Free The Living Will Envy The Dead by Christopher Nuttall

them good.
     
    “I often dreamed about doing that,” Richard said, softly.  I nodded in agreement.  If I’d been in his place, I would have had the same fantasy.  “What are you going to do with the others?”
     
    Did I do the right thing?  The hell of the matter is that I don’t know.  Yes, I couldn’t take the risk of allowing them to run rampant across the countryside, not on top of all the other chaos.  Yes, they all deserved death and worse.  Yes, we couldn’t have kept them supplied with the medications after the supplies in the jail ran out.  We couldn’t have produced them, as far as I knew, for years.  The ones who needed the drugs would have died when they ran out.  The ones who didn’t need the drugs would not have reformed.  In a world where law and order was no longer a going concern, they would have become a nightmare…
     
    And they would never hurt anyone else.
     
    “Get the remainder of the prisoners into the auditorium,” I said, finally.  We’d given the ones we – I – had decided to spare a good meal, certainly better than soup that looked suspiciously like vomit, but most of them had been reluctant to eat.  It had to be pointed out to most of them that killing them would be as simple as poking a gun through the bars and firing a single shot.  I got the impression that most of the guards were privately amused.  They had a chance to really scare most of the prisoners straight.  “I have to talk to them.”
     
    The auditorium was just another lecture hall, where lucky prisoners would get a chance to listen to whatever band dared to perform in the jail (and most of whose members deserved to be in jail), although it was rather less comfortable than some I’d attended while in Iraq.  The guards watched, wearing their body armour and carrying their weapons, as the prisoners were escorted into the hall and secured to the benches.  It was rather less civilised than a college lecture hall, but I had the feeling that it might actually be safer, maybe even less rowdy.  Two veterans who’d carried machine guns in Iraq had set a pair up in position to spray the prisoners with bullets if they got out of hand, while other members of the Posse held their own weapons, ready to intervene if matters got out of hand.  I didn’t intend them to get out of hand, at all, but something might well go wrong…
     
    I stood up on the dais and stared down at them.  The prisoners stared back with a conflicting mixture of emotions, ranging from cold hatred to respect and even joy.  They had feared the worst of the prisoners as much as I had, perhaps more, and were glad to see them dead.  They also feared me, which wasn't actually a bad thing.  I wanted them to fear me.  It would make them much more amiable to reason.
     
    Yes, I’m a bastard sometimes.  Bear in mind that most of them thoroughly deserved their prison sentences.
     
    “Pay attention,” I snapped, finally.  My voice echoed through the room, loudly enough to be heard by all of the prisoners.  “The country has been plunged into war.”
     
    On cue, the lights flickered slightly.  If you’re thinking that that is a remarkably suspicious coincidence, you’re entirely correct; it was.  I had given Richard instructions to flicker the lights from time to time, just to add to the atmosphere.  I needed them malleable and scared.  It would make this much easier.
     
    I didn’t hold anything back, either, apart from one detail.  “We are under nuclear attack,” I continued.  “Hundreds of cities have been destroyed and millions of megatons have been detonated on our soil” – a slight exaggeration, but one I felt was justified under the circumstances – “and the country is in ruins.  We no longer have the time or inclination to play nice with scum like you…and we showed you just how we were prepared to treat even worse scum than you.”
     
    “You can’t do this,” a voice shouted from the rear of the