Them or Us (8 page)

7

THE EMPTY ROADS ARE
desolate, and I keep driving along the A12 until I reach the village of Wrentham, a strangely skeletal place. Everything of value has long since been removed and taken back to Lowestoft. In the silent center of the village there’s a junction. The road sign directly opposite is bent over double like a drunk throwing up against a wall and it’s hard to make out what it says. I think it’s around a mile and a half to Southwold. Fortunately the road names here are pretty self-explanatory: Lowestoft Road, London Road (note to self—don’t go down that one), and Southwold Road. I follow the Southwold Road, looking out for somewhere safe to leave the car so I can finish the last mile or so of the journey on foot. I’ll draw less attention to myself and have more chance of avoiding any trouble that way. Damn Hinchcliffe, I really don’t want to do this. If there was more fuel in this car I could make a break for it and try to find another place like Lowestoft. Then again, what’s the point? Every surviving town will probably have its own KC.

Another mile or so and I reach a business park, which seems as quiet as everywhere else. I drive as deep into the property as I dare, then park the car inside a large warehouse, out of sight. I quickly check the building out, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for months. There’s an undisturbed layer of dust everywhere, and that’s reassuring. I need to be careful with the car. Not only will Hinchcliffe hit the roof if I don’t get it back to him in one piece, but it’s also my ticket out of here. I take my CD with me, just in case, shoving it into my backpack along with some clothes, weapons, two books, scraps of food to trade, and Hinchcliffe’s radio.

*   *   *

I skirt around the edge of another village first, Reydon, then follow a dog-eared tourist’s street map that Hinchcliffe gave me to get deeper into Southwold. I check the map repeatedly as I follow the main road, which runs right through the center of the town. I don’t feel like a tourist today. I’m nervous as hell.

There’s not much to this place, and I’m assuming that here, as in Lowestoft, any settlers will have gravitated toward the center, where the shops, pubs, offices, and everything else used to be. If there are only thirty or so people here, they probably haven’t spread out that far. I don’t know anything about this guy John Warner, but it’s safe to assume he’s probably a nasty bastard. He must be pretty sure of himself to have turned down an “invitation” to relocate to Lowestoft. Either he’s dumb, or he’s got balls of steel.

This place is like a ghost town. Perhaps because of its relatively remote location and small size, Southwold seems to have escaped much of the recent fighting. There’s plenty of surface damage, but most of the buildings still appear structurally sound. The once carefully tended shoulders and lawns are overgrown and wild now, although the grass is yellow and limp. Weeds are beginning to sprout through the cracks in the pavements. I stare through a dust-covered window into the deceptively normal living room of an abandoned house, then catch my breath when I hear voices nearby, carried on the winter wind.
Focus!
I tell myself. I can’t afford to take chances. There’s a reason these people are defying Hinchcliffe, and if they’re prepared to piss him off, they’ll have no qualms about getting rid of me.

There’s a lighthouse up ahead. I didn’t pay it much attention when I first saw it marked on the map, but now that it’s actually looming up right in front of me I can’t help but notice it. Unlike most lighthouses I’ve come across before, this one is nestled deep in the center of the town rather than out on the rocks or at the edge of the water. I edge closer to try to get a better view, peering around the corner of a row of modest-looking houses. Circling the very top of the lighthouse is a metal gantry, and there’s someone pacing around it on watch. I can’t see much from this distance, but it looks like he’s armed. There’s no sense taking any unnecessary chances. I decide to work my way around the center of the town in a wide circle rather than risk getting too close too soon and being shot at.

Through a narrow gap between two oddly spaced rows of houses I see a small group of people working in a field near a church. I can’t see what it is they’re doing from here, but I change direction again to avoid any confrontation. Still staying tucked in close to the fronts of the buildings I pass to minimize the chance of being seen by the lighthouse lookout, I find myself walking down toward the ocean. The steadily increasing noise of the waves crashing against the shingle shore is reassuring and welcome. The morning sun that was briefly visible in Lowestoft has disappeared now, and the sky is again clogged with heavy, dirty gray cloud. The wind coming up off the water is bracing, almost too cold to stand. It’s raining—either sea-spray or sleet—and I ask myself again,
What the hell am I doing here
?

