The Culled ac-1 Page 6

  I felt an eyebrow ruck upwards.

  The sign read: WELCOME TO THE NEW DAWN

  …along with all the usual scarlet circles, colourful highlights and other assorted Neo-Clergy bollocks. The whole compound set up looked like it'd been made out of pipe-cleaners and bogrolls at the local school, then scaled up a couple of hundred times.

  It was painted bright blue.

  It was all a bit pathetic.

  I could see the sniper now, through the chinks of shattered glass and mangled instrumentation of the cockpit, standing in full sight on the gantry. He had a loudspeaker slung on a cord across his shoulders and a seriously sexy scope-rifle cradled in his hands, at a guess an M82. I'd only even seen them in pictures.

  Shit.

  Above a pair of wide sunglasses – tinted ruby-red – a stupid sort of flat-cap was set jauntily on his scalp, somewhere between a beret and a devotional kippah, and his robes were several shades whiter than those of his dead colleagues. So:

  The boss.

  I tried to get a bead on him, squinting along the barrel of the M16, but at this range I might as well blow snot. He had his back to me, leaning down over the rear of the railing to point and shout at someone below, hidden behind the sign. There seemed to be an argument going on, and in his apoplexy the twat-in-the-hat was stamping and waving his fists in a full-on tantrum.

  A violent growl picked up from out of nowhere – an engine, gunning hungrily – and a blocky shape emerged from behind the compound. Fat and square, grinding along slowly. For one awful moment I thought it must be a tank. Some ultra-rare military surplus these insane godbotherers had maintained for years. But no, it was far weirder than that.

  It was a school bus, thick flanges of corrugated iron hanging down to protect its tyres, painted the same lurid blue as the buildings and marked with the same great scarlet 'O's on either side. The windows were blocked-up – padded by what looked like dozens of Kevlar jackets marked 'NYPD' – and the front windshield protected by a heavy-duty wire mesh. I couldn't see the driver. I couldn't see who or what was inside. All I could see was this surreal shape lumbering towards the plane, towards me and my complete lack of preparation, and the fucking stupid 'destination' inside the little window above the front: SALVATION (ONE WAY)

  I felt like shooting at it on general principle.

  The vehicle took a wide arc around the plane's tail, circling behind the wreckage, shunting its way through lumps of flaming debris with the impunity of something big, impatient and impervious. I dropped quickly down from my shaky vantage and squirreled into the recess beneath the drooping camber of the cockpit, the first vestiges of panic rising inside. When it drew alongside, the driver would have to be blind not to see me. What precisely was I supposed to do then?

  It didn't take a genius to work out what they were up to. A lazy recon around the perimeter to get a good look at the side they couldn't see from their hickledy conning towers. To flush me out into the open, if I turned out to still be alive.

  With the sniper on one side and an armoured vehicle on the other, it wouldn't be hard work to catch me out, pick me off like a flaky scab.

  I breathed deep, letting the conditioning guide me. Thinking like a machine.

  Only viable place to hide now was back in the bloody plane, which I'd just spent half an hour trying to get out of. I considered crawling back. I even tensed, ready to hoist myself out from my pitiful cover and up through the shattered cockpit windows, probably lacerating myself all to hell in the process, but still… It was better than n The bus stopped.

  Its brakes squeaked quietly as it drew to a halt beside the knotted cavity of the missing tail segment, far off to my right. I could hear voices arguing inside. A hatch flapped-open near the rear and a robed figure leaned out. I froze.

  The man tossed something, underarm, into the plane's tail.

  "Go!" He shouted, presumably to the driver.

  The hatch slammed shut and the bus moved on.

  "Oh fuck…" I whispered.

  The tail bulged. The whole wreck shuddered, scraping deeper into the dry grass. Round the corner of my cover, too far out in the open for me to see clearly, flames and tumbling lumps of metal arced high overhead, shattered fragments of blue-painted hull spiralling in orbital contrails of sparks and smoke, to bounce and break on the tarmac.

  A few bits and bobs pinged cutely off the bus. It didn't seem to mind.

  They thought I was still inside. It didn't much matter much, either way. Inside or out of the wreck, with the 'Cult Of Unfair Destructive Hi-Tech Gadgetry' around I was as good as mince.

