The Culled Read online

  As if to reinforce this point, the guards commanded each entrant to display his or her Klan marking. Elbows and shoulders were silently brandished, knees held out, necks craned, and I caught a few fleeting glimpses of the squiggles and meaningless icons depicting each different group. In every case the guard quickly tied a black rag, plucked from a filthy basket, around the scar; hiding the brand from sight.

  “Neutral,” was all that Nate said.

  We reached the front of the queue and caused something of a commotion. For a start, Nate’s branding could hardly be covered with a simple piece of rag – unless he was prepared to submit to blindfolding, which he wasn’t – but it was the nature of the mark itself that really got them riled. They kept exchanging looks, clenching their jaws, wondering out loud if they should fetch the ‘em-bee.’

  More fucking acronyms. Nate seemed to be enjoying all the consternation.

  He’d explained it to me last night, the instant that the scavs he’d called ‘Mickeys’ scuttled off into the dark.

  “The Neo-Clergy,” he said, “the mighty New Church, the holier-than-thou warrior priests of the New Dawn, were really just another Klan.”

  Oh, a big one, to be sure. The biggest. The de-facto rulers of New York, whose powerbase gave them an administrative control over all the others, but still...

  It hadn’t seemed possible, somehow. How could something so mundane, so seedy, as this feudal mob have spread across the devastated world to make its claims of ushering-in a new future? From angry thugs to architects of tomorrow.

  According to Nate, the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn started out as a band of raggedy-arsed bastards calling themselves The Choirboys. They had no particular defining features – besides a reputation for being twisted little shits – and would have languished in obscurity had they not encountered the man named John-Paul Rohare Baptiste.

  No one knew much about him. No one knew where he’d come from or who he’d been. All they knew was that he shouldn’t be alive, and he proved it to them over and over again, with tests and samples and nothing-up-his-sleeves, just as he had continued to do every week on his detestable fucking TV show.

  The Blight should have got him. He should have been Culled.

  But he lived anyway.

  Under his guidance, and the fluttering banner of his self-declared divinity, the Klan swelled like a tumour. It came to the point they could have challenged and annihilated any other group they chose, but they didn’t. They simply tuned out from the power struggle, announced that their intentions had transcended the merely territorial, and elected themselves into a position of magisterial arbitration.

  Nowadays they monitored the others, like proud parents adjudicating the play-fighting of toddlers. They formalised the squabbles and scuffles, they leant their backing to whichever Klans they favoured, they provided weapons and drugs (their most valuable currencies), and in return they demanded The Tithe.

  Oh yeah...

  The Tithe.

  “Every child above age five,” Nate had said the night before, like reading from a scripture written inside his eyelids, “and below age eighteen, to be inducted into the ay-see-arr-dee.”

  That’s Apostolic Church of the etc, etc.

  They’d spread the good news across the oceans. They’d conquered the airwaves when all other frequencies had fallen silent. They’d taken responsibility for the future when all the starving, dribbling politicians and leaders and generals left behind could not, and then they’d made it their business to take charge of the children.

  They’d made the people want to give up their own kids. And they were just another New York gang.

  I found myself wishing I’d taken a little longer with the fuckers inside the plane.

  Eventually, loving every minute of the guards’ continuing bewilderment, Nate dug from his pocket a tattered eye patch and covered over his half-tattoo. He looked like he’d done this sort of thing before. The goons all but fainted in relief; apologising with twenty shades of uncharacteristic pomposity and explaining that members of ‘The Great Klan’ so rarely visited the Mart, they were unprepared. It’s one of those sights that sticks in the mind: two seven-foot yetis fawning and scraping over a scrawny old git dressed like a tramp with a uniform fetish. Nate clucked and swaggered along the concourse.

  The guards turned to me and let the panicky hysteria fade from their grizzled faces. They took my gun, glancing at it with suspicious eyes that said how inna hell did you come by this, little man? and told me to show them my Klan marking.

  “Ah,” I said.

  The way it worked, Nate had told me, was that you had your Klansmen, and then you had your scavs. The scavs were like livestock. Their loyalties determined by whichever mob happened to rule the territory in which they’d chosen to eke out their lives. Some went wherever their Klans went, or chose the most profitable or benevolent of regimes to nuzzle up to. Others were just spoils, like land taken in territorial scuffles; unceremoniously re-branded as the occasion required.

  It sounded feudal. It sounded fucking stupid.

