David Moody - Them or Us

“Now you’ve found me.”

“You have to come—”

“I don’t have to do anything,” I tell him. “You can tell Hinchcliffe to go fuck himself. I’m through running around after him. I quit.”

“No, Danny,” he says, beginning to sob, “you can’t. Please. If I go back without you again he’ll kill me.”

“Then don’t go back. Make a stand. Let someone else deal with him.”

“I’ve never seen him like this before. Please, Danny, you’ve got to come.”

Decision time. How much longer do I keep putting up with all this crap? I don’t enjoy seeing Rufus like this, but at least he’s still got a choice. My hand has been forced.

“Listen,” I tell him, a hand on either shoulder, standing him upright and looking into his face, “I’m not going back. I’m finished with this place and with Hinchcliffe. I’m going to pack my stuff and get out of here, and if you’ve got any sense, I think you should do the same.”

He just looks at me pathetically, dumbstruck and terrified. What he does next is up to him, but my mind’s made up.

“You can’t … I can’t…”

“Yes you can, Rufus. Hinchcliffe is an evil cunt, and the only hold he’s got over you is fear. Don’t go back. Walk out of here tonight and find somewhere else. That’s what I’m doing.”

“But there is nowhere else. I—”

“Good luck, pal. I hope everything works out for you.”

With that I force myself to move and sidestep him. When I look back I see he’s still standing in the pouring rain in the middle of the street, just watching me go.

28

I KNOW I’VE MADE a rod for my own back, but that’s just how it is. Once Rufus plucks up the courage to go back and face Hinchcliffe (and I know he will—he’ll be too scared not to, and he doesn’t have the strength to walk away from this place), then the shit will hit the fan. He’ll probably send Llewellyn or one of the others out here to find me. I know I’m doing the right thing, but I’ve managed to put myself under a whole load of pressure I didn’t need. Well, you have to go with your gut feeling, I guess, even when your gut is apparently stuffed full of tumors.

The day has evaporated and it’s late now, but I force myself to keep working, packing up as much stuff as I can carry before word filters down to Hinchcliffe that I’m no longer playing ball. The fucker is going to explode. I’ll get as much together as I can, then maybe move it to another house nearby, just to get it away from here. I’ll find a way of getting a car, and once I’ve done that, I’m gone. Good-bye Hinchcliffe and good-bye Lowestoft. Good-bye Rufus, too. I feel bad for him, but he has to make a stand. He doesn’t even have to fight, just walk.

I’ve packed almost everything except for the food under the floorboards. I head upstairs to see if there’s anything of any worth left in the bedrooms. I rarely ever come up here because all I’ve ever needed to use in this house has been the living room and kitchen, so these upstairs rooms are just as the previous occupants left them, and it freaks me out. I spent a few nights up here when I first started using the house, but I couldn’t sleep among the memories. Coming upstairs is like stepping back in time a year into a dust-covered reminder of the prewar world. It’s like the people who lived here just got up one morning and never came back, and that’s probably exactly what happened. There’s a pile of laundry still waiting to be put away on the end of an unmade double bed, and a board game on a kid’s bedroom floor, abandoned before the last game was ever finished. There are pictures of the people who lived here on the wall, and I try not to look at them. I feel like their eyes are following me as I walk around what’s left of their home.

The only things I keep up here are a few weapons. A pistol, a handful of bullets, and a grenade, all hidden in the dried-up water tank. The grenade’s a souvenir. It came from the final battle in my hometown. Julia gave it to me before I—

What was that?

Shit. A car.

I run to the front bedroom window and look down. I can hear it but I can’t see it. I strain to see and then pull my head back as it screeches around the corner at the end of the road. It overshoots the house; then the driver slams on the brakes and reverses back, wheels skidding on the icy road. Fuck, it’s Hinchcliffe. What’s he doing here? This is bad news. He must be extremely pissed off to have dragged himself out of the courthouse and come here. I stand to the side of the window and press myself back against the wall, trying to work out how I’m going to get out without him seeing me. I lean forward slightly and look out again. Rufus gets out of the car but tries to hang back, cowering away. Hinchcliffe grabs him, then marches up the drive, dragging him behind. He kicks the front door, then yells through the mail slot.

“Open up, McCoyne. Open this fucking door right now!”

What do I do? I press myself back against the wall again, too scared to go down but also too scared not to. I could try the attic, but I don’t know if there’s a ladder to get up, and even if there is, I’d be backing myself into a corner with no way out. Downstairs I hear the door begin to splinter and crack as Hinchcliffe boots it again and again. What the hell did Rufus say to him? I told him to stand up for himself when he came around here earlier, and is that what he’s done? Or has he betrayed me so that Hinchcliffe would go easy on him? My fear suddenly increases massively—Christ, what if he had me followed earlier? What if he knows about Peter Sutton and the Unchanged? Worse still, what if I was wrong about Sutton? What if he’s double-crossed me and told Hinchcliffe I’m the one harboring Unchanged to get himself off the hook?

“Open this fucking door, McCoyne!” Hinchcliffe yells again, and I know my best option is to get out through the back of the house. I’ll go down and slip out, then come back later as I’d planned and fetch my stuff. I check around the edge of the window frame again. There’s only Hinchcliffe and Rufus here, no other fighters. I could hide in any one of the hundreds of other empty houses around this estate and they’d be none the wiser.

On the street below, poor old Rufus tries to make a run for it. Hinchcliffe knows what he’s up to and he’s having none of it. He turns on him in a heartbeat and kicks his legs out from under him. Rufus crashes down on his back on the driveway with a heavy thump and a horrible yelp of pain. Hinchcliffe kicks him in the kidney, screaming at him that he’s not going anywhere until they’ve found me, then takes another run at the door.

Got to move fast.

I start to run through the house, but I’m not even halfway down the stairs when the door flies open, finally giving way under the force of Hinchcliffe’s boot. I try to turn back but trip and land on my backside on the bottom step as splinters of broken wood and shards of glass go flying in all directions around me.

“McCoyne,” he yells when he sees me. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Upstairs. I was asleep,” I tell him, trying to lie my way out of trouble. “I’m sick, Hinchcliffe. I didn’t know you were here.”

I can’t tell whether or not he believes me. He turns and grabs hold of Rufus, then hauls him into the house. Rufus stands and stares at me with a petrified expression on his face. He’s been badly beaten. His right eye is swollen shut, and there’s blood running down his chin. At least he’s managing to hold my gaze. That’s a good sign, I hope. I don’t think he’d be able to look at me if he’d told Hinchcliffe what I said earlier. Poor bastard’s no good at handling situations like this.

“Where have you been?” Hinchcliffe asks again.