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that you others were looking for me, then I got him to take me to the rest of them.”
    “And it was that easy?”
    “Yep, that easy.”
    “So how’d you manage that, then?”
    “Just something I picked up.”
    “Is that right?”
    “Yep.”
    Llewellyn grinned at him. “You devious little bastard, you can hold the Hate, can’t you?”
    McCoyne looked away and picked up another bag. Did he really want anyone to know?
    “So what if I can,” he said nonchalantly. “Not a lot of call for it these days, is there? Hardly any of them left.”
    “When we get back to Lowestoft,” Llewellyn said, leaning over him until their faces were just inches apart, “you’re coming with me to see Hinchcliffe. He’ll be interested to know we’ve got a freak like you in town.”

 
    Today
    THE TWO MEN SKULKED silently through the filthy streets like starving rats, skin deathly pale, eyes blinking wide, both of them looking from side to side in constant, never-ending fear of attack. They ran frantically through the collapsed ruins at the edge of the town, arms overloaded with the food they’d unexpectedly managed to scavenge, fear and adrenaline driving them on, temporarily masking their physical pain. Their bodies were wrecked: exhausted and underfed. It was the first time either of them had been out in the open in more than two weeks, but, weak as they were, as the physically strongest members of the last remaining group of Unchanged in the area, this was something Fisher and Winston had had no choice but to do. Including the straggler who’d found them a few days back, there were only thirteen of them left now. They both knew that none of them would last much longer if they didn’t have food.
    Fisher froze. “Up ahead. Top of the road. Two hundred yards.”
    Winston grabbed his arm and pulled him back against the wall of the nearest building. He watched the Hater in the distance. Was it alone or part of a pack? His eyes were failing and it was hard to tell anything from here, but it looked like a young boy, probably one of those feral kids like the one that had killed his dad last summer. It paused on the dotted white line in the middle of the road, sniffing at the air like a hunting animal trying to catch a scent. Winston forced himself to remain completely motionless and prayed that Fisher would do the same. Even the slightest movement or noise might give them away and that’d be it—months of constantly struggling to survive ended in a heartbeat (maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, he thought). He watched the figure up ahead as it began to move again, very slowly at first, then sprinting away swiftly when something in the distance caught its eye. Winston didn’t move until he was completely sure it had gone. In those unbearably long moments, he asked himself again (as he did at least once every hour) why he was even bothering to try to stay alive. Why not just give up and get it over with? A few seconds of agony and it would all be over and he could stop at last. The fear of death had always been enough to keep driving him on until now, but life was rapidly losing its appeal. Imagine the relief, he thought. No more running. No more hiding. No more crying. No more sitting in silence in the dark with the others, freezing cold, doubled up with hunger pains, feeling himself draining away, just waiting for the inevitable …
    “We’re clear,” Fisher said, his voice just a whisper against the icy wind. Winston pushed himself away from the wall and ran forward again, just managing to keep his balance as he tripped down the curb, narrowly avoiding the crumbling edge of a huge, egg-shaped crater in the road where the skeletal body of someone who had once been like him lay facedown in several inches of dirty rainwater.
    *   *   *
    Another few minutes of breathless, stop-start running and hiding, and they were almost there. Winston dropped the supplies he’d been carrying in front of the wooden fence, then