  “Why don’t they just leave?” I’d said, in the airport, as Nate explained. “Why don’t they just rebel? There must be thousands of them.”

  “They do.” Nate shrugged. “All the time. Not a day goes by there ain’t a little... revolution, uprising, whatever. Chaos on the streets, every fucking night. But here’s the thing: you want a way to share out scavenged shit, or food, or whatever you got? Klans’re the only way.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Not bullshit. Good sense. And if not good sense then natural-fucking-order.” He’d licked his lips, waving a hand as he hunted down an example. “Let’s say you’re a... a young girl, right? Only just escaped the tithe. No parents. No weapons. No friends or food. Who’s gonna stick up for you? Who’s gonna make sure that shitty squat you found to sleep in don’t get raided, or burnt down, or torn-up by some crackhead rapist? Huh?”

  I’d shaken my head, unable to bring myself to agree, but I could see what he was getting at. Just.

  “And what if you’re not helpless?” I’d said. “You’ve still got to... toe the fucking line. Join up, act like a piece of property, get branded like a sodding cow.”

  “Yes, you do. Yes, you do. But the only way is up. And what happens when you impress one of the hotshots, huh? Or maybe cosy-up to the Klanboss? Or kill someone in the communal bad-books?”

  I’d shaken my head again.

  “Promotion.” He grinned. “Become a Klansman. Free to carry weapons. Free to roam. Work your way up. Maybe one day challenge for the top spot.”

  “And if you fuck up?”

  His voice had gone quiet, all but lost behind the crackling fire.

  “Then you out on your ear. And you better hope you can take care of yourself, or else find someone who can.”

  Talking about himself, again. Just like always.

  Nate said the Klansmen wore gang colours, and let their brands heal over. They got to carry weapons and administer internal justice and expand territories and all the other bullshit war games you can imagine. They played at being generals, gladiators, law enforcers and conquistadors. They got all the best gear. They had first choice of any scav, ate the best pickings, collected on debts, upheld the Klan’s integrity and generally acted big.

  I told Nate I was shaking in my boots. I’m not sure if he knew I was joking.

  Back to the power plant.

  “I don’t have a brand,” I told the guards.

  “You ain’t a scav?” One of them ran his eyes up and down my pitiful clothing. “Look like a scav.”

  “Fully paid-up Klansman,” I said, smiling, knocking-out my best US accent and still managing to sound (in my head, at least) like I was taking the piss.

  I was.

  “Yeah?” The guard said, looking like he’d already had a bad day and couldn’t be arsed with it getting any worse. “What Klan?”

  I thought for a moment, smiled sweetly and said:


  “The Culled.”

  They let me through, eventually, and as I passed him by the biggest goon grumbled, half-hearted.

  “No Klan business inside.”

  I grinned and told him to perish the thought.

  AS WE PASSED the checkpoint and wound our way further into the facility, I caught Nate staring at me, like some freakish version of a pirate, uncovered eye twinkling.

  He’d been carrying my pack since the airport – to spare my shoulder, he said – and now he unslung it carefully onto the floor, staring at me with a curious smile.

  I wondered for the fiftieth time what he was hoping to get out of all this. Out of helping me. Out of saving my life and bringing me here.

  Call me cynical, but Nate didn’t strike me as the sort of guy to do something for nothing.

  “Take another cigarette?” he asked.

  He’d earned it. Of course he had.

  Currency’s currency.

  “Go ahead.”

  But as he dipped his hands inside the pack they moved with a speed and confidence that betrayed all kinds of stuff, if you’re a paranoid bastard like me. If you know what you’re looking for.

  Familiarity.

  Confidence.

  Avarice.

  When he saved my life, when he made the choice to attach himself to me rather than kill me, as I lay with a dying man’s blood pulsing into my veins, he’d had hours and hours to go through the bag. Was that it? Was that all there was to him staying with me?

  He’d seen the goods and wanted to earn his share?

  No. No that made no sense. He could have just let me bleed out, let me die there on the runway, then taken it all for himself.

  What then?

  That same scratching. That same itching something at the back of my mind.

  Something not quite right.

  Something not adding up.

  “Nate.”

  “Mm?” he said, sparking the cigarette.

  Just ask, dammit...

  “Why are you helping me?”

  The air smelt of salt and car fumes. For a long time, there was silence.

  He watched me. Eyes unmoving.

  “Thought we’d established that,” he said, slowly, as if I was being ungrateful. As if I’d told him I didn’t need him.

  “Try again,” I said, gently.

  He sighed. Pursed his lips.

