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  “Look on the bright side,” Marshall said under his breath, sharing Mark’s disappointment and almost managing to smile. “Loads more of those cunts die when the public are involved.”

  He was right. As soon as the first civilians took a step out of their hiding place, hordes of Haters would inevitably descend on them from every direction. Maybe that was the plan? Easy pickings for the helicopter and the forty or so armed soldiers traveling with them in this convoy. He wondered what kind of state the survivors they rescued would be in. Would they even be worth rescuing? He couldn’t imagine how they’d managed to last for so long out here. Christ, it had been hard enough trying to survive back in the city. If these people thought their situation was going to get better after they were rescued, they were very wrong.

  The road they followed used to be a busy commuter route into town, permanently packed with traffic. In today’s baking afternoon heat it was little more than a silent, rubbish-strewn scar that snaked its way between overgrown fields and run-down housing projects. Sandwiched between the first military vehicle and the squat armored troop transport bringing up the rear, the three empty, high-sided wagons clattered along, following the clear path that had been snowplowed through the chaos like the carriages of a train following an engine down the track. Still bearing the bright-colored logos and ads of the businesses that had owned them before the war, they were conspicuously obvious and exposed as they traveled through the dust-covered gray of everything else.

  Mark stared at the back of a row of houses they thundered past, convinced he’d seen the flash of a fast-moving figure. There it was again, visible just for a fraction of a second between two buildings, a sudden blur of color and speed. Then, as he was trying to find the first again, a second appeared. It was a woman of average height and slender build. She athletically scrambled to the top of a pile of rubble, then leaped over onto a parched grass verge, losing her footing momentarily before steadying herself, digging in, and increasing her pace. She sprinted alongside the convoy, wild hair flowing in the breeze behind her like a mane, almost managing to match the speed of the five vehicles. Mark jumped in his seat as a lump of concrete hit the truck door, hurled from the other side of the road and missing the window he was looking through by just a few inches. Startled, he glanced into the side mirror and saw that they were being chased. His view was limited, but he could see at least ten figures in the road behind the convoy, running after them. They were never going to catch up, but maybe they sensed the vehicles would be stopping soon. They kept running with a dogged persistence, the gap between them increasing but their speed and intent undiminished. He looked anxiously from side to side and saw even more of them moving through the shadows toward the road. Their frantic, unpredictable movements made it hard to estimate how many of them there were. It looked like there were hundreds.

  Marshall remembered the place they were heading to from before the war, a modern office building in the middle of an out-of-town business park; as part of his job in his former life he’d made deliveries to a depot nearby on numerous occasions. He was glad he was following and not leading the way today. It was getting harder to navigate out here, and he’d convinced himself they had farther to go than they actually did. Everything looked so different out here beyond the exclusion zone, the landscape overgrown and pounded into submission after months of continuous fighting. A reduction in the number of undamaged buildings was matched by a marked increase in the level of rubble and ruin. There were more corpses here, too. Some were heavily decayed, sun-dried and skeletal; others appeared fresh and recently slaughtered. Christ, he thought to himself, not wanting to voice his fears and observations, what would this place be like a few months from now? There were already weeds everywhere, pushing up through cracks in the pavements and roads and clawing their way up partially demolished buildings, no municipal workers with weed-killer sprays left to halt their steady advance. Recent heavy rainstorms and the relative heat of early summer had combined to dramatically increase both the rate of growth of vegetation and the rate of decay of dead flesh. Everything seemed now to have a tinge of green about it, like mold spreading over spoiled food. The outside world looked like it was rotting, and the stench that hung heavy in the air was unbearable.