  Think, think…

  The bus cruised gently forwards, cornering the rear of the plane and pausing beside the next gaping rent in its fuselage, a third of the way along its flank. Again, the hatch flipped open, and like some surreally casual picture – a guy in a park pitching a ball to an overeager dog – the goon flipped another grenade into the wreck.

  The bus moved on.

  This time the detonation blew off an emergency exit door, straight upwards like a rocket, to tumble over and under back down again. More spilled fuel caught fire as the debris mushroomed out, and for the second time I felt a wave of weakness and nausea passing over me. Everything seemed to go grey.

  Fuzzy.

  Meaningless.

  Not now!

  Blood loss. Hollow prickles of heat up and down empty veins…

  I Don't you fucking give up, soldier!

  I brought the rifle up to my shoulder. This time the bus driver would see me. This time they'd be too close. The grenade would blow out the front of the plane, erupt through the cockpit like a great pulsing embolism, crushing and breaking and burning me all at once.

  The brakes squealed.

  The hatch flipped open.

  The goon wasn't looking out, bending back inside to shout at the driver, hands curled snugly around the baseball bomb, ready to throw.

  I heard:

  "…fucking opinions to yourself, grandpa, and let the real men do the…"

  He pulled the pin.

  I shot him.

  The hatch flipped closed, bloodhaze wafting down and out. The grenade sill inside.

  The unseen driver shouted.

  I pushed myself deep into the recess and curled into a ball.

  The bus's arse blew off like an overfilled balloon, smoke swallowed the sky, pulsing waves of weirdness sent me flopping like a boneless doll with vomit on my chin, and everything faded to white.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My first worry was that my eyes weren't working properly.

  Okay, so I'd just woken up. No need to panic yet, maybe, but the training and conditioning went deep, and the first thing you learn is be aware.

  Know everything.

  Cover the angles.

  Right.

  I had the vague idea I'd passed out from loss of blood. There was something about a… a bus? A plane? What the fuck? Maybe I was still hallucinating.

  Maybe this hazy curtain obstructing everything I was seeing was just an effect of my traumatised mind, or something cloudy dripping in my eyes, or… or whatever.

  Assume a worst case scenario.

  Sir, yes sir, etc etc.

  So: Major damage following oxygen starvation to the brain, leading to sensory corruption and an inability to effectively continue.

  Solution: Abort mission.

  I remembered where I was. I remembered the plane crash and the gunfight and was even starting to piece together the thing with the bus when the biggest puzzle-piece of all dropped into place: I remembered why I'd come here.

  The Signal.

  'Inability to effectively continue' wasn't an option. 'Abort Mission' could, pardon my French, fuck off.

  I mentally nutted the worst-case scenario and tried out a little optimism for a change. When I twisted my head to glance at the floor beneath me – I was lying on my right shoulder, aching from my own weight – the cracked tarmac of the airstrip came into perfect and unobstruc
ted focus. It was only when I looked further afield that my vision became obscured, as if the horizon was playing hard-to-get.

  "Stay still," someone croaked. "Nearly done. Can't finish-up if you keep moving."

  My skin prickled, and it took a moment or two to realise why. I was half naked. Lying on a mangled runway surrounded by debris and fuel, unable to see anything past a few dozen feet, in nothing but my underwear.

  "H-hey…"

  "Dammit! Stay still." A wrinkled hand – dark brown knuckles and a pale palm – dipped briefly into my field of view and gave me a chastising flick on the forehead, not doing much for my sense of security. I felt my whole body rocking a little, as if a dog had got hold of my left sleeve and was tugging it from side to side, though I wasn't wearing anything and consequently had no sleeves.

  It was all very odd. There was no pain.

  I poked my tongue around my mouth, half testing for the taste of blood, half summoning the strength to speak, and eventually tried: "What are you… uh…?"

  "Sorting you out." the speaker said. His voice was hard-accented – African-American, New York sharp – with an inbuilt semi cackle that turned every statement into a grandfatherly demonstration of humouring the kiddies. I felt vaguely patronised, and couldn't work out why.

  "And how," I said, failing to focus yet again on the murky distance, "are you doing that?"

