Them or Us

5

RUFUS IS ON HIS pushbike, riding alongside me as I walk into town. Truth be told, I’m glad of the company, even though he never shuts up.

“Of course, I saw all this coming before the Hate.”

“All what coming?”

“This chaos. We’ve been on a slippery slope for years. We were overreliant on technology. There was an irony to that, wasn’t there? The easier it was for people to communicate, the worse at communicating they became.”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

“Did you ever try phoning a teenager’s cell?”

“Not that often, why?”

“I did. Fuckers would never answer. I worked with a lot of students, and they always had their phones in their hands, so how come they never answered?”

“You tell me,” I mumble, knowing full well that he’s about to.

“Either they were being selective and only talking to who they wanted to, or they were too busy using the phones for something else. All that social networking and stuff. Antisocial networking, I used to call it.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. We didn’t even have a computer at home. Couldn’t afford the Internet.”

He gives me a sideways glance, then continues. “People started using technology instead of thinking, letting machines do all the work, and now where are we?”

“Lowestoft,” I answer glibly.

“You know what I mean,” he says. “I knew this lad once, he had one of those SAT NAVs, remember them? Fucking thing stopped working when he was driving up for a meeting, and you know what happened?”

“He got lost?”

“Worse than that. Fucking idiot just kept driving in a straight line until he got a signal again. Didn’t think to look at road signs or get himself a map, did he? Took him almost fifty miles to get back on track. There was another time I had a girl in tears because she couldn’t unlock her car because the battery had gone and the key wouldn’t work. For Christ’s sake! I had to march her down to the parking lot and put the key in the fucking door for her myself!”

Rufus continues to chatter tirelessly as we approach the center of town. I say little. I know this is his therapy: his chance to vent his many frustrations without fear of taking a beating. Me, I’m too nervous to give a damn.

“The other day I saw that Curtis fellow, and do you know what he was doing? He was kicking in the door of one of the buildings next to the courthouse and using it for firewood. Where’s the sense in that when there’s so much they could use outside the compound? They’re just too blinkered. They don’t look any further than—”

“Rufus, shut up.”

I stop walking, and he stops pedalling. We’re deep among the underclass now, and something’s happening up ahead. I gesture for him to hold back and we wait by the side of a partially collapsed garage. There are other people all around us, most of them doing the same, keeping their distance. There’s a truck waiting at the barricade, just back from a scavenging mission by the looks of things, and it’s surrounded. One of the fighters in the front gets out and starts swinging a bludgeon at the people who are closest, forcing them back, but the crowd is large and volatile, and when he lunges for one section, people elsewhere surge forward. A couple of them manage to scramble up onto the back of the truck and help themselves, only to be kicked back down by another savage bastard hidden under the canopy. No sooner have they hit the ground than other vagrants are swarming around them, trying to “resteal” what they’ve just stolen. The situation deteriorates with frightening speed until two more fighters appear from the back and wade into the crowd. One of them brandishes a sub-machine gun that he fires into the air, and the people scatter. As soon as there’s sufficient space around the truck, the gate opens and it drives through.

“Lovely,” Rufus says. “I think this is where I’ll leave you.”

He pushes off and pedals away. I don’t know where he’s going, but I do know he has as little desire to head into Hinchcliffe’s compound as I do. At least he has a choice.

The closer I get to the gate around the compound, the more human detritus there is to wade through. This so-called society has divided itself into its own bizarre class structure. It’s like a pyramid now with Hinchcliffe perched alone at the top. Below him are his generals, Llewellyn and a couple of others—those fighters who first, understand how this new world order works, second, have enough brains to know how to deal with Hinchcliffe and keep on his good side, and third, are strong and ruthless enough to hold their own in any conflict. Beneath them are the rest of the fighters, their position in the overall scheme of things depending entirely on their individual strength and aggression, and beneath them are the Switchbacks: people who’ve desperately tried to regain something resembling their old lives, finding new routines and responsibilities to fill the void where now-defunct jobs, families, and relationships used to be. At the bottom of the heap are the hundreds of useless vagrants like the woman who broke into the house last night. Hinchcliffe has a simple way of evaluating each person’s worth: Does he need them? If they weren’t there, he asks, would it matter? With resources so limited, he’s not about to waste time and effort on those useless people who are only going to take. Those poor bastards are lost without a purpose.

As I pick my way through the crowds of underclass—some begging for food they know I won’t give them, some scavenging, some picking through a huge mountain of waste like a landfill site, some hunting rats that others have disturbed, many others just sitting and staring into space—I try to work out where I fit into the hierarchy today. I quickly come to the same conclusion I reach whenever I think about it: I don’t. Sometimes, I don’t know if I want to. Even before the war I felt out of step with everyone else. Now I struggle to believe we’re all part of the same species.

