Them or Us

You’ve got to remember, everything is built on aggression now, Dan. We’re all fighters, whether we like it or not. The only thing that separates us is our individual strength and determination. If you don’t stake your claim, someone else will.”
    “So where does it end? Last man standing?”
    “Possibly.”
    “I don’t buy it.”
    “I know you don’t, and I understand that—but we’ll have to agree to disagree because I’m in charge. Anyway, even if you don’t like the way I do things, you’re smart enough to know you’ll be okay as long as you stay in line and don’t piss me off, aren’t you?”
    “Suppose. But did it really need to be so harsh in Southwold? Couldn’t you just have dealt with Warner and left the rest of them be?”
    “I had to send a message. If I hadn’t I’d have just been heading back in a few weeks to straighten them out again. Someone would have taken Warner’s place.”
    “But Warner’s people were cooperating with each other. Surely if you—”
    “I like you, Danny,” he interrupts, obviously no longer interested. “You’re way off the mark sometimes, but you’re good to have around. You’re not like all those sycophants and asslickers. You keep me grounded. You make me laugh.”
    “You’re welcome,” I mumble quietly, not sure if that was a compliment or not. There’s no arguing with Hinchcliffe. Today he reminds me of all those long-gone world leaders who used to start wars in far-off places to maintain the peace . It’s the same kind of flawed logic as the government’s Ministry of Defense that only ever seemed to attack. Feeling a fraction more confident now, and as he’s clearly in the mood to talk, I decide to take the bull by the horns and ask a question that’s been troubling me recently. “So now the Unchanged are gone, what happens next?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Those fighters of yours this morning … all they wanted to do was kill. They were like kids at Christmas. So what happens to them now the enemy’s been defeated? Do you think they’ll just stop? They’re not going to want to go back to being bricklayers or teachers or pub owners…”
    “I know that, and they won’t have to. There’s a new class structure emerging here, and we’re at the top. Have you looked outside this compound, Danny? Seen how many people are waiting out there? They’re the ones who’ll eventually do the work. They’ll do anything I tell them, and you know why?”
    “Why?”
    “The two f ’s.”
    “The two f ’s? What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Come on, keep up! We’ve talked about this. Food and fear. They’ll do what I tell them. When I need bricklayers and teachers and the like, they’ll be fighting with each other to help.”
    His vision of the future seems ridiculously simplistic.
    “So what happens when the food runs out?”
    “That’s not going to happen for a long time,” he answers quickly. “We’ll see it coming and start planning for it when we need to.”
    “How?”
    “By the time it’s become a problem I’ll have enough of a workforce to start producing food again, and they’ll be hungry enough to keep doing exactly what I tell them. There’s no point making people work for food yet, while there’s still stuff to be scavenged; they’re not desperate enough.”
    “John Warner was trying to get people farming,” I tell him.
    “Was it working?”
    “No, but—”
    “Well, there you go, then. It’s too soon.”
    I could ask him how he ever plans to farm when all the livestock for miles around Lowestoft is either dead, dying, or running wild, and when the soil has been poisoned by radiation … but I’m sure he knows that anyway and so I don’t bother. Instead I try another tack.
    “The batteries in my reading lamp are almost gone,” I start to say before he interrupts, laughing.
    “Your reading lamp! Fuck me, Danny, you’re turning into an old woman!”
    I ignore him and carry on.
    “The batteries are going in my reading lamp,” I say again. “What do I do when they die?”
    “You come and see me and I get you some more,” he answers quickly. “Same as always.”
    “So what happens when you run out?”
    “I send people out to find more.”
    “And when they can’t find any? When we really have used them all up?”
    “You have to stop reading at night,” he smirks. I’m serious, and his grin disappears. “I know what you’re saying, Danny, and you do have a valid point. What do