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time.
                “Why bother?”
Skea lights a cigarette. “Just to grab a couple of extra days?”
                  “I think you’ll find they will be coming soon
for us,” Helst says softly. “They will already have had this conversation. It’s
just a case of when.” He looks around us, then back to his hard scrutiny of me.
“Someone has already started making the calculations of numbers over food.” His
eyes narrow with a thin veil that squeezes on my heart. Yeah, you’ve worked it all already , I think to myself, and I realise
just how dangerous he now is. I can feel the flesh crawling on the back of my
neck just returning his gaze.
                 “You think so?” Cora askes.
                 “Yeah. I saw Meska and Clook together
last night.   You can bet they are
planning something. They don’t give a fuck about the rest of us; they just see
us as a food supply.”
                 “Exactly,” Jem mutters. “That is why
we have to hit them first.”
                 “Still don’t see the point,” Skea
grumbles.
                 “Then you might as well put a bullet
through your brain now,” Cora snorts. “Save yourself the suffering.”
                  “I intend to,” Helst says, and we all look
hard at him. “When it gets real bad.”
                 “Really?” Jem asks what we all
thinking.
                 “Yeah. Just not yet,” He glances at
me, then sits back in a cloud of smoke. Nobody is sure what to say, and we know
it doesn’t matter anyway. Everyone has that choice if they want it. I think
about the abominations and I silently agree. That’s an easy one – a bullet in
the head or being pulled limb from limb and devoured? Yeah, I would do it
without question. But the past now burns to keep me alive. It’s interesting how
his mind works, but I have to be very careful because I have caught his eye.
                  “I think we should take turns on guard,” he
adds, “No doubt they will come when we’re sleeping, so I think it’s best we are
ready.” Yes, he has it all figured out, I think, but his constant attention makes
me uneasy. He’s right though: they will come when they think we’re sleeping. It’s
what we would have done. Probably tonight – there’s no point in wasting time.

 
                                                                            *

 
                  Gunfire rips me out of a light and hazy sleep.
Up the corridor I can hear Jem screaming for us and, as one, we are down on
floor level and ready. I run up to meet him. He is at the junction and firing
controlled bursts to the left, with Cora, Skea and Helst are not far behind. I
crouch down and risk a quick look. I can see someone lying in a growing lake of
blood, and there is movement beyond. I aim and take the shot, the machine gun
alive and stinging my hands. It is so incredibly loud, and there is a scream.
Someone thumps out of the dark, writhing beside their comrade, and Skea picks
them off with a burst to the head, opening it up wide and spraying brains in
all directions.
                  “Come on,” Jem yells, and we begin creeping
down the dark maw, ready for any loose shot. It comes fast, shattering into the
wall above my head and I shoot back with a scream on my lips, unheard above the
din. I can smell blood, hot and metallic, as well as ripped flesh and urine,
and the guns – that sharp burn that cloys the throat.
                  “We have to make sure they don’t circle round
behind us,” Helst hisses. I nod as he calls for Cora, and the pair of them head
back the way we came. Slowly, we move forward, inch by inch; the doors on
either side of the dark corridor are all open, so we have to be careful no one
is lurking within. Its agonising crouching there in the