“Is this it, McCoyne?”
“No,” I tell him, “not yet. Julia says we should-”
“I think it’s time.”
“Not yet,” I say again, having to shout now to make myself heard. “She’s up there by the statue. Go and speak to her. See what she says before you-”
“It must be time,” he shouts over the rain. “I can’t stand all this waiting-”
“Parsons, don’t! It was just a helicopter crash. And the other explosion-”
He doesn’t say anything else. Instead he just pulls the pin from his grenade. A sudden surge from the crowd shunts him sideways. I try to move back as he manages to get his balance and stand straight again.
“Throw the fucking thing!”
Disoriented and racked with nerves, Parsons just looks at me. I shove him hard in the gut, sending him tripping down the slope, colliding with refugees and knocking them over like bowling pins. He topples back and is gone, immediately snatched from view by the hordes. I put my shoulder down and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction, forcing my way through the masses. I trip over a body on the ground and stumble forward, barely managing to stay upright. Instinctively, I reach out and grab hold of another startled refugee, using him to haul myself back up and keep moving forward. He tries to grapple me down, but I just push him out of the way, knowing that in seconds I’ll be the least of his worries. This one has more spirit and fight than most. He manages to cling to the corner of my coat, and I yank it from his grip, then duck to one side when he takes a swing at me. I try to focus on getting away and not panic. I shove him down and glance back over my shoulder, praying that I won’t be able to-
For a fraction of a second the world is filled with brilliant white light and a noise so loud I think my head’s going to burst. I’m thrown down by the force of the explosion behind me, and for a moment all I can do lie still, sandwiched between fallen Unchanged. I pick myself up, using the bodies around me for support. I look back again, and I can see a space in the crowd and a dark, shallow pit where, just seconds ago, countless people were crammed together. Now there’s nothing, just a layer of bloody, smoldering debris. I turn and run as the shock quickly fades and panic again begins to fill the air.
People are running in every direction away from the square now, and I allow myself to be carried along with them, using their bulk as camouflage. None of them know who or what I am, and none of them care. Away from Julia and the others I’m suddenly as irrelevant and unimportant as everyone else, and the anonymity is welcome and reassuring. Running shoulder to shoulder with the enemy, I realize the desperate need to kill these people I’ve always felt has all but disappeared. Maybe it’s because these people are all dead anyway? There’s less than an hour to go now until Sahota’s moment of glory, but I don’t think the city will last that long. A phalanx of helicopters thunders overhead. One of them breaks off and begins firing on some unseen target close to the burning high-rise, causing the crowd around me to start moving with even more panic and speed.
Above the heads of the stampeding masses I see something I think I recognize-the distinctive angular outline of a tall, recently built apartment building. As I run toward it there’s another sudden detonation and the front of the building explodes outward in a swollen bulge of fire and heat. I turn away from the immediate blast and duck down as thousands of tiny shards of glass begin raining down around me. Most of the crowd instinctively tries to turn back and run the other way. Dumb fuckers. I keep moving forward, knowing that the ground around the center of the blast will be relatively clear now with just the dead and dying to get through. I run past the burning stump of the building, zigzagging through the carnage, dodging chunks of concrete and twisted lumps of metal and flesh. I look up and see people trapped on the upper floors. A woman falls from a third-floor window and lands on the pavement just ahead of me, shoved out by the terrified crowds behind her, hitting the ground with a wet thud like rotten fruit. It’s wonderful to see. Part of me wishes I could find somewhere safe around here to sit and watch the whole city burn.
I’m back to shoving my way through the enemy masses again in seconds. I thump heads with another man, and he pushes me away angrily, his eyes full of hate. Instinctively I reach for my knife but force myself to let it go, fighting against everything I believe in. The need to kill might have subsided, but the desire’s still strong. I’m like a junkie who’s been clean for years but who’s now surrounded by an endless supply of his drug of choice. Once I start killing, will I be able to stop? If I lose control now, all hope of finding Lizzie will be gone forever, and although I don’t want to have to face her again, without Lizzie there’s no chance I’ll ever know what happened to Ellis. This is my last chance.
There’s another momentary gap in the crowd at the middle of a once-busy crossroads. This place used to be one of the busiest intersections in town with backed-up lines of traffic all day, every day. I climb up onto the roof of an abandoned MPV-the kind of car I always wanted-and look around me. The Prince Hotel is, I think, still about half a mile farther in the direction I’ve just been running. Apparently endless swarms of people continue to try to escape the carnage behind me, fighting with each other to make it through the madness. As more explosions suddenly light up the area around the town hall and the civic square behind me, the beauty and simplicity of Sahota’s plan comes sharply into focus. Did Julia cause those last blasts, or Craven or one of the others? Has she finally given the order to attack? If it’s like this now, I think to myself, how bad will it be by six o’clock?
A helicopter crawls across the sky overhead, illuminating me momentarily with its sweeping searchlight, filling the air with thumping noise. I jump back down to the road and keep running.
34
RECOGNITION AND FAMILIARITY BRING even more fear and nerves. Not far now. The hotel’s almost in view, and every footstep I take brings me closer to Lizzie and to knowing what happened to my daughter. What if I’m too late? What if Ellis is lost or dead? Suddenly turning tail and heading back to the town hall to fight alongside the others seems an easier option than what I’m about to do.
I take a shortcut through an eerily empty supermarket, in through the loading bay and out toward the smashed front windows. Before going outside again I stop and stand in the darkness to take stock of the chaos unfolding all around me. The behavior of the Unchanged population is changing. In the short time since the explosions around the town hall, most of them have abandoned their need to remain isolated and distant from everyone else. Although there are some who still cling to the protection of the shadows, desperate not to be seen, most have now joined the ever-growing exodus away from the center of the city. They move virtually as a single, snaking mass now, all of them following the person in front, none of them consciously choosing the direction in which they run. Their sudden reliance on the safety of numbers again exposes the pathetic weakness and vulnerability of the Unchanged.
I run along a narrow, shadow-filled street, then pause when I reach Arley Road and look in both directions, struggling to see anything through the hordes of people now trying to escape from the center of town down this major route. Then I spot it. The Prince Hotel stands fifty yards or so farther up the road. The once-imposing building is pretty much exactly as I remember, its frontage just becoming visible in the dull first light of dawn. The rain has finally stopped, leaving the damp air smelling fresh and clean, the dirt and decay temporarily washed away.