Them or Us

these kids might well be the last three left alive and my “talent” for holding the Hate could soon be worthless. I’ve no doubt Hinchcliffe will chuck me back onto the underclass scrap heap just as quickly as he plucked me from it.
    The van slows unexpectedly, the engine sounding like it’s on its last legs, and I’m immediately on guard. I get up fast, and my sudden movements are met with another volley of spit and swear words from the boy in the cage. I look out of the windows but I can’t see anything. The days are short and the nights long now, and the light’s fading rapidly. I’m guessing we’re well into January by now, but the days, weeks, and months seem to have all melted into one another and become a single dragging blur. No one even mentioned Christmas or New Year. I didn’t think about them until long after they’d gone.
    The tired engine threatens to stall, but, with much cursing, the driver just about manages to keep it ticking over. He overaccelerates and steers up the curb, and I brace myself as the van lurches from side to side. There’s a body in the middle of the road behind us. Looks like it was a Brute. Haven’t seen any of them in a while. They’re a dying breed. The war was all they had, and they hunted for kills at all costs. My guess is most of them ended up back in and around the irradiated remains of the refugee camps, and those that survived are now just roaming what’s left of the countryside, looking for Unchanged that are long gone. This guy I know, Rufus, says the Brutes are a warning, that there’s a lesson to be learned from what’s happened to them. For what it’s worth, I think he’s right. I’m not sure what the lesson is though.
    We’ve almost made it back to Lowestoft. It’s an almost bearable place to live (in comparison to everywhere else), but conditions have steadily worsened. I’m sure there are other places like this around the country, and I often wonder if I’d be better off elsewhere. I can’t bring myself to call this a community, because that word conjures up all kinds of nostalgic, old-fashioned images of people actually getting along and working together for a common good. Lowestoft is just a place where people with nowhere else to go have drifted together. The most aggressive fighters rule the roost now like some kind of prehistoric elite, propped up by the subservient underclasses who live off the scraps they discard. Lowestoft limps along from day to day for now, but the bottom line remains; those who can hit the hardest are the ones who benefit most, and these days no one has bigger fists than Hinchcliffe.
    There’s definitely a problem with this van. No doubt it’ll be dumped as soon as we get back to town. The rest of the convoy has long since left us behind, and the driver constantly curses and overrevs the engine to keep it from dying. We swerve again, weaving between the wreck of a car and a pile of crumbling masonry from a battle-damaged building like we’re on a racetrack chicane. The Unchanged kids are safe in their cage, but I’m thrown around the back with every sudden change of direction. Eventually I wedge myself into position between the side of the van and the cage and stare out of the window, trying to stay focused on the barely visible glow of the moon behind the dense cloud layer. My guts feel like someone’s mixing them in a blender. If I don’t get out of here soon we’ll all be seeing more of the dog I ate earlier.
    *   *   *
    We reach the gate across the bridge spanning the A12 at the bottom end of town, little more than a pair of tall metal doors removed from a building, their hinges welded to the back of two trucks parked facing away from each other. These gates don’t need to be particularly strong—there are enough guards around to prevent anyone getting inside Hinchcliffe’s compound. Pity the poor fuckers who are stationed out here in the cold. Having visible guards positioned at these key points helps the population to remember who’s in charge here, and the underclass maintain a cautious distance. Even if any of them did get inside, they wouldn’t last long.
    We have a delivery of Unchanged kids to make. We’re through the gate now, and I can see the drop-off point looming up ahead. Silhouetted against the purple-black sky is the distinctive angular outline of a group of industrial buildings that Hinchcliffe simply refers to as “the factory.” It’s an ugly, sprawling mess of a