Them or Us

8

HE TAKES ME BACK toward the center of town without saying another word, leading me all the way back along the beachfront promenade, passing level with the lighthouse, until we reach a pub. There we turn right and walk up a narrow road lined with odd-shaped, brightly painted cottages packed tightly together. The blues and yellows might have faded, but they still stand out amid the muted grays and browns of everything else. This place is in such relatively good condition that I still keep getting distracted, and I don’t realize we’ve reached the boss’s place until we’re there. It’s a large, grubby, white-fronted hotel, right in the very center of the town, overlooking a junction where one road merges with another and forms an open arrowhead-shaped space. The roads are completely devoid of any moving traffic, and this place has become a kind of makeshift village square, with several vehicles parked and other stacks of equipment left lying around. The frontages of some of the buildings have been fortified with wooden barriers and spools of barbed wire. There are two men standing next to a glowing brazier a short distance away, but it’s otherwise quiet and there’s no one else about. It’s still relatively early. No doubt I’ll see more activity later, providing I survive my meeting with Warner, that is.

“Is this it?”

The man disappears inside the hotel, both avoiding my question and answering it at the same time. I stand and wait in the middle of the street, feeling vulnerable but doing all I can to keep up the illusion that I’m a scavenger who just happens to have stumbled across this place, not a spy sent here by the local neighborhood despot. I can see movement through the ground-floor windows of the hotel, but I can’t make out who it is or what’s happening inside. I check my pockets and the leather holster on my belt, feeling for the reassuring shapes of my knives, and I try to prepare myself mentally for the inevitable quick getaway I’ll have to make if things turn nasty. I try not to look too conspicuous as a group of people emerges from around the side of a building behind me, dragging a trailer between them. Thankfully they pass by quickly, barely even giving me a second glance. I haven’t seen a lot, but I know already that this place is a world apart from Lowestoft. There you often can’t move along the pavement for swarms of useless underclass, loitering, begging, and squabbling. But their numbers can be useful, and I can disappear into the crowds when I don’t want to be found. Here I have no cover or protection whatsoever.

The tall man appears from a passageway that runs down the side of the hotel, between this building and the next. He beckons me toward him, and I have little option but to follow. The short passageway almost immediately opens out into a large cobblestone courtyard, and he gestures for me to go through a doorway into the building adjacent to the hotel. I’m reluctant; am I walking into a trap? But why should he be trying to trap me, unless he really does want to kill and eat me? Apart from turning up here unannounced, I don’t think I’ve done anything to arouse suspicions.

Judging from the decoration and the almost undamaged oak paneling inside, I think this must have been some kind of town hall, although if it is, it’s the smallest town hall I’ve ever seen. I’m ushered through another door into a large, high-ceilinged room, which is empty save for a gaunt, white-haired man sitting at a table writing figures in a book. He doesn’t even look up when we enter. He looks like a country gent, how I imagine a squire might look from history lessons long gone. Appearances can be deceptive, I keep reminding myself. First impressions don’t count like they used to.

“You Warner?” I ask. He doesn’t react at first. Instead he finishes writing, then puts down his pen, takes off his glasses, and carefully lays them on the desk. Then he looks up at me.

“Yep,” he answers, “and who might you be?”

“My name’s Rufus,” I tell him, picking the first name that comes into my head, then immediately wishing I’d chosen something less conspicuous.

“And what can I do for you, Rufus?”

His simple question is stupidly hard to answer, probably because of the ominous way he asks it, staring straight at me. Is he trying to trip me up?

“Says he’s been scavenging down south,” the man who brought me here says from the doorway behind me.

“Has he now?”

“That’s right,” I tell him, mouth dry with nerves.

“Not been too close to what’s left of London, I hope,” Warner says, grinning knowingly at the other man. “Don’t want our little town contaminated.”

I shake my head. “Nowhere near it. Look, I don’t want any trouble. I swear I didn’t know there was anyone here. I’m just looking for something to eat and somewhere to shelter. I’ll be gone again tomorrow.”

“You look like you need feeding up. The road not been kind to you?”

I shrug my shoulders. “No harder on me than anyone else.”

“Why are you here so early, then? Couldn’t you sleep?”

Warner’s strange question throws me, so much so that I instinctively slide my hand into my pocket and feel for the hilt of my knife again.

“What?”

“You been walking through the night?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Common sense says,” he begins, leaning across the table, eyes burning into me, “that most people rest at night and move during daylight hours when it’s safer. Especially with it being the middle of winter and all, and with the world being such a fucking horrible place all of a sudden. So why are you turning up in front of me now, before we’ve even got to midmorning?”

Stay calm, I tell myself, feeling my body tensing in anticipation of an attack. There could be any one of a hundred plausible explanations why someone might have chosen to walk through the night. Just don’t panic … I grip the handle of the blade in my pocket.

“Go for that knife and I’ll have you killed before you’ve even drawn it,” he says calmly. I let it go and lift my hands.

“I set out at sunrise,” I tell him, swallowing hard, plumping for the most simple and logical explanation I can come up with. “I knew I wasn’t far from this place, but I must have lost my bearings somewhere along the way. I was a few hours farther down the road than I thought. I’d got it into my head I had another half a day’s walk ahead of me.”

He nods slowly. Is he deciding whether he believes my story or working out how he’s going to get rid of me? Warner’s obviously no fool. I see flashes of the arrogance of a fighter in his eyes, but there’s clearly much more to him than that. I stand my ground, hold my nerve, and keep quiet.

“But I found him up by the pier,” the man behind me says.

“So?” Warner asks.

“So that’s north of town, John. He said he came here from the south.”

Warner’s silence demands an answer.

“I did come from the south,” I tell them both, trying not to be noticed as I reach for a different knife inside my long coat. “I didn’t see anyone when I first got here. I just kept walking out along the seafront, and that’s where you found me.”

“I’m not sure about this. There are enough people out in the fields. Surely he’d have—”

“I saw them. By the church…”

“So why didn’t you ask them for food? You said you didn’t know there was anyone here.”

Warner raises his hand to silence the other man and shakes his head. He sits in front of me impassive, like a judge about to pass sentence. I keep waiting for him to give the order and for a pack of previously hidden fighters to emerge from the woodwork and take me out. I’m woefully out of shape and I haven’t fought seriously for weeks. I’d struggle to defend myself against these two today, never mind anyone else they might call in to help them. Fucking Hinchcliffe and his stupid fucking empire building. Why do I let him maneuver me into situations like this? The answer’s disappointingly obvious: He’d kill me if I didn’t do what he said.

“Let it go, Ben,” Warner says, still surprisingly calm. “Does it really matter? Fact is, he’s here now and he’s got a simple choice to make. He can play ball and follow our rules, or he can fuck off and keep walking. If he’s as cold, hungry, and miserable as he looks, I think he’ll do what he’s told.”

“I will,” I say quickly, sounding deliberately pathetic. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Fair enough, then,” Warner says, picking up his pen again and chewing thoughtfully on the end of it. “The first rule you need to know is that it’s one day’s work here for one meal and one night’s shelter. You work hard and you keep working until you’re told to stop and you’ll get fed. Any slacking and you’ll get fuck all.”

“Sounds fair.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but you get the idea.”

“Okay.”

“Second rule: Any problems here, you come and see me. Understand?”

“Understand.”

“You don’t try to sort things out yourself, right?”

“Right.”

Warner leans back in his chair and continues to watch me for a few uncomfortable seconds longer.

“You don’t look like you’ll last the day,” he says. Insolent bastard.

“I’m fine.”

“Right, then,” he announces. “Get him out to the others, Ben, and find him something to do.”