Them or Us

27

I’M ON THE EDGE of the empty development, almost back at the house. The thought of being shut away in the dark there again makes my heart sink, but it’s the only place I’ve got left to go. Don’t remember how I got here. Don’t even remember leaving the factory.

Take a couple of days off, Hinchcliffe told me. Relax and straighten yourself out, he said. That was a fucking joke. Relax? Since when has anyone been able to relax in this vile, fucked-up world? Straighten myself out? Jesus, that’s equally impossible. In the space of a day everything has become infinitely more complicated and yet immeasurably simpler at the same time: more to think about, but less time to do it. My mind flits constantly as I walk through the torrential rain, never settling on any one thing long enough to give me time to work anything out. If I’m not thinking about the fact I’m dying, I’m thinking about Peter Sutton, Joseph Mallon, and the crowd of Unchanged buried underground. And if I’m not thinking about them, I’m thinking about the little girl strapped to the chair in Rona Scott’s fucking torture chamber. I can’t get her out of my head, poor little cow. And if I’m not thinking about her, I’m thinking about my own kids, and that’s never a good sign. Under it all there’s just one main thought I keep coming back to: I have a terminal disease.

If this had happened to me in my old life, I’d be panicking now, and so would everyone else. I’d be thinking about the kids and Lizzie, checking whether I had any insurance coverage, avoiding all the difficult but necessary practical conversations that Liz would be having with me about the future I wasn’t going to have … but today there’s no panic and no noise, just a strange, uneasy calm—an empty black hole where my life used to be. I knew I wasn’t well, and nothing the doctor said came as a great surprise, but at least until I’d spoken to her there was still an element of uncertainty and doubt, and I could still think I might wake up tomorrow and feel better. Now that’s gone, and the only thing I know for sure is that I’m well and truly fucked. There was a guy at work who got cancer. We all had half a day off for his funeral, and the crematorium was packed. There were hundreds of people there—hundreds of lives affected by one death. Christ, no one will even notice when I go. If I die alone at the house, my body will just be left there to rot. No one gives a shit about me. They all just take what they need from me, then dump me.

I trudge slowly through the housing development, soaked through, laughing to myself at the bloody irony of it all. I’ve survived the war—countless attacks, battles, and fights, a gas chamber, bombings, a nuclear blast even—and yet it’s my own flesh and bone that’s finally going to finish me off as my body eats itself from the inside out.

I remember Adam, the crippled fighter I spent a few days with last summer, when the war was close to reaching its peak and the killing still felt brave and righteous. I often think about him. In constant pain and barely able to move without help, all he wanted to do was fight. In spite of his obvious physical limitations, the only thing that mattered to him was killing—wiping out the last of the Unchanged before they could get to him. It’s not his determination or his aggression I remember most, though. It’s his attitude to death. I sat with him as his body shut itself down, and I listened to him still talking about the next fight and the next kill as if he was going to go on forever. He was like an animal, blissfully unaware of his own mortality, living for each moment, not wallowing in self-pity and waiting for his life to reach its inevitably anticlimactic ending.

What I’ve learned today has forced me into a position that is almost the exact opposite of Adam’s. He felt free and uninhibited; I’m restricted and trapped. His death meant nothing to him; mine is all I can think about. I’m already consumed by it; damned to spend my last days, weeks, and months (if I’m lucky) wondering how many more times I’ll wake up and see the sun rise, how many more times I’ll fall asleep, how many more fights I’ll have or avoid, how many books I’ll read or how many more times I’ll go to certain places or see certain people …

I’m between a rock and a hard place—Hinchcliffe on one side, Peter Sutton on the other—and I know I have to either do something about it or take Rona Scott’s advice and finish things right now. Last night I was on the verge of packing up and getting out of here for good, and Christ, I wish I had. Apart from suicide, leaving here is my only remaining option.

There’s a light up ahead. Someone with a flashlight is coming toward me, a coat over his head. Even from this distance I can tell by his height and the way he’s moving that it’s Rufus. What the fuck does he want now? Why can’t everyone just fuck off and leave me alone? There’s always someone looking for me, and they all want something. None of them ever wants to do anything for me. Well, they can all go to hell. I’ve got nothing left to give.

“Danny,” he yells as he flags me down, his voice sounding even more tense and unsure than usual. “Thank God I found you. Hinchcliffe wants to see you.”

“Hinchcliffe can fuck off,” I tell him, pushing past and continuing on toward the house. Rufus scurries after me, again overtaking and getting in my way, desperately trying to stop me.

“Where have you been?”

“Leave me alone, Rufus.”

“I’ve been looking for you all day.”

“Now you’ve found me.”

“You have to come—”

“I don’t have to do anything,” I tell him. “You can tell Hinchcliffe to go fuck himself. I’m through running around after him. I quit.”

“No, Danny,” he says, beginning to sob, “you can’t. Please. If I go back without you again he’ll kill me.”

“Then don’t go back. Make a stand. Let someone else deal with him.”

“I’ve never seen him like this before. Please, Danny, you’ve got to come.”

Decision time. How much longer do I keep putting up with all this crap? I don’t enjoy seeing Rufus like this, but at least he’s still got a choice. My hand has been forced.

“Listen,” I tell him, a hand on either shoulder, standing him upright and looking into his face, “I’m not going back. I’m finished with this place and with Hinchcliffe. I’m going to pack my stuff and get out of here, and if you’ve got any sense, I think you should do the same.”

He just looks at me pathetically, dumbstruck and terrified. What he does next is up to him, but my mind’s made up.

“You can’t … I can’t…”

“Yes you can, Rufus. Hinchcliffe is an evil cunt, and the only hold he’s got over you is fear. Don’t go back. Walk out of here tonight and find somewhere else. That’s what I’m doing.”

“But there is nowhere else. I—”

“Good luck, pal. I hope everything works out for you.”

With that I force myself to move and sidestep him. When I look back I see he’s still standing in the pouring rain in the middle of the street, just watching me go.