“You think so?”
He leads me away from the cells.
“I’m convinced these kids are as wild as they are because they’ve just lived through the worst of the war. When things calm down again, so will they. We’ll teach them how to be human again, how to control themselves.”
“Be human?” I laugh. “What, human like your fighters? Christ, Hinchcliffe, hardly the best role models for them. Anyway, these children have spent the last year killing. Do you really think you’re going to be able to make them stop?”
“What use are they to us if we can’t?”
“So what are you suggesting? Are you going to keep all newborns locked up until they’ve grown out of their viciousness?”
I think he’s confused being controlled with being catatonic, but I don’t want to risk antagonizing him. It says something when his idea of progress is producing a kid that doesn’t immediately want to kill everything in the immediate vicinity. These children are hardwired to fight now. They’ve had a year of running wild, and their immature, prepubescent brains either don’t know or don’t want to know anything else.
“It’s been less than twelve months,” he continues. “We’ll keep studying the ones we’ve got here. My guess is that newborns won’t be like this, because they won’t have lived through the fighting that these kids have. It might be that we end up with a missed generation or two, but there’s nothing anyone can do about that.”
The guard lets us back out through the gate, and we walk on down the road.
“So what about the other end of the factory?” I ask, stupidly prolonging a conversation I never actually wanted to have, realizing I still don’t know why Hinchcliffe wanted to see me.
“What about it?”
“What have you got going on there? Is it the reverse of all this? Have you got Rona Scott provoking Unchanged kids until they fight back?”
“Something like that. It’s not so much about making them fight as it is getting them to be like us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They’ve got to be able to survive and hold their own.”
Hinchcliffe increases his speed. Heading north, I follow him past the farthest end of the complex and then continue along a wide footpath which runs parallel with the seawall. The last light of day is beginning to fade. I don’t think I’ve been out here before. To my left is a sheer drop of several yards down onto another walkway, beyond it the remains of a long-since-abandoned RV park. There are numerous equally spaced rectangular slabs of concrete visible through the overgrowth and weeds where RVs used to stand, looking like oversized graves. It’s an eerie place, silent but for our footsteps and the sea battering the rocks on the other side of the wall to my right.
“There’s so much I need to know the answers to, Danny,” he explains as I catch up with him, “things you probably haven’t even considered. For a start, what do we do if any of the women give birth to Unchanged kids? A kid’s just a kid, that’s got to be the position we get to. It’ll get easier over time.”
“Will it?”
“Rona Scott thinks so. She says when there’s absolutely nothing left but us, they won’t know any different. We still don’t know why we are like we are, and we probably never will. We don’t know if what happened was because of some physical change or a virus or germ or just something we saw on TV. Thing is, kids who are inherently Unchanged are going to have to adapt and become like us to survive. Either that or they’ll be killed.”
I deliberately don’t respond because this is something I’ve thought about already. I’ve thought about it too much, if anything. Months ago, back when I was looking for Ellis, I saw a pregnant woman. Since then I’ve often wondered what would happen to a newborn child. What if the kid’s born and its mother’s gut instinct—the same raw, undeniable gut instinct that made me kill hundreds of Unchanged—tells her to kill her own child? I’ve had nightmare visions of people crowding around the birth, trying to work out if the baby’s like us or like them, trying to decide whether they should keep it alive or drown it in the river. Or worse still, people fighting with each other to be the one who kills an Unchanged child. I’ve even imagined delivery rooms with a dividing line drawn down the middle—medical equipment on one side, weapons on the other.
I try to bite my lip and stop myself, but I can’t help speaking out again. I wish I could ignore what’s happening and switch off, but the memory of what happened to all three of my own children keeps me asking questions and searching for answers I know I’ll probably never find.
“It’s a paradox, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“What you’re talking about. You’re saying we have to straighten out our kids and corrupt the Unchanged. Isn’t there a danger you’ll just end up breaking all of them? Aren’t you just going to end up with generation after generation of fuckups? Kids that can’t fight, can’t think, can’t even function?”
Hinchcliffe just looks at me and grunts, and I think I’ve gone too far again.
“Sorry,” I apologize quickly, remembering who I’m talking to. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Yes you should,” he says, surprising me. “You should keep challenging like this. I told you, no one else has got the balls to do it. You see things differently than the rest of them.”
“I’m not trying to be difficult, I’m just—”
“You’re just saying what you think, and that’s a good thing. You might turn out to be right about everything, but for the record, I don’t think you are. Thing is, there’s no way of knowing yet. The world these kids will end up inheriting will be completely different from anything we’ve experienced, different from what we’re seeing now, even. Until then, the only thing we can do is explore every possibility and cover all eventualities.”
“That’s a tall order. How are you planning to do that?” I ask. I’m really struggling to keep up with Hinchcliffe’s fast pace now and I’m relieved when he finally stops walking. He turns around and grins. It scares the shit out of me when he looks at me like that.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he says. “It’s like everything else. It all boils down to supply and demand.”
17
MY EVENING WITH HINCHCLIFFE is clearly far from over. His speed increases again as we continue farther along the seawall. I’m left dragging behind, panting hard and drenched with sweat, and there’s absolutely no one else around. I look back the way we just came and see that we’ve traveled a surprising distance away from the center of town. The walk back to the house is going to take forever.
“You’re far too tense, Danny,” he says, waiting for me to catch up again. “I know exactly what you need. Help you get rid of some of that pent-up frustration.”
“All I need is some sleep. I’ll be okay in the morning.”
“You’ve been saying that for weeks.”
I notice there are several buildings up ahead, barely visible in the increasing darkness until now. Hinchcliffe pauses to light a cigarette. He blows out smoke, flicks the match over the wall, then moves on, leading me away from the ocean now and up a steep climb along a muddy pathway. As we get closer, I see that there are dull lights flickering in the windows of one of the buildings. It’s hard to make out much detail, but it looks like one of those dime-a-dozen seafront hotels you always used to find in places like this. We cross a road to get closer, and I see that its frontage is painted a grubby powdery blue. There’s a lopsided signpost at this end of the short front yard, two truncated lengths of chain hanging down where the building’s name would once have hung. There’s a guard standing just inside the door. I recognize him right away. It’s Joe Chandra, one of Hinchcliffe’s most prized fighters. He’s a distinctive, ugly-looking bastard. He looks like a comic-book villain with burns covering almost exactly half of his face. I haven’t seen him around in a while. Just assumed he was dead. So what’s Hinchcliffe got him posted all the way out here for? My heart’s pounding suddenly, and this time it’s not because of the effort of the walk.