The Culled ac-1 Read online

  Nate coughed, awkwardly. Malice was staring at me with an ironic eyebrow, like she was trying not to laugh. I became distantly aware of a quiet noise, like:

  Spitaspataspitaspata

  The pack was leaking. A few jagged shards of glass – half a vodka bottle and the angular rim of a JD litre – had torn their way through the fabric in several places, and their wasted contents were puddling on the floor. It looked like a lot of other shit had fallen out too. Somewhere outside, in the thick of the crowd.

  "Ah," I said. "Bugger."

  This minor calamity seemed to adjust the atmosphere somehow, as if by demonstrating that I wasn't quite as cool as I'd made out, I'd taken the sting out of Malice's suspicion. I'd like to say I'd planned it that way. The woman even smiled openly once or twice – her posture relaxing for a beat – as we rescued what we could from the doomed offerings.

  The alcohol was all gone and the cigarettes reduced to a soggy mess, stinking of whisky. Nate (self-elected expert) declared them to be utterly worthless, then pocketed them quietly when he thought I wasn't watching. The blankets were stained but useable, the dog food and rubbers untroubled by their liquor soaking, and the drugs – which I'd hoped would be my most valuable bargaining chip – had alternately dissolved, shattered, fallen out of the pack, or dribbled away. Two of the Bliss hypos remained, along with a single vial of 'phets and the baggie of skunk. Nate kept moaning quietly under his breath every time we found something else ruined or missing, like he'd had it in his mind that the longer he stuck with me, the more of my stash he was liable to inherit.

  I wondered vaguely if the drastic losses were enough to make him stop following me round. To break the debt.

  I let the thought go, for now – content to let things carry me, trusting my instincts – and poked about in the miserly little stash we'd rescued. Five years of misery and starvation since the Cull, and the 'drugs problem' had mutated mysteriously from 'There's Too Much', to 'There's Not Enough'. It's hard to take the moral high ground when you've watched your friends die, when you've spent all day chasing ornamental ducks along stagnant canals, when you're freezing to death and when someone's offering you a quick and easy way to escape.

  'Just say no?' Fuck that.

  Just say gimme.

  If fuel was gold in this mean-arsed new world, then hardcore narcotic stimulation was platinum.

  "Not going to get you much." Malice shrugged. "How far you gotta go?"

  "How about you show me what you've got?"

  She shrugged again – the baby hiccupped – and gestured towards the rear door of the tent.

  I stepped outside and felt my neck prickling. This is the same feeling all men get, when they step into a room full of gadgets, or fast cars, or big guns.

  Set back from the main square, on an adjacent street between black painted walls of corrugated iron and criss-crossed walkways manned by gun-toting guards, Malice led me through rows of cars, vans, pickups, SUVs, motorbikes, bicycles and – shuffling nervously against the rope walls of a makeshift paddock – a trio of horses. Amidst the dozens of wheeled contraptions the whinnying livestock was about the only means of transport in the place that hadn't been radically altered in some way, and even they'd been daubed with crazy patterns in black and red branding paint. On everything else clashing colours and crudities were smeared along every chassis, windows were shattered or missing, innards had been comprehensively plundered. It would have been faintly depressing – like a scrap yard refusing to give up the ghost – had it not been for the special area, roped-off with its own guards. Inside its boundaries everything had been augmented, streamlined, changed. I gazed lovingly at steel roll-bars, wheel-covers in three types of mesh, hulking nitro canisters wedged inside passenger seats and ten different variations on the theme of 'heavily armed.'

  Pintle mounts poked like miniature SAM-sites from the roofs of jeeps and spot-welded AVs. Swinging hatches – just like on Nate's old school bus – replaced side-doors and load containers, whilst several cars sported a sneaky set of exhausts below the rims of the front doors, to blast flames at the touch of a button at anyone dumb enough to try getting inside.

  I wanted to play.

  All of them were painted black and red.

  "What're these?" I asked Malice, barely able to control the drooling.

  She smirked. "Rentals."

