by that mad bastard. About a third of them had completely bought into his preaching and another third had joined him, not wanting to be left in the minority. I wonder, if we’d not arrived when we did, whether the first two thirds might eventually have turned on the last - the non-believers.
Mankind has plenty of form with that sort of thing.
There are wounds that are going to take years to heal. A lot of work for Jenny Sutherland. There was also the news that her lad was gone. Truth be told, I think it hasn’t sunk in yet, or maybe she’d come to terms with never seeing either of them again and to have at least one of her children back was a blessing.
There was also news for the big woman, what’s her name? Martha. News that her son is with Maxwell’s little army. That has certainly focused minds to pull together again: the knowledge that something worse than the mad priest is out there and will turn up one day soon.
I look at both the Sutherland women and I’m amazed at their bloody fortitude. Mother and daughter, natural survivors . . . tough buggers, the pair of them. It does make me wonder whether true ‘toughness’, ‘true grit’ isn’t the size of the muscles you can bench-press out of your body, or how many miles you can jog with eighty pounds of field kit strapped to your back, or how big a gun you can hold in your hands.
I think it’s in how much crap you can endure, how much brutality you’re on the receiving end of and yet still keep your humanity.
In a world like this with no laws, no charter of human rights, it’s the women who suffer. It’s the women who learn what it is to be tough, not the men.
Adam Brooks
‘. . . because you never listened to anyone,’ said Tami Gupta. ‘That is the truth, my dear. I am sorry to say that.’
The mess erupted with a chorus of voices. Most of them agreeing with the woman. The chairs and tables had been cleared away to allow as many people in as possible. Pretty much everyone was here. Those unable to fit in the mess stood amongst the rows of preparation surfaces in the galley, sat on the serving counter, the large roller-shutter fully retracted to make it more like one large meeting room. There were even people crowded on the gantry outside, and sitting on the steps all the way down to the accommodation module’s first floor; mostly children, more likely to find the ‘town hall meeting’ somewhat boring.
‘You know I’m very fond of you, Jenny. I say this because it needs to be said. In the early days, when there was just the few of us, it was right that we had someone take charge. And I think we would never have managed without you making the decisions. Perhaps we would never have settled here. We needed you.’
Tami, seated in the chair next to Jenny, behind the one table they’d not stacked out of the way, reached a hand out to her friend. ‘I love you like a sister, Jenny, but we now need to have some sort of a democracy. There are too many people with different opinions. Too many people whispering because their voice is not heard.’ Tami glanced pointedly at Alice Harton. ‘That is how that man came between us. Like an infection from a simple cut, he exploited the discontent . . . the whispering.’
Jenny sat still and looked down at her hands. ‘Maybe . . .’ she began, then paused. Her words quietened the hubbub in the mess. They awaited more from her. ‘Maybe it’s time, then.’ She looked up. ‘I am so bloody tired of it.’
Leona, sitting on her other side, nodded. ‘We know, Mum.’
‘I suppose I just never trusted anyone else,’ she continued. ‘I promised Andy to take care of you both and I just couldn’t put us in a situation where someone else was deciding your fate.’ She sucked in a breath, looking up from her twisting hands at the women and men crammed into the room. ‘But things are different now, aren’t they?’
There were murmurs of assent, nodding heads.
‘I’ll stand down then and we’ll vote on someone new.’
A spattering of applause rippled through them. But Adam, sitting at the end of the table, raised his hand. The applause quickly faded away.
‘But maybe not right now, Mrs Sutherland?’
There were a few muted giggles