high-rise, swallowing the tail of the helicopter. The fire moves with incredible speed, seeming to eat up the higher floors of the building in massive gulps. The destruction is beautiful, almost hypnotic. But then something happening down here at ground level tears my attention away from the building. People. They’re starting to flood into the already packed square. As if a dam has burst its banks, a deluge of desperate refugees is suddenly washing toward us, forced out from their flimsy shelters and squalid refuges around the base of the burning building. Some are injured. Others are coughing, their lungs filled with acrid smoke and dust. Most, though, are just panicking-going with the flow of everyone else around them. Their fear and confusion is invigorating. To experience their terror this close makes me feel superior and strong. They’re running blind from the immediately perceived danger without giving a second’s thought to what they might be running toward.
Suddenly the air is filled with more thunderous noise. Another explosion. This time it’s in the opposite direction, and I’m sure this has to be one of ours. A swollen balloon of flame billows up in the darkness about half a mile from here. It disappears quickly, but its aftereffects remain. Surely another surge of refugees will start moving this way and will hit the others head-on?
“That’s enough,” Craven says. “Come on, Julia, let’s just do it. We won’t gain anything from waiting.”
They can do what the fuck they like. I’m going. This is my last chance to find Lizzie before all hell breaks loose, and I’m going to take it. I climb down off the statue, and then, leaving Craven and Julia arguing, I start to move back through the crowd. I glance up at the clock on the side of the town hall as I’m swallowed up by the masses. Quarter to five. If Julia has her way I’ve still got an hour. Or have I? Has the fuse already been lit?
The constant movement and heavy rain are disorienting, and I’m struggling to get my bearings. I push my way deeper into the hordes of Unchanged and manage to almost reach the farthest edge of the civic square before I realize I’m moving in the wrong direction, the burned-out ruin of a nightclub looming up in front of me. People are tearing along an alleyway at the side of the ruined building in both directions, none of them making any progress. I turn around and walk straight into Parsons. He stands in front of me and blocks my way, looking as desperate and lost as one of the Unchanged. He has a grenade in his hand.
“Is this it, McCoyne?”
“No,” I tell him, “not yet. Julia says we should-”
“I think it’s time.”
“Not yet,” I say again, having to shout now to make myself heard. “She’s up there by the statue. Go and speak to her. See what she says before you-”
“It must be time,” he shouts over the rain. “I can’t stand all this waiting-”
“Parsons, don’t! It was just a helicopter crash. And the other explosion-”
He doesn’t say anything else. Instead he just pulls the pin from his grenade. A sudden surge from the crowd shunts him sideways. I try to move back as he manages to get his balance and stand straight again.
“Throw the fucking thing!”
Disoriented and racked with nerves, Parsons just looks at me. I shove him hard in the gut, sending him tripping down the slope, colliding with refugees and knocking them over like bowling pins. He topples back and is gone, immediately snatched from view by the hordes. I put my shoulder down and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction, forcing my way through the masses. I trip over a body on the ground and stumble forward, barely managing to stay upright. Instinctively, I reach out and grab hold of another startled refugee, using him to haul myself back up and keep moving forward. He tries to grapple me down, but I just push him out of the way, knowing that in seconds I’ll be the least of his worries. This one has more spirit and fight than most. He manages to cling to the corner of my coat, and I yank it from his grip, then duck to one side when he takes a swing at me. I try to focus on getting away and not panic. I shove him down and glance back over my shoulder, praying that I won’t be able to-
For a fraction of a second the world is filled with brilliant white light and a noise so loud I think my head’s going to burst. I’m thrown down by the force of the explosion behind me, and for a moment all I can do lie still, sandwiched between fallen Unchanged. I pick myself up, using the bodies around me for support. I look back again, and I can see a space in the crowd and a dark, shallow pit where, just seconds ago, countless people were crammed together. Now there’s nothing, just a layer of bloody, smoldering debris. I turn and run as the shock quickly fades and panic again begins to fill the air.
People are running in every direction away from the square now, and I allow myself to be carried along with them, using their bulk as camouflage. None of them know who or what I am, and none of them care. Away from Julia and the others I’m suddenly as irrelevant and unimportant as everyone else, and the anonymity is welcome and reassuring. Running shoulder to shoulder with the enemy, I realize the desperate need to kill these people I’ve always felt has all but disappeared. Maybe it’s because these people are all dead anyway? There’s less than an hour to go now until Sahota’s moment of glory, but I don’t think the city will last that long. A phalanx of helicopters thunders overhead. One of them breaks off and begins firing on some unseen target close to the burning high-rise, causing the crowd around me to start moving with even more panic and speed.
Above the heads of the stampeding masses I see something I think I recognize-the distinctive angular outline of a tall, recently built apartment building. As I run toward it there’s another sudden detonation and the front of the building explodes outward in a swollen bulge of fire and heat. I turn away from the immediate blast and duck down as thousands of tiny shards of glass begin raining down around me. Most of the crowd instinctively tries to turn back and run the other way. Dumb fuckers. I keep moving forward, knowing that the ground around the center of the blast will be relatively clear now with just the dead and dying to get through. I run past the burning stump of the building, zigzagging through the carnage, dodging chunks of concrete and twisted lumps of metal and flesh. I look up and see people trapped on the upper floors. A woman falls from a third-floor window and lands on the pavement just ahead of me, shoved out by the terrified crowds behind her, hitting the ground with a wet thud like rotten fruit. It’s wonderful to see. Part of me wishes I could find somewhere safe around here to sit and watch the whole city burn.
I’m back to shoving my way through the enemy masses again in seconds. I thump heads with another man, and he pushes me away angrily, his eyes full of hate. Instinctively I reach for my knife but force myself to let it go, fighting against everything I believe in. The need to kill might have subsided, but the desire’s still strong. I’m like a junkie who’s been clean for years but who’s now surrounded by an endless supply of his drug of choice. Once I start killing, will I be able to stop? If I lose control now, all hope of finding Lizzie will be gone forever, and although I don’t want to have to face her again, without Lizzie there’s no chance I’ll ever know what happened to Ellis. This is my last chance.
There’s another momentary gap in the crowd at the middle of a once-busy crossroads. This place used to be one of the busiest intersections in town with backed-up lines of traffic all day, every day. I climb up onto the roof of an abandoned MPV-the kind of car I always wanted-and look around me. The Prince Hotel is, I think, still about half a mile farther in the direction I’ve just been running. Apparently endless swarms of people continue to try to escape the carnage behind me, fighting with each other to make it through the madness. As more explosions suddenly light up the area around the town hall and the civic square behind me, the beauty and simplicity of Sahota’s plan comes sharply into focus. Did Julia cause those last blasts, or Craven or one of the others? Has she finally given the order to attack? If it’s like this now, I think to myself, how bad will it be by six o’clock?
A helicopter crawls across the sky overhead, illuminating me momentarily with its sweeping searchlight, filling the air with thumping noise. I jump back down to the road and keep running.
34
RECOGNITION AND FAMILIARITY BRING even more fear and nerves. Not far now. The hotel’s almost in view, and every footstep I take brings me closer to Lizzie and to knowing what happened to my daughter. What if I’m too late? What if Ellis is lost or dead? Suddenly turning tail and heading back to the town hall to fight alongside the others seems an easier option than what I’m about to do.
I take a shortcut through an eerily empty supermarket, in through the loading bay and out toward the smashed front windows. Before going outside again I stop and stand in the darkness to take stock of the chaos unfolding all around me. The behavior of the Unchanged population is changing. In the short time since the explosions around the town hall, most of them have abandoned their need to remain isolated and distant from everyone else. Although
