Them or Us

glibly.
    “You know what I mean,” he says. “I knew this lad once, he had one of those SAT NAVs, remember them? Fucking thing stopped working when he was driving up for a meeting, and you know what happened?”
    “He got lost?”
    “Worse than that. Fucking idiot just kept driving in a straight line until he got a signal again. Didn’t think to look at road signs or get himself a map, did he? Took him almost fifty miles to get back on track. There was another time I had a girl in tears because she couldn’t unlock her car because the battery had gone and the key wouldn’t work. For Christ’s sake! I had to march her down to the parking lot and put the key in the fucking door for her myself!”
    Rufus continues to chatter tirelessly as we approach the center of town. I say little. I know this is his therapy: his chance to vent his many frustrations without fear of taking a beating. Me, I’m too nervous to give a damn.
    “The other day I saw that Curtis fellow, and do you know what he was doing? He was kicking in the door of one of the buildings next to the courthouse and using it for firewood. Where’s the sense in that when there’s so much they could use outside the compound? They’re just too blinkered. They don’t look any further than—”
    “Rufus, shut up.”
    I stop walking, and he stops pedalling. We’re deep among the underclass now, and something’s happening up ahead. I gesture for him to hold back and we wait by the side of a partially collapsed garage. There are other people all around us, most of them doing the same, keeping their distance. There’s a truck waiting at the barricade, just back from a scavenging mission by the looks of things, and it’s surrounded. One of the fighters in the front gets out and starts swinging a bludgeon at the people who are closest, forcing them back, but the crowd is large and volatile, and when he lunges for one section, people elsewhere surge forward. A couple of them manage to scramble up onto the back of the truck and help themselves, only to be kicked back down by another savage bastard hidden under the canopy. No sooner have they hit the ground than other vagrants are swarming around them, trying to “resteal” what they’ve just stolen. The situation deteriorates with frightening speed until two more fighters appear from the back and wade into the crowd. One of them brandishes a sub-machine gun that he fires into the air, and the people scatter. As soon as there’s sufficient space around the truck, the gate opens and it drives through.
    “Lovely,” Rufus says. “I think this is where I’ll leave you.”
    He pushes off and pedals away. I don’t know where he’s going, but I do know he has as little desire to head into Hinchcliffe’s compound as I do. At least he has a choice.
    The closer I get to the gate around the compound, the more human detritus there is to wade through. This so-called society has divided itself into its own bizarre class structure. It’s like a pyramid now with Hinchcliffe perched alone at the top. Below him are his generals, Llewellyn and a couple of others—those fighters who first, understand how this new world order works, second, have enough brains to know how to deal with Hinchcliffe and keep on his good side, and third, are strong and ruthless enough to hold their own in any conflict. Beneath them are the rest of the fighters, their position in the overall scheme of things depending entirely on their individual strength and aggression, and beneath them are the Switchbacks: people who’ve desperately tried to regain something resembling their old lives, finding new routines and responsibilities to fill the void where now-defunct jobs, families, and relationships used to be. At the bottom of the heap are the hundreds of useless vagrants like the woman who broke into the house last night. Hinchcliffe has a simple way of evaluating each person’s worth: Does he need them? If they weren’t there, he asks, would it matter? With resources so limited, he’s not about to waste time and effort on those useless people who are only going to take. Those poor bastards are lost without a purpose.
    As I pick my way through the crowds of underclass—some begging for food they know I won’t give them, some scavenging, some picking through a huge mountain of waste like a landfill site, some hunting rats that others have disturbed, many others just sitting and staring into space—I try to work out where I fit