I reach the cordon and hammer on the gate with my fist.

“Who is it?” someone shouts.

“Danny McCoyne,” I answer back. “Hinchcliffe wants to see me.”

A narrow hatch is opened and a fighter stares out at me, checking I’m who I say I am. There’s never any delay when I mention the big man’s name. The hatch closes again; then the gate immediately starts to open, and I’m pulled through as soon as the gap’s wide enough. It’s slammed the moment I’m inside.

I head up what used to be Lowestoft’s main shopping street toward the courthouse building, where Hinchcliffe bases himself, avoiding the foul-smelling piles of rubbish that are steadily encroaching on either side of the narrowing road. The atmosphere is different on this side of the barriers. Here there are fewer people out in the open, and those I can see are moving with more purpose than those stuck on the wrong side of the blockade. Here the Switchbacks compete to stay in favor with the fighters. They remind me of the little birds that used to risk their lives to clean crocodiles’ razor-sharp teeth or the parasitic fish that lived off sharks. This is a more symbiotic relationship, though, because they all need each other. The fighters are a uniformly foul breed—a mix of the physically strong, the instinctively aggressive, and those who are both. They’re a deadly combination of hard, experienced bastards who look like they’ve been fighting all their lives, and younger vigilantes on the cusp of adulthood, always ready for battle. They float like pond scum on top of everyone else, relying on the subservient Switchbacks to fix their cars, fetch their food, and do most other menial tasks in return for water and scraps of food. It all feels precariously balanced.

I reach Hinchcliffe’s place too quickly for my liking. I should go straight inside, but I pace up and down the pavement for a couple of minutes to compose myself first, breathing in slowly to settle my nerves and trying to stop myself from coughing again. The hazy sun peeks unexpectedly through a gap in the heavy clouds, and I cover my eyes. It’s probably my imagination, but even the sun seems to have changed since the bombs. It’s never as clear as it used to be. The light looks and feels different, like a layer of color and strength has been stripped away. Then again, maybe it’s just my eyes.

I feel sick, and the smell here’s not helping. Sanitation is pretty basic around town, and the stench is inescapable. People have taken to crapping in the gutters to get their waste into the drains and sewers. If we carry on at this rate it won’t be long before we’re slopping out again: people emptying buckets of shit into the street from upstairs windows.

A sudden gust of wind clears the air momentarily, and I stop and breathe in the odd breeze. No one pays me any attention, and that’s the way I like it. I can see a crowd around the entrance to the small shopping mall that Hinchcliffe uses as a food store and, occasionally, a distribution point. The same thing’s happening again a couple of hundred yards away, where a street-corner hamburger stand is being used for a similar purpose. These lines never completely disappear. There are always more people than there is food, but no one dares to steal. Just a little way up the road is what’s left of Hook, the last thief Hinchcliffe caught. Once the bane of my life, his corpse now hangs from a lamppost by its feet like a grotesque piece of street decoration. When he found out what he’d been up to, Hinchcliffe strung him up and gutted him like a pig. The rumor was that someone else had been pulling his strings …

The courthouse looks squat and small from street level, but its size is deceptive. Hinchcliffe has occupied a large part of the surrounding area, and most of the neighboring buildings have been taken by his small army of fighters. There’s usually power and water in this part of town. Huge fuel-fired generators thump away continually in the background like a monotonous, mechanical call to the faithful. Hinchcliffe is no fool. This place is a less than subtle symbol of his unquestioned authority here. He’s aligned himself with what used to be the traditional centers of power in Lowestoft, and no matter how the people here behave now and what they’ve become, everyone is still conditioned to a certain extent. They still look at places like this and, whether they’d admit it or not, they see people in charge. I certainly do.

The sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can head back home again. I take a deep breath and go inside.

I enter the courthouse building unchallenged and head straight for Hinchcliffe’s room. Much of the space in here is filled with boxes of supplies, piled so high that in places they’ve spilled out of rooms and have blocked corridors. It’s not that there’s a vast amount of stuff here, more that it’s just incredibly disorganized. Dirty, too. Cleanliness is the very least of anyone’s concerns today. The windows are opaque, and every surface I touch is either covered in dust or sticky with a layer of grime.

