Them or Us

noise of the animals around the fire. If I don’t kill tomorrow, I’m dead .

 
    Three Months, Three Weeks Ago
    JOHANNSON WAS GONE, KILLED in a battle over hunting grounds several weeks back. In the days preceding her death, her growing army had slowly drifted east toward the coast, ultimately reaching the edge of territory controlled by a man called Thacker. Although nowhere near as ruthless a warrior as Johannson, Thacker had other qualities that inspired hordes of fighters to follow him, and their numbers ultimately gave him a crucial edge. In contrast to much of the now nomadic population, he ran his operations from an established and easily defendable location that provided shelter and a place to store food, weapons, and other supplies. When Johannson had challenged him, her own people had turned against her, realizing they’d be better off with this new lord and master. Thacker was different. As well as being aware of the importance of finding the next Unchanged to kill, he was already thinking about what might happen tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Unlike just about everyone else, he had started to plan ahead.
    Thacker, his fighters, and an ever-increasing horde of accompanying scavengers had occupied the coastal town of Lowestoft. The most easterly point on the map, before the war it had been a curious mix of industrial port and seaside resort, and its relative remoteness seemed to have shielded it from the worst of the fighting. Sure, it was a mere shadow of the place it had once been and it had been stripped of pretty much everything of value, but unlike most of the rest of the country’s towns and cities, it remained remarkably intact. Unbroken windows, secure doors, and the like were still few and far between, but most buildings remained standing, and its basic physical infrastructure was sound.
    A sensible man (in his prewar life he’d been national operations manager for a large and successful chain of hotels), Thacker immediately recognized the potential value of a place like Lowestoft in this new, postwar world. Its coastal location was important and easy to defend. Furthermore, its size was ideal: large and established enough to cope with a decent-sized population, but sufficiently compact to be managed effectively by him and his small army.
    *   *   *
    First light.
    McCoyne reported for duty and joined the back of the line of volunteers as he did every morning. The hunting parties he’d been forced to be a part of since being picked up off the road after the bombs exploded had begun to gradually change in purpose over the last few weeks. The Unchanged were becoming harder to find each day, and the competition to be the one who actually made the kills when they found them was intensifying. Like an increasing number of other people (Switchbacks, Thacker liked to call them—Christ, McCoyne thought, why does everyone have to have a label these days?), McCoyne volunteered daily to head out into the wilderness alongside the hunting parties to scavenge. Other people, those who weren’t particularly capable fighters but who had retained useful skills from their prewar vocations—builders, mechanics, medics, and the like—found some useful employment in the town and were paid by Thacker with scraps of food to repair and rebuild as best they could with limited resources. There was no call, though, for a useless, second-rate desk jockey like the man McCoyne used to be. His career options had been reduced almost overnight to a simple choice: scavenge or beg. At least scavenging sometimes enabled him to find the odd extra scrap, which he’d shove in his pocket when no one was looking to either eat himself or trade with later.
    Lowestoft was as good as it was going to get. McCoyne knew what he needed to do to survive, and he knew the town was his best chance. He wasn’t stupid. Tired, apathetic, and sick of fighting constantly perhaps, but not stupid.
    *   *   *
    A fleet of battered vans left Lowestoft each morning at daybreak: a couple of fighters in each sitting up front, a handful of scavengers crammed into the back behind them. Thacker’s generals (as the few fighters who exerted sufficient influence over the rest of them had come to be known) dispatched the vehicles out toward villages and towns in a steadily widening arc. Once they’d arrived at their predetermined locations, the teams were under orders to split up and search, looking for Unchanged first of all,