Them or Us

three.
    Before any of the fighters could react, the Brute struck. It leaped through the air with a grace that belied its stature, its powerful body naked and lean, still manlike in appearance but its movements more animal than human now. The creature covered the girl’s entire face with one large hand, then slammed her head against a rock, caving in the back of her skull. With a flash of awe-inspiring violence and speed, it stamped on her chest, crushing her ribs, then yanked her right arm from its socket with a single powerful tug. It ran deeper into the woods, carrying the spindly, blood-soaked limb like a trophy and leaving its dying enemy spurting blood into the leaf litter. One of the fighters booted the woman’s disfigured face. Then the rest of the fighters moved on, each of them desperate to be the one who made the next kill.
    McCoyne stopped and waited for them to disappear. Johannson was close; he could see her beginning to move toward him as she finished killing another. She stumbled momentarily, tripping over the trailing legs of her victim, then steadied herself as she crashed through a brittle-branched bush into the clearing where McCoyne was hiding. He quickly grabbed the collar of the Brute-kill, lifted the woman’s head inches off the ground, then punched her jaw and dropped her back down, making sure the leader had seen him, hoping to give the impression that he was the one who’d struck the killer blow. Johannson made momentary eye contact with him, and he relaxed, relieved that the boss had seen him at work, satisfied that she’d fallen for his pathetic, improvised deception.
    “Keep fighting,” she grunted. “More coming.”
    She grabbed his shoulder, hauled him up onto his feet, and dragged him back into battle.
    *   *   *
    Many hours later, in an empty warehouse on a hillside near a long-deserted factory, the group took shelter from the heavy, polluted rain that had been driving down all day and all night. It was cold, more like February than August. Some heat and light came from a pyre of Unchanged corpses, but ringside seats were reserved for Johannson and her most prized fighters. McCoyne and the rest of the hangers-on—the weak, the injured, the old, the indifferent—sat on the edges and took what they could, begging scraps and trading anything they’d managed to scavenge during the course of the day for a few meager mouthfuls of food.
    Soaked through, shivering with cold, and unable to sleep, McCoyne stared into the darkness outside. Another endless night. The fear of being attacked kept him awake, but when he did manage to lose consciousness, nightmares would inevitably wake him again. He dreamed about the bombs every night, remembering the heat and the light and the impossibly huge mushroom cloud of smoke and ash rising up over the vaporized city; horrific images forever burned into his mind. For a few days immediately after the attack, the bombs had given him a misplaced sense of relief, comfort almost. He’d sought solace in the fact that such unspeakable horror had been unleashed and he’d survived. The bombs were the ultimate symbol of the Hate—how could things possibly get any worse?
    As the night dragged on, McCoyne remembered a conversation he’d had many weeks ago with a friend. They’d talked about vampires and werewolves and other fictional creatures from the past, and had come to the conclusion that although they were still alive, the monsters he and the rest of his kind had come to resemble most of all were zombies. Back then he’d tried to imagine what would happen to the undead once the last of their prey had been hunted down and destroyed. Today he decided he’d found the answer. This was all that remained: this constant, never-ending purgatory. Dragging themselves through what was left of their world until their physical bodies finally failed them, all of them desperate to satisfy an insatiable craving that would never be silenced. Nothing else mattered anymore. Their lives were empty but for the hunt and the kill. It was an inescapable paradox: By destroying their enemy they were also removing their own reason to live.
    He curled up in the darkness on the outside edge of the group and tried to rest, knowing that he somehow had to build up his strength for tomorrow. The hunting and fighting would begin again at daybreak. Who I used to be and everything I’ve done before today counts for nothing , he thought to himself as he tried to shut out the