end up like this.
“Look on the bright side,” Adam shouts across the clearing.
“There’s a bright side?”
“’Course there is. You got away. That could have been you, that could. Could have been me…”
I ignore him and keep walking farther into the clearing, following a narrow pathway between another two fifty- yard-or-so-long piles of death. Distracted, I lose my footing when I reach the end of the rows, and the ground suddenly starts to crumble beneath my boots. I fall back and find myself sitting on my backside on the edge of a vast hole, at least twenty yards square and deep enough for me not to be able to see the bottom in some parts. I know immediately what it is-a mass grave filled with an incalculable number of people like Adam and me. I get up and carefully walk around the edge. There’s a bulldozer up ahead with a massive metal scoop. At first I think they must have used it to dig the pit, but then I see there’s a scrap of clothing caught on the teeth of the scoop and I realize they were using it to fill it. Directly below me there are corpses reaching almost all the way up to the surface, piled up where they were tipped out. They look like they’re climbing over each other to get out.
I jog back over to Adam, forcing myself to look away from the dead. How many sites like this were there, and are any still in operation? Even now as I’m wasting time here, are more of our people being killed elsewhere? Then another thought crosses my mind that makes me go cold: my daughter, Ellis. Did she end up in a place like this? Is she there now, waiting to die? Is she here? For a few desperate seconds I turn back toward the corpses and start looking through them, terrified the next face I see will be my little girl’s. Then, as quickly as sudden panic just took hold, common sense takes over again. If she’s here there’s nothing I can do. I have to believe she’s still alive. She’s all I’ve got left.
“So where are they all?” Adam asks.
“Who?”
“The fuckers who did this. Where’d they go?”
“I don’t know,” I answer as I lead him out behind the main building toward a group of three square-shaped, light-colored, prefabricated huts that look new in comparison to everything else. “Just abandoned the place, I guess. Maybe they were attacked?”
“Hope the bastards got what they deserved.”
Two of the almost identical shedlike buildings are locked. The corrugated metal roller door on the front of the third, however, is not. I open it fully and go inside. It’s small, cramped, and half full of bags of chemicals. Doesn’t matter. It’ll do for tonight. No one with any sense will come here, and even if they do, we’ll just play dead. I’d have fought side by side with any of the thousands of people who died here, but they’re just rotting meat now, and we’ll use them as cover.
Adam sits down on a pile of sacks, struggling to get comfortable and still talking nonstop about nothing of any importance. I close the door, then find myself a scrap of space in the far corner of the hard concrete floor and try to sleep, resting my head on another plastic sack full of Christ-knows-what. It could be poisonous or corrosive, but it doesn’t matter. I cover it with my coat and close my eyes, too tired to care.
4
I’M WOKEN BY A crash and a muffled cry of pain. I sit up quickly and look around the dark room, struggling for a second to decide where I am. The combination of the acrid chemical smell and the stench of decay helps me remember. Where’s Adam? I catch a momentary glimpse of him outside through the open door, hobbling back toward the main building. I grab a knife from my backpack and run after him. I’ve barely taken two steps out of the chemical storeroom when I hear other voices up ahead. There are people around the front of the cull site. I drag Adam out of the way, stopping only when we’re both pressed up tight against the outside wall at the back of the main killing chamber.
“It’s Unchanged,” he whispers, voice full of nervous excitement. “I saw them.”
“How many?”
“Don’t know. Heard engines.”
What the hell do I do now? Despite what Adam probably thinks, we can’t risk taking them on until we know how many we’re facing. There could be hundreds of them here, and if they’ve dared come out into the open like this then they’re probably armed to the teeth and ready to fight. What do they want? Maybe they’ve come to try to get this place restarted? Shit, maybe they’re here looking for us?
“Wait here,” I tell him, pushing him toward an alcove. “Keep yourself under control and don’t do anything until I come back, okay? I’ll try to get a better look.”
Adam nods and does as I say. I take a couple of steps away from the building and see that there’s a metal ladder running from ground level to an access hatch up high. Before I can talk myself out of it I start climbing, trying to limit the sound of my heavy boots on the metal rungs. I pause when I’m two-thirds up and lean over to one side to peer in through a grubby window. The early morning sun is blazing through the windows along one side of the slaughterhouse and the hole in the roof, filling it with light, uncovering every gruesome detail that was hidden in the darkness last night. The Unchanged are inside the building now. I can see a couple of them slowly picking their way through the bodies and debris.
At the top of the ladder I open the hatch and carefully ease myself inside. I’m on one of the narrow gantries running around the edge of the vast room, and I know I’m all too visible up here through the metal grilles. I move toward the side of the room that is still in shadow. I’m right above one of the intruders now. Looks like he’s wrestling with a corpse, trying to pry a rifle from the death grip of a decaying soldier. Fortunately he’s preoccupied, and I keep moving toward the front of the site undetected. Farther ahead I notice that this walkway’s loose. Several brackets and supports have come away from the wall, and it’s already feeling less secure. I’m less worried about my safety and more concerned that the creaking and groaning of the metal will cause one of the scavengers below to look up. They don’t look like typical Unchanged military or militia. They’re wearing odd, mismatched clothing, and they’re both weighed down with weapons, far more than they need. They look more like mechanics than soldiers.
A sudden noise makes me catch my breath. I look back over my shoulder and stare down, worried they’ve found Adam. It’s nothing, just another Unchanged helping himself to a dead man’s gun.
I turn around to try to get off this unstable walkway, but stop when I glimpse something happening through the large dust- and cobweb-covered window at my side. The reason for the enemy being here has suddenly become painfully apparent. Outside, under the protective gaze of five armed militia fighters, two young women and a white-haired, elderly man are working their way along the nearest pile of corpses, stripping them of anything of value. Inhuman bastards. There must be a hell of a black market somewhere for them to risk doing this, but the fuckers look well organized, and they know what they’re doing. Wearing yellow dishwashing gloves, the three of them move along the bodies at speed, each of them working at different heights, snatching rings and watches from the dead hands that stick out of the massive mound of rotting flesh, filling buckets with their stolen booty. A teenaged boy grabs each bucket when it’s full, replacing it with an empty one and carrying the stash away out of sight. What I’m watching makes me seethe with hate and anger, but what can I do? There are too many of them to risk taking on alone (and even though Adam’s with me, in terms of fighting I still think of myself as being alone). All I can do is wait for them to disappear.
Hang on, something’s caught the attention of the grave-robbing bastards below me. One of them stops scavenging and calls to his pals. Carrying several weapons each, they head toward the door in the corner we exited through last night. I run back along the gantry, but before I get to the hatch I know it’s Adam. I hear the stupid kid before I see him through the window. Should have known he’d struggle to keep himself under control. The Unchanged are outside now, heading straight for him as he limps aggressively toward them, the sharp tip of his ski-pole walking stick held out like a bayonet. Fortunately the rest of this gang are either unaware or too interested in their haul to get involved. I climb back out through the door and down the ladder. Adam and the Unchanged are out of sight now, but I can still hear them fighting. With half a dozen rungs left I jump down and run around the corner to help, knife in hand. Adam’s on the ground, taking a heavy beating from two of them. To his credit he’s already taken the other one out. The scrawny little fucker is slumped up against the side of the building, impaled with Adam’s metal stick.