  "Minor transfusion, first up." The voice sounded matter-of-fact about this, despite the subject. "About the only good damn thing about The Cull. Everyone's a donor, see?"

  "Blood?"

  "He's a quick one!" I got the impression the guy, whoever he was, was squatting behind me. "Yeah, blood. Which is to say: you were seriously lacking for the stuff, pal."

  "A-and you gave m… From where?"

  "No need to worry 'bout that."

  I silently begged to differ, but the same tugging sensation from my left shoulder was distracting my attention and the voice – an old man, I'd decided – wasn't finished.

  "Then it was tidying up, see? I mean… who made this damn mess of your arm here?" There was a quiet tap-tap-tap, and I imagined a finger poking the skin next to the bullet hole – though again I felt nothing. "Might as well have poured a quart of mud in the hole and closed it down with knitting needles."

  "I… I did it."

  "Done it yourself?" The voice went quiet for a moment, then whistled softly. "Well… maybe that's different. Still a fuckin' mess, mind."

  "You've… You've sorted it?"

  "Yep. Anitsep, new stitches, new dressing." He paused, considering my voice. "Limey, huh?"

  "But I can't feel it. My arm."

  "Lived over there myself, for a time. Nice place. But for the weather."

  "I said I can't fee…"

  "Yeah. That'd be the anaesthetic."

  I started to blurt: Anaesthetic? Where the fuck did you get th-, but my thought-process shifted rails with an inelegant clang and ran up against a far more obvious quandary.

  "Why?" I said.

  "Why what?"

  "Why are you doing all this? What's going on?"

  "Ah."

  The syllable was pronounced with the sort of enigmatic significance that said:

  More to follow.

  There was a heavier tug on my left side, executed with a certain amount of rough finality and a breathless grunt – "There!" – and then a coarse hand rolled me onto my back. I felt a little like a turtle inverted in the sun, unable to lift myself upright. Not that I'd tried yet. I was far too busy staring up at my benefactor, wondering if I was still asleep and hadn't realised.

  "Evening." The shadow said. "Name's Nate."

  He was an older man. I think. Five years since the Cull it was already difficult to say, hard living took its toll on some worse than others; youngsters quickly hardened, faces became taught, lines (not laughter, obviously) gathered at corners of eyes and mouths. Plus fallout, starvation, exposure, injury. Who could say? My best guess put this guy at sixty, but he looked older and acted younger. His skin was a uniform teak that gave his face an unreal quality every time he smiled. Perfectly white eyes and teeth lighting up like bulbs set into a dark sculpture.

  "Nate." I repeated. He grinned.

  He wore a strange getup, like he'd spent all his life pilfering clothes of a vaguely uniform bent. Tan and khaki camo combat trousers (sorry, pants), a pale blue shirt with an NYPD insignia stitched into the lapel and an outrageous jacket – dark blue, festooned with gold pips and double-buttons – which it took me a moment to recognise as an Union Army antique. I figured he'd looted it from some re-creation society or fancy dress store, though admittedly – thanks to scuffs, stains and frays – it did have a century-and-a-half-old look about it. Its effect was simply to add to the overall impression of a uniformed nutter, driven to steal anything vaguely official-looking like a magpie hording shinies.

  I resisted the urge to salute.

  This curious attempt to look authoritative was undermined somewhat by the accessories he'd chosen: bright red sneakers, a white New York Mets baseball cap and a vivid yellow belt with the most enormous buckle engraved with the legend: POP BITCH

  There was a dead guy sitting next to him.

  Nate followed my glance and his grin faltered a touch. "Ah," he said again.

  The corpse was one of the Clergy-soldiers, though I didn't recognise him from inside the plane. He didn't have a hole through his face, for a start.

  His grey robes were blackened and singed, spattered with blood and dirty water, and the patches of his skin I could see were just as soiled: peeled back in moist red welts or incised totally by razor-like fragments of shrapnel. One of his arms was hanging off at the shoulder by a few threads of gristle and a notched bony core, and his head was so tattered the scarlet tattoo around his eye was barely visible at all. He sat slumped, semi-upright, against the tangled remains of the same armoured school bus that prowled my recent memories. It reminded me, surreally, of a novelty firework: its front-end all but untouched; the remnants of its length blown-to-shit so totally that their remains barely made any physical sense at all.

