Them or Us

continue to climb, but each time the only audible reply comes from my own voice echoing back at me.
    Finally, legs trembling with effort, virtually having to crawl the last few steps on my hands and knees, I reach the top of the lighthouse. I use a rail to haul myself upright, then push myself through the door and out onto the observation platform. The wind’s even stronger and colder up here, and I have to hold on tight just to stay standing. I lean back against the glass that surrounds the huge, useless lamp and stare out toward the sea, barely able to support my own weight any longer. I’m filled with an overwhelming, crushing sense of disappointment that they’re not here, and it’s all I can do to keep myself upright. Looking out into the nothingness of the gray clouds and falling snow, I find myself imagining how the Unchanged might have been caught. I picture Joseph trying hopelessly to reason with Hinchcliffe’s Neanderthal fuckers or Ankin’s troops, whichever found them first. I picture the little girl Chloe trying to run from them, bare feet crunching through the snow as she’s chased down by a pack of the foul bastards …
    I’ve had enough.
    The more effort I put in, the less I achieve. It’s time to stop. Maybe I should just go back inside, drag up a chair, then sit back and watch the sun rise as many more times as I can before I go. No one will disturb me up here. No one will know where I am. More to the point, no one will care.
    Is this the moment where my life starts flashing before my eyes? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen now? Just for a second I allow myself to drift back and remember things as they used to be before the war: the hellhole of an apartment I used to live in with Lizzie and the kids, doing a mindless job for a pittance pay, barely making ends meet, the endless arguing and struggling with the kids, all the grief I used to get from Harry … but I’d still rather be there than here today. Christ, I spent so much time focusing on the negatives that I completely missed the positives, which were there in abundance. The security, the relationships, being safe within the four walls of our home, the closeness I had with Lizzie and the children … It’s an old cliché, but it’s so true: You never realize what you’ve got until you lose it. I remember the war and all the killing—the joy and euphoria I used to feel whenever I ended an Unchanged life. To think, for a time I was thankful for the Hate and the freedom I thought it gave me. Now, even though I try hard not to, I find myself thinking about Ellis again, remembering what the Hate did to her and what she became. What it did to all of us …
    It must be time now.
    I lean back against the window and look out to sea, numb with cold, weak with effort, and hollow with disappointment. I’d go back inside, but I’m too tired to move. Everything’s too much effort. Maybe I’ll just sit here and—
    Wait.
    What’s that?
    It’s probably just the snow or my eyes playing tricks on me, but I swear I just saw something moving down at street level. I lean forward over the edge of the lighthouse railings and look down, struggling to focus through the blizzard. Then I see it again … a brief flash of movement between two buildings, someone running from right to left. I shield my eyes from the white glare and look out along the seafront, but I can hardly see anything through the haze. I follow the line of the promenade from level with the center of the village all the way out toward the half-collapsed pier. What was it I saw? Scavengers? More refugees from Lowestoft? Or did I just imagine it? Am I going out of my mind and hallucinating now too? Maybe that’d be a good thing …
    I look out toward the remains of the pier in the distance, then fix my eyes on a long strip of virtually empty parking lot that begins outside its dilapidated frontage and stretches away into the distance. I can see the shapes of several long-abandoned vehicles, and a couple nearer the entrance to the pier that aren’t covered in snow. Wait a second … could it be? I lean out over the edge of the lighthouse railings as far as I dare, knowing another few inches won’t make a scrap of difference but praying it will, desperately trying to make out more detail. It looks like a van and a truck. Through a momentary break in the snow I see the side of the truck. Although I can’t distinguish any real level of detail from back here, I’m sure I