  High above the line of trucks, the helicopter suddenly banked hard to the right and dropped down. Mark leaned forward and watched its rapid descent, knowing that the sudden change in flight path meant they’d reached their destination. Despite an irrational fear of heights, at moments like this he wished he were up there picking off the enemy from a distance rather than trying to deal with them down at ground level. Not that he was expected to fight unless he had to, of course. His role was simply to get as much food, supplies, civilians, or whatever they were out here to acquire into the trucks in as short a time as possible. He wasn’t stupid, though. He knew that these missions were often little more than thinly veiled excuses to stir up as many of the enemy as possible, draw them into a specified location, and blow the shit out of them. Their uncoordinated, nomadic behavior and apparently insatiable desire to kill made them surprisingly easy to manipulate and control. Any activity outside the exclusion zone would inevitably cause most of them within an unexpectedly wide radius to surge toward the disturbance, where they could be taken out with ease. And if civilians, soldiers, or volunteers like him got hurt in the process? That was an acceptable risk he had to get used to. Anyone was expendable as long as at least one Hater died with him.

  The convoy swung the wrong way around a traffic circle, then joined the road that led into the business park. Once well maintained and expensively landscaped, it was now as run-down and overgrown as everywhere else. The snowplow truck smashed through a lowered security barrier, then accelerated again, bouncing up into the air and clattering heavily back down as it powered over speed bumps. Mark could see the office building up ahead, the sun’s fierce reflection bouncing back at him from its grubby bronzed-glass fascia. He tried to look for an obvious entrance, but at the speed they were approaching it was impossible. He clung to the sides of his seat and lurched forward as Marshall, following the lead of the driver in front, turned the truck around in a tight arc and backed up toward the building. He slammed on the brakes just a couple of yards short of the office, parallel with the other vehicles.

  Mark didn’t want to move.

  Marshall glared at him. “Go!”

  He didn’t argue. The tension and fear suddenly evident in Marshall’s voice were palpable. Mark jumped down from the cab and sprinted around to open up the back of the truck. He was aware of sudden noise and movement all around him as soldiers poured out of their transports and formed a protective arc around the front of the building and the rest of the convoy, sealing them in. More soldiers, maybe a fifth of their total number, ran towards the office building’s barricaded entrance doors and began to try to force their way inside. A burned-out car surrounded by garbage cans full of rubble blocked the main doorway.

  “Incoming!” a loud voice bellowed from somewhere far over to his left, audible even over the sound of the swooping helicopter and the noise of everything else. Distracted, he looked up along the side of the truck toward the protective line of soldiers. Through the gaps between them he could see Haters advancing, hurtling forward from all angles and converging on the exposed building with deadly speed. Like pack animals desperately hunting scraps of food, they tore through holes in overgrown hedges, clambered over abandoned cars, and scrambled through the empty ruins of other buildings to get to the Unchanged. Mark watched transfixed as many of them were hacked down by a hail of gunfire coming from both the defensive line and the helicopter circling overhead, their bodies jerking and snatching as they were hit. For each one that was killed, countless more seemed to immediately appear to take their place, all but wrestling with each other to get to the front of the attack. Some of them seemed oblivious to the danger, more concerned with killing than with being killed themselves. Their ferocity was terrifying.
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br />   Mark heard the sound of pounding feet racing toward him. He spun around, ready to defend himself, but then stepped aside when he saw it was the first of a flood of refugees who were pouring out of a smashed first-floor window. He tried to help them up into the back of the truck, but his assistance was unwanted and unneeded. Sheer terror was driving these people forward, every man, woman, and child fighting with every other to get into one of the transports, desperate not to be left behind. After weeks of living in unimaginable squalor and uncertainty, and with their hideout now open and exposed, this was their last chance—their only chance—of escape.

  The relentless gunfire and the thunder and fury of the helicopter overhead continued undiminished. Mark tried to block out the noise and concentrate on getting as many people as possible into the truck. Ahead of them, the soldiers were being forced back. Marshall revved the engine, his only way of letting Mark know he was about to leave. Terrified of being left behind, he ran forward and hauled himself up into his seat, leaving more refugees to try to cram themselves into the truck.

