Them or Us

room.
    “You’re probably right,” he says. “You can’t talk if you’re dead.”
    “I’m not going to talk.”
    “You don’t have to. I’m getting to know you too well. I can tell when you’re lying.”
    “Why would I bother lying now? What’s the point?”
    “Depends how many more Unchanged you’re hiding.”
    “I’m not hiding any Unchanged. Come on, Hinchcliffe—”
    “Deny it all you like, I know you’re helping more of them.”
    “Think what you want.”
    “The taller guy downstairs,” he says, “just before I killed him, I heard him say something about a boat, and something about a guy called Joseph.”
    I try bullshitting my way out of trouble. “The name means nothing to me. All I know is they were going to try to take a boat from one of the boatyards in town.”
    “They’d never have made it.”
    “That’s what I told them.”
    “I still don’t believe you.”
    “I still don’t care.”
    He stands across the room and glares at me, and I can see him thinking, working through the options.
    “So where is this Joseph?”
    “I told you, I’ve never heard of him.”
    “And I told you, I can tell when you’re lying. So if the Unchanged were trying to get onto a boat, it’s safe to assume this mystery man Joseph and his pals are close to water.”
    “Hinchcliffe, I’m not going to tell you anything.”
    “They’re not going to want to travel any farther inland, so the coast would have been the best option—and as the bulk of Ankin’s forces came from Norwich to the north, I’m guessing they’ll have wanted to travel south. Am I getting close now?”
    My silence gives him all the answers he needs. He grabs my arm and drags me downstairs.

 
    47
    HINCHCLIFFE KNOWS HIS WAY around this place far better than I do. Bastard’s obviously had his escape routes planned for some time. He drives the fully loaded jeep at a frantic speed along back roads and side streets I didn’t even know existed, frequently skidding in the ice and snow, obviously as eager to get away from Lowestoft as I am.
    The nauseous panic I’ve felt since he appeared in the house has finally started to reduce. I’ve spent weeks focusing on myself, my every decision made at the potential expense of everyone and everything else. Hinchcliffe is still doing exactly that, but now I find that I can’t. I know that the fate of Joseph Mallon and the rest of the Unchanged now rests squarely on my shoulders, and suddenly it matters. Peter Sutton told me they were all that was left of the human race, and I’m starting to think he might be right. If I don’t get to Southwold, they’re fucked. I might not have the boat we promised them, but this jeep full of supplies is their lifeline. This food will buy them a little time, and with all that’s happening in and around Lowestoft, that time might be enough for them to find another way of getting away. Then again, if I turn up there with Hinchcliffe, they won’t have a hope in hell anyway. I have to get as close as I can, then get rid of him.
    “All this was inevitable,” he says as he swings the jeep around another corner, sliding across the road and just missing hitting a lone vagrant who scrambles for cover. Hinchcliffe doesn’t even flinch.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The war, them and us—the human race has been on a downward spiral since the first caveman killed the fucker living in the cave next door because he’d stolen his woman or his dinner.”
    “We were better than that. It didn’t have to be this way.”
    “Yes it did. We’re all hardwired to want to survive, and when push comes to shove, we’ll do it at the expense of everyone else. I worked in the City, remember? I used to shaft people for a living. The Change came, and the war that followed was inevitable. There was nothing any of us could have done to stop it. We just did what we had to do, you included.”
    “We’ve all played our part, I don’t deny that—but trying to rebuild a society based on power and fear? How was that ever going to be anything but a failure?”
    “I was never trying to rebuild a society, you idiot. Don’t you listen? I was just trying to survive. This day has been a long time coming,” he continues, swerving around a traffic circle the wrong way and joining the A12. “Thing is, Danny, people have always been out for themselves, even when they made it look like they were cooperating. Look at this Ankin guy and all those other politicians you