Them or Us

to react. “You know as well as I do that we were all forced into this, forced to take sides and fight.”
    “Maybe that’s where we’re still going wrong,” he says, starting to sound suspiciously like people I heard talking way back in the summer, just before I lost my daughter forever and half the country disappeared in a white-hot nuclear haze. “Look at what happened in Southwold,” he continues unnecessarily.
    “This isn’t right, though. You shouldn’t be doing this.”
    “Not helping these people wouldn’t be right either.”
    One of the Unchanged closest to me shuffles his legs suddenly, and I almost overreact at the completely innocent movement.
    “But you’re not helping them, are you? Can’t you see that? All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. They’ll have to leave here eventually, and the second they do, they’ll be killed. Christ alone knows how you’ve managed to keep them alive down here for so long anyway.”
    He gestures for me to keep my voice down, but I’m past caring.
    “I did it because I had to,” he says. “Come on, Danny, these people have got nothing to do with the fighting. They’re just like you and me. You’ve got more in common with them than with Hinchcliffe and his fighters.”
    There’s no point arguing, this deluded idiot isn’t going to listen. I look around this dank, claustrophobic bunker in disbelief. I’ve risked and lost everything to help wipe these bastards out, and all the time Peter fucking Sutton was sheltering them. Protecting them . I’m filled with anger, and all I want to do is kill the lot of them, Sutton included—but I know I won’t. I don’t even know if I can. I’ve killed hundreds of refugees like this, but I’m outnumbered now and in no state to fight today. Or am I just making excuses? I watch an Unchanged man sitting on the edge of a thin mattress on the floor, comforting a woman and holding her close. Despite the fact they both look skeletal and close to death, the way they are together reminds me how I used to hold Lizzie before all of this began.
    Don’t be such a fucking idiot. You’re nothing like them and you had no choice. You did what you had to do. They are the enemy .
    Is that really true? Did I have a choice?
    “Just tell me why?” I ask, surprising myself by asking the question I’d been thinking out loud. I’m hoping Sutton will say something profound that will help make sense of this sudden madness.
    “I’ll show you,” he answers, beckoning me to follow him deeper into the bunker. He gently pushes past an elderly Unchanged woman, acknowledging her by name as if she matters, then takes me down another short corridor and into a large L-shaped space. We have to step over and around even more people to get through. One man is badly burned, his face heavily scarred, but his wounds are clean and have been obviously been treated. “See that?”
    “See what?”
    “The kids. Right over on the far side, there’s a couple of kids playing.”
    I follow the line of his gaze and quickly spot the children. For a few seconds I’m transfixed. They’re playing . These are the first kids I’ve seen since the start of the war who aren’t fighting or screaming, or throwing themselves at me and attacking, or standing swaying in a dark corner in a catatonic haze … these children are actually playing . They’re laughing and talking and interacting with each other. They’re pushing each other around and picking themselves back up and … and it’s hard to come to terms with what I’m seeing. This behavior—so normal and innocent—now seems strange and unnatural. It’s hard to believe that even now, even after being buried underground in this cold, damp, dark armpit of a place for who knows how long, they’re still managing to find something positive in their dire and hopeless situation. For the briefest of moments I almost feel a sense of regret. How many people like this have I killed?
    FOCUS!
    “What about them?” I ask.
    “See the older girl with the boy on her knee? Sitting just over from the others?”
    I immediately see who he’s talking about. Separated slightly from the rest of the young group and sitting in the soft circle of light coming from another lamp, a girl is holding a toddler. She looks like an underage mom, probably in her late teens, and he’s no older than two years old, three at the most. He sits on her knee and she holds him tight, arms wrapped around him, gently bouncing