Them or Us

deigning to provide essential rations to a fortunate few. A briefly burgeoning black market collapsed quickly. The commodities became the currency, and there was never going to be a good enough supply to satisfy the population’s constant demands.
    Those who were in the best position outside Hinchcliffe’s compound were those who continued to volunteer to scavenge the wastelands. They were paid for their efforts with a meager cut of whatever they found. The terms were grossly unfair, but that was tough. For the most part, with nowhere else to go (and no means of going anyway), the ever-growing underclass population remained in and around the town, building up on street corners like drifting snow. Hinchcliffe tolerated them and used them when it suited him. He controlled the food supplies (carefully coordinating storage across numerous sites so that he was the only one who knew where everything was), and he controlled the fighters. Far more than his predecessor, Hinchcliffe had wormed himself into an apparently unassailable position. His foot soldiers were rewarded for their loyalty with a life that was more comfortable than many would have ever thought possible again when the war had been at its bloody peak. On the right side of the compound wall there was a supply of fairly clean water, enough food for all, and, occasionally, heat and power. On the other side: nothing.
    The crowd McCoyne had joined this morning was gathered in front of the larger of the two gates at the northern edge of the compound. Word had spread that a scavenging party was heading out west today into an area that had, until now, remained relatively untouched. Over the last couple of months it had been established that at least six cities (more precisely, six refugee camps) had been destroyed by the nuclear strikes last summer: London to the south, Edinburgh to the north, and several others, including Manchester and Birmingham. Without the means to measure pollution and radiation levels, it had been assumed that the bottom third of the country and a wide strip running the length of the land from the south coast right up into Scotland was most probably uninhabitable. Now, however, almost six months after the bombs, necessity had forced the foragers to start looking farther afield for supplies. A Switchback who’d once been a high school science teacher had done some basic research for Hinchcliffe in what was left of the Lowestoft library. She’d used reference works and other, less scientifically accurate books documenting what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and had eventually come to the unsupported conclusion that although the bomb sites were nowhere near completely safe, the risks involved in scavenging a little closer to them had probably reduced enough by now to be worthwhile. Hinchcliffe didn’t care. He wasn’t the one going out there.
    The metal gate across the road was pushed open. Two trucks drove out of the compound, the nose of the first gently nudging through the crowd, which quickly parted. Once they’d driven out and the gate had been closed behind them, the trucks stopped again. A shaven-headed fighter jumped down from the cab of the second truck. People scurried out of his way, leaving a bubble of empty space around him, their sudden distance a mark of fear, not respect. This nasty bastard was Llewellyn, and he was one of the few fighters known by name to virtually everyone left in and around Lowestoft. With a military background and undoubted strength and aggression, he was Hinchcliffe’s right-hand man. His reputation was second only to that of his boss. He was older and quieter, but no less deadly.
    “I’m looking for about fifteen of you,” he said. McCoyne squirmed forward, trying to squeeze through a gap that wasn’t there. The person on his right reacted and pushed him back the other way. He tripped over someone’s boot and landed on all fours at Llewellyn’s feet. Llewellyn grabbed his collar and pulled him up.
    “What the fuck are you doing?”
    “Volunteering,” McCoyne said quickly. Llewellyn screwed up his face and looked him up and down.
    “Suppose you’ll do,” Llewellyn said, throwing him toward the back of his truck before reaching out and grabbing someone else, “and you, and you…”
    McCoyne climbed into the empty truck and found himself a dark spot at the very back of the vehicle, where he could watch the others and keep all his options open. He pulled his knees up tight to his