Them or Us

Southwold earlier has really gotten under my skin. I never expected him to let John Warner have carte blanche to run the place, but his reaction today was extreme. Hinchcliffe sits down on the corner of his unmade bed and looks up at me, and the silence in here is immediately tense and unbearable. He may be many things, but he’s certainly not stupid. He’s probably already worked out what I’m thinking. I want to run, but he keeps staring at me and I can’t move.
    “You still look sick.”
    “I am sick. Haven’t felt well for days, weeks maybe.”
    “Are you eating enough? Want me to get you some more food?”
    “I’m not eating anything.”
    He shakes his head. “You have to eat, Danny. Look, if you’re really that bad, get yourself over to the factory and have a word with Rona Scott.”
    “Thanks, I will,” I answer, although I know I probably won’t. The last thing I want to do is to submit myself to an examination by Rona Scott. She’s the closest thing Hinchcliffe has to a doctor. When she’s not working on the Unchanged kids in the factory, it’s her job to keep his fighters patched up and ready for battle. She’s not interested in people like me.
    “You’ve had a rough week, what with the Unchanged and now Southwold,” Hinchcliffe says suddenly, taking me by surprise, the tone of his voice now different. “I know I ask a lot of you sometimes. It can’t have been easy with those Unchanged. I don’t know how you do it. Christ, just the thought of them makes my skin crawl, even after all this time. That last catch, Danny … you tracked them, trapped them, stayed with them until we were ready to move in. Now that takes guts.”
    “Just doing what you asked me to,” I say quietly. Truth is, I didn’t have any choice.
    “Listen, I don’t think I’ll need you for the next couple of days. Get some rest. Straighten yourself out.”
    I hate it when Hinchcliffe’s pleasant to me. This isn’t like him. He never gives, only takes. I pause and wait for the catch. When he doesn’t say anything, I begrudgingly acknowledge him. “Thanks.”
    I still don’t feel able to move. His piercing gaze makes me feel like my feet are nailed to the floor, and he knows it. The fucker probably enjoys it.
    “Something on your mind?”
    I want to tell him, but I can’t.
    “Nothing.”
    “Come on, I know you better than that. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
    How honest am I prepared to be? I sense he wants me to talk openly, but if I’m too critical he’s likely to react badly, and I don’t think I can take a beating today. On the other hand, he’s not going to let me go until I tell him what’s wrong.
    “Honest answer?”
    “Honest answer.”
    “I don’t understand why you did what you did in Southwold. Fair enough if you’ve got a problem with Warner, but the rest of them…?”
    “It needed doing.”
    “Did it need to be so brutal?”
    “I think so. They needed to know what’s what.”
    “There’s a world of difference between sending a message and what your fighters did today.”
    “I knew that was what was bothering you.”
    “So why did you ask?”
    “Just wanted to see if you had the guts to tell me,” he says. “I thought you would. Not many people would have the balls. You and me, Danny, we’ve got a lot in common.”
    “Have we?”
    “When it comes down to it,” he continues, “we both want the same thing. We both want an end to all the bullshit and fighting and we want an easy life. We’re just going about it in very different ways.”
    “You want an end to the fighting? Really? That’s not what I saw. The Unchanged are gone, and all you’re doing is looking for someone else to batter instead. We don’t have to fight anymore. I think you want to.”
    “That’s not how it is.”
    “Well, that’s how it looks.”
    “I know you’re happy to bury your head in the sand and keep to yourself, but I’m not prepared to do that. In this world you can either sit back and wait for events to overtake you, or you can go out there and make things happen now and on your terms.”
    “Is that what you’re doing?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s what you’re doing when you’re ordering the people in Southwold to be beaten and killed? When you’ve got your fighters burning buildings to the ground?”
    “Yes. The people in Southwold had a choice. The ones who didn’t resist are on their way here now, and if they’re useful, they’ll be okay. The rest are dead.