  The dead Clergyman had been the guy inside. The grenade chucker.

  Nate coughed, embarrassed.

  A thin rubber tube meandered from a grimy canula thrust into the corpse's wrist, out onto the floor where it coiled once or twice towards me, then vanished beneath the edge of my exhausted peripheral vision. I didn't want to turn my head to confirm it, but I had a pretty good idea where it led.

  It was full of blood.

  "Not like he needed it…" Nate said, a little surly. "And I disconnected plenty of time before he died."

  Well that's okay then.

  Nate fussed beside me – lifting up the other end of the transfusion tube and waggling it like a glove puppet – and then started tidying away the various equipment he'd scattered on a mostly clean blanket beside me. Stitching needles, bloody rags, sealed packs of military-issue sterilisers and antiseptic pads, and a roll of off-white bandaging that'd come partly unrolled and scampered off along the oil-spattered tarmac.

  The horizon still hadn't come into focus. I was starting to worry.

  "Why can't I see properly?" I asked, finding that I could control my body – just – but was so exhausted it hurt even to think about moving.

  Nate scowled for a minute, confused, and peered around us. If I'd had to guess, his expression was one of someone who'd just spent hours saving a stranger from bleeding to death, only to discover they were already vegetative in the brain department.

  "Can't see?" He said.

  "It's… it's like a… a blur. Like… Near-to things are okay, but the further away stuff gets…"

  He looked at me like I was a retard.

  "Well that," he said, "is what's sometimes called fog."

  Even despite the panicky relief, I still had some headroom for feeling like a fuckwit.

  "B-but… but it was perfectly clear when the plane… when it…"

  "Well
, that's New York for ya." He waved a dismissive hand, gazing out into the wall of soupy white. "It's called the QuickSmog Eff-Why-Eye."

  "Eff…what?"

  "Eff-Why-Eye. For Your Info. Sorry… Guy gets sorta used to talking in letters, hanging around with the grunts, you know." He hooked a thumb towards the slumped body and shook his head. "Soldiers and monks, Jeez-us! Nary the twain should meet."

  I struggled to hang on to a single thread. Nate was the sort of guy who could hold three schizophrenic conversations at once, leaping from tangent to tangent like a monkey on speed. There was a shielded intelligence simmering away in those eyes, too, hiding behind the accent and the daft clothes, but watching everything. Paying attention.

  "QuickSmog." I repeated, bringing him back.

  "Yeah, yeah. Guy I knew one time told me it started right after the camel-jocks zapped out DC. 'Cause, you know, I wasn't stateside back then. Never saw the lightshow. But yeah, QuickSmog… Comes in quick, goes out quick. Just like that. No rhyme or reason. Doesn't seem to do much harm, though if you ask me right now it's a good thing."

  "How come?"

  "You kidding? Fucking great plane wreck, burning to shit… sending up a pillar of smoke higher'n a pothead's prick." He grinned. "And with your robe-wearin'-pals here gone away, nothing to stop the scavs from coming to take a look."

  Scavs. Robe-wearin'-pals. Camel Jocks zapping DC.

  One fucking detail at a time.

  Know everything.

  Cover the angles.

  "There was a sniper… a-and a driver. Guy in the bus. He dead too?" The effort of talking was becoming appalling now; even as the sensations started to return to my numbed arm the rest of me was screaming for rest.

  Nate sniffed, wiping a dewdrop off his nose.

  "Well now," he said. "Your sniper up there, that's a mean pieceashit Cardinal name of Cy. Near as I can tell he wasn't milit'ry before The Cull, so I guess something pretty damn nasty musta happened… Man's fucked in the head but good. Gen-u-ine psycho. Heh." Nate spat on the ground. "High-up too. Maybe take over from the Abbot some day. See, Cy's in charge of bringing the freight from the airstrip back to the city. When the bird comes down all wrecked-up like that, and all the kids missin', he knows straight away his neck's on the line. That's how come the Choirboys went in so hard. Cy wanted to have a… a body, whatever. Like: 'yeah, the airport's fucked and we didn't get the Brit tithe, but I caught the guy who did it…'"