“So where does it end? Last man standing?”
“Possibly.”
“I don’t buy it.”
“I know you don’t, and I understand that—but we’ll have to agree to disagree because I’m in charge. Anyway, even if you don’t like the way I do things, you’re smart enough to know you’ll be okay as long as you stay in line and don’t piss me off, aren’t you?”
“Suppose. But did it really need to be so harsh in Southwold? Couldn’t you just have dealt with Warner and left the rest of them be?”
“I had to send a message. If I hadn’t I’d have just been heading back in a few weeks to straighten them out again. Someone would have taken Warner’s place.”
“But Warner’s people were cooperating with each other. Surely if you—”
“I like you, Danny,” he interrupts, obviously no longer interested. “You’re way off the mark sometimes, but you’re good to have around. You’re not like all those sycophants and asslickers. You keep me grounded. You make me laugh.”
“You’re welcome,” I mumble quietly, not sure if that was a compliment or not. There’s no arguing with Hinchcliffe. Today he reminds me of all those long-gone world leaders who used to start wars in far-off places to maintain the peace. It’s the same kind of flawed logic as the government’s Ministry of Defense that only ever seemed to attack. Feeling a fraction more confident now, and as he’s clearly in the mood to talk, I decide to take the bull by the horns and ask a question that’s been troubling me recently. “So now the Unchanged are gone, what happens next?”
“What do you mean?”
“Those fighters of yours this morning … all they wanted to do was kill. They were like kids at Christmas. So what happens to them now the enemy’s been defeated? Do you think they’ll just stop? They’re not going to want to go back to being bricklayers or teachers or pub owners…”
“I know that, and they won’t have to. There’s a new class structure emerging here, and we’re at the top. Have you looked outside this compound, Danny? Seen how many people are waiting out there? They’re the ones who’ll eventually do the work. They’ll do anything I tell them, and you know why?”
“Why?”
“The two f’s.”
“The two f’s? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, keep up! We’ve talked about this. Food and fear. They’ll do what I tell them. When I need bricklayers and teachers and the like, they’ll be fighting with each other to help.”
His vision of the future seems ridiculously simplistic.
“So what happens when the food runs out?”
“That’s not going to happen for a long time,” he answers quickly. “We’ll see it coming and start planning for it when we need to.”
“How?”
“By the time it’s become a problem I’ll have enough of a workforce to start producing food again, and they’ll be hungry enough to keep doing exactly what I tell them. There’s no point making people work for food yet, while there’s still stuff to be scavenged; they’re not desperate enough.”
“John Warner was trying to get people farming,” I tell him.
“Was it working?”
“No, but—”
“Well, there you go, then. It’s too soon.”
I could ask him how he ever plans to farm when all the livestock for miles around Lowestoft is either dead, dying, or running wild, and when the soil has been poisoned by radiation … but I’m sure he knows that anyway and so I don’t bother. Instead I try another tack.
“The batteries in my reading lamp are almost gone,” I start to say before he interrupts, laughing.
“Your reading lamp! Fuck me, Danny, you’re turning into an old woman!”
I ignore him and carry on.
“The batteries are going in my reading lamp,” I say again. “What do I do when they die?”
“You come and see me and I get you some more,” he answers quickly. “Same as always.”
“So what happens when you run out?”
“I send people out to find more.”
“And when they can’t find any? When we really have used them all up?”
“You have to stop reading at night,” he smirks. I’m serious, and his grin disappears. “I know what you’re saying, Danny, and you do have a valid point. What do we do? I don’t know how to make batteries, and even if I did, I couldn’t get my hands on the right chemicals and equipment. But the information’s out there somewhere.”
“It’s just that the way you talk about things makes everything sound a lot easier than it’s actually going to be. It’s not just reading, it’s making food, keeping warm, staying alive … Once everything’s gone we’ll struggle to get any of it back again.”
“I never said it was going to be easy. Thing is, if I’m too honest with people too soon, I’ll lose their support. I can’t risk that. I need the numbers right now. It’s still early. When we’re more established here, we’ll start planning ahead. All that matters today is today.”
Hinchcliffe slips all too easily into spouting bullshit and spin. Politics never changes, even after everything we’ve all been through. I guess it doesn’t matter how high the stakes are, to people like him, position and self- preservation are everything.
“The trick right now,” he continues to explain, clearly mistaking me for someone who gives a damn, “is to let the people who matter think they’re in control. I give my best fighters everything they want, and the Switchbacks who work hard, they get most of what they need, too. Compared to the pathetic lives they used to lead, this is something much better. They’re free, uninhibited…”
“For now, maybe.”
“Lighten up,” he says.
“I don’t want to lighten up.”
“Things will improve, Danny.”
“Will they?”
“Of course they will. We’ll get that wind turbine working after the winter. Imagine that, constant power for the whole town again.”
“It’ll never happen.”
“Yes it will.”
“No it won’t. One of its blades is broken, for Christ’s sake. Where are you going to get a replacement from? And how are you going to get it up there? Have you got anyone who knows anything about engineering and mechanics? Got a crane tucked away anywhere? Christ, you’ve just said you’ll be screwed when you run out of batteries.”
“It’s all out there somewhere,” he says, starting to sound annoyed, “and there are bound to be people who used to know about these things. They’ll help if I give them food and—”
“And if you hold a gun to their heads.”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“I think you’ve got to get the fundamentals right before you start talking about electricity and stuff like that.”
“Is that what John Warner was doing?”
“Maybe,” I admit, wondering if I’ve gone too far.
“You’re wrong,” he says. “Warner was a thieving bastard who was trying to undermine what I’ve got here.”
“All due respect, I don’t think Warner gave a shit what you were doing here.”
“The fucker was interested enough to want to steal from me,” Hinchcliffe snaps, a hit of barely suppressed anger in his voice. He gets up and pours himself a drink but doesn’t offer me one. I think I’ve outstayed my welcome. That’s a sure sign I’ve pissed him off. Not a good idea.
