearily walked over to talk to Llewellyn, who marshaled the movements of the fighters from the back of a pickup truck.
    “Had fun in there, McCoyne?”
    “They’re fucked,” he grunted. “They won’t give you any trouble.”
    “How many?”
    “Eleven of them left. Three kids. Few basic weapons. All of them are pretty weak. A couple of them are virtually dead already.”
    Llewellyn nodded, then gestured for his soldiers to take up their positions. Five men armed with blades, bludgeons, and the occasional gun stood on either side at the doorway and waited. A van reversed back into the gap. The driver got out and moved around to the back.
    “Wilson,” Llewellyn bellowed at him, “let them go.”
    On his command, Kevin Wilson, chief kid-wrangler, yanked the van doors open and dragged two small children out on leashes. Naked and covered with grime, they struggled to escape, one of them trying to bite through the lead. When a terrified Unchanged face appeared under the roller-shutter for a split second, the children both lunged forward and threw themselves at the gap with furious speed. It was all Wilson could do to untangle himself from the leather straps and let go before he was dragged inside with them.
    Exhausted, McCoyne leaned back against Llewellyn’s pickup and waited for the inevitable. Barely half a minute passed before the other door into the shelter flew open and a crowd of terrified Unchanged was flushed out, running