Hinchcliffe’s empire is based on a few core principles. Central to his control (of both the fighters and the underclass) is the provision (or at least the promise) of food and water, backed up with the threat of brutal force if anyone steps out of line. He drip-feeds the people here to keep them sweet: Do what I say and you might get what you need, he tells them, fuck with me and I’ll kill you. It really is as simple as that. Today he hoards whatever scraps he can find and stockpiles everything at various locations within the compound. I know where one stash is kept and I have an idea about two others, but I don’t know any more than that. No one knows where everything is except for Hinchcliffe. He manipulates the situation to consciously generate an air of mutual distrust between his fighters when it comes to the supplies, rewarding loyalty with increased rations and at the same time encouraging them to rat on anyone who doesn’t play ball.

Hinchcliffe is the worst of the worst. He is physically and mentally stronger than anyone else, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a Brute with a brain.

I pause outside the tall double doors to his office to compose myself, trying to make myself appear more confident than I feel. I go through and, thankfully, my entrance goes largely unnoticed. The heat in here literally stops me in my tracks. There are electric and oil-fired heaters placed around the edges of the room, probably more here than in the rest of the town combined. Recycling, energy efficiency … all consigned to history now. The amount of waste in here alone is astonishing. Hinchcliffe and his posse seem to go through supplies as if there’s no tomorrow, as if they’re expecting fresh supplies to turn up any day now in a goddamn supermarket truck.

This used to be the main county courtroom, but it’s barely recognizable as such today. It’s been stripped of all gravitas by yet more boxes and crates stacked around in haphazard piles, and the floor and desks are covered with a layer of rubbish. Most of it is clearly just general litter, food wrappers and the like, but there’s a lot of discarded, office-type paperwork lying around, too. Considering this is supposed to be the administrative hub of the town—the beating heart of Hinchcliffe’s empire—it doesn’t look like anyone’s doing very much. I pick up a map that’s been left open on the desk next to where I’m standing. Black crosses have been scrawled over every town and village within thirty miles of this place. There’s a sudden noise behind me, and I spin around to see Llewellyn hurtling toward me. I try to put the map down without him seeing I’ve been looking at it, but it’s too late. He snatches it from my hand and pushes me back against the wall. He hits me harder than I was expecting and my skull cracks against the plaster.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Hinchcliffe wants to see me.”

“Does he? And did he say you could come in here and start looking through my stuff?”

“No, I—”

“You nosy fucker. I’ll break your fucking legs if I catch you at it again. He shouldn’t let a freak like you just wander around.”

“You tell him, then,” I stupidly say, and Llewellyn wraps his hand around my neck.

“You wiseass bastard. Watch yourself, McCoyne, I’m going to—”

“He’s coming,” another fighter says as he bursts into the room. “I’ve just seen him. He’ll be here in a sec.”

Llewellyn lets me go. The other man is Curtis, his deputy. He’s half Llewellyn’s age but just as vicious. He always wears full body armor, taken from his first-ever kill, he’ll regularly tell anyone who’ll listen. Llewellyn grunts at him, then snarls at me, and they walk away together to study the crumpled map, finally leaving me alone. I rub the back of my head and sit down on the edge of the nearest desk. Llewellyn’s got a real problem with me, but I don’t care. If he touches me, Hinchcliffe will kill him, and he knows it. Maybe that’s why he hates me. He doesn’t like the fact that Hinchcliffe seems to trust me, if trust is the right word. It’s a thinly veiled, childlike jealousy, and it’s pitiful.

As I wait for Hinchcliffe to arrive, I watch three other fighters I don’t recognize crowding around a thin slip of a man who’s trying to repair a radio with shaking hands. Sitting at a desk facing me, keeping to himself and working on a battered old laptop, is Anderson, Hinchcliffe’s “stock-keeper.” He’s another gopher, like Rufus. I’m told he used to be an accountant, but now he’s the man charged with keeping a tally of everything that Hinchcliffe owns and controls: the land, food, weapons, vehicles, people … I walk farther into the room and pass him, but he doesn’t even look up. I glance back and see that he’s playing cards on the computer, not working at all.

The man trying to fix the radio makes a mistake. There’s a bright spark, accompanied by a sudden loud cracking noise, a wisp of smoke, and the smell of burning, and he yelps with surprise and pain. Obviously not impressed, one of the fighters watching cuffs him around the back of the head, then shoves him into the wall, face-first. Dazed, he reels away with blood dripping from his nose. He wipes his face clean and immediately tries to work on the radio again and avoid another slap, hands trembling, barely even able to focus, frequently stopping to wipe away more drips of blood.

