“But I’m not—”
“I know who you are now, Danny McCoyne. Here’s a tip for you: If you’re going to use a false name, never use the name of someone who actually exists. I asked for Rufus at the barricades and ended up being introduced to your friend. He seems like a decent enough guy, but you might want to have a word with him about his loose tongue. I described you to him, and he says, ‘Ah … you’re looking for Danny McCoyne.’ So here I am, Danny, and here you are, too.”
“Rufus told you where I was just like that?”
“Pretty much,” he answers. “He didn’t need to say a lot. He told me about this place and he said you were the only one here. I just started knocking on windows and doors until I found you. Wasn’t that hard, really.”
“How come? There are hundreds of houses—”
“I know, and I’ve been here for fucking ages. However, yours is the only house with a fresh puddle of vomit on the drive. I thought there was a good chance you might have something to do with it.”
Sutton’s breath billows in clouds around his face. We’re both shaking with cold. There’s been a heavy frost overnight, and everything glistens with ice, white-blue in the first light of dawn.
“Okay,” I say, still shivering but still not letting him in, “you found me. Now what do you want?”
“Can we talk inside?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m fucking cold and this is fucking important.”
He’s insistent if nothing else, but the fact he won’t talk outside the house just increases my unease. Either what he’s got to say is genuinely important or he’s trying to trick me.
“It’s out here or nothing.”
He thinks for a minute, shaking with cold. My hand starts to feel like it’s freezing to the wrench.
“Remember that truck? The one you said you didn’t see?”
“What about it?”
“Want to know where it came from?”
“Not really.”
“That’s what I figured, but I’m sure your boss will.”
“My boss?”
“Whoever sent you to Southwold. Hinchcliffe, is it? Come on, Danny, stop playing games. Let’s talk. This is important.”
I need a piss, and the bitter cold out here is making it worse. Oh, what the hell … he’s obviously no fighter. One step out of line and I’ll finish him off with a smack on the head with the wrench. That’ll solve all our problems. Against my better judgment, I decide to let him in.
“You’ve got five minutes,” I warn him.
“Thank you,” he says, scurrying past me to get into the warmth. I gesture for him to go through to the living room, making sure he gets another eyeful of the wrench as I use it to point the way.
“Try anything and I’ll kill you.”
“I won’t, I swear. I don’t want any trouble.”
I follow him into the house, watching his every move. “Okay then, talk.”
He paces the room, taking his time and choosing his words carefully.
“I guess your boss assumed those supplies came from him. Did he find out who was supplying Warner?”
“Hinchcliffe’s not the investigative type. So do you know?”
“Not yet, but I need to find out.”
“Why?”
“Look, you’re the only other person like me I’ve found in months,” he says, teeth still chattering, “the only person I think I can trust.”
“You’re not making any sense. For fuck’s sake, Sutton, stop beating around the bush and just tell me.”
He pauses ominously.
“Those supplies you saw weren’t from Lowestoft.”
“Where, then?”
“Come with me and I’ll show you.”
21
SUTTON HAS A CAR with a quarter tank of fuel, which he says he took from the aftermath of the fighting in Southwold. He told me he got out of the center of the town as soon as he heard the first of Hinchcliffe’s fighters arrive, then hid on the outskirts until they’d cleared out again. If that’s true then he’s been a damn sight more alert than I have recently. He drove up to within a couple of streets of the house this morning, and in my alcoholic daze I didn’t hear a bloody thing. He could have been anyone.
This car was once a fairly decent and spacious high-end model, but, like most everything else, it’s seen better days. It’s full of trash, and the upholstery is slashed and torn. Outside it’s snowing, but it’s not quite cold enough to settle.
No matter how smooth the ride might once have been, today the surface of the road we’re traveling over is rough and uneven. Sutton drives straight over a pothole that’s full of water and deeper than expected. He doesn’t even bother to try to steer around it, and the sudden lurching downward movement makes the liquid in my stomach swirl and wash around again. I swallow down bile and try to concentrate on the music he’s playing. He tells me it helps calm his nerves, but it’s doing nothing for mine. The fact he still listens to music like me is a good sign, I guess, but this morning the uncomfortably loud noise just makes me feel even more unwell.
“It must be because of the smoke from the bombs,” he says suddenly. He’s talked nervously for most of the journey without saying anything of any substance. I still don’t fully know why I’m here, but I keep telling myself it was worth agreeing because there’s the slightest chance he’ll show me something worth seeing before I leave Lowestoft forever. Another place like Southwold, or John Warner’s mysterious benefactor perhaps? Fact is, I need a way out.
“What’s because of the smoke?”
“The drop in temperature. All the snow and ice.”
“It’s the middle of winter.”
“I know, but it’s not usually this bad, is it?”
“There are fewer people around than this time last year, fewer cars and no factories, hospitals, or schools. No emissions or exhausts. Think of all the fumes that aren’t being belched up into the atmosphere anymore.”
Sutton glances across at me and nods enthusiastically, and something about the expression on his face makes alarm bells start to ring again. I’d put his sudden change of mood down to relief that I’d agreed to come with him, but I’m wondering now if I’ve made a huge mistake and he really is the psycho I’d first feared. I start silently plotting my escape. When he next slows the car down I’ll try to get out. I’ll roll away along the ground like they used to in action movies, then I’ll work out where the hell I am and try to get back to Lowestoft. If Sutton dares turn up on my doorstep again, I’ll introduce his face to my wrench, then dump his useless body. No one will miss him.
“Be interesting to see what happens to the environment now, won’t it?” he says.
“Will it?”
“I think so. You’ve got all that pollution and contamination on one hand, and the fact that a huge number of people are dead on the other. Will they cancel each other out? Who knows, McCoyne, maybe genocide will turn out to have been a blessing in disguise!”
He laughs manically, loud enough to drown out the music for a moment, and I want out of here. We pass through Wrentham and turn right at the junction I turned left at for Southwold yesterday. After another mile or so I see something at the side of the road that distracts me temporarily. I’ve been here before. It’s the site of a vicious battle that Llewellyn bragged about once. He said it was like something out of the movies. He was with a group of ex-soldiers that had been cornered by some Unchanged military. They were massively outnumbered, he’d said (although I’m sure he was exaggerating), and yet twenty or so of them had dug in and held off their attackers for
