“He was a good man. He kept us alive, and I trusted him.”
“You call this living? Look around, Joseph. This place is no different from the mass graves I saw outside the gas chambers. You’re all just waiting to die.”
“What about you?”
“Me, too. You’ll probably all outlast me. I don’t have long left.”
“So why let it end this way? Do something with the little time you have, Danny. After all you came through to get here, how hard you fought to find your daughter, the things you managed to survive … I can’t believe you’re talking like this now.”
“Sorry if I’ve let you down,” I sneer, concentrating on another sudden cramping pain in my gut rather than anything Mallon has to say.
“It’s not just me, though, is it?” he continues, not giving up on the guilt trip. “It’s the rest of them. It’s everyone down here. You’re our last chance.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it? Way I see it, even if everything else has fallen apart up there, you can still help us. You, me, and everyone else down here, we might be all there is left now.”
45
AN HOUR PASSES, MAYBE longer. The pain gradually subsides as long as I stay still, but I know the bastard who attacked me aboveground has done some serious damage to my already seriously damaged insides. The temporary relief the drugs gave me from the pain is definitely over. I can feel my body giving up and breaking down.
The Unchanged have left me alone in here. I don’t know whether they’re maintaining a respectful distance from the dead and dying (my only company is Peter Sutton’s corpse) or if they’re just afraid of me.
The door to the corridor that leads down into the main part of the bunker is open, and I can hear Joseph talking, addressing the group. Christ alone knows what he’s telling them. My guess is he’s trying to get them ready to leave, but doesn’t the dumb bastard realize what it’s like up there now? Surely Sutton would have told him? These people are almost certainly the last Unchanged left alive, and as soon as they put their heads above the surface they’ll be hunted down and killed. They might last a few hours or days, maybe a week if they’re lucky, but sooner or later they’ll be destroyed. Their fates are as certain as mine. Poor fuckers. My mind—tired and confused—fills with baseless, nightmare images of the girl Chloe being tracked and killed by my dead daughter Ellis.
The voices down the corridor are becoming raised, and I try to sit up to listen closer. The pain in my gut is too severe, and I have to lie back down and stretch out again. I roll over onto my front and gradually manage to lift myself up onto all fours, then slowly climb the wall until I’m standing up straight. I edge toward the door, then take a few unsteady steps farther down the sloping corridor, dragging my heavy feet. By the time I get close to the other end, Joseph’s in full flow again.
“We’ve talked about this before. We knew this day would come eventually.”
“We have to stay down here,” someone protests. “They’ll never find this place.”
“You think so? They know where we are now, that’s the difference, and they’ll keep on looking until they find us. We’ve all seen what they’re like. They won’t stop until they’ve forced us out into the open and killed us all, because in their stupid, misguided minds they still believe it’s them or us. That’s why we need to move from here now while we’ve still got a chance, before they come looking.”
“It’s suicide.”
“No it isn’t. Sitting down here in the dark, slowly starving to death, is suicidal. I agree it’s not much, but at least we do have some chance up there.”
“Where are we supposed to go? They’re everywhere,” Tracey, the doctor, asks, her voice full of anger. I can see her standing opposite Joseph, arms crossed, body language uncomfortably confrontational. I keep walking, gravity and the incline helping me to move. Almost at the far door now.
“Peter and I discussed that. You are right, but they’ve been hit almost as hard by this war as we have. Their numbers are massively reduced. Peter had a plan. He said we should head straight for the ocean, get on a boat, and get off the mainland. Doesn’t matter where we go after that, we just have to—”
“Where exactly do you think you’re going to get a boat from?” I ask, staggering a little closer, leaning up against the door frame for support, dripping with sweat.
Joseph turns around and shrugs. “We’re on the coast. There will be something somewhere.”
“You’re hoping. You’re going to need a better plan than that. There’s not much left undamaged up there, you know.”
“I didn’t think there would be.”
“So what are you going to do exactly? Just walk around all the boatyards together until you find something, all of you wearing hats and dark glasses, hoping no one notices you? Get real.”
A ripple of nervous conversation spreads quickly through the group. I can see them all for the first time now.
“Why don’t you just fuck off,” Tracey says. “Go back and—”
“We’ll manage,” Joseph insists, interrupting and trying to defuse her anger. “We have so far.”
“It’s thanks to him that Peter’s dead,” a badly burned man yells, gesturing at me accusingly.
“It’s thanks to Danny these two children are alive, Gary,” Joseph counters.
“There’s nothing left of most of the towns around here,” I tell them, feeling strangely obliged to be honest and let these people know exactly what’s what aboveground. “I was told that Lowestoft was the only place left, and that’s being torn to pieces as we speak. As far as finding a boat goes, you’ll be lucky to find anything still floating, never mind anything big enough to carry all of you.”
“Peter told me about a couple of places. Oulton Broad, does that sound familiar?”
I know the place he’s talking about. From what I understand, it was a base for pleasure cruising and family boating vacations in the days before the war. It’s close to Lowestoft, but far enough away from the very center of town to have remained relatively overlooked and ignored. It’s weeks since I’ve been anywhere near the water there.
“Oulton Broad’s a possibility, but even if you managed to find a big enough boat, you’ve still got a massive problem to deal with before you start.”
“Such as?”
“It’s inland. If you’re planning on heading for the ocean, you’re going to have to sail right through Lowestoft to get there. Oh, and I might not have mentioned,” I add sarcastically, “there’s a bit of a war going on up there right now.”
“Well, that could work in our favor,” Joseph says optimistically. “A distraction.”
“You think? I’ll tell you something, fight or no fight, if anyone gets so much as a sniff of just one of you, then everything else will be forgotten and the hunt will be back on. All the infighting will stop and you’ll be the only targets again.”
Another frightened murmur spreads quickly through the group. Many of the Unchanged are staring at me now. I make momentary eye contact with Chloe. Perhaps she doesn’t fully follow the conversation, but I can tell from the expression on her face that the implications of what she’s hearing are clearly understood. Jake, sitting on a desk and swinging his legs, lifts his hand and points a finger at me.
“I bet he can show us a better place to find a boat,” he says, his voice initially quiet but steadily gaining in confidence. “He knows where to go,” he tells the others.
“He’s already told us he’s not interested in helping,” Tracey says.
Jake’s not listening. “Then make him do it.”
“We can’t.”
“You can show us, can’t you?” he says again, looking straight at me. “We were by the sea when you found us. You must know where the boats are.”