Hinchcliffe appears through another set of doors, which swing shut into the face of a woman I don’t immediately recognize who’s following behind him. She’s straightening her clothes as she walks, and the reason she’s been here is obvious. It’s unusual to see anyone female around here unless she’s been brought in for sex. It’s another sad indictment of the backward direction this new “society” is taking. The days of women’s lib and equality are long gone. Women fighters are easily as aggressive as men, but generally they’re less physically strong. As a result, fewer of them rise up through the ranks. It’s ironic; the arrival of the Hate temporarily wiped out all the divisions and prejudices that used to split society, but now the war’s ending, they’re flooding back and are even more divisive than before. Hinchcliffe and I talked about it a while back. He told me it’s tough shit, because that’s just the way it is now. There are no human rights groups to help you anymore, he said, we’re all on our own. I don’t care if you’re a black lesbian Jew with one leg, I remember him saying, enjoying belaboring the point, if it comes down to a straight choice between you and me surviving, you’re fucked.

When he finally notices I’m here, Hinchcliffe says something to the woman and she slopes away.

“Danny,” he grins, his voice full of obviously false enthusiasm, “how are you this morning?”

My head aches, my body aches, and my guts are still in turmoil from last night’s dinner of dog, but I spare him the details.

“Shit.”

“Excellent!” he says sarcastically. “Come through. I need to talk to you.”

He turns, and I follow him down a short corridor, up a flight of stairs, and into the first of his private rooms. I’ve been in here a couple of times before, but it still takes me by surprise. It’s more like a teenager’s bedroom than anything else. There’s a flat-screen TV on one wall—possibly the last unbroken TV left in the whole town—and numerous game consoles lying around. There’s a recently vacated, unmade double bed opposite, and the air is heavy with cigarette smoke and other stale and equally unpleasant smells. We continue through to his office, a slightly more businesslike room. There’s a large oval wooden table, covered in as much shit as everywhere else. The grubby cream-colored carpet is stained heavily with blood in several places, no doubt left by those unfortunate people who managed to piss the KC off.

Hinchcliffe sits at the head of the table on a tall-backed leather swivel chair that’s bigger than the rest. He gestures for me to sit next to him, and I do as he says, still doing all I can to disguise my nerves. Despite his inner circle of fighters, his is the only seat that really matters. He is the lawmaker, judge, prosecutor, defense lawyer, jury, and executioner, all rolled into one, and I try not to let him see how much he intimidates me. I act casual and do my best to maintain eye contact, but the fucker just grins and I’m the one who looks away first. Is he really such a threat, or am I blowing things out of proportion? He reminds me of the senior managers I used to work for at the council, but far, far more intense, and, unlike them, he has a personality. He’s no stronger than many of the people he surrounds himself with, but he’s clever and witty and smart, and that’s the real danger. When he looks at me like this it’s like he’s trying to work out exactly what I’m thinking, trying to get into my head and take me apart so he can understand what makes me tick. The war has made most people shed absolutely every aspect of their former selves. Hinchcliffe, though, is different. He used to be an investment banker who’d probably have sold his own mother to turn a profit. He still has the same arrogance and swagger, but now he trades in lower-value currencies for much higher stakes. The rumor according to Rufus (and I really don’t want to know whether it’s true or not) is that when the Change took him, Hinchcliffe wiped out virtually an entire floor of more than forty City traders single-handed.

Take it easy. Don’t let him see you’re nervous.

“You really don’t look so good,” he says, looking me up and down.

“You’re the second person who’s said that to me today.”

“How many people have you seen?”

“Just two.”

“Well, we both must be right, then,” he says, continuing to stare at me, his face an unreadable mix of fascination and disgust. Then his expression suddenly changes. He ducks down, reaches under the table, and pulls out a four-pack of beer, which he slides over to me.

“For helping us get rid of those Unchanged fuckers yesterday. Good job.”

“Thanks.”

I take the beers and quickly remove them from the plastic rings holding them together. I shove the individual cans into different pockets of my long coat. I might drink one later, but the rest will be going under the floorboards when I get back to the house.

“I was really pleased with what you did. Biggest Unchanged haul in ages.”

“Six weeks.”

“I thought we’d seen the last of them. Thought we’d finally got rid of them all.”

“Me, too. Maybe we have now.”

“And we got a few kids, too. Bonus! Wasn’t expecting that.”

“Neither were they.”

There’s another long, awkward (for me, anyway), and uneasy silence.

“I’ve got another job for you,” he finally announces. “Ever heard of a place called Southwold?”

Southwold is a village a few miles farther down the east coast. I’ve never been there, and I know very little about it other than its name. I shake my head. The more Hinchcliffe thinks I know, the more he’ll expect from me.

“It’s about ten miles from here,” he explains. “Used to be a nice little spot. Couple of people I knew in the City had second homes down there back in the day.”

