“Sorry, Hinchcliffe. I didn’t mean to talk out of turn.”
He shakes his head and leans against a dusty window, looking out over the divided streets of Lowestoft.
“You’re okay. Like I said, Danny, you’re not like the others. You’re always questioning, and I need that from time to time. Just don’t let me catch you talking like this to anyone else.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m taking a hell of a risk, but this seems as good a time as any to ask him something that’s been on my mind for a while.
“So what about me?”
“What about you?”
“I don’t have any special skills. I can’t fight anymore. You’ve kept me onside to hunt out the Unchanged, but now they’re gone, what happens to me?”
He thinks carefully before answering.
“You’re not going anywhere, my friend. You underestimate yourself. You’ve proved your worth to me again and again over the last few weeks. There’s a lot of work still to be done to get this place how I want it, and I’m gonna need people like you.”
I make a mental note to start fucking up more often.
“You really think you’ll be able to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Get this place straightened out? Keep people in line? You think they’re just going to keep doing what you tell them to?”
“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “They won’t have any choice.”
I stand there and stare at him, still unable to move, and now unable to speak either. This guy’s out of his fucking mind, but I’m not going to be the one who tells him. The whole conversation leaves me feeling empty and hollow. What chance has anyone got if people like Hinchcliffe are left in charge?
Hinchcliffe wraps his arm around my shoulder and walks me back toward the exit.
“I know what you need,” he says. “You’re too tense. You need to relax. Go home, get some rest, then come back here. Meet me outside the front at dusk.”
He shoves me out of the door and I walk back through the courthouse building, relieved to be away from him but nervous about why he wants me to come back. The last thing I want is to spend any more time with Hinchcliffe, but I don’t have any choice.
16
HINCHCLIFFE TOLD ME TO meet him outside the courthouse, but I think he’s stood me up. He’s not inside, and I’ve been out here waiting in the freezing cold for ages now. The wind is biting, and I thrust my hands deep into my pockets, wishing I was anywhere but here. I would go back to the house, but I don’t want to risk pissing him off any more than I think I already have today. He’ll kill me if I’m not here when he’s ready.
The contrast between Lowestoft and what I saw happening in Southwold is stark. Across the way from where I’m standing, a group of Switchbacks are unloading supplies from a cart and taking them into the police station barracks, where most of the fighters live. Others are collecting waste and dumping it over the compound walls for vagrants to plunder. Elsewhere, more of them are working on setting up a rudimentary water supply outside what used to be the library, to replace the previous one, which fell apart. They’ve lined up a series of drainpipes and water barrels to collect water from the gutters of buildings, black plastic taps hanging over the lip of a low brick wall for people to take water from. Lizzie’s dad used to have one of those barrels in his garden. I remember how the kids used to mess with it, and how they used to complain about the stagnant stench and the flies and the algae … and is this the best we can manage now? Still, if it’s bad here by Hinchcliffe’s courthouse, it’s much worse on the other side of the barricades.
Just outside the south gate, on the approach to the bridge, there’s an old man who lives in an ambulance. I pass him often when I go to or from the house, and I saw him on my way here today. He’s clearly not a fighter—he can barely stand—but he seems able to switch on an angry, violent facade at will, using it as a deterrent to anyone who approaches him. He’s well known, and Hinchcliffe’s fighters often taunt him for sport, trying to get him to react and bite back. He collects rocks and chucks them at anyone who gets too close. Fucker almost got me today. His ambulance is useless—just a battered wreck with a blown engine and only a single wheel remaining—but it seems to symbolize everything that’s wrong here. All around this place, people have taken things that used to matter and turned them into nothing. I’ve stayed here because this place looked like my best option, but maybe it’s time to reconsider. The longer the violence here continues, the further we seem to regress.
“What d’you want?” Curtis asks as he thunders out through the courthouse door, knocking into me.
“I’m supposed to be meeting Hinchcliffe.”
“He’s not here.”
“I know that, I—”
“Factory,” he says, shoving me out of the way.
Typical. I immediately start walking, hobbling the first few steps, my legs stiff and painful. It’s a relief at last to be moving. My body aches and my face is frozen, completely numb with cold.
It’s not far from the courthouse to the factory, but I always get distracted when I walk this route. I always end up imagining what this place was like before the war … seaside shops selling worthless junk and kitsch, pandering to the hordes of vacationers who used to come here (hard to believe this was a destination of choice once). There are the usual main street chain stores, supermarkets, banks, real estate agents, doctors’ and lawyers’ offices—all just shells now, their unlit signs the only indication of what they used to be. Now these wildly different buildings, those which are still safe enough to be used, all look the same. They’re dark and uninviting, stripped of anything of worth and occupied by squatters who stare out from the shadows. I just put my head down and keep moving.
* * *
“You seen Hinchcliffe?” I ask a remarkably fresh-faced fighter who’s on guard duty at the checkpoint at the end of the road into the factory. He’s slumped down on a chair inside what looks like half a garden shed, buried under blankets, hardly guarding, and hardly threatening. It’s no surprise, really. No one in their right mind would want to come here. Apart from some of the more vicious kids (who’d kill you as soon as look at you), there’s nothing here worth taking.
“He’s up with Wilson,” the guard answers. “He said you’d probably turn up.”
The fact that Hinchcliffe’s with Wilson, his chief kid-wrangler, is a relief. That means he’s at the opposite end of the factory complex from where Rona Scott does whatever she does to the Unchanged kids. I can see a handful of flickering lights in the distance up ahead, and I wrap my coat around me even tighter as the wind whips up off the sea and blasts through the gaps between buildings. Eventually I reach a set of metal gates behind which the useful kids are kept. There’s another guard here—an irritating little shit who takes himself too seriously and blocks my way through. When I tell him I’m supposed to be meeting Hinchcliffe he disappears. He’s gone for a couple of minutes before eventually returning and begrudgingly letting me pass.
I find Hinchcliffe waiting for me in a small courtyard, surrounded on three sides by a series of squat, metal- walled, box-shaped buildings which probably used to be industrial units, storage sheds or something similar. The roofs of the buildings are covered with curls of razor wire.
“Forgot about you, Danny,” Hinchcliffe says, and that’s as good an apology as I’m going to get. “I was just checking the stock.”
“The stock?”
“The kids,” he explains. “I’ve been thinking more about what we were saying earlier.”
“And?” I press hopefully.
“And maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not looking as far forward as I should be.”
“So what’s that got to do with the kids?”
“Everything, you dumb fuck! No kids, no future.”
“That doesn’t bode well, does it? All the kids I’ve seen since the war started have either been Unchanged or are wild animals.”
