Them or Us Read Free Page B

whiff of sweat and fresh human waste. He needed to take his time and not screw this up. It was either someone like him who’d turned their back on what was left of society (and he’d come across several people like that before now), or it was one of them .
    The room above the kitchen was empty. There was a bed that looked like it had been recently slept in, and a pathetically small store of supplies. Whoever had been staying here had shown some initiative and had been living off the vermin who were living off the food downstairs and next door. Three dead rats were hung by their tails from a clothes drier, and next to them was the deflated husk of something that had been either a cat or a small dog, he couldn’t tell. Regardless of what else turned out to be here, this pathetic stock of meat meant that McCoyne did at least now have something to give to Hook. He opened a pair of threadbare curtains, filling the room with dull morning light, and looked around for something to put his booty into.
    As McCoyne walked back toward the top of the stairs to check the other rooms, he noticed that a wooden chest of drawers he’d just passed was in an unusual position. There was a gap of a couple of inches between the back of the unit and the wall. Curious, he leaned over the top of it, looked down, and saw that there was a small hole in the wall between this building and the next, just wide enough for someone to crawl through. Clever little fucker, he thought to himself as he carefully pushed the chest of drawers out of the way. Whoever he’d disturbed in here had got their escape route planned, and that was no doubt how they’d survived undetected for so long. By now they’d probably either have disappeared out through the back of the building next door or locked themselves away in some other equally devious hidden hideaway. He crouched down and looked through the gap but couldn’t see anything other than complete darkness on the other side. He leaned farther in and was about to crawl right through when he heard scurrying footsteps running up fast behind him. He tried to back out and turn around but couldn’t move quickly enough in the confined space. He heard someone give a grunt of effort, then felt sudden, intense pain as he was cracked across the back with a plank of wood. He screamed out in agony and managed to roll over in time to see a scrawny figure sprinting out through the bedroom door.
    “Up here!” he yelled, hoping that someone outside would hear him and help. “Unchanged!”
    He limped out of the room, legs weak and back throbbing, then staggered downstairs. By the time he got outside, Hook and another fighter had already caught and killed the Unchanged man. His body was spread around the front of the restaurant, bright bloodred splashes of dribbling color among the dust-covered gray. Hook was standing on the sidewalk, the euphoria on his face clear even from a distance.
    “Bastard was hiding,” McCoyne said, groaning and stretching for effect. “Came up behind me and—”
    Hook grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and threw him against the side of the van. McCoyne, stunned, couldn’t move.
    “You’re fucking useless, McCoyne,” Hook sneered. “Couldn’t even kill one starving Unchanged. You need to watch yourself, pal. Fuck up like that again on my watch and you’ll be the next one I kill.”
    “I won’t,” McCoyne tried to say, his strangled voice barely audible.
    “That Unchanged,” Hook continued, pointing at the man’s remains smeared up the window, “he had more backbone than you, you prick. At least he made an effort. You, you’re just a waste of oxygen. Completely fucking useless.”

 
    Seven Weeks Ago
    MCCOYNE STOOD OUTSIDE THE recently built cordon that had been erected around the very center of Lowestoft, jostling for position in the middle of a crowd of some fifty others. None of them wanted to be there, but had to. They kept themselves to themselves and barely spoke or