Chokehold Read online

  * * *

  Hours pass. Some of them are asleep now. Others are sitting staring into space. A woman and a man get up together and walk away from the group. Matt growls at them, “Where you going?”

  “To the toilet,” the woman says. “Back off. Jesus.”

  Matt thinks people are weird. This woman has spent weeks living in squalid confines with no choice but to do everything in full view of everyone else. He can’t understand why she feels the need to show discretion now just because they’ve got a little more space. He also thinks it’s strange how little he knows about any of the others, bar Darren, Jason, Kara, and a couple of others. Christ, he doesn’t even know their names.

  The woman and her chaperone tiptoe toward the entrance doors, which Darren secured earlier by threading a metal weight-lifting bar through the handles. She goes into the dried-up toilets, and he dutifully waits outside.

  And he waits.

  Matt’s uneasy. Is something wrong? He sits upright to get a better view, then relaxes when she eventually reappears.

  Bloody woman. What the hell was she doing in there?

  The two of them walk idly back toward the group, chatting as if they don’t have a damn care in the world. The noise of the nonstop rain drowns out their noise.

  And then they stop.

  Matt’s guts flip, and he gets up and walks toward them. He can tell from the woman’s face that something’s not right. She walks over to the long floor-to-ceiling windows along one side of the corridor and presses her face against the glass. It’s uniformly discolored: caked with dried-on mud and dust from the summer, then layered with all kinds of grime that’s since been spat down in the rain. It’s almost opaque.

  “Get away from the window,” Matt tells her.

  “Thought I saw something,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Don’t know … Could have been anything.”

  “Exactly. Get back to the others.”

  “It was probably nothing,” her companion says, but then something—someone—slams against the filthy window. Whoever it is, they’re having as much trouble seeing in as the woman has seeing out. He or she adjusts their position constantly, trying to find a clear spot but failing. They wipe furiously at the window, but succeed only in smearing the grime, not shifting it.

  “They didn’t see me,” the woman says to Matt. “They couldn’t have. If it was one of them, then they’d—”

  She’s silenced by an ungodly commotion coming from the front of the building. Darren securing the doors has stopped whoever it is from getting in, but it’s also let them know someone’s in here. Either that or there’s something here worth taking.

  Matt sees more faces pressed against the other windows. Four of them, at least. No, wait … seven … ten. The noise at the front door has acted like an alarm bell. Darren and Jason are on their feet now, too. He gestures for them to hold back and not react.

  Kara appears from a doorway opposite Darren. “Where’ve you been?” he whispers.

  “Upstairs. Fire escape.”

  “And?”

  “Haters. Has to be.”

  “How many?”

  “Fucking loads.”

  “Shit.”

  “How many is fucking loads?” Matt asks. “Be specific.”

  “I didn’t do a head count,” she snaps at him, nervous.

  “A rough idea, then. Five? Fifty?”

  “Fifteen. Maybe twenty. Something like that.”

  “We can deal with that many,” Darren announces, sounding more confident than he is.

  Matt shakes his head. “We can’t assume. Like she said, she didn’t do a head count. This might just be the first wave. There could be hundreds of them watching us. Could be an army out there.”

  “Fight, hide, or run?” Kara says, narrowing down their options.

  “Hide,” Matt immediately answers. “Can’t risk fighting, can’t risk running. Soon as we’re out in the open again, they’ll pick us off. They’d be all over us before the last of us is out the door.”

  “There are rooms upstairs we can use. We can go out on the roof if we have to.”

  Matt’s about to tell her to start getting everyone organized, but it’s too late. A rock is thrown through one of the windows nearest the entrance, filling the building with noise. And rather than stick together, the group instead panics and scatters. Matt tries to herd people toward the staircase Kara just used, and though plenty of them do as he says, many more head in the opposite direction. He can see several of them lowering themselves into the corpse- and rainwater-filled swimming pool, intending to hide among the mass of decomposing bodies. The toilet woman runs the wrong way and is caught. Her screams are louder than anything else and fill the cavernous building as a pack of hate-filled animals attack her, practically tearing her limb from limb. “Move,” Matt tells Darren, shoving him back. “There’s nothing we can do for her. Take advantage of the distraction to get away.”