A long, uninterrupted, and empty roadway runs parallel with the shingle beach below, appearing to stretch right along the full length of the town, all the way out toward a crumbling pier that reaches into the sea. The promenade is a relatively straight, hardly overlooked strip of asphalt, and I’m suddenly struck by the fact that there’s something very different about this place in comparison with everywhere else I’ve been since I arrived in the area. The deeper I’ve gone into Southwold, the more obvious it’s become. The roads here in this part of town have been cleared. There are the usual burned-out cars and occasional piles of rubble lying around, but here, unlike in Lowestoft, they appear to have been moved out of the way. This is weird. No one cleans anything anymore, there’s no point. There’s barely anything left to clean
with
. The whole country is covered in a layer of radioactive grime that never gets touched. People usually climb over and around obstructions such as these, very rarely ever doing anything about them.

A sudden gust of wind catches a loose window in a run-down house behind me, slamming it shut. My heart’s in my mouth and my body immediately tenses up, ready for confrontation. I grab my knife and look around in all directions, but I can’t see anyone, and I curse myself again for getting so easily distracted. Next to the house is a small corner store with a real estate agent’s
FOR RENT
sign hanging above the door. Its bare shelves have long since been stripped of anything of value, but, feeling exposed, I go inside.

The store’s as empty as it looked from the street, probably cleared out just before the fighting began in earnest. Again, if this had been Lowestoft or anywhere else, the floor would be covered in crap, the furniture broken into pieces for firewood, the windows smashed, a couple of bodies left rotting in the corner … There’s a pile of papers on the end of a counter, neatly stacked next to an empty display unit as if the outgoing owners just left them there on their way out. There’s a local newspaper on top of the pile, dated last February, and I casually flick through it, this time happy to be distracted. The yellowed pages immediately take me back to a world that’s long gone. There are a few vague mentions of the beginning of the troubles that eventually consumed everything and everyone, but generally the paper’s filled with the kind of empty stories that used to be so typical and that used to matter in places like this: local merchants protesting about increased parking charges, the proposed merger of two secondary schools, an amateur dramatics group desperately trying to hawk tickets for their latest production, a new car dealership opening … For a while I’m hypnotized as I read through the TV and local movie listings, looking at program titles I thought I’d forgotten and the names of films I never got to see, but then I remember where I am and what I’m supposed to be doing and I make myself move.

On the floor by my feet, wedged under the counter, is a postcard lying facedown. I pick it up and flip it over. On the front is a picture of Southwold beach and the pier taken on a gloriously sunny summer’s day, way back when. The colors of the postcard are still remarkably bright and vivid.
GREETINGS FROM SOUTHWOLD
it says at the bottom, in large orange and yellow text. Maybe I should send it to Hinchcliffe? I don’t think he’d appreciate the joke.

I take the postcard outside with me and compare it to the real world. The original photograph must have been taken from somewhere very near to this exact spot, because the view of the pier is pretty much the same. I cross the promenade and a strip of muddy grass, then lean against the metal railings and look down toward the sea. Holding the postcard up, I can clearly see the contrast between the past and the present. Apart from the weather and the lack of color (everything today is disappointingly monochrome), the other major difference is the pier itself. There’s now a large chasm about two-thirds of the way along its length where part of the structure has collapsed and fallen into the sea. Bent girders hang down like tumbling weeds, and several supporting metal struts have buckled. It looks like something impossibly heavy crashed down into the pier from on high. A plane perhaps? Aware that I’m wasting time but not giving a damn, I start to walk down toward it, curious as to how it came to be so badly damaged. Was there a bomb? Did something hit it from below? Was there a fire or a battle here at some point? At the entrance to the pier is a large pale-yellow-painted art deco building that looks like it used to house the usual seaside distractions: an amusement arcade, cafés, and gift shops. Running along the length of the pier, straight up its center, is a line of what look like wooden shacks—yet more cafés and shops, I presume. I resist the temptation to get any closer, and instead I turn around and look back along the beach toward the town, knowing that I have to stop putting it off and start doing what Hinchcliffe sent me here to do. The normality of what I see takes me by surprise—the waves crashing against the shore, the breakwaters jutting up through the surf and spray, a long line of small wooden beach huts … it all fills me with unexpected nostalgia as I remember long-gone family holidays. The economy of pretty much this whole town, I imagine, would have been based on tourism. Summer vacations, ice creams, buckets, and spades … all gone forever now. Christ, the very idea of a holiday seems bizarre and out of—

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

The unexpected voice catches me by surprise. I spin around and find myself face-to-face with a tall man carrying a rifle. Dressed in ragged, mud-splattered fatigues with his head wrapped up in a bizarre checked hat–scarf combination, he looks like a cross between a farmer and a freedom fighter, like he should divide his time between milking cows and hiding in Middle Eastern cave systems. A bushy gray beard hides his mouth and makes his expression frustratingly hard to read. Christ, I’m a dumb prick. He could have killed me ten times over and I don’t even have my knife ready to defend myself. All I’ve got in my hand is a fucking picture postcard. I drop it fast, hoping he hasn’t noticed.

