Them or Us Read online

  “You still look sick.”

  “I am sick. Haven’t felt well for days, weeks maybe.”

  “Are you eating enough? Want me to get you some more food?”

  “I’m not eating anything.”

  He shakes his head. “You have to eat, Danny. Look, if you’re really that bad, get yourself over to the factory and have a word with Rona Scott.”

  “Thanks, I will,” I answer, although I know I probably won’t. The last thing I want to do is to submit myself to an examination by Rona Scott. She’s the closest thing Hinchcliffe has to a doctor. When she’s not working on the Unchanged kids in the factory, it’s her job to keep his fighters patched up and ready for battle. She’s not interested in people like me.

  “You’ve had a rough week, what with the Unchanged and now Southwold,” Hinchcliffe says suddenly, taking me by surprise, the tone of his voice now different. “I know I ask a lot of you sometimes. It can’t have been easy with those Unchanged. I don’t know how you do it. Christ, just the thought of them makes my skin crawl, even after all this time. That last catch, Danny … you tracked them, trapped them, stayed with them until we were ready to move in. Now that takes guts.”

  “Just doing what you asked me to,” I say quietly. Truth is, I didn’t have any choice.

  “Listen, I don’t think I’ll need you for the next couple of days. Get some rest. Straighten yourself out.”

  I hate it when Hinchcliffe’s pleasant to me. This isn’t like him. He never gives, only takes. I pause and wait for the catch. When he doesn’t say anything, I begrudgingly acknowledge him. “Thanks.”

  I still don’t feel able to move. His piercing gaze makes me feel like my feet are nailed to the floor, and he knows it. The fucker probably enjoys it.

  “Something on your mind?”

  I want to tell him, but I can’t.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, I know you better than that. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  How honest am I prepared to be? I sense he wants me to talk openly, but if I’m too critical he’s likely to react badly, and I don’t think I can take a beating today. On the other hand, he’s not going to let me go until I tell him what’s wrong.

  “Honest answer?”

  “Honest answer.”

  “I don’t understand why you did what you did in Southwold. Fair enough if you’ve got a problem with Warner, but the rest of them…?”

  “It needed doing.”

  “Did it need to be so brutal?”

  “I think so. They needed to know what’s what.”

  “There’s a world of difference between sending a message and what your fighters did today.”

  “I knew that was what was bothering you.”

  “So why did you ask?”

  “Just wanted to see if you had the guts to tell me,” he says. “I thought you would. Not many people would have the balls. You and me, Danny, we’ve got a lot in common.”

  “Have we?”

  “When it comes down to it,” he continues, “we both want the same thing. We both want an end to all the bullshit and fighting and we want an easy life. We’re just going about it in very different ways.”

  “You want an end to the fighting? Really? That’s not what I saw. The Unchanged are gone, and all you’re doing is looking for someone else to batter instead. We don’t have to fight anymore. I think you want to.”

  “That’s not how it is.”

  “Well, that’s how it looks.”

  “I know you’re happy to bury your head in the sand and keep to yourself, but I’m not prepared to do that. In this world you can either sit back and wait for events to overtake you, or you can go out there and make things happen now and on your terms.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what you’re doing when you’re ordering the people in Southwold to be beaten and killed? When you’ve got your fighters burning buildings to the ground?”

  “Yes. The people in Southwold had a choice. The ones who didn’t resist are on their way here now, and if they’re useful, they’ll be okay. The rest are dead. You’ve got to remember, everything is built on aggression now, Dan. We’re all fighters, whether we like it or not. The only thing that separates us is our individual strength and determination. If you don’t stake your claim, someone else will.”

  “So where does it end? Last man standing?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “I know you don’t, and I understand that—but we’ll have to agree to disagree because I’m in charge. Anyway, even if you don’t like the way I do things, you’re smart enough to know you’ll be okay as long as you stay in line and don’t piss me off, aren’t you?”

  “Suppose. But did it really need to be so harsh in Southwold? Couldn’t you just have dealt with Warner and left the rest of them be?”

  “I had to send a message. If I hadn’t I’d have just been heading back in a few weeks to straighten them out again. Someone would have taken Warner’s place.”

  “But Warner’s people were cooperating with each other. Surely if you—”

  “I like you, Danny,” he interrupts, obviously no longer interested. “You’re way off the mark sometimes, but you’re good to have around. You’re not like all those sycophants and asslickers. You keep me grounded. You make me laugh.”

  “You’re welcome,” I mumble quietly, not sure if that was a compliment or not. There’s no arguing with Hinchcliffe. Today he reminds me of all those long-gone world leaders who used to start wars in far-off places to maintain the peace. It’s the same kind of flawed logic as the government’s Ministry of Defense that only ever seemed to attack. Feeling a fraction more confident now, and as he’s clearly in the mood to talk, I decide to take the bull by the horns and ask a question that’s been troubling me recently. “So now the Unchanged are gone, what happens next?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those fighters of yours this morning … all they wanted to do was kill. They were like kids at Christmas. So what happens to them now the enemy’s been defeated? Do you think they’ll just stop? They’re not going to want to go back to being bricklayers or teachers or pub owners…”

  “I know that, and they won’t have to. There’s a new class structure emerging here, and we’re at the top. Have you looked outside this compound, Danny? Seen how many people are waiting out there? They’re the ones who’ll eventually do the work. They’ll do anything I tell them, and you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “The two f’s.”