  “This is getting shitty,” Marshall said, nodding over toward a section of the defensive line of soldiers that appeared dangerously close to being breached. “We’re going to—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, a gap appeared in the line where a Hater woman took out a soldier as he reloaded. She knocked the soldier to the ground, leaped onto his chest, and caved his head in with a soccer-ball-sized lump of concrete. As the soldiers on either side tried to react and defend, one gap became two and then three and then four. In disbelief Mark watched as a huge beast of a Hater manhandled another soldier out of the way and smashed him up against a wall. The soldier continued to fire at his attacker, but the Hater seemed oblivious to the bullets that ripped into his flesh, continuing to move and fight until he finally dropped and died.

  The speed and strength of the enemy were bewildering and terrifying. Marshall had seen enough. Following the lead of the truck to his right, without waiting for order or instruction, he accelerated. Unsuspecting refugees fell from the back of the truck and immediately began sprinting after the disappearing vehicle, but they didn’t stand a chance. Haters rushed them from either side, taking them out like animal predators preying on plentiful, slow-moving game on the savannah. In the distance the last few civilians spilled out of the building like lambs to the slaughter.

  The third truck—the one that had been parked immediately to Marshall’s left—hadn’t moved. Mark watched in the side mirror as Haters yanked the doors of the truck’s cab open and dragged the driver out, swarming over him like maggots over rotting food. Within seconds they’d enveloped the entire vehicle and were massacring the refugees who’d fought to get in the back to be driven to safety. As the distance between the truck he was in and the building behind him increased, all Mark could see was more refugees and stranded soldiers being wiped out in countless brutal, lightning-fast attacks. Above them all, the helicopter continued to circle and attack, its gunner’s orders now simply to destroy anything on the ground that still moved.

  Those Haters who had escaped the carnage outside stormed into the building, looking for more of the Unchanged to kill. More than twenty of them moved from room to room, sweeping over every last square foot of space, desperate to kill and keep killing. One of them sensed something. In a narrow corridor he stopped beside an innocuous doorway that the rest of them had ignored. There were dirty handprints around the edges of the door, and he was sure he’d heard something moving inside. It was the faintest of noises, barely even audible amid the chaos of everything else, but it was enough. He grabbed the handle and pulled and pushed and shook it, but the door was locked. He took a hand axe from an improvised holster on his belt and began to smash at the latch. One of them was still in there, he was certain of it. He could almost smell them …

  The short corridor was empty, and the noise of his axe splintering the wood temporarily drowned out the sounds of fighting coming from elsewhere. Ten strong strikes and the wood began to split. He hit the door hard with his shoulder and felt it almost give. Another few hits with the axe and another shoulder shove and it gave way. He flew into the dark, foul-smelling room and tripped over a child’s corpse that had been wrapped in what looked like an old, rolled-up projector screen. An Unchanged woman—the dead child’s mother, he presumed—ran at him from the shadows. Instead of attacking, she dropped to her knees in front of him and begged for mercy. He showed her none, grabbing a fistful of hair, then chopping his axe down into the side of her neck, killing her instantly. He pushed her body over. She collapsed on top of her child, and he looked down into her face, her dead, unblinking eyes staring back at him. He felt a sudden surge of power and relief, the unmistakable, blissful, druglike rush of the kill.

  The room was filled with noise again as the circling helicopter returned. Taking cover behind a concrete pillar, he peered out through a small rectangular window and watched as more of the fighters still out in the open were taken out by machine-gun fire from above. Then, without warning, the helicopter turned and climbed and disappeared from view. He listened as its engines and the thumping of its rotor blades faded into the distance.

  Danny McCoyne knew he had to get out of the building before they came back. He’d seen them use these tactics before. He knew what was coming next.

  1

  HAVE TO GET AWAY from here. It’s too dangerous to stay. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about our piss-weak, cowardly enemy, it’s that they always deal their deadliest blows from a distance.