  He stands there, dumbstruck, but Matt’s not hanging around. He races up another staircase, then takes a wrong turn and finds himself out on a viewing balcony overlooking the swimming pool. There are more Haters surging in through the broken window. He can only look down helplessly as the raggedy, evil-looking fuckers prowl around the edge of the pool. He sees familiar faces buried among the unfamiliar dead, and he knows there’s absolutely nothing he can do to help them. There are already too many of the enemy inside the leisure center, and he knows more will inevitably come.

  Matt doubles back on himself and this time takes a right through a door marked Staff Only. It’s some kind of plant room: a mini-maze of pipes and machines, air-conditioning control panels. There’s a metal ladder going straight up to the roof, an open hatch, and he climbs out into the hissing rain, figuring there might still be some slight advantage in claiming the higher ground. Maybe it just mean he’ll have farther to fall?

  Kara and Jason are already up here with one group. Darren bursts out onto the asphalt through another door, and Dr. Tracy’s not far behind, following a group of three bedraggled kids she herds ahead of her. Matt leans over the edge of the building and looks down. The bastards are circling the leisure center, far more than Kara originally estimated. And their numbers are only going to increase.

  “We’ll have to fight our way out,” Darren says.

  “We’ll never make it.”

  “We’ve got to try, though, right? The rest of our people are still down there.”

  “Do whatever you think you have to.”

  “What do you suggest? Stop up here and wait until it’s all over?”

  “That’s his usual tactic,” Jason says. “That’s how he stays alive.”

  “You all found your way up here, and so did I,” Matt says, ignoring him. “If the rest of them want to stay alive, they’re going to have to show some initiative.”

  One of the Haters is clearly in charge down there. Kara watches him giving orders to another pack who pour in through the smashed window. “You called this wrong, Matt. We can’t stay up here and leave the rest of them to die,” she says, and before anyone can argue, she’s on her way back down.

  Matt watches her disappear. Jason was right—all he wants to do is find somewhere to shelter and sit this out, but he knows he can’t. This isn’t like it was when he was on his own out in the wastelands all those months ago, trying to get back to Jen. He follows Kara back down into the bowels of the building, horrified by the prospect of her facing the enemy on her own. She has a determination and drive about her that the others lack. He doesn’t want her to get hurt.

  Upward of thirty Haters are running roughshod around the ground floor of the leisure center now. One of the group who hid in the pool loses his nerve and makes a break for the smashed window, trying to get out as more vicious, scrawny fighters are clambering to get in. He doesn’t have a hope in hell, but that doesn’t stop Kara wanting to help him. She’s about to run out into the open, but Matt grabs her shoulder and drags her b
ack. “Get off me,” she rages at him, but he doesn’t.

  “Don’t be stupid. He’s had it.”

  She knows he’s right. She watches helplessly as two of the foul bastards beat the life out of him with baseball bats.

  Most of the group are still stranded on the roof, many others playing dead in the pool. The enemy are temporarily distracted, picking through the meager supplies the group left around the café area.

  “They think they’ve gotten rid of us all. They don’t know how many of us are here,” Kara says.

  “You might be right.”

  “I am right. We need to move,” she tells him, and this time Matt agrees. He gestures toward another door adjacent to the one they’re hiding behind. They make the quick dash across several meters of open space, then find themselves in a damp-smelling sauna room. Jason’s already found his way down here, along with several others.

  “Thought you’d be long gone,” he says when Matt appears.

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  There’s a second door leading into a large changing room area, and another door after that, which emerges close to the main entrance Darren blocked off. Matt’s about to lead them out, but he stops. “Wait. Listen. You hear that?”

