Them or Us

35

IT’S PITCH BLACK AND rain is coming in through the broken window when Llewellyn barges into my freezing-cold room and hauls me up onto my feet. Christ, it must be the middle of the night. He drags me downstairs, ignoring my protests and hardly saying a word, then shoves me out through the museum door. With my right arm held in his viselike grip, he leads me through the muddy quagmire outside.

“Time for your checkup,” he says, virtually throwing me into the back of a long red and white truck, then slamming and locking the door behind me. It’s as dark inside the truck as it is outside, and I work my way along its length looking for another way out. It’s some kind of medical vehicle, laid out like a makeshift mobile clinic. On closer inspection, it looks like one of those blood donation units that used to come to the offices back home every so often. I used to give blood just for the free cup of tea and an hour off work.

I’m drenched and shivering. The windows are welded shut, and there’s no other obvious way out. There’s a skylight above me, and that looks like my only viable means of escape. Groaning with effort, I manage to drag a metal box across the floor and try to get up, but it’s not high enough and the tips of my fingers barely reach the ceiling. I’m looking around for something else to stand on when the door flies open again. The noise startles me, and I look around to see a balding, willow-framed man climbing the steps up into the back of the unit, using the handrail to both support himself and haul himself up. He looks at me with a mix of bewilderment and disinterest, then calmly closes the door again and hangs his light from a hook on the ceiling.

“Danny McCoyne?” he asks as he removes a scarf and two outdoor jackets, then puts on a heavily stained white overcoat.

“Yes.”

“Sit down, please, Mr. McCoyne, and stop trying to escape. There’s really no need; I’m actually trying to help you. It’s bad enough that I have to come here at this hour, so let’s not make things any harder than they need be.”

With little other option, I do as he says, taken aback for a moment by being called Mr. McCoyne for the first time in as long as I can remember. He takes off his half-moon glasses, which have steamed up, and cleans them on his grubby lapel. He’s tall and thin, and something about his manner and the way he carries himself suggests he’s well educated. In comparison to Rona Scott he’s a bloody angel. That foul woman is a butcher: brutal and rough. I visualize this man standing amid the carnage on the battlefield, carefully dissecting Unchanged rather than just hacking them apart like everyone else.

“Mr. Ankin has asked me to have a look and see if there’s anything we can do for you. How long have you been sick?”

“I don’t know when it started. It’s only over the last few weeks that things have gotten really bad.”

He nods thoughtfully, then starts to carry out a very brief physical examination. He checks the same things Rona Scott checked, but he makes me feel like a patient, not a slab of meat. He checks my pulse, listens to my heart, looks into my eyes, asks me about allergies and medication and all the other questions doctors used to ask back in the day. I’m feeling nervous suddenly, and without thinking I start asking questions back—pointless small talk to calm myself down.

“Have you been with Ankin long?”

“Several months.”

“Where have you been based?”

“In this unit, mostly,” he answers as he prods and pokes at my gut with freezing, spindly fingers.

“Have you seen much of the rest of the country?”

“Too much,” he says, obviously in no mood to chat.

“Ankin was telling me about Hull. Were you there?”

“For a while, until the fighting.”

“What fighting? Ankin said—”

“Look, I know you’re anxious, Mr. McCoyne, but I’m trying to work. Please shut up and stop asking questions.”

The doctor shoves his hand down the neck of his sweater and pulls out a bunch of keys on a chain. He studies them carefully, holding them closer to the light, then picks one and unlocks a metal cabinet. He mooches through the contents of various shelves filled with clinking glass bottles and vials before selecting one and peering at its label through his glasses, which are now perched perilously close to the end of his nose.

“You’re obviously very important to Mr. Ankin,” he says, rejecting one bottle and choosing another.

“You think?”

“Absolutely. Believe me, they don’t just dish this stuff out to every Tom, Dick, or Harry who needs it. Do you have any idea how many people are walking around out there in the same kind of condition as you are?”

“I don’t know how many people are walking around out there period,” I answer quickly.

“Fewer than you’d expect,” he says. “Now, I’m no expert, but I’ve seen an abnormal level of cancers and deaths from—”

“Wait a second. Go back a step. What do you mean, you’re no expert?”

He finally settles on a third bottle half-filled with clear liquid and draws a syringe-full from it.

“I’m no expert, but I’m no idiot, either. Truth is, there aren’t any experts left. This time last year I was researching genetics at Birmingham University, cutting up fruit flies, writing papers, and delivering lectures to students who couldn’t have been any less interested if they’d tried. I’d originally planned to go into medicine, and I did my basic training before I specialized, so I’m not a complete novice if that’s what you’re worried about. You know how these things have a habit of turning out. Since the war started I’ve spent most of my time patching up soldiers so they can keep fighting, learning on the job. It makes a change to be asked to do something different.”

“But you do know what you’re doing?”

“I know enough. Listen, I may not be formally qualified, but you’re not going to find anyone better to help you today. Anyway, no one’s forcing you to have this treatment. Just go if you want to and we’ll say no more about it. I would offer to get you a second opinion, but mine’s the only opinion left!”

He chuckles to himself. I don’t see the funny side.

“It’s okay. Just do it.”

“You’re a lucky boy,” he says, patronizing me.

“I don’t feel lucky. What is that stuff, anyway?”

“Steroids. Keep you going for a while longer. It won’t do anything to fight the disease, but it’ll mask the symptoms for a time.”

“How long?”

“A day, maybe two.”

There’s a lull in the conversation as I peel back various layers of sodden clothing to expose the top of my right arm.

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“How long do you think I’ve got left?”

I’ve asked the question before I’ve realized what I’m saying, and I immediately wish I could rewind time and retract it. Too late. He looks down at me again and frowns, then returns his attention to preparing the drugs for injection.

“Bear in mind,” he says, hunting for a swab and a reasonably clean dressing, “that I don’t have any medical records for you, not that anyone has any records anymore. So my estimations could be way off. This is based purely on my gut instinct and several other recent cases I’ve seen, nothing else, and you also have to remember that we’re about to reach the coldest part of winter, and I doubt any of us are eating properly, so we’re all going to be more susceptible to—”

“I understand all of that,” I interrupt, “just tell me what you think.”

“I don’t think you have long, Mr. McCoyne, I don’t think you have long at all. From what I can see, the disease looks pretty well advanced.”

He shoves the needle into my skin, but I don’t feel a thing. He drops the syringe into a plastic bin, then picks up another. He grips the same arm tight, then injects me again. This time it hurts.

“What the hell’s that? Jesus, how much of that stuff are you putting into me?”

“Not steroids this time,” he says, his voice beginning to fade. “This one’s a special request from Messrs. Ankin and Llewellyn.”