Ten miles. Doesn’t sound far, but distances aren’t what they used to be. People tend to stay put in Lowestoft now and, unless they’re out scavenging, rarely venture more than a couple of miles in any direction. Fuel’s in short supply, so most traveling’s now done on foot, and that puts Southwold the best part of a day away.

Hinchcliffe lights up a cigarette and leans back, taking a long draw and slowly blowing out a cloud of blue-gray smoke up toward the ceiling. Now there’s an expression of status if ever I saw one. Smoking these days says to anyone who’s watching that you’ve got the means and the connections to be able to get your hands on a steady supply of cigarettes to fuel your pointless habit. Most people struggle to find food, never mind anything else. Hinchcliffe knows I’m watching him. Cocky bastard.

“Want one?”

“No thanks. Don’t smoke. Bad for you.”

He laughs and lifts the cigarette box up in front of me, shaking it.

“You sure? These are the real thing,” he says. “Word to the wise, if you do decide to start, come and see me first. There are some dirty fuckers making their own smokes from scrag ends and dried leaves and whatever else they can get their hands on. Bit of a black market starting to spring up around here…”

“You were talking about Southwold,” I remind him, eager to get the conversation back on track and get this over with. He leans forward secretively.

“I might have a problem,” he whispers.

“Unchanged?”

“Not this time.”

“What, then?”

“Settlers. I need you to check them out for me.”

“Why me?”

“Christ, Danny, why do you always ask the same damn questions? You know why. You’re forgettable. No one notices you. No one even gives you a second glance.”

“Thanks.”

“You know what I mean. You can handle yourself. Doesn’t matter who or what you come across, you treat them all the same. You don’t rush in there with your fists flying like everyone else I’ve got who could go.”

Bit of a backhanded compliment, but that’s as good as it gets with Hinchcliffe.

“So what’s your problem?”

“Little issue with the neighbors,” he says, grinning again. “There’s something going on down there, I’m sure of it. I’ve been talking to them for a while, trying to get them to pack up and come up here. Thing is, they wanted to stay where they were, so I figured I’d keep them with us and let them get the place organized for me, then get in there and annex them.”

“I take it things aren’t going to plan?”

He screws up his face and takes another drag on his cigarette.

“It’s not that,” he explains, “I’m just starting to get a little uneasy. There are about thirty of them, and they’re not being as cooperative as I’d like. I think they’re stockpiling and digging in, and I need to get a handle on things.”

“Before someone else does?” I suggest. He pauses, and for a fraction of a second I think I might have overstepped the mark. Then he grins again and points at me.

“You got it! See, you don’t miss a trick, Dan. That’s why I like you!”

He doesn’t like me and we both know it. Fucking idiot.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“There’s a guy called Warner running things down there. John Warner. He’s a local. Came with the territory.”

“You don’t trust him?”

“I don’t trust anyone,” he answers quickly. “Do you know Neil Casey?”

I struggle for a few seconds to place the name. I know he’s one of Hinchcliffe’s top cronies, but, truth be told, they’re all the same to me. Their personalities have become diluted. Rufus says they’ve been de-individualized, and I know what he means. I can only tell them apart by comparing their scars and their level of aggression. I lose track of which one’s which, but I think I know who Casey is.

“Tall guy, nasty scar on the back of his head?”

“That’s him. I sent him down there a few days ago, and he hasn’t reported back to me yet. You know the routine, Dan, if you’re working for me and I send you outside Lowestoft, you make contact at least once every twenty-four hours. That’s the deal.”

“You think they’ve got rid of him?”

“I don’t know what I think, and that’s why I want you to go there. Try to get a feel for what’s going on and let me know if there’s anything I should be worried about, OK?”

I don’t want to go anywhere, but what else can I say? Hinchcliffe doesn’t ask, he tells.

“OK.”

“Good man. Take a car from the pool, pick yourself up a radio, and get down there as soon as you can.”

“Now?”

“Why? You got something better to do?”

“No, it’s just that I don’t feel—”

“Get down there now and report back to me tonight. The sooner you go, the sooner you get back, and the happier I’ll be.”

Bastard. I can’t stand being used like this, but what choice do I have? It’s do the job or risk a beating, maybe worse. I get up to leave, but I’m not even halfway across the room when the coughing starts again, worsened no doubt by Hinchcliffe’s smoking and the arid, dry heat in here. I’m doubled over before I know what’s happening.

“You’ve got to start taking better care of yourself, Danny,” Hinchcliffe shouts after me, “you’re a key member of my team.” I glance back at him but I don’t react. Is he being genuine or sarcastic? I can’t tell the difference anymore.