  "And how do you make sure the customer brings them back?"

  "Oh, that's easy."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah. We go with them."

  At the far corner of the section my eye fell on something. Something big and angry-looking. Something spiky.

  I nearly fell in love.

  "The Inferno," said Malice, following my eye. "Cute, huh?"

  It had been a fire truck once, though to be fair it bore about as much similarity to its previous incarnation as a shark to a diving bell. It was… sleek, which was an adjective I'd never have picked to describe a fire engine before. 'Like a speeding brick', maybe, but never dangerous. Never predatory.

  Progressive layers of sheet-iron had been built-up from a sort of conical crest along the truck's nose, like the scales of a dagger-like fish. Below its new snout a shallow dozer-scoop clamoured with spikes and barbed wire, whilst wide flanges protected the windshield above.

  All four tyres wore heavy swaddles of chains, canvas padding, rubber coils and thick iron rims, and a set of spares were lashed carefully beneath a wire and sheet gurney on the left flank. Halfway down the truck's 30-foot length an angle-poised turret reclined its muzzles towards the sky, its firing position enclosed on all sides by a low balustrade of welded plate steel. At one time it'd been a water cannon, easily hitched to a tanker truck and fired in great arcing loops. Now it had been modified. Converted in ways I couldn't easily see, so the central cannon stood surrounded in a clutch of cables, secondary devices and dangling controls. I think I picked out a Mk19 grenade launcher amongst the oily barrels, which told me everything I needed to know.

  You did not fuck with the Inferno.

  Secondary and rear-angle tertiary gunmounts were placed further along the vehicle's spine, each one protected by small forests of steel jags and corrugated shields. The whole thing was painted as black as sin, except the rims of the wheels and the hood above the windshield, which stood out in vibrant red like the belly of a Black Widow.

  It was something of an effort to form words. "How many… does…?"

  "Four crew. Five if you want the big guns out, but that's extra. Room for as many passengers as can hold on."

  "And how much… ah. How much would it cost to…?"

  She stared at me. She wasn't smiling.

  "A lot more," she said, "than you've got."

  So that squished that one.

  Long story short: I ended up embarking on my perilous quest on the back of a fucking quadbike, which sputtered and farted every time I throttled it, and it cost me everything I had except a single can of dog food, a sodding cashmere blanket and a packet of condoms. Malice said I'd got myself a bargain, and filled the whiny little vehicle up for free.

  I settled into the driver's seat – feeling pretty good, letting the engine tick over – and turned to thank her for her help. She was already walking away, disappearing into the tent, and the last I saw of her was her baby staring at me owlishly from her shoulders, dribbling with a smile. I sighed, wondering what I felt.

  Attraction? Loss?

  Guilt?

  Nate was staring at the quad with a sort of disgusted fascination. I sat back in the seat and folded my arms. Let him choose, I thought, feeling nasty. Let him ask.

  "So, ah…" he shifted from foot to foot.

  Then tsked.

  Then started clambering on.

  "Whoa, whoa… hang on…" I waved him off. "You're coming just like that?"

  "Too damn right."

  "But, you're… I mean…" I gaped, earnestly astonished. It felt a little like a limpet had attached itself to me, and no matter how long I held i
t over the fire it wasn't going to let go. "You don't even know where I'm headed!"

  I watched his face.

  There. There it was again.

  The hesitation.

  The eyes flicking to the pack on my back, then away again.

  "Don't matter." He said, forcing a smile. "I'm game."

  "And if I wanna go on alone?"

  "Then I remind you how I saved your life."

  "But…"

  "And I add – seeing as how you're bein' so hardass about it – that my price just went up. I get bodily protection, plus one blanket, one can dog food."

  "You want all my shit too? For what?"

  He smirked, white teeth electric beside me.

  "Travelling medic." He said. "Keep you outta trouble."

  And then it was too late, and he was perched on the pillion and pointing ahead like a general giving the order to advance, and that was that.

  Good, I tried to tell myself. He's a resource. He can help. He knows the area.

