Them or Us (6 page)

4

SOME FUCKER’S BANGING ON
the door. I keep my eyes screwed shut, nowhere near ready to start another day just yet. If I stay still long enough and don’t react, maybe whoever it is will give up and go away. I half open one eye and look around. It’s light outside, not long after dawn. My book’s on the floor. My tired body aches more than it did when I went to sleep.

The hammering on the door continues. I know who it is now. He lifts the flap of the mail slot and shouts at me, but I don’t react. I know he’s not going anywhere, but I can’t be bothered to move. I make him wait a little longer.

“Come on, Danny, I know you’re in there.”

“Piss off, Rufus.”

He starts knocking on the window, rapping on the glass with his knuckles, and the sound hurts my head. I’ll go and see what he wants, then get rid of him. Rufus has an annoying habit of coming here when he’s got nowhere else to go, wanting to talk for hours about nothing in particular. Sometimes I can tolerate him, but I don’t feel so good this morning and I’m not in the mood. Sometimes he stays all day and we play cards together and put the world to rights (although that particular problem’s bigger than both of us), but not today. Most of the time I’ve forgotten everything he’s said by the time I’ve managed to push him back out the door.

He’s not going anywhere. Admitting defeat, I start to get up but then fall back down again when the morning cough hits me. I’ve probably smoked less than a handful of cigarettes in my whole life, but these days I sound like a chain-smoker who’s had a fifty a day habit for the last twenty years. The cough comes in wrenching waves, and I know there’s nothing I can do to fight it. I manage to stand up and steady myself on the back of the chair as another hacking burst overtakes me. My sleeping bag drops down around my feet like a used condom, leaving me freezing cold and exposed. One more painful, tearing retch, strong enough to make me feel like I’m being turned inside out, and the coughing finally starts to subside. I spit out a lump of sticky red-green phlegm into my empty coffee cup, step out of the sleeping bag, and stagger over to open the door.

“What?”

“You took your time,” he says, not impressed.

“What do you want?”

Rufus glares up at me (he’s a good few inches shorter than I am), then ducks under my outstretched arm and pushes his way into the house.

“You’re a pain in the backside, Danny. Why didn’t you just let me in?”

“
I’m
a pain in the backside? You’re the one banging on the window like a goddamn idiot.”

“Didn’t you hear me knocking? Fucking hell, I’ve been out there for ages. It’s freezing outside.”

“It’s winter, what do you expect? Anyway, it’s no better in here.”

I climb back into my sleeping bag, pull it up, and sit down again. He stands in front of me in the middle of the living room, flapping his arms around himself to try and get warm.

“You should light a fire or something,” he says, blowing into his hands.

“Can’t be bothered. Too much effort.”

“You need to start taking more care of yourself. You’re not looking so good.”

“Thanks.”

“You know what I mean.”

He shakes his head in despair, then picks my book up off the floor and starts flicking through the pages. He has to hold it right up to his face to be able to read anything. Poor bugger’s eyesight is bad. He was a voracious reader, but he’s been reduced to reading children’s editions because the print’s larger. He used to wear strong glasses, but the lenses got broken a few weeks back when he got caught up in the middle of a fight he had nothing to do with. Rufus doesn’t handle conflict well. Makes me wonder how he’s lasted this long. He has another fresh bruise on his face this morning. He’s probably pissed somebody off again. Doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

“Don’t know how you can read this crap.”

“It’s simple, shallow, and predictable. Just what I need.”

“Yes, but there’s a whole load of literature out there, Dan. Read some classics. Broaden your horizons.”

“I don’t want to broaden my horizons. In fact, I want to start limiting my horizons to the four walls of this house, screw everything else.”

“Don’t be so narrow. Listen, have you read
1984
? I managed to salvage a pile of postapocalyptic books from the library before Hinchcliffe’s morons burned them. You should read it. And
Earth Abides,
that’s another. It’s really interesting to see how people thought things were going to pan out. I mean, they were all miles off the mark, but don’t let that—”

“Rufus,” I interrupt, “what is it you want? You didn’t come here this early just to make reading recommendations.”

“Come on, Danny,” he sighs, dropping the book down again. “You know I only disturb you when I absolutely have to.”

I know he’s right, but I’m not going to make it easy for him. He always does exactly what he’s told (he’s too scared not to), and he wouldn’t be here at this hour if he had any choice. Rufus is an ex–civil servant, working as a gopher for Hinchcliffe and his cronies, running errands and carrying messages. His intelligence and natural ability to talk rings around everyone else elevate him above the rest of the underclass, but he’s not a natural fighter by any means, and every day is a struggle for him to survive. Rufus calls me his friend, although I think he needs me far more than I need him. I spit into my cup again and wipe my mouth on my sleeve.

“You really do need to start taking more care of yourself, Dan,” he says again, looking me up and down.

“I’m tired, that’s all. Spent the last few days hunting.”

“I heard. Most of the people in the compound heard. The beer was certainly flowing last night. They were toasting your success. Hate to think what’s going to happen when they run out of booze.”

“Whatever. So why exactly are you here? Is that all you came to tell me?”

Rufus doesn’t answer right away. He’s distracted by the picture on the cover of another of my trashy novels. I whistle at him to get his attention, and he finally looks up.

“He wants to see you. Says he’s got another job for you.”

My heart sinks. “He” is Hinchcliffe, and I don’t need any more detail. If he wants to see me, then I don’t have any choice but to go and find him. When I get there and he tells me what it is he wants me to do, I’ll have no choice but to do it.

“Christ, Rufus, what is it this time?”

“I’m just the messenger, Danny, you know he doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Shit. I swear, it’s like being back at work sometimes, the amount of stuff he has me doing. Is it more Unchanged or—”

“I told you, I don’t know. He’s not a happy bunny, though.”

“Great.”

Despite the fact that Hinchcliffe genuinely seems to value me (as much as anyone values anyone else these days), and the fact that whatever he asks me to do, I’ve probably already had to do much worse, I immediately feel nervous. I can try to hide it, and I can bullshit and make light of the situation until I’m blue in the face, but the fact remains: Hinchcliffe scares the shit out of me. Sometimes I think our collective fear of good old KC is the glue that holds this fragile place together.

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.