“Wait,” I interrupt, “he disappeared?”
“It was like someone flicked a switch, Danny. One minute he’s sitting in his office, giving out his orders, the next he’s loading up a car, clearing out the supplies, getting his people together, and getting the hell out of there. They killed the rest of us before they left, but I was one step ahead of the game. Locked myself in your old room, as it happens. Hid under the bed and waited there until I was sure they’d all gone.”
“But the bomb … how did you get away?”
“A combination of good luck and common sense,” he answers. “The area around the convent was empty, not a single person left there but me. Then, next day, crack of dawn, everything goes crazy. I hear fighting, then there’s this unbelievable noise and the army starts racing away from the middle of town. Didn’t take a genius to work out that the shit was about to hit the fan big-time. Sahota’s people had left a couple of cars behind. I had one of them ready, and I joined the convoy out of the city. I saw the explosion in the distance, but I was far enough away by then. I dug in with the military until they were attacked. Me and a couple of others managed to get away, and that was when we ran into Peter here and his people. ’Cause he’s like you he was able to keep up all the bullshit and pretense and keep us hidden. Now here we are, several months and several stops farther down the line. And here you are, too. Jesus Christ, Danny McCoyne, it’s good to see you! I can’t believe it’s you!”
I can’t believe it’s him, either. I try again to make sense of everything I’ve heard today, to unweave the stories Mallon and Sutton have told me and try to find a logical explanation as to why I’m in a bunker buried under a farm with a bunch of foul Unchanged, but I can’t. It’s as impossible as it sounds. My overriding emotion right now, stronger even than anything I feel for either Mallon or the Unchanged, is anger toward Hinchcliffe and Sutton. Now, if what Mallon’s just said is true, then that anger spreads to Sahota, too, because after dispatching me and many others into the city to fight and sacrifice ourselves in the name of the cause, he turned tail and ran. Cowardly fucker.
“I need help to look after these people,” Sutton says. I look into his face, but in the half-light his expression is impossible to read. Is he genuine, or is he just another manipulative shyster, out to use me and exploit me like everyone else? “This is their only chance. This is our only chance.”
“You shouldn’t have brought me here.”
“Yes I should. Please stay, Danny, I need your help. I can’t do this on my own anymore.”
“Can’t do what exactly? You keep saying that.”
“I can’t provide for all these people by myself. I was working in Southwold to try to get food and water, but there wasn’t enough, and…”
The penny drops.
“So that’s it? That’s why you really wanted me here? You think because of my connections with Hinchcliffe I’ll be able to sort everything out for you and keep you stocked up with supplies? Fuck off, Sutton. Go hijack one of those trucks you saw in Southwold.”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” he backpedals quickly. “I didn’t even know you were connected to Hinchcliffe. If I had, then maybe I wouldn’t have asked you.”
“I wish you hadn’t.”
“Take a look around you,” he says, his voice intentionally louder, wanting to be heard now. “These people deserve more than this.”
“Not my responsibility.”
“Yes it is,” he shouts, loud enough to fill the whole shelter and stop all other conversations dead. “It’s our responsibility.”
I shake my head with despair. What do I have to do to make this dumb fucker understand?
“Not my responsibility,” I shout back equally loudly, then lower my voice again. “I’m not interested. What’s to stop me bringing Hinchcliffe’s fighters here and ending this bullshit today?”
“You won’t do that, Danny,” Mallon says. “I know you’re better than that. I know what kind of a man you are. I saw it.”
“You saw nothing.”
“Yes I did. Back at the convent I saw a man who still had his priorities straight, even after all that had happened. You were still thinking about your family when all that everyone else like you wanted to do was kill. Tell me, did you ever find your daughter?”
“What was left of her.”
“Sorry, man. Was she…?”
I shake my head, but I can’t bring myself to explain. It hurts too much. I look deep into Mallon’s dark, staring eyes and wish with every fiber of my being that I’d never met either him or Sutton. Then again, I remind myself, without Mallon I’d never have been able to get back into the city and I’d never have found Ellis and shared those last few moments with Lizzie. They’d have died together in the bomb blast, and I’d have been none the wiser. Strange how important, in retrospect, those last few seconds we had together were. I think about them every day. Lizzie gave up everything she had left for Ellis. The memories of what happened to her and what my daughter became still fill me with unbearable pain.
I can’t take this.
I can’t do it.
I push past both of them and run for the exit. Mallon tries to hold me back, but I shrug him off and keep moving.
25
THE COLD AIR OUTSIDE hits my chest like a hammer blow, but I keep moving. I run back toward the farm, but I’ve scarcely made it to the top of the rise before I’m doubled over with pain, coughing so violently I can hardly breathe, making so much foul noise that the solitary cow bolts and runs for cover again. I make it back to the buildings, stumbling down the slope. In a momentary gap between painful convulsions I manage to suck in a lungful of air and spit a lump of sticky, dribbling phlegm against a wall. I watch it as it slowly drips down to the ground. My spit is red-brown and streaked with blood, and there’s a foul metallic aftertaste in my mouth. Fuck. What’s happening to me? I’m falling apart, physically and mentally. I slump back against the wall of the burned-out farmhouse, too weak to stay standing, sobbing with the pain. Christ, it hurts.
Peter Sutton slowly approaches. I wish he’d fuck off and leave me alone, but I’m too tired to fight or argue.
“I’m sorry,” he says pathetically. “There was no other way.”
“You should never have brought me here,” I tell him again, still wheezing badly.
“I didn’t know what else to do. I’m desperate, Danny. I didn’t have any choice. When I saw you in Southwold and realized you were like me…”
I slide farther down the wall and land hard on my backside on the ice-cold dirt.
“You did have a choice. You still do. You can just walk away from this place right now and not look back. Just forget about them.”
“Is that what you’re going to do?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” I tell him, pausing midsentence to clutch my chest as another wave of cramping pain takes hold. It’s snowing hard now, and I can feel my face and hands starting to freeze.
“You know I can’t do that,” he says, standing over me and looking down. He helps me sit up straight again.
“Why not? What’s stopping you? Why not just leave them down there to starve to death? It’ll be easier on them in the long run. Better than being forced out into the open and killed, and that’s what’s going to happen eventually. They can’t stay down there forever.”
“Those people down there are more human than most of what’s up here.”
“Then maybe it’s time to redefine ‘human.’”