Them or Us

are gone now and there’s nothing left. Before today there was always a way out, but I can’t see one today. My only option now is to try to break free and run, and I know I probably don’t have either the strength or the speed to outrun one of these fighters, let alone all of them. It’s the four of them against me, and in my heart I know that this time I’m finally fucked.
    We stop at a traffic island, and Healey consults a folded-up map, checking our location against what’s left of our surroundings. “Not far now,” he says, filling me with the same cloying sense of dread I remember feeling when I was being led blindfolded through the convent with Joseph Mallon. Now, just for a single dangerous second, I’m distracted thinking about him again. I almost envy him and the rest of the Unchanged, buried in their bunker beneath the farm, isolated from the alien world above them. Maybe some of what Peter Sutton said yesterday was right. They’re safe, I’m screwed. Who’s the most sensible?
    “You nervous, McCoyne?” Llewellyn asks, breaking ranks and catching my eye. I try to play it cool but fail completely, and my terror must be obvious. His face remains passive and unemotional at first, but then he can’t help himself and breaks into a wide, sadistic smile. He’s actually enjoying this. Evil motherfucker. “Do you think we’re going to find any airplanes today?” he sneers. Chandra sniggers and tightens his grip on my arm when I try to react. This isn’t right. If they knew how sick I am, would they let me go? Maybe I can persuade them to free me because I’ll probably be dead soon anyway and no one will know any different. It’s not like I’m going to go back to Lowestoft and tell Hinchcliffe what they’ve done. Who the hell am I kidding? Do I really expect hard, emotionless fuckers like this to show any compassion? I don’t even bother trying to fight, saving my energy instead so I can make my final break for freedom when the moment comes. By the look of things, that’s not going to be long. We duck down through a hole in a chain-link fence, then cross a patch of scrubland. My nerves increase with every step. I can’t help myself …
    “Whatever you’re going to do to me, just do it.”
    Llewellyn looks at me, puzzled. “What makes you think we’re going to do anything to you? You’re paranoid, man.” He turns to the others. “This it?” he asks.
    Healey nods. Chandra lets go of me and I try to run. They’re too damn fast for me. Llewellyn shoots out his arm, grabs me, and pulls me back into line.
    “Don’t,” he warns ominously.
    The area of town we’ve reached seems to have suffered slightly less damage than elsewhere, and most of the buildings around us are still largely intact. Following some predetermined plan, my four-fighter guard suddenly disperses. Healey and Swales go one way; Chandra stops walking and takes a radio out from his backpack. Llewellyn still has ahold of me, and he keeps me moving forward. I try to pry his fingers off my arm, but he’s having none of it. He tightens his grip.
    “Just do it,” I beg pathetically, “please…”
    “Pull yourself together, you miserable dick,” he says as he drags me toward a wide-fronted, Gothic-looking building. What the hell is this place? It’s too big to be a church. Was it some kind of school? A prison, city hall, or some other public office before the war? He opens the arch-shaped white wooden door, looks around, then pushes me inside. He shuts it behind us and finally lets me go. “Listen, I’m not going to kill you. I’ve got better things to do today.”
    “Then why did you—”
    “You shouldn’t even be here. Fucking Hinchcliffe. Don’t know why he sent you out with us.”
    It takes my eyes a few seconds to become accustomed to the light indoors. We’re standing in the entrance hall of some kind of museum. It has the unmistakable air of the past about it; a bubble of the old, old world, trapped here in the rubble of the new.
    “What are we doing here?”
    “It’s funny how things work out sometimes,” Llewellyn says, although from where I’m standing there’s nothing funny about it at all. “You never know what you’re going to find around the corner these days.”
    I follow him up several flights of a wide marble staircase, legs weak with effort and relief, to the third floor of the building. We pass glass cabinets filled with remnants of long-dead people and long-lost things. This