Them or Us Read Online Free PDF Page B

McCoyne, clothes flapping around his wiry frame, McCoyne knew immediately that he was Unchanged. He felt himself tensing up inside and reached for the knife in his belt but then stopped at the last possible second. Hold the Hate , he silently ordered himself, there might be more of them . He lifted his hands in mock surrender. The Unchanged man, obviously terrified, took a couple of steps back. It occurred to McCoyne that the longer this unexpected standoff continued, the less obvious it would be that he was going to rip the fucker’s head from his shoulders any second now. He could almost see the man’s mind working behind his frightened, constantly moving eyes. If he hasn’t killed me yet, he was thinking, then he can’t be one of them.
    Turn this around , McCoyne told himself. Play the victim .
    “Help me,” he said quietly. “They’re here. If we don’t get out of sight they’ll kill us.”
    “Who are you?” the man croaked, his voice barely audible. “How did you get here?”
    McCoyne was struggling to come up with a plausible response when he heard Llewellyn shouting again, calling them back to the trucks. He didn’t have long.
    “They’re coming,” he said. “Loads of them. Two trucks full. They followed me here. We need to get under cover.”
    The man stood his ground for what felt like an eternity, eyeing McCoyne up and down and trying to make sense of the situation. McCoyne forced himself to stay still and not react, all the time knowing that he should finish this Unchanged bastard now and that if anyone found out he’d been standing here talking to one of them like this, they’d probably kill him as fast as they’d kill them.
    “This way,” the man said suddenly, turning around and gesturing for McCoyne to follow him inside. He led him into the hut (a gift shop with shelves still well stocked with teddy bears, toys, and other assorted rubbish), through an interconnecting door and into yet another similar building, then out through another rear exit and across a narrow strip of asphalt. Hidden behind garbage cans and a mud-streaked golf cart emblazoned with the theme park’s logo was a door in the side of a large brick building. McCoyne followed him through, making sure to shut the door again behind him and block it to prevent the Unchanged from doubling back and getting away. They tripped down a tight and steep staircase, then squeezed down a narrow, twisting corridor before emerging into a huge, dimly lit space. McCoyne struggled to make sense of what he was seeing for a moment. The room was a vast and clearly artificial cavelike structure, with fake stalagmites and stalactites bolted to the floor and ceiling, and pools of foul-smelling, dripping water. Light came from a number of lanterns dotted around the room, just enough illumination for him to see at least another eight Unchanged, wide-eyed and mole-like. He shuffled back until he reached the nearest wall, eager to stay out of sight, and his foot kicked against a heap of dummies like the one he’d seen standing in the stream. Then it dawned on him, this was the Mine—the huge building he’d stood outside earlier.
    He could hear the man who’d led him down here talking.
    “He was outside by the kitchens,” he explained.
    “For Christ’s sake, Jeff, they’re outside. Are you fucking stupid? He’s with them !”
    “He’s not, I swear. He’s like us. Would I be standing here now if he was one of them?”
    McCoyne slid along the wall, watching the small group beginning to splinter, listening to the arguments develop and the volume of their voices increase.
    No time for this. Got to act .
    He ran forward and splashed through an unexpectedly deep puddle, his boots sinking into several inches of silt. Off balance and running almost blind, he tripped over a rocky mound and fell, then picked himself up again and carried on. The Unchanged panicked in response to the sudden movement and noise. Several of them ran after him. They were