“Sorry … I was just looking. I didn’t know if—”

“I don’t know you. Where you from?” he interrupts. He doesn’t sound like he’s going to stand for any bullshit. Whether he’d use his rifle on me or not is debatable, but I’m not about to take any chances. I try to clear my head and remember the back story I’d thought up for myself on the way here from Lowestoft.
Act dumb
.
Pretend you’re lost
.
You’re not here to fight
, I make myself remember,
just to observe
.

“I’ve been working my way up the coast,” I lie.

“Doing what?” he sneers. “Taking in the sights?”

“Scavenging. Honest, man, I didn’t know anyone was here. Thought the place was dead like everywhere else. Just let me go and I’ll get out of your way.”

“Found much?”

“What?”

“On your travels … have you found much?”

“Not a lot. Not a lot left anywhere, to be honest.”

“You on your own?”

“Best way to be. What about you?”

“Nope. Plenty more of us in the village.”

“You live here?”

“Yep, if you call this living.”

He seems reasonably calm, although appearances can be deceptive. I don’t get the impression he’s looking for trouble, but I can’t risk making assumptions. For all I know, he could be head honcho of a family of cannibals or something equally unpleasant. Stranger things have happened.

“Listen, I’m starving. You got any food? I’ll trade for it.”

“You’ll need to talk to Warner,” he says, using the end of his rifle to gesture back toward the town. “He makes the decisions around here.”

8

HE TAKES ME BACK
toward the center of town without saying another word, leading me all the way back along the beachfront promenade, passing level with the lighthouse, until we reach a pub. There we turn right and walk up a narrow road lined with odd-shaped, brightly painted cottages packed tightly together. The blues and yellows might have faded, but they still stand out amid the muted grays and browns of everything else. This place is in such relatively good condition that I still keep getting distracted, and I don’t realize we’ve reached the boss’s place until we’re there. It’s a large, grubby, white-fronted hotel, right in the very center of the town, overlooking a junction where one road merges with another and forms an open arrowhead-shaped space. The roads are completely devoid of any moving traffic, and this place has become a kind of makeshift village square, with several vehicles parked and other stacks of equipment left lying around. The frontages of some of the buildings have been fortified with wooden barriers and spools of barbed wire. There are two men standing next to a glowing brazier a short distance away, but it’s otherwise quiet and there’s no one else about. It’s still relatively early. No doubt I’ll see more activity later, providing I survive my meeting with Warner, that is.

“Is this it?”

The man disappears inside the hotel, both avoiding my question and answering it at the same time. I stand and wait in the middle of the street, feeling vulnerable but doing all I can to keep up the illusion that I’m a scavenger who just happens to have stumbled across this place, not a spy sent here by the local neighborhood despot. I can see movement through the ground-floor windows of the hotel, but I can’t make out who it is or what’s happening inside. I check my pockets and the leather holster on my belt, feeling for the reassuring shapes of my knives, and I try to prepare myself mentally for the inevitable quick getaway I’ll have to make if things turn nasty. I try not to look too conspicuous as a group of people emerges from around the side of a building behind me, dragging a trailer between them. Thankfully they pass by quickly, barely even giving me a second glance. I haven’t seen a lot, but I know already that this place is a world apart from Lowestoft. There you often can’t move along the pavement for swarms of useless underclass, loitering, begging, and squabbling. But their numbers can be useful, and I can disappear into the crowds when I don’t want to be found. Here I have no cover or protection whatsoever.

The tall man appears from a passageway that runs down the side of the hotel, between this building and the next. He beckons me toward him, and I have little option but to follow. The short passageway almost immediately opens out into a large cobblestone courtyard, and he gestures for me to go through a doorway into the building adjacent to the hotel. I’m reluctant; am I walking into a trap? But why should he be trying to trap me, unless he really does want to kill and eat me? Apart from turning up here unannounced, I don’t think I’ve done anything to arouse suspicions.

Judging from the decoration and the almost undamaged oak paneling inside, I think this must have been some kind of town hall, although if it is, it’s the smallest town hall I’ve ever seen. I’m ushered through another door into a large, high-ceilinged room, which is empty save for a gaunt, white-haired man sitting at a table writing figures in a book. He doesn’t even look up when we enter. He looks like a country gent, how I imagine a squire might look from history lessons long gone. Appearances can be deceptive, I keep reminding myself. First impressions don’t count like they used to.

“You Warner?” I ask. He doesn’t react at first. Instead he finishes writing, then puts down his pen, takes off his glasses, and carefully lays them on the desk. Then he looks up at me.