  The leaden feet of the woman’s corpse are blocking the door and stopping me from getting out. I drag her out of the way, then shift the kid’s body, kicking it back across the cluttered floor. The kid’s bloodstained projector-screen shroud unrolls, revealing his lifeless face. Jesus, he was one of us. I uncover him fully. His wrists and ankles are bound. Can’t see how he died, but he hasn’t been dead long, a few days at the most. Probably starved. Another pitiful example of an Unchanged parent refusing to accept their kid’s destiny and let go. Did she think she’d be able to tame him or find a “cure” or something? Dumb bitch.

  Back out into the corridor. Most people have gone now, but I can still hear a few of them moving about, hunting down the last kills before they move on. I automatically head toward the back of the building, hoping I’ll find more cover going out that way. A small kid darts past me, moving so fast that I can’t even tell if it’s a boy or a girl, then doubles back when it can’t get out. I keep moving forward until I reach a T-intersection. There’s a fire door to my left, but it’s been blocked and I can’t get through. I follow three men and a woman the other way into a dank toilet that smells so bad it makes my eyes water. The sudden darkness is disorienting, and the man in front of me takes the full force of a clumsy but unexpected attack from an Unchanged straggler who’s hiding in the shadows under a sink. There’s hardly room to swing a punch in here, but between the five of us we get rid of him quickly. I smash his face into a cracked mirror with a satisfying thump. He leaves a bloody stain on the glass, just another mark among many.

  In a wide, rectangular handicapped cubicle there’s a narrow window high on the wall above the dried-up, mustard-brown-stained toilet bowl. One of the men, a small, suntanned, wiry-framed guy, climbs up onto the toilet, then uses the pipework to haul himself up. He opens the window and squeezes out through the gap. We take turns to follow him, impatiently standing in line like we’re waiting for a piss. The fighter in front of me has a wide belly and backside, and I can’t see him getting through. I’ll be damned if I’m going to get stuck in here behind him. I push him to one side and climb past, knowing I’ll be long gone before he gets outside, if he gets out at all. I throw my backpack down, then force myself through the narrow window frame and drop down into a flower bed overrun with brambles and weeds. A pile of waste and emaciated corpses cushions my fall. I quickly get up, swing my pack back onto my shoulders, and start to run. Won’t be long now before they …<
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  “Oi, Danny!”

  Who the hell was that? My heart sinks when I look back and see Adam hopping after me with his ski-pole walking stick, his useless, misshapen, badly broken left foot swinging. I found this poor bastard trapped in his parents’ house a few days back, and I haven’t been able to shake him yet. He can hardly walk, so I could leave him if I wanted to, but I stupidly keep letting my conscience get the better of me. I tell myself that if I get him away from here he’ll be able to kill again, and anyone who’s going to get rid of even one more of the Unchanged has got to be worth saving. I run back, put my arm around his waist, and start dragging him away from the building.

  “Thanks, man,” he starts to say. “I thought I—”

  “Shut the fuck up and move.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. What did I ever—”

  “Listen,” I tell him, interrupting him midflow. “They’re coming back.”

  I pull him deep into the undergrowth behind the office building. Even over my hurried, rustling footsteps and although the canopy of leaves above us muffles and distorts the sound, I can definitely hear another aircraft approaching. Whatever’s coming this time is larger, louder, and no doubt deadlier than the helicopter that was here before.

  Adam yelps as his broken ankle thumps against a low tree stump. I ignore him and keep moving. His leg’s already fucked; a little more damage won’t matter.

  “Sounds big,” he says through clenched teeth, trying to distract himself from the pain. I don’t respond, concentrating instead on putting the maximum possible distance between me and the office. Other people run through the trees on either side of me, illuminated by shafts of sunlight that pour through the odd-shaped gaps between leaves, all of them passing us. The noise is increasing, so loud now that I can feel it through the ground. It must be a jet. Christ, what did I do wrong to end up saddled with a cripple at a time like this? Maybe I should just leave him here and let him take his chances? I look up, and through a gap in the trees I catch the briefest glimpse of the plane streaking across the sky at incredible speed, so fast that the noise it makes seems to lag way behind it.