Them or Us

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.

“I already told you, asleep upstairs.”

“No, earlier. I sent Rufus to find you and you weren’t here.”

“When?” I ask, deliberately acting dumb, hoping he’ll give me some details to help flesh out my story. “I’m not well. I had a few drinks and I took some stuff to help me sleep…”

Hinchcliffe glares at me, the shadows and darkness making his face look uncomfortably angular and fierce, accentuating his anger. “What time was that?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t know, honest. I don’t wear a watch. It was dark and—”

“What about earlier? Where were you this afternoon?”

“I went to see Rona Scott.”

“I know about that, she told me. I’m talking about before then.”

I can’t risk telling him anything. “I don’t know. Look, Hinchcliffe, I’m sorry if I wasn’t around. Did Scott tell you what she told me? Thing is, I’m dying. I’ve just been walking around, trying to get my head together so I could—”

“We’re all dying,” he interrupts. “Now stop pissing around and tell me where you were when the plane flew over.”

“Plane? What plane?”

What the hell is he talking about now? The skies are empty, have been for months. Even the birds are dying out. The last thing I saw flying was the missile carrying the warhead that destroyed my hometown. I don’t feel any less nervous now, but suddenly the pressure is fractionally reduced. Is this the reason he’s come out here? Unless he thinks I was flying this plane (which would be impossible), then maybe I’m not the real focus of his fury tonight.

“Just before midday,” he explains slowly, virtually spitting each word at me, “a plane flew over the town.”

“And you think I’ve got something to do with it?”

“Don’t be so fucking stupid,” he snaps (confirming my suspicions), “of course I don’t think that. I don’t know what you do out here on your own, but I know you’re not flying fucking airplanes.”

“What, then?”

Frustrated, Hinchcliffe turns his back on me and kicks what’s left of the door shut. Rufus flinches at the noise, then shuffles farther away, trying to move deeper into the house and hoping neither of us will notice. I start to feel marginally more confident, as it seems I’m not the problem here. Someone else has pissed him off.

“I run this place,” he says, turning around and advancing toward me menacingly, pointing his finger into my face. I take a step back to get out of his way and trip and fall back onto the stairs again. I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s incensed, barely able to keep his anger suppressed. I need to watch my step here and choose my next words carefully. Don’t want to do anything that’s going to push him over the edge.

“I know you run Lowestoft. Everyone here knows it.”

“Yes, but those fuckers up there don’t,” he yells, jabbing his finger skyward.

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing. I need to keep control here. I need to know exactly what’s going on. I can’t have people doing things that I can’t control, you understand?”

I’m not sure I do.

“So did they just fly over? Just happen to come across the town by chance?”

He shakes his head and massages his temples. “No, they flew circuits. Put on a proper fucking show. They might have found us by chance, but they definitely checked everything out properly before they left.”

“So what type of plane was it?”

“What?” he asks, confused.

“What type of plane? Military? A jet or bomber?”

He shakes his head again. “No, nothing like that.”

“What, then?”

“Just a little plane. Two- or four-seater, something like that.”

“So what’s the problem? Someone probably just got lucky and managed to get a plane up and—”

“What’s the problem?!” he screams at me, storming forward again, now so close that I can feel his hot, booze-tinged breath on my face. “What’s the problem? The problem is that they’re doing something I can’t. I can’t allow anyone to have that kind of advantage over me.”

“A little plane? Is that really such an advantage?”

“Well, if you’d been here like you should have been, McCoyne, you’d have seen the effect it had. That’s what I’m talking about. When that plane flew over, every single fucker in Lowestoft stopped what they were doing and looked up at it. My fighters, the underclass—all of them.”

“Yes, but a two-seater plane … Come on, what are they going to do?”

“Nothing right now, but it’s what they could do that’s important. They’ve got one plane today, they could have two tomorrow. They could train pilots and have a whole goddamn fleet up in the air before we know it. Now they know we’re here they’ll be back. They could drop bombs on us and there’d be nothing we could do.”

“That’s not likely to happen, is it? Like I said, it’s probably just someone who got lucky.”

“I know that and you know that, McCoyne, but the hundreds of dumb bastards lining the streets of this town don’t.”

“So hunt them out. Try to get whoever it was on the team.”

For a moment he’s quiet. He leans back against the wall and runs his fingers through his hair, then massages his temples. I’m sure he’s already thought of that. He’s probably already sent his fighters out there hunting the plane and its pilot—and if and when he finds them, I know he’ll leave them with no choice but to work with him.

“Thing is,” he says, sounding marginally calmer again, “seeing people flying around affects what the people here think about me. They know I don’t have any planes, so they automatically assume those bastards up there are superior. This is eroding my authority and putting unnecessary strain on the control I’ve got here. I can’t let that happen, you understand?”

“Yes, but—”

He holds up his hand and stops me talking.

“There’s also the very real possibility that they might attack from the skies. What would I do then? Have people standing on rooftops chucking stones back at them if they fly low enough?”

“The chances of them attacking are remote—”

“How do you know that? Anyway, a chance is a chance. It gives them a tactical advantage, and we have to do something about it.”

“We?” I say stupidly. Hinchcliffe glares at me again, then starts pacing around the living room. Rufus scuttles out of the way as he moves toward him. Hinchcliffe spots the wrench I leave lying around for self-defense. He picks it up and starts swinging it, passing it from hand to hand and feeling its weight.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he announces. “I’m sending Llewellyn and a few others out at first light to find those bastards. Llewellyn thinks he’s worked out where they’re likely to have come from. He’ll find them and either bring them back to me or get rid of them. And you’re going with them.”

“Me? Why?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t fucking know. Same reason I always send you. You’re so fucking insignificant that no one gives you a second glance. You can assess the situation better than most, and if you can’t assess it, you can at least spy on the fuckers and tell me what’s going on.”

“But I’m sick.”

“So? I’m not asking you to run a fucking marathon.”

I try to think of a valid reason that’ll make him change his mind, but I can’t.

“Okay,” I say, desperate to pacify him but already trying to think of ways to get away from this mess once and for all. I’m relieved when he starts walking back toward the door. Rufus hesitates, then follows in his footsteps, unsure what to do next. Clumsy bastard knocks another stack of books over, then walks into Hinchcliffe when he stops suddenly.

“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.”