  “I walked out on the Clergy, pal. Saved my own skin when I shoulda... shoulda died like a martyr. That’s what they expect. Thoughtless obedience, you understand?”

  “So?”

  “So if they catch up with me, it’s... It’ll be...” He looked away, face fearful, and coughed awkwardly. Another long suck on the cigarette, calming his nerves.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I seen you in action.”

  “And?”

  “I kept you alive, raggedy-man. Now all you got to do is return the favour.”

  And it was an explanation, I suppose. It made sense. It all added up.

  And underneath it all the dark voice in my mind, shouting:

  Don’t you fucking give up, soldier.

  Don’t you get distracted, boy.

  Don’t you let things slip.

  Sir, no sir, etc, etc.

  Nate was helping me. Because of him I was healthy enough to carry on; to get the job done; to go after it like a flaming fucking sword. Everything else was just dross. Everything else was just peripheral shit that didn’t matter. Who cared why Nate was helping me? He’d given his explanation. Now move on.

  Except, except, except.

  Except that as Nate dropped the cigarettes back into the bag his hand paused – a split second, no more – next to the battered city map with its New York scrawl and red ink notes, and his lips twitched. A fraction. Just a fraction.

  Then he caught me staring, and closed up the pack with a friendly smile, and led me further inside the power plant.

  I took the pack and shouldered it myself.

  “How you feeling?” he said, as we walked. “Got your strength back? Lot of blood you lost, back there.”

  Reminding me. Keeping me indebted.

  Not subtle, Nate.

  “I’m peachy,” I told him, a little colder than I’d meant.

  Basic training, year two:

  Call in favours. Get people good and beholden. Make friends. Make the fuckers owe you one.

  But 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.

  People are parasites, boy. They see something strong, they clamp on.

  They slow you down.

  They complicate shit.

  “Just peachy,” I mumble-repeated, morose.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BY THEN, THE TV broadcasts were getting random.

  The signal itself was okay. Would continue to be for another year or two, up until the power died and the generators sucked dry on fuel and all the diehards up at White City gave up. By which time barely anyone had a TV left working anyway.

  But at the start, loud and clear, picture-perfect, 100% dross.

  Mostly it was repeats. A computer governed the scheduling, I guessed, to cover holes and overruns. Endless episodes of Only Fools and Horses, long-gone seasons of Porridge and The Good Life, a smattering of game shows whose contestants won or lost years before. Friends reruns, over and over and over and over, and anyone who gave a shit waited in vain for an episode called ‘The One Where Everyone Dies of an Unknown Flesh-Digesting Virus.’

  No one was making anything new. No documentaries about the present emergency. No one had the time or energy to programme the channels.

  Everyone was too busy staying alive.

  This was at the beginning. This was during the Cull itself, as The Blight swept the country, as the infrastructure gave way like a dam made of salt and all the comfortable little certainties – advertising, street-sweepers, hotdog stalls, the Metro newspaper on the underground, discount sales, pirated DVDs, free samples in supermarkets, full vending machines – all the little frills you never fucking noticed, just slowly...

  ...went away.

  Except the news. Sometimes, anyway. “God Bless the BBC!” people would say, as they passed in the street, tripping on bloody bodies and dead riot cops. Sometimes days would piss past with nothing – no bulletins at the top of the hour, no “we-interrupt-this-antique-comedy-to-bring-you-breaking-news” – and out in the rain all the uncertain crowds who couldn’t work out why they weren’t coughing and dying like everyone else were all anxiety and confusion, waiting beside the screens. But once in a while... once in a while.

  I imagined a skeleton crew, struggling on bravely at Television Centre; sleeping and living in its ugly bulges just to get the word out. I imagined them feeling pretty good about themselves, like the fireman who goes above and beyond to save a crying kid, like an artist who doesn’t sleep for a week to get the right tones, the right shades, the right effects. Like the soldier who keeps going, who never gives up, no matter what.

  IN A CIVILISED – and I use the word with the appropriate levels of irony – world, news is just another commodity. It so rarely affects you. It so rarely intersects with the sheltered, blinkered universe of your real world. It’s just another entertainment. Another distant work of fiction (or as good as) to be picked apart and discussed in the local boozer, over tea or coffee, sat on the train, wherever.

  The Cull changed all that. The Cull made it so everyone was living the news, all the time. Suddenly all the people – the quiet little nobodies who called themselves ‘normal’ and never made a fuss – knew what it was like to be a native of