Them or Us

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