  But always the itching. Always the uncertainty. Always the suspicion.

  What's your ulterior motive, doc?

  And even deeper than that, drummed-in at a genetic level, the angry lectures splitting open my head; a tac-command feed direct into my skull.

  Don't you let yourself owe anyone anything. You hear me, soldier? Don't you get yourself in arrears. Don't you feel obliged to take care of anyone.

  "Oh, hey," he grinned. "And throw in them rubbers, too."

  My train of thought derailed itself in a blur of disbelief. "You want condoms?" I gaped.

  He seemed vaguely affronted. "Damn straight! You think I wanna be a daddy aga…"

  He stopped himself, mouth open, then blinked once or twice and started over; coughing his way through the hesitation. "You think I wanna be a daddy, my time of life?"

  I stared at him for a moment, wondering what to say, how to react, then shrugged and tossed him the rubbers.

  "Fine," I grinned. "Clean me out."

  He scrambled onto the saddle's pillion like a scarecrow mounting a horse, and I gunned the bike along the Mart's central promenade with a fierce sensation of freedom, letting the customers still pouring in take responsibility for not getting run down. Even so, as I stopped to retrieve the rifle and pistols I'd lodged with the goons at the check-in, there was something grinding in my mind. Cogs interlocking, memories grinding. Something about Nate. Something he'd said, maybe.

  Something not quite right…

  We churned through the Mart's main gates, bobbing uncomfortably over untended tarmac and roadside debris, and took a sharp right. Nate leaned down and shouted over the roar of the wind.

  "What I said!" He called, voice hoarse. "Earlier on! About the Clergy!"

  "What about them?"

  "About… About what if they catch up to me! They… They got these… what's it called, man! Jesus-Cross!"

  "Crucifix?"

  "Yeah! Right! They got a shitload! All ready for any motherfucker pisses them off!"

  Visions of medieval tortures and Inquisitorial nastiness slipped through my head. I kept seeing that scene from Spartacus; the main road flanked on both sides by crucified rebels, and saw me and Nate swinging in the breeze. "Oh yeah?" I shouted. "Where's that?"

  "Midtown, man! Manhattan! Biggest territory there is! Centre of the fucking universe!"

  I let the quadbike bring itself to a trundling halt, feeling the engine die-down, forming words carefully.

  "What you doing?" Nate blurted, prodding the quadbike. "Is it busted?"

  "No, no, it's… ah."

  "What?"

  I tried to grin. Failed.

  "Well, it's just… you'll never guess where we're headed."

  CHAPTER NINE

  Interlude

  Raymond – or Ram – caught up with Rick somewhere in the city suburbs. The first he knew about it was a speck in his single remaining wing mirror, gathering size as it tore toward him at top speed.

  At first he thought nothing of it. He'd seen little of anyone during this last leg of the journey, but the few people he'd spotted were enough to relax his nerves, where before he would have stiffened and fled from anyone. Out here, beneath the ever-changing sky (one hour burning bright, the next choked with fog, the next boiling with turbulent clouds; but always on a scale that seemed somehow too big, defying the eye) his only company were the occasional figures distantly glimpsed across the hills, tending fields or felling dead trees. Once or twice he'd even passed vehicles, always heading west. Mostly monstrous pickups and HGVs crammed to the gills with filthy-looking people, who stared at him with dead eyes as the trike gunned by, manoeuvring awkwardly around the abyssal potholes and gaping cracks that striated the roads. Some of these travelling groups were surrounded by little clusters of motorbike outriders, who glared suspiciously as they hurried all other traffic off the road. Each time he saw them Rick stiffened, expecting more silver-jacketed Collectors, imagining Slim's bloodless body stretched-out in the hardware store back in Snow Hand.

  None of the bikers so much as looked at him.

  Other trucks bristled with quills like porcupines: men with rifles and swivelling arms-mounts, suspicious of everything that moved. He wondered who they all were, where they were all going, what they did all day long – then promptly forgot them as soon as he reached the next corner.

