other side of the door.
“What the fuck’s going on, Sutton?” I demand, panting.
He stands over me, looking down. Behind the thick lenses of his glasses, his eyes dart anxiously around my face. “You’re really not well, are you?”
“Don’t change the subject. What’s going on?” I ask again.
“It’s okay.”
“Okay? How can it be okay?”
He stares at me again, trying to work out what I’m thinking. Truth is, even I don’t know what I’m thinking right now. Finding so many Unchanged like this has left me with a gut-full of bitter, conflicting emotions. I know I should have already killed them, but I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I have the strength, and there are too many of them. I wish someone else had found them and could do it for me. They need to be killed because, as I’ve been telling myself for months, the sooner the last Unchanged has been wiped off the face of the planet, the sooner this pointless, bloody war will finally be over. I was starting to think it already was.
“Sorry about the bullshit about Southwold’s supplies, you’d never have come if I’d told you,” Sutton says, his voice echoing around the room.
“Damn right I wouldn’t have come. For crying out loud, what were you thinking?”
“I said you were like me, didn’t I? I know you won’t hurt these people. I knew the moment I saw you.”
“Being with these people will bring you nothing but grief. You should get rid of them now. If you can’t do that, you should just get away and not come back.”
“I can’t do that,” he says, “and I think you’re wrong. Just let me explain—”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
“It’s not what you think.”
I try to stand but I can’t get up, another crippling wave of nausea making it almost impossible for me to move. It’s a combination of nerves and the airless, sweaty stench of this badly ventilated and overcrowded hideout. My head’s thumping. Sutton helps me to my feet, and I lean back against the wall.
“What is this place?” I ask him, looking around at the emotionless painted faces of the mannequins that surround us. Some of them are dressed in old-fashioned army uniforms.
“A nuclear bunker,” he announces. “It was operational until the end of the Cold War. Then they decommissioned it and turned it into a tourist attraction. Hence the dummies.”
His words just bounce off me, barely sinking in. I should probably ask him a load of other questions, but my brain is still struggling to make sense of any of this. Stupidly, all I can think right now is how much I hate Hinchcliffe. If it hadn’t been for him then I wouldn’t have gone to Southwold and if I hadn’t been in Southwold, I wouldn’t have met Peter Sutton, and if I hadn’t met Sutton I wouldn’t know anything about this damn place or the Unchanged hiding down here. Thinking about Hinchcliffe makes me remember what he forced me to do with that woman yesterday afternoon … and then part of me starts wondering whether I should just stay down here in the dark and never put my head above ground again. Nothing makes sense any more. Whenever I think I’m starting to come to terms with the way this dysfunctional new world works, something always happens that leaves me feeling as confused and disoriented as I did when I killed Lizzie’s dad, Harry. Right back to square one again. Life feels like a game of Snakes and Ladders, but without any ladders.
Sutton waits, then cautiously edges nearer. “I told you this place changes everything.”
“And I told you you were an overdramatic prick. This changes nothing.”
“Well, it’s changed everything for me,” he says. “Before I found these people I was lost.”
“You’ve lost your fucking mind, that’s about all.”
“I knew you’d feel this way at first, but just stop and think for a minute, Danny.”
“Think about what? About the fact that you’re a traitor? About what Hinchcliffe’s going to do to you when he finds out about this place?”
“No, I want you to think about yourself. Think about what you’ve had to do over the last year. Think about how much you’ve lost.”
“And how much I’ve gained.”
“Have you gained anything?”
“My freedom. This time last year I was at a dead end.”
“Things are better for you today because…?” He waits for me to answer, and the silence is deafening. “You’re alone, your health’s deteriorating, you’re living by yourself in a freezing-cold house in an otherwise empty housing development—doesn’t look so great to me.”
“Are things any better for you?”
“Not really,” he answers. “Truth be told, life’s shit for all of us now. You, me, these Unchanged. Killing them won’t make any difference.”
“That’s not the point.”
“There’s something else I want you to see,” he says, supporting my weight and gently leading me back toward the door. More Unchanged scatter when it opens, their wiry limbs and sudden movements making them appear unnervingly insectlike. We go back out into the main area of this part of the bunker. Some sections of the odd-shaped space are dimly illuminated by dull lamps; other corners remain shrouded in darkness. The walls that I can see are covered in old photographs, maps, and other paraphernalia, making the room appear smaller than it actually is.
“Just look at them, Danny,” he says, shuffling me around and gesturing over to where a group of them are sitting at a mess table, watching us nervously. “These people didn’t do anything wrong. They didn’t deserve any of what happened to them.”
“Neither did I. Neither did you. This war wasn’t anyone’s fault, it just happened.”
“But the fact the war’s dragged on is our fault. We have to stop the fighting.”
“The fighting will end when all the Unchanged are gone.”
“Do you really still believe that?”
“Yes,” I answer quickly, even though I don’t. It’s an instinctive reaction. Sometimes I think I say these things just because I’m used to saying them, like I’ve been conditioned to react. “You know as well as I do that we were all forced into this, forced to take sides and fight.”
“Maybe that’s where we’re still going wrong,” he says, starting to sound suspiciously like people I heard talking way back in the summer, just before I lost my daughter forever and half the country disappeared in a white-hot nuclear haze. “Look at what happened in Southwold,” he continues unnecessarily.
“This isn’t right, though. You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Not helping these people wouldn’t be right either.”
One of the Unchanged closest to me shuffles his legs suddenly, and I almost overreact at the completely innocent movement.
“But you’re not helping them, are you? Can’t you see that? All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. They’ll have to leave here eventually, and the second they do, they’ll be killed. Christ alone knows how you’ve managed to keep them alive down here for so long anyway.”
He gestures for me to keep my voice down, but I’m past caring.
“I did it because I had to,” he says. “Come on, Danny, these people have got nothing to do with the fighting. They’re just like you and me. You’ve got more in common with them than with Hinchcliffe and his fighters.”
There’s no point arguing, this deluded idiot isn’t going to listen. I look around this dank, claustrophobic bunker in disbelief. I’ve risked and lost everything to help wipe these bastards out, and all the time Peter fucking Sutton was sheltering them. Protecting them. I’m filled with anger, and all I want to do is kill the lot of them, Sutton included—but I know I won’t. I don’t even know if I can. I’ve killed hundreds of refugees like this, but I’m outnumbered now and in no state to fight today. Or am I just making excuses? I watch an Unchanged man sitting on the edge of a thin mattress on the floor, comforting a woman and holding her close. Despite the fact they both look skeletal and close to death, the way they are together reminds me how I used to hold Lizzie before all of this began.
Don’t be such a fucking idiot. You’re nothing like them and you had no choice. You did what you had to do. They are the enemy.
Is that really true? Did I have a choice?
“Just tell me why?” I ask, surprising myself by asking the question I’d been thinking out loud. I’m hoping