  “The two f’s? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Come on, keep up! We’ve talked about this. Food and fear. They’ll do what I tell them. When I need bricklayers and teachers and the like, they’ll be fighting with each other to help.”

  His vision of the future seems ridiculously simplistic.

  “So what happens when the food runs out?”

  “That’s not going to happen for a long time,” he answers quickly. “We’ll see it coming and start planning for it when we need to.”

  “How?”

  “By the time it’s become a problem I’ll have enough of a workforce to start producing food again, and they’ll be hungry enough to keep doing exactly what I tell them. There’s no point making people work for food yet, while there’s still stuff to be scavenged; they’re not desperate enough.”

  “John Warner was trying to get people farming,” I tell him.

  “Was it working?”

  “No, but—”

  “Well, there you go, then. It’s too soon.”

  I could ask him how he ever plans to farm when all the livestock for miles around Lowestoft is either dead, dying, or running wild, and when the soil has been poisoned by radiation … but I’m sure he knows that anyway and so I don’t bother. Instead I try another tack.

  “The batteries in my reading lamp are almost gone,” I start to say before he
interrupts, laughing.

  “Your reading lamp! Fuck me, Danny, you’re turning into an old woman!”

  I ignore him and carry on.

  “The batteries are going in my reading lamp,” I say again. “What do I do when they die?”

  “You come and see me and I get you some more,” he answers quickly. “Same as always.”

  “So what happens when you run out?”

  “I send people out to find more.”

  “And when they can’t find any? When we really have used them all up?”

  “You have to stop reading at night,” he smirks. I’m serious, and his grin disappears. “I know what you’re saying, Danny, and you do have a valid point. What do we do? I don’t know how to make batteries, and even if I did, I couldn’t get my hands on the right chemicals and equipment. But the information’s out there somewhere.”

  “It’s just that the way you talk about things makes everything sound a lot easier than it’s actually going to be. It’s not just reading, it’s making food, keeping warm, staying alive … Once everything’s gone we’ll struggle to get any of it back again.”

  “I never said it was going to be easy. Thing is, if I’m too honest with people too soon, I’ll lose their support. I can’t risk that. I need the numbers right now. It’s still early. When we’re more established here, we’ll start planning ahead. All that matters today is today.”

  Hinchcliffe slips all too easily into spouting bullshit and spin. Politics never changes, even after everything we’ve all been through. I guess it doesn’t matter how high the stakes are, to people like him, position and self-preservation are everything.

  “The trick right now,” he continues to explain, clearly mistaking me for someone who gives a damn, “is to let the people who matter think they’re in control. I give my best fighters everything they want, and the Switchbacks who work hard, they get most of what they need, too. Compared to the pathetic lives they used to lead, this is something much better. They’re free, uninhibited…”

  “For now, maybe.”

  “Lighten up,” he says.

  “I don’t want to lighten up.”

  “Things will improve, Danny.”

  “Will they?”

  “Of course they will. We’ll get that wind turbine working after the winter. Imagine that, constant power for the whole town again.”

  “It’ll never happen.”

  “Yes it will.”

  “No it won’t. One of its blades is broken, for Christ’s sake. Where are you going to get a replacement from? And how are you going to get it up there? Have you got anyone who knows anything about engineering and mechanics? Got a crane tucked away anywhere? Christ, you’ve just said you’ll be screwed when you run out of batteries.”

  “It’s all out there somewhere,” he says, starting to sound annoyed, “and there are bound to be people who used to know about these things. They’ll help if I give them food and—”

  “And if you hold a gun to their heads.”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “I think you’ve got to get the fundamentals right before you start talking about electricity and stuff like that.”

  “Is that what John Warner was doing?”

  “Maybe,” I admit, wondering if I’ve gone too far.

  “You’re wrong,” he says. “Warner was a thieving bastard who was trying to undermine what I’ve got here.”

  “All due respect, I don’t think Warner gave a shit what you were doing here.”

  “The fucker was interested enough to want to steal from me,” Hinchcliffe snaps, a hit of barely suppressed anger in his voice. He gets up and pours himself a drink but doesn’t offer me one. I think I’ve outstayed my welcome. That’s a sure sign I’ve pissed him off. Not a good idea.

  “Sorry, Hinchcliffe. I didn’t mean to talk out of turn.”

  He shakes his head and leans against a dusty window, looking out over the divided streets of Lowestoft.