  The air outside is filled with new noises now. Through a cracked window, Kara sees several speeding vehicles come to a sudden halt outside the leisure center. Some of them are ramshackle and unremarkable, while others are ex-military. They’re all dirt-streaked and paint-charred and appear to have been well used since the bomb. “That’s us screwed.”

  “What do you see?”

  “A fucking Hater army, that’s what.”

  Can’t go forward, can’t go back. There’s no option but to try to fight, but Matt knows none of them are natural fighters. Christ, the only weapon he’s carrying is a damn jump rope.

  No choice.

  He takes a deep breath and steps out into the corridor, then immediately dives back the other way. A Hater woman sprints past, moving so fast that she doesn’t even realize Matt’s there. He’s about to move again when a man wearing bike leathers runs past and tackles the woman to the ground. She’s trying to get away, on all fours now, but he has a boot on her ankle. He stands over her and clubs her around the back of her head with a length of metal pipe that’s already dripping with blood.

  Change of plan.

  “What going on?” Jason asks, frantic.

  “Looks like we’ve found ourselves in the middle of a turf war. Go back the way we came. Quick!”

  Matt tries to shepherd the others back, but it’s too late. The door flies open, and the leather-clad man appears. He lunges for Matt, who covers his head, ready for the inevitable battering. When it doesn’t immediately begin, he dares to look up. The man’s holding the door open. “Poolside. Move!” he orders.

  There’s no hesitation and no dissention, because there’s only one logical explanation for what’s happening here—these people aren’t Haters. Matt, Jason, Kara, and the others are marched through the leisure center, where they see Darren, Tracy, and the rest of the group lined up by the poolside, hands behind heads like police suspects. The fact that the last few Hater stragglers are being rounded up and executed is proof positive these people are human. Matt watches with an uneasy mix of horror and hope. Jesus, whoever these people are, they’re fearsome bastards. They might prove to be worse than the enemy.

  Farther down the line, someone’s begging for mercy, but mercy’s the absolute last thing on offer here today. A woman comes up behind the man who’s wailing and grabs a fistful of his hair. She pulls his head back and holds the point of a savage-looking knife to his throat. “Keep the fucking noise down,” she warns, and he immediately shuts up.

  Other shell-shocked survivors are being plucked out of the pool, then shoved across the tiles to stand shaking with Darren and the others. There’s an uncomfortable, muted silence now; everyone’s too afraid to protest.

  No faces.

  Matt realizes that all these people have their faces covered, and the only reason he can think of for that is to throw Haters off the scent. He assumes his directed position alongside the others: legs apart, hands behind his head, looking dead ahead. A guy dressed in a mix of bike leathers and army camouflage gear walks along the line, looking at each of the group in turn, studying them from behind dark goggles. Matt thinks he should probably keep his mouth shut, but he knows he has to say something.

  “We’re like you,” he says, and the man stops. He has an automatic rifle at his side, which he raises and shoves under Matt’s chin.

  “And how would you know what we are?”

  “The fact you haven’t fired that thing, for a start. You’ve killed a lot of people since you’ve been here, but you’ve done it quietly. Relatively quietly, anyway.”

  “And why shouldn’t I kill you?”

  “No reason. You can if you want. I think we’re on the same side, though.”

  A figure behind Matt kicks the back of his legs, and before he realizes it, Matt’s on his knees with the barrel of the rifle pressed against his forehead. Again Matt thinks he should stay quiet, but equally he knows he has to try to reason with these people.

  “You made enough noise getting in, but you’re keeping intentionally quiet now. You don’t want to attract any more attention than is absolutely necessary. You’ve only killed Haters, from what I can see, and you know by now that we’re not like them because we’re doing what you tell us and not trying to fight back.”

  “Except you. You don’t know when to shut up.”

  “Maybe. I just don’t want to die pointlessly, that’s all. We can help you. Help each other.”

