Them or Us Read Free Page A

off his shoulders and started picking his way through the waste scattered all around the musty, enclosed space. He took everything he could find, no matter how insignificant: newspapers and magazines to help light fires, a couple of paperback books, some string, scissors, bits of stationery … Around the back of the counter he found some sweets—several bars of chocolate and a handful of lollipops, which he split unequally between Thacker and himself, shoving his personal hoard into the pockets of the trousers he wore under his baggy overtrousers, where Hook and the others wouldn’t find them. He checked the rest of the building but found little: some garden tools in an outhouse, some bedding, and a few pieces of cutlery. He briefly checked inside a half-empty storeroom but didn’t waste much time there. He could tell from the droppings that covered the floor and the holes that had been gnawed in the sides of the few cardboard boxes that remained on the shelves that he wasn’t the first scavenger to have been there. There was a body slumped against the back wall, and he could see the flesh of the corpse had been picked clean by rodents’ teeth. Yellow bone was visible beneath flaps of heavily stained clothing.
    McCoyne returned to the road outside to dump his stash. The rest of the party had busied themselves clearing out a service station and hotel, and by the looks of things they’d already found a damn sight more than he had. Hook, who just happened to be looking up at the wrong moment, stormed out to meet him and snatched his backpack. “This it?”
    “There’s nothing left. What am I supposed to do if there’s nothing left? I can’t magic stuff out of thin air.”
    Hook angrily shoved McCoyne in the chest. He tripped back and fell on his backside in the gutter at the side of the road, getting soaked with dirty rainwater. Hook grabbed another empty bag from the back of the van and threw it at him.
    “Keep looking,” he ordered. “Find more.”
    McCoyne wearily picked himself up again and trudged toward the takeout restaurant, praying he’d find enough stuff inside to avoid the inevitable beating that fucker Hook would give him if he came back empty-handed. His body ached and he felt permanently tired these days. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
    Inside the shop, a waist-high counter separated the public area from the rest of the building. He fumbled with an awkward brass latch, then lifted up a hinged section of counter and went through. Please let me find food, he thought to himself. He started making desperate contingency plans just in case, for a while even considering trying to creep back to the van, steal some of what the others had already found, then hand it back in again as his own and try to make it look like it was newly discovered stash.
    The kitchen was disappointingly—but not unexpectedly—empty. It had obviously been ransacked like the shop next door, and subject to the same ferocious vermin infestation. McCoyne checked every cupboard and shelf, desperate to find something that might appease Hook, but there was nothing. He walked along a hallway into a small and compact living area behind the kitchen and stared out into the overgrown back garden. He was trying to decide whether he had enough strength (or desire) to try to get back to Lowestoft by himself, and avoid facing that bastard Hook altogether, when he heard something. It was directly above his head—footsteps in a room upstairs.
    McCoyne quietly laid down his bag, unsheathed one of his knives, then crept slowly toward the bottom of the staircase. Whoever or whatever was up there, he knew it might be enough to help him avoid a battering. There was silence now, but he hadn’t imagined it. With his pulse racing and his mouth dry, he climbed the steep steps to the second floor. It was dark, but he didn’t need to see to know that there was someone up here with him. The smell gave it away—a pungent, inescapable