  “You’re okay. Like I said, Danny, you’re not like the others. You’re always questioning, and I need that from time to time. Just don’t let me catch you talking like this to anyone else.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m taking a hell of a risk, but this seems as good a time as any to ask him something that’s been on my mind for a while.

  “So what about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t have any special skills. I can’t fight anymore. You’ve kept me onside to hunt out the Unchanged, but now they’re gone, what happens to me?”

  He thinks carefully before answering.

  “You’re not going anywhere, my friend. You underestimate yourself. You’ve proved your worth to me again and again over the last few weeks. There’s a lot of work still to be done to get this place how I want it, and I’m gonna need people like you.”

  I make a mental note to start fucking up more often.

  “You really think you’ll be able to do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get this place straightened out? Keep people in line? You think they’re just going to keep doing what you tell them to?”

  “Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “They won’t have any choice.”

  I stand there and stare at him, still unable to move, and now unable to speak either. This guy’s out of his fucking mind, but I’m not going to be the one who tells him. The whole conversation leaves me feeling empty and hollow. What chance has anyone got if people like Hinchcliffe are left in charge?

  Hinchcliffe wraps his arm around my shoulder and walks me back toward the exit.

  “I know what you need,” he says. “You’re too tense. You need to relax. Go home, get some rest, then come back here. Meet me outside the front at dusk.”

  He shoves me out of the door and I walk back through the courthouse building, relieved to be away from him but nervous about why he wants me to come back. The last thing I want is to spend any more time with Hinchcliffe, but I don’t have any choice.

  16

  HINCHCLIFFE TOLD ME TO meet him outside the courthouse, but I think he’s stood me up. He’s not inside, and I’ve been out here waiting in the freezing cold for ages now. The wind is biting, and I thrust my hands deep into my pockets, wishing I was anywhere but here. I would go back to the house, but I don’t want to risk pissing him off any more than I think I already have today. He’ll kill me if I’m not here when he’s ready.

  The contrast between Lowestoft and what I saw happening in Southwold is stark. Across the way from where I’m standing, a group of Switchbacks are unloading supplies from a cart and taking them into the police station barracks, where most of the fighters live. Others are collecting waste and dumping it over the compound walls for vagrants to plunder. Elsewhere, more of them are working on setting up a rudimentary water supply outside what used to be the library, to replace the previous one, which fell apart. They’ve lined up a series of drainpipes and water barrels to collect water from the gutters of buildings, black plastic taps hanging over the lip of a low brick wall for people to take water from. Lizzie’s dad used to have one of those barrels in his garden. I remember how the kids used to mess with it, and how they used to complain about the stagnant stench and the flies and the algae … and is this the best we can manage now? Still, if it’s bad here by Hinchcliffe’s courthouse, it’s much worse on the other side of the barricades.

  Just outside the south gate, on the approach to the bridge, there’s an old man who lives in an ambulance. I pass him often when I go to or from the house, and I saw him on my way here today. He’s clearly not a fighter—he can barely stand—but he seems able to switch on an angry, violent facade at will, using it as a deterrent to anyone who approaches him. He’s well known, and Hinchcliffe’s fighters often taunt him for sport, trying to get him to react and bite back. He collects rocks and chucks them at anyone who gets too close. Fucker almost got me today. His ambulance is useless—just a battered wreck with a blown engine and only a single
wheel remaining—but it seems to symbolize everything that’s wrong here. All around this place, people have taken things that used to matter and turned them into nothing. I’ve stayed here because this place looked like my best option, but maybe it’s time to reconsider. The longer the violence here continues, the further we seem to regress.

  “What d’you want?” Curtis asks as he thunders out through the courthouse door, knocking into me.

  “I’m supposed to be meeting Hinchcliffe.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “I know that, I—”

  “Factory,” he says, shoving me out of the way.

  Typical. I immediately start walking, hobbling the first few steps, my legs stiff and painful. It’s a relief at last to be moving. My body aches and my face is frozen, completely numb with cold.

  It’s not far from the courthouse to the factory, but I always get distracted when I walk this route. I always end up imagining what this place was like before the war … seaside shops selling worthless junk and kitsch, pandering to the hordes of vacationers who used to come here (hard to believe this was a destination of choice once). There are the usual main street chain stores, supermarkets, banks, real estate agents, doctors’ and lawyers’ offices—all just shells now, their unlit signs the only indication of what they used to be. Now these wildly different buildings, those which are still safe enough to be used, all look the same. They’re dark and uninviting, stripped of anything of worth and occupied by squatters who stare out from the shadows. I just put my head down and keep moving.

  * * *

  “You seen Hinchcliffe?” I ask a remarkably fresh-faced fighter who’s on guard duty at the checkpoint at the end of the road into the factory. He’s slumped down on a chair inside what looks like half a garden shed, buried under blankets, hardly guarding, and hardly threatening. It’s no surprise, really. No one in their right mind would want to come here. Apart from some of the more vicious kids (who’d kill you as soon as look at you), there’s nothing here worth taking.