  The man with the gun laughs. “You think?”

  “It’s all about numbers these days, isn’t it? There are about thirty of us.”

  “Are you sure? You just lost a few, I think.”

  “Still more than double your number, from what I can see.”

  “Believe me, there’s a lot you can’t see from down on your knees. You’re in no position to start bargaining, pal. Right now, all I want to know is who you are, what you’re doing out here, and why we haven’t seen you before.”

  “We were sheltering. Underground. Been there since the bomb.”

  “And you thought you’d come up top and see how things were working out?”

  “Nope. Landslide. Shelter got flooded. We’d have drowned.”

  “And before then?”

  “In the city. Planned evacuation when it all started to go to hell.”

  “You did well to get out alive,” the man says. Matt looks up and detects a slight softening, a chink in his façade. He drags Matt back up to his feet, then nods at another similarly garbed figure standing nearby. “Check ’em.”

  There’s a flurry of activity. More unspoken orders are issued by way of gestures and expressions. Matt thinks this—whatever this is—appears to be a well-rehearsed routine. He sees there are guards stationed at every exit, others acting as lookouts, patrolling the borders. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a lone Hater burst into the building. Two guards cut him down fast. One covers the invader’s mouth with his hand, then slits his throat. Silent. Brutally effective. Ninja-like. Matt’s impressed. And apprehensive as hell.

  Elsewhere, another one of the new arrivals walks along the side of the swimming pool with a dying Hater in tow, barely alive and with its head covered with a bag. It half walks and is half dragged, left leg buckling whenever it tries to put any weight on it. Soaked with blood from the waist down. Bleeding out from a savage-looking wound in its gut.

  “Look at me,” the leader with the rifle says, and Matt obediently obliges. The guy’s removed his dark goggles and the scarf that covered his mouth. Matt thinks he looks in reasonably good shape. There’s some scarring to his right cheek, but a little superficial damage is par for the course these days. He appears to be strong and physically fit—a far cry from the Haters they’ve so far seen. He knows appearances can be d
eceptive, but first impressions are that these people have been spared the worst of the fallout. Matt’s mind is racing now, trying to join the dots … does this mean they’ve traveled here from a distance?

  The woman with the Hater drags the pathetic-looking creature over, leaving a glistening snail trail of blood along the poolside.

  Matt thinks he’s figured out where this is going.

  And he’s right.

  The dying Hater is hauled upright in front of him, and the bag covering its head is removed. It’s a young woman, and as soon as she sees Matt, she reacts exactly as any Hater would: her injuries and the obvious danger she’s in are immediately forgotten, and she launches a volley of spit and fury at him. He stands his ground as the filthy, scrawny creature thrashes and squirms, fighting to free her hands and wrap them around his throat.

  “Believe me now?” Matt says, heart racing, but there’s no answer until the same routine has been repeated up and down the entire line. Once everyone’s been checked, the Hater-wrangler finishes the dying woman off by drawing a blade across her throat. There’s blood everywhere, but she’s still trying to fight.

  “That settles it, then,” the boss says as he rolls the Hater into the pool with his boot. “You can relax. Looks like we’re all friends together.”

  “Where did you come from? Are there more of you?”

  The boss reaches out and shakes hands with Matt. “Yeah, there are a few of us. We’re based a fair distance away. Name’s Aaron Rayner, by the way.”

  “Matthew Dunne.”

  “You’re bloody lucky we found you.”

  “And how did you find us?” Matt asks.

  “That landslide you were talking about … we were doing a recce of what’s left of the airport and got diverted by the mud. Saw you trekking away from wherever it was you’d been holed up.”

  “And you’ve been watching us all this time?”

  “Yep. Can’t take any chances these days. Had to be sure what you were before we stepped in. Good job we did as well. This place would have been swarming before long. They attract each other like flies around shit, in case you hadn’t noticed.”