I wouldn’t give to be able to take a break and let someone else take charge for a while.’
‘There’s my mum,’ said Jacob. ‘Jenny Sutherland.’ He made a face. ‘I’m afraid she’s not a member of any government, though.’
‘She’s pretty cool,’ added Nathan. ‘She’s in charge. Runs things pretty much on her own. But she’s, like, totally fair.’
‘So why the hell are they stuck out on a gas rig of all places?’
‘Safety, mainly,’ replied Jacob. ‘We moved about five or six years ago. There were bands of scavengers making it too dangerous on the mainland.’
Maxwell looked at Nathan. ‘It must have been bloody hard, moving, starting again from scratch.’
Nathan shrugged. ‘I dunno . . . I guess. Me an’ my mum joined them a year after.’
‘It was hard at first,’ added Jacob. ‘But we were lucky. The nearby town was a freight port. There was loads of warehouses full of shipping containers of supplies. We wouldn’t have managed otherwise. We had a couple of boats and we were ferrying stuff from there nearly every day at first. Wasn’t a big deal ferrying stuff. I mean the rigs are just off the coast. You can just about see them from Bracton. Maybe fifteen miles out, wouldn’t you say, Nate?’
He nodded.
Maxwell cocked his head. ‘Bracton?’
‘Yeah. It was a port and a gas refinery. All the underwater pipes from the rigs came into there.’
‘Whereabouts is that?’
Both boys looked at each other for a moment. Not a shared glance of suspicion; more wondering how best to explain. ‘Sort of north-east curve of East Anglia,’ replied Jacob.
‘It’s down a bit,’ said Nathan. ‘South of Great Yarmouth.’
Maxwell nodded, he knew where they meant. He’d spent his youth living in Southend. He’d even visited Great Yarmouth for a camping holiday with his grandparents in the early eighties. Alan remembered it being pretty grim then during the height of the recession; a cheap and not too cheerful holiday resort, a wet summer that year and an incessant chilly offshore breeze that swept across the deck of the town’s dismal pier. And miserable-looking, cold, grey-skinned families holidaying on the cheap; all beer, fags and arcades.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m going to send some of my boys up there to introduce themselves, say “hi” and see if we can arrange a talk with your mum. And, given we’re all a little wary of strangers these days, I’d like you two to lead them up there and make the introductions.’ He cocked a dark eyebrow. ‘What do you think of that?’
Both of them grinned.
‘You’re right, Mr Maxwell,’ said Nathan. ‘Better if we go along. Mrs Sutherland won’t lower no ladders for a bunch of blokes she don’t know, not with guns. No way. Ain’t that right, Jay?’
He nodded. ‘She’s sort of very suspicious of strangers.’
‘Quite right,’ said Maxwell. ‘As she well should.’ He stopped walking and turned round to look at them. ‘Okay, well here’s what we’re going to do - we’re going to initiate you as praetorians. That is . . . if you want.’
‘Shit, yeah,’ smiled Nathan.
Jacob nodded eagerly.
‘Good. I’ve already spoken to Edward “Snoop” Tindall.’ Maxwell shook his head and laughed drily. ‘Snoop . . . ridiculous bloody nicknames they’ve given themselves. Anyway, I’ve spoken to him and he thinks you’re a pair of good guys and he’s happy to have you aboard.’
‘Cool.’
Maxwell took half a step forward. ‘It’s all about trust, lads. By my letting you join them, I’m trusting you. Snoop and his boys are trusting you. Just like being in the army, your fellow squaddies rely on you, and you on them. If there was a fight, if outsiders came here to take what we’ve got, those boys would be asked to fight for us, to lay down their lives if they had to to protect these people out here,’ he said, indicating the workers amongst the rows of plants.
‘Right,’ said Jacob nodding solemnly.
‘That’s why I give the boys their little treats; their Saturday nights, the music, those bloody noisy arcade machines.’
‘What about the others?’ asked Jacob. ‘These people?’
Maxwell tightened his lips, looked away for a moment. ‘We keep them safe, we keep them fed. I’m sure they’d much rather be here in the Zone than out there.’
‘So,’ Jacob frowned, ‘they’re never allowed in the arena?’
‘No. Not at any time. Staff only.’
‘But, uh . . . why is—?’
Nathan subtly tugged at his friend’s arm. ‘Hey, Jay? Doesn’t matter, right?’
Maxwell realised these two boys needed a little more explanation. Needed to understand the way things worked