Them or Us

if need be: Take the coast road out of town to Wrentham, then right at the junction and head farther inland. Out of the corner of my eye I notice Sutton is watching me. “You’ve got to believe me, McCoyne,” he says, his voice now serious again, no doubt picking up on my unease, “what I’m going to show you is important.”
    “You keep telling me that,” I reply, sliding my left hand down into my inside jacket pocket until the tips of my outstretched fingers rest on the hilt of one of my fighting knives, checking it’s still there, “but you still haven’t given me any details. I’m starting to think this was a bad idea.”
    “It’s hard to explain.”
    “Try.”
    “It’s difficult. I’m not sure how you’ll react or what you’ll think.”
    What’s he hiding? Is he behind the stolen supplies? Is it worse than that?
    “You’re not making me feel any better about this.”
    “I swear, when we’re finished you can just walk away if you want, and you’ll never see me again—but I don’t think you will.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “Because you’re like me,” he says again, starting to sound like a broken record. Sutton takes a sudden hard right turn off the road, driving through an open metal gate and out along a narrow gravel track. The front of the car clatters through a deep water- and ice-filled dip, then rattles over a cattle grid, and I have to concentrate again just to stop myself from throwing up.
    “We’re here,” he says, slowing down and steering around the curve of the track toward a motley collection of ramshackle farm buildings. The farmhouse and its outbuildings appear deserted, black smoke damage visible around the edges of some of the windows and doors. We drive through a large yard full of furrows and puddles, most of them filled with ice. Bizarrely, Sutton has to slow down to allow a lone cow to wander across in front of us. It’s as starved and thin as every other animal I’ve seen recently. When it looks around and sees us it panics. Its hooves skid in the slippery mud as it tries to change direction, and it looks like it’s got that “mad cow” disease they used to talk about on the TV news. First cow I’ve seen in months.
    “Don’t see many of them here anymore,” Sutton says, watching me watching the animal. “Quite a few survived, but I doubt they’ll last the winter. Brutes drove most of them away.”
    “Brutes? I thought the Brutes were all dead.”
    “As good as.”
    “Why would Brutes be here?”
    “Because they knew.”
    “Knew what?”
    Sutton doesn’t answer. He drives the car into a dark, open-ended barn and stops it deep in the shadows, parking next to a filthy, beaten-up delivery truck with a faded picture of a woman’s face on its side, advertising something you can’t get anymore, which probably wasn’t that important anyway. I look up and stare into the face; still as beautiful and perfect as the women on the covers of the books I read. Sutton switches off the engine, and the sudden silence is unsettling.
    “The Brutes knew what we were doing here,” he explains as he opens his door and gets out. “Don’t ask me how, but they did.”
    Now I really am starting to get worried.
    “So what are we here for? Is this where the trucks are from or—”
    “Nothing like that,” he says, leaning back into the car. “This isn’t about John Warner’s supplies. Sorry, Danny, I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
    “Fuck it,” I shout at him, refusing to move. “I knew I shouldn’t have come here. Either give me the keys or take me back to Lowestoft.”
    “You’ve come this far,” he replies, obviously having no intention of doing either, “might as well see now. This is important, I swear. What I’m going to show you changes everything.”
    With that he walks away, moving with suddenly revitalized energy and speed. Shit. What are my options? Kill him? I don’t know if I could. Make a run for it? The hungover state I’m in this morning, I wouldn’t get far. Oh, what the hell … even though I’m sick, I’m armed, and I’m still probably stronger than he is.
    Sutton turns back and beckons me to follow him along another track, this one leading away from the farm buildings. The dirt track climbs steeply and snakes away across uneven grassland that’s bleached yellow and brown. He’s not that much faster than me, but I’m happy to let him build up a decent lead, figuring that putting a little distance