As I pick my way through the crowds of underclass—some begging for food they know I won’t give them, some scavenging, some picking through a huge mountain of waste like a landfill site, some hunting rats that others have disturbed, many others just sitting and staring into space—I try to work out where I fit into the hierarchy today. I quickly come to the same conclusion I reach whenever I think about it: I don’t. Sometimes, I don’t know if I want to. Even before the war I felt out of step with everyone else. Now I struggle to believe we’re all part of the same species.
I reach the cordon and hammer on the gate with my fist.
“Who is it?” someone shouts.
“Danny McCoyne,” I answer back. “Hinchcliffe wants to see me.”
A narrow hatch is opened and a fighter stares out at me, checking I’m who I say I am. There’s never any delay when I mention the big man’s name. The hatch closes again; then the gate immediately starts to open, and I’m pulled through as soon as the gap’s wide enough. It’s slammed the moment I’m inside.
I head up what used to be Lowestoft’s main shopping street toward the courthouse building, where Hinchcliffe bases himself, avoiding the foul-smelling piles of rubbish that are steadily encroaching on either side of the narrowing road. The atmosphere is different on this side of the barriers. Here there are fewer people out in the open, and those I can see are moving with more purpose than those stuck on the wrong side of the blockade. Here the Switchbacks compete to stay in favor with the fighters. They remind me of the little birds that used to risk their lives to clean crocodiles’ razor-sharp teeth or the parasitic fish that lived off sharks. This is a more symbiotic relationship, though, because they all need each other. The fighters are a uniformly foul breed—a mix of the physically strong, the instinctively aggressive, and those who are both. They’re a deadly combination of hard, experienced bastards who look like they’ve been fighting all their lives, and younger vigilantes on the cusp of adulthood, always ready for battle. They float like pond scum on top of everyone else, relying on the subservient Switchbacks to fix their cars, fetch their food, and do most other menial tasks in return for water and scraps of food. It all feels precariously balanced.
I reach Hinchcliffe’s place too quickly for my liking. I should go straight inside, but I pace up and down the pavement for a couple of minutes to compose myself first, breathing in slowly to settle my nerves and trying to stop myself from coughing again. The hazy sun peeks unexpectedly through a gap in the heavy clouds, and I cover my eyes. It’s probably my imagination, but even the sun seems to have changed since the bombs. It’s never as clear as it used to be. The light looks and feels different, like a layer of color and strength has been stripped away. Then again, maybe it’s just my eyes.
I feel sick, and the smell here’s not helping. Sanitation is pretty basic around town, and the stench is inescapable. People have taken to crapping in the gutters to get their waste into the drains and sewers. If we carry on at this rate it won’t be long before we’re slopping out again: people emptying buckets of shit into the street from upstairs windows.
A sudden gust of wind clears the air momentarily, and I stop and breathe in the odd breeze. No one pays me any attention, and that’s the way I like it. I can see a crowd around the entrance to the small shopping mall that Hinchcliffe uses as a food store and, occasionally, a distribution point. The same thing’s happening again a couple of hundred yards away, where a street-corner hamburger stand is being used for a similar purpose. These lines never completely disappear. There are always more people than there is food, but no one dares to steal. Just a little way up the road is what’s left of Hook, the last thief Hinchcliffe caught. Once the bane of my life, his corpse now hangs from a lamppost by its feet like a grotesque piece of street decoration. When he found out what he’d been up to, Hinchcliffe strung him up and gutted him like a pig. The rumor was that someone else had been pulling his strings …
The courthouse looks squat and small from street level, but its size is deceptive. Hinchcliffe has occupied a large part of the surrounding area, and most of the neighboring buildings have been taken by his small army of fighters. There’s usually power and water in this part of town. Huge fuel-fired generators thump away continually in the background like a monotonous, mechanical call to the faithful. Hinchcliffe is no fool. This place is a less than subtle symbol of his unquestioned authority here. He’s aligned himself with what used to be the traditional centers of power in Lowestoft, and no matter how the people here behave now and what they’ve become, everyone is still conditioned to a certain extent. They still look at places like this and, whether they’d admit it or not, they see people in charge. I certainly do.
The sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can head back home again. I take a deep breath and go inside.
I enter the courthouse building unchallenged and head straight for Hinchcliffe’s room. Much of the space in here is filled with boxes of supplies, piled so high that in places they’ve spilled out of rooms and have blocked corridors. It’s not that there’s a vast amount of stuff here, more that it’s just incredibly disorganized. Dirty, too. Cleanliness is the very least of anyone’s concerns today. The windows are opaque, and every surface I touch is either covered in dust or sticky with a layer of grime.
Hinchcliffe’s empire is based on a few core principles. Central to his control (of both the fighters and the underclass) is the provision (or at least the promise) of food and water, backed up with the threat of brutal force if anyone steps out of line. He drip-feeds the people here to keep them sweet: Do what I say and you might get what you need, he tells them, fuck with me and I’ll kill you. It really is as simple as that. Today he hoards whatever scraps he can find and stockpiles everything at various locations within the compound. I know where one stash is kept and I have an idea about two others, but I don’t know any more than that. No one knows where everything is except for Hinchcliffe. He manipulates the situation to consciously generate an air of mutual distrust between his fighters when it comes to the supplies, rewarding loyalty with increased rations and at the same time encouraging them to rat on anyone who doesn’t play ball.
Hinchcliffe is the worst of the worst. He is physically and mentally stronger than anyone else, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a Brute with a brain.
I pause outside the tall double doors to his office to compose myself, trying to make myself appear more confident than I feel. I go through and, thankfully, my entrance goes largely unnoticed. The heat in here literally stops me in my tracks. There are electric and oil-fired heaters placed around the edges of the room, probably more here than in the rest of the town combined. Recycling, energy efficiency … all consigned to history now. The amount of waste in here alone is astonishing. Hinchcliffe and his posse seem to go through supplies as if there’s no tomorrow, as if they’re expecting fresh supplies to turn up any day now in a goddamn supermarket truck.
This used to be the main county courtroom, but it’s barely recognizable as such today. It’s been stripped of all gravitas by yet more boxes and crates stacked around in haphazard piles, and the floor and desks are covered with a layer of rubbish. Most of it is clearly just general litter, food wrappers and the like, but there’s a lot of discarded, office-type paperwork lying around, too. Considering this is supposed to be the administrative hub of the town—the beating heart of Hinchcliffe’s empire—it doesn’t look like anyone’s doing very much. I pick up a map that’s been left open on the desk next to where I’m standing. Black crosses have been scrawled over every town and village within thirty miles of this place. There’s a sudden noise behind me, and I spin around to see Llewellyn hurtling toward me. I try to put the map down without him seeing I’ve been looking at it, but it’s too late. He snatches it from my hand and pushes me back against the wall. He hits me harder than I was expecting and my skull cracks against the plaster.