“Yep,” he answers, “and who might you be?”

“My name’s Rufus,” I tell him, picking the first name that comes into my head, then immediately wishing I’d chosen something less conspicuous.

“And what can I do for you, Rufus?”

His simple question is stupidly hard to answer, probably because of the ominous way he asks it, staring straight at me. Is he trying to trip me up?

“Says he’s been scavenging down south,” the man who brought me here says from the doorway behind me.

“Has he now?”

“That’s right,” I tell him, mouth dry with nerves.

“Not been too close to what’s left of London, I hope,” Warner says, grinning knowingly at the other man. “Don’t want our little town contaminated.”

I shake my head. “Nowhere near it. Look, I don’t want any trouble. I swear I didn’t know there was anyone here. I’m just looking for something to eat and somewhere to shelter. I’ll be gone again tomorrow.”

“You look like you need feeding up. The road not been kind to you?”

I shrug my shoulders. “No harder on me than anyone else.”

“Why are you here so early, then? Couldn’t you sleep?”

Warner’s strange question throws me, so much so that I instinctively slide my hand into my pocket and feel for the hilt of my knife again.

“What?”

“You been walking through the night?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Common sense says,” he begins, leaning across the table, eyes burning into me, “that most people rest at night and move during daylight hours when it’s safer. Especially with it being the middle of winter and all, and with the world being such a fucking horrible place all of a sudden. So why are you turning up in front of me now, before we’ve even got to midmorning?”

Stay calm,
I tell myself, feeling my body tensing in anticipation of an attack. There could be any one of a hundred plausible explanations why someone might have chosen to walk through the night.
Just don’t panic
 … I grip the handle of the blade in my pocket.

“Go for that knife and I’ll have you killed before you’ve even drawn it,” he says calmly. I let it go and lift my hands.

“I set out at sunrise,” I tell him, swallowing hard, plumping for the most simple and logical explanation I can come up with. “I knew I wasn’t far from this place, but I must have lost my bearings somewhere along the way. I was a few hours farther down the road than I thought. I’d got it into my head I had another half a day’s walk ahead of me.”

He nods slowly. Is he deciding whether he believes my story or working out how he’s going to get rid of me? Warner’s obviously no fool. I see flashes of the arrogance of a fighter in his eyes, but there’s clearly much more to him than that. I stand my ground, hold my nerve, and keep quiet.

“But I found him up by the pier,” the man behind me says.

“So?” Warner asks.

“So that’s north of town, John. He said he came here from the south.”

Warner’s silence demands an answer.

“I did come from the south,” I tell them both, trying not to be noticed as I reach for a different knife inside my long coat. “I didn’t see anyone when I first got here. I just kept walking out along the seafront, and that’s where you found me.”

“I’m not sure about this. There are enough people out in the fields. Surely he’d have—”

“I saw them. By the church…”

“So why didn’t you ask them for food? You said you didn’t know there was anyone here.”

Warner raises his hand to silence the other man and shakes his head. He sits in front of me impassive, like a judge about to pass sentence. I keep waiting for him to give the order and for a pack of previously hidden fighters to emerge from the woodwork and take me out. I’m woefully out of shape and I haven’t fought seriously for weeks. I’d struggle to defend myself against these two today, never mind anyone else they might call in to help them. Fucking Hinchcliffe and his stupid fucking empire building. Why do I let him maneuver me into situations like this? The answer’s disappointingly obvious: He’d kill me if I didn’t do what he said.

“Let it go, Ben,” Warner says, still surprisingly calm. “Does it really matter? Fact is, he’s here now and he’s got a simple choice to make. He can play ball and follow our rules, or he can fuck off and keep walking. If he’s as cold, hungry, and miserable as he looks, I think he’ll do what he’s told.”

“I will,” I say quickly, sounding deliberately pathetic. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Fair enough, then,” Warner says, picking up his pen again and chewing thoughtfully on the end of it. “The first rule you need to know is that it’s one day’s work here for one meal and one night’s shelter. You work hard and you keep working until you’re told to stop and you’ll get fed. Any slacking and you’ll get fuck all.”

“Sounds fair.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but you get the idea.”

“Okay.”

“Second rule: Any problems here, you come and see me. Understand?”

“Understand.”

“You don’t try to sort things out yourself, right?”

“Right.”

Warner leans back in his chair and continues to watch me for a few uncomfortable seconds longer.

“You don’t look like you’ll last the day,” he says. Insolent bastard.

“I’m fine.”

“Right, then,” he announces. “Get him out to the others, Ben, and find him something to do.”