Them or Us Read Free

a part of since being picked up off the road after the bombs exploded had begun to gradually change in purpose over the last few weeks. The Unchanged were becoming harder to find each day, and the competition to be the one who actually made the kills when they found them was intensifying. Like an increasing number of other people (Switchbacks, Thacker liked to call them—Christ, McCoyne thought, why does everyone have to have a label these days?), McCoyne volunteered daily to head out into the wilderness alongside the hunting parties to scavenge. Other people, those who weren’t particularly capable fighters but who had retained useful skills from their prewar vocations—builders, mechanics, medics, and the like—found some useful employment in the town and were paid by Thacker with scraps of food to repair and rebuild as best they could with limited resources. There was no call, though, for a useless, second-rate desk jockey like the man McCoyne used to be. His career options had been reduced almost overnight to a simple choice: scavenge or beg. At least scavenging sometimes enabled him to find the odd extra scrap, which he’d shove in his pocket when no one was looking to either eat himself or trade with later.
    Lowestoft was as good as it was going to get. McCoyne knew what he needed to do to survive, and he knew the town was his best chance. He wasn’t stupid. Tired, apathetic, and sick of fighting constantly perhaps, but not stupid.
    *   *   *
    A fleet of battered vans left Lowestoft each morning at daybreak: a couple of fighters in each sitting up front, a handful of scavengers crammed into the back behind them. Thacker’s generals (as the few fighters who exerted sufficient influence over the rest of them had come to be known) dispatched the vehicles out toward villages and towns in a steadily widening arc. Once they’d arrived at their predetermined locations, the teams were under orders to split up and search, looking for Unchanged first of all, then food, water, and fuel. Then anything else they could find.
    McCoyne stood behind the van in the middle of a dead village he didn’t even know the name of and looked around dejectedly. The hissing gray rain had stopped momentarily, and now all he could hear was the water dripping off roofs and trees and trickling down drains. It was already obvious that this was a lifeless place, and he silently cursed whoever it was who had decided to send them out this way. There were clear signs that numerous other scouting parties had been here before them. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference where they went, he thought to himself: Everywhere was like this now.
    Hook, the lead fighter who’d driven the van this morning, shoved McCoyne toward a row of buildings on the other side of the road, grunting at him to check them out. McCoyne stumbled forward but managed to keep his balance and didn’t protest for fear of provoking a reaction. A momentary scowl over his shoulder was as defiant as he dared to be. Grumbling under his breath, he wrapped his arms around himself and limped toward the buildings, chest rattling with the cold.
    He peered through a grubby, cobweb-covered window into the first of five narrow row houses. He couldn’t see anything inside and moved on, more interested in the takeout place next door and the newsagent’s next to that. The newsagent’s seemed the most sensible place to start. The door was stuck, but he managed to shove it open, the unexpected noise of an old-fashioned entrance bell ringing out and announcing his success at gaining entry. He stood still in the middle of the shop and waited for a moment, wondering if anyone was going to come to the counter. It was a dumb, instinctive reaction. The owners of this place were almost certainly long gone or dead, and judging by the stench in this gloomy, icy-cold building, he was betting on the latter.
    Once his eyes had become accustomed to the low light, he swung his empty backpack