  He was in a slightly fragile state of mind.

  The I-80 was an endless grey snake, cracked and mud-drenched, pocked with deep wells and unexpected fissures that crept-up on the unprepared traveller, wending its way through hills and fields of green and brown. Here and there old heaps stood and rusted – breakdowns that no one ever bothered to tow clear – and only the twittering of unseen birds, and rabbits scampering for cover, disturbed the hypnotic progress of the tarmac serpent.

  Rick was beginning to relax about the Harley too. At first it had seemed an unnecessarily flashy addition to his equipment: a mid-life-crisis on three tyres. It roared like the end of the world every time he gave it some throttle, and along with its dayglo paintjob in yellow and red, it conspired to be the absolute opposite of 'inconspicuous.'

  The clan mothers would not have approved.

  On the other hand, it was fast. It was far sturdier than the Yamaha, and in odd moments between small towns he'd begun to fancy he was riding an armchair; hovering across forests and lakes. With the stolen shotgun strapped across his back and a veritable cornucopia of other weapons stashed in the saddlebags, he kept seeing himself in some tacky Schwarzenegger moment. Crashing through flaming debris with a pithy one liner and a minigun blazing.

  In fact, Rick – nee Hiawatha – kept imagining himself and his environment in all sorts of outrageous new ways. This had something to do with the boredom of cross-country travel, something to do with his natural imaginativeness, and a lot to do with the enormous quantities of the sachems' weed he'd been smoking since his run-in with the colossal bear-like sodomite who attempted to kill and eat him the night before.

  He figured he owed it to himself.

  He'd spent the night in a mid-sized town called White Deer, two hours or so down the interstate from his fateful encounter with Slim in Snow Hand. The place had been mostly deserted, but a pocket-sized population had set up a sort of commune around the central square, and Rick was too exhausted and too nervy to risk breaking-in somewhere else. He traded one of the 9mms and a box of ammo for a comfy bed and two pouches of dried rabbit, and even got a bowl of vegetable soup into the bargain. The people were polite, eager to please, but ultimately empty. He could see the terror in their eyes; the way they kept looking back and forth from him to the Harley, to the bulging saddlebags.

  At one point a little girl appeared – precociously smiley – and asked him if he was a Collector come to take her away to the bad men in dresses. He was about to tell her "no" – to tell the whole goddamn town he was nothing to do with the fucking Clergy, or any other troublemaking scum they might be afraid of – when her mother swept h
er away with a dozen fearful glances over her shoulder and a muttered warning for him to "stay the hell away from her!"

  Point taken, he kept himself to himself after that: got as stoned as is it physically possible to get, sat staring at a fire with all the usual bullshit thoughts of spirits and voices that he only ever got when he 'wasn't himself', and cleared off in the morning before the sun was fully up.

  Two hours down the road, he passed a place called Kidder. There were three bodies strung-up on builder's scaffolding beside the turnoff; old and dried-out, almost skeletal now, dangling by their wrists on sharp cords of barbed wire. A spray-painted plaque below each one declared their crimes to the passing world.

  THIEF

  MUSLIM

  INJUN

  Each Tag had a scarlet circle sprayed below.

  Rick decided against visiting Kidder.

  He paused only once during the morning – another narcotic stop, to top-up the fuzziness that had insulated him from the terrors and confusions of the night – and now as he flew along the ridged spine of the grey snake road, sweeping in lazy arcs from left to right, his mind wandered in all the beautiful, empty places the Sachems would have been proud to lead him.

  Endless valleys of sound.

  Broken wildernesses, with great gnarled trees standing lonely on ancient barrows.

  Horizon-spanning herds of buffalo (or at least, great shaggy monstrosities with horns like scimitars, which is how – never having seen one – he imagined buffalo must look), oozing across grassy plains and moaning, deep down where sound stops and feeling begins, to each other.

  Ghost-dancers, capering from side to side, seething and hissing as the chalk-dust coating their dusky skin dripped away with their sweat.