David Moody - Them or Us

“Sorry, Hinchcliffe,” he mumbles pathetically, cowering back. Hinchcliffe ignores him and slowly turns back around to face me.

“Where were you, Danny?”

“What?”

“When the plane flew over, where were you? You still haven’t told me.”

“I don’t know when that was. Like I said, I’m sick. I went for a walk to try to clear my head, and when I got back I went to see your doctor.”

“Does it affect your hearing?”

“What?”

“This ‘sickness’ of yours, makes you deaf, does it?”

“No.”

“So how come you didn’t hear anything? They were circling Lowestoft for almost an hour, maybe even longer. How could you not have heard it?”

“I don’t know. How am I supposed to answer that? I’ve had things on my mind. Like I said, I could have been asleep or down by the beach…”

“It’s all a bit convenient, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

He stares at me, unblinking. Does he know more than he’s letting on? My pulse is racing, but I hold his gaze. He finally breaks eye contact and looks away, and the relief is immense.

“No, probably not.”

“What, then? What are you saying?”

“You talk the talk, Danny, but do you really understand how important this might be?”

“Yes, you’ve just explained.”

“So you understand that it’s crucial for me to keep control of this place?”

“Yes.”

“So why weren’t you here?”

“You said to take some time off. You said you didn’t need me.”

“I thought you were smarter than that.”

“What?”

“I might have told you I didn’t have anything I needed you to do for a couple of days, but I didn’t say you could go away on a fucking vacation.”

“I didn’t go on vacation, I just—”

He holds up his hand (and my wrench) again to silence me. Arrogant bastard.

“In future you’ll be here exactly when I want you to be. Understand?”

“Have I ever not been? Have I ever—”

“I need to know who I can trust, Danny.”

“You can trust me. You know you can.”

“You let me down today. Llewellyn could have been on his way by now. If you’d been there he could have followed the damn plane out of town. Now we’ve given them a head start and they could be anywhere.”

“They’re flying, Hinchcliffe. They could be anywhere anyway.”

He takes another couple of steps closer, and I freeze. Keep your fucking mouth shut, you idiot, I scream to myself.

“When you get back with Llewellyn,” he seethes, “you’re going to collect all your shit from this house and find somewhere to stay in the middle of town, closer to the courthouse.”

“But—”

“I’m not asking, I’m telling.”

“What difference does it make?” I protest, desperate not to give up my privacy, remembering too late that I’m not planning on hanging around. Hinchcliffe moves closer still, and I immediately shut up, regretting my outburst. Then, with a grunt of sudden, unexpected anger, he spins around and smashes the wrench into Rufus’s face. Rufus immediately drops to the ground, and I stare at him, stunned. He lies on his back, arms and legs still moving, face covered with blood, whimpering through broken teeth. Hinchcliffe leans down and smacks him in the head again, finishing him off. He stands up, one foot either side of the now motionless body, and thrusts the bloody wrench at me.

“Don’t ever give me any reason not to trust you again.”

“I won’t…”

“I don’t know where the fuck you were today, but from now on you do exactly what you’re told. You don’t ask questions, you just do what I tell you. Understand?”

“I understand,” I say quietly, looking down at the battered body of my friend.

“Get the stuff you need together. We’re heading back into town. And don’t ever fuck with me again, Danny, because you will regret it.”

29

I’M IN THE BACK of an armor-plated van with Llewellyn and three other fighters, scared shitless. This is my worst nightmare. Llewellyn’s never trusted me, and he’s been waiting for a chance to get me away from Lowestoft on my own. There’s something different about the way he’s acting toward me today, and the longer this journey lasts, the more convinced I am that he’s probably the one who persuaded Hinchcliffe I should be part of this pointless expedition so he could get rid of me. Fucker’s going to kill me and concoct some bullshit story to explain to Hinchcliffe why his prize pet is dead.

The four members of my armed guard talk to each other in secretive whispers, deliberately excluding me. I’m used to it. I’ve felt like an outsider for as long as I’ve been in Lowestoft. No matter how I look at it, I seem to have a foot in neither camp. I’m neither fighter nor underclass; not like the rest of them, but not Unchanged either, just an unwanted, mixed-breed outcast. Today my paranoia has been ramped up by several hundred percent. Whatever the intentions of these men are, I won’t know for sure what they’re planning until they make their move. I have to try to stay one step ahead of the game, like I learned to do with the Unchanged. I have to hope that, wherever we end up, I’ll be able to find a way of giving them the slip and getting away. What I’ll do after I’ve broken cover is anyone’s guess. I don’t suppose it matters anymore. I’m not eating, hardly drinking … I’ll just find a rock to crawl under and sit it out. I can’t waste any more time thinking about it. I might not have any time left.

Llewellyn sits up front next to the driver, Ben Healey. In the back with me are two other men, handpicked for their aggression and strength: Chandra—the disfigured guard I saw outside Hinchcliffe’s hotel breeding center—and Swales, a cocky and aggressive young bastard I’ve had little to do with until today.

We’re in radio contact with Hinchcliffe, but communications with Lowestoft have been brief and infrequent. I’m not going to risk saying anything, but they surely must realize we’re never going to find that plane today. Christ, it could have come from anywhere. Overseas, even. No one knows for sure what’s happening in other countries (it’s hard enough finding out what’s going on here), but I’m guessing everywhere else must be in as dire and desperate a state as this place is. Regardless, the fact remains: Looking for the plane and its pilot is going to be like looking for a needle in a pile of a thousand massive haystacks. What if it came from somewhere on the other side of the huge radioactive scar that now stretches much of the length of the country? There’s no point trying to tell Llewellyn; he’s never going listen to me. Instead he’ll just concentrate on his impossible task and won’t question anything. If Hinchcliffe told these morons to kill themselves I think most of them probably would, but it’s more likely they’re going to kill me.

Llewellyn glances over his shoulder and makes eye contact with me, and my blood runs cold. This bastard seems to be enjoying himself. He can’t wait to be shot of me. The longer I’m around, the more he resents the fact that I’m useful to Hinchcliffe. Fighters can be replaced, but me … I’m unique (unfortunately), and Llewellyn doesn’t like it.

I peer out of the wire-mesh-covered window to my side and see that we’ve entered the outskirts of what used to be the city of Norwich. It’s an empty, lifeless place now, nothing more than a desolate shell. I don’t know what happened here during the war, but it obviously wasn’t a big enough concern to warrant being nuked. Over the last few months it’s been systematically stripped clean, first by Thacker, then Hinchcliffe. Too large and unwieldy a place to be governed effectively, and not as geographically well placed as the port of Lowestoft, it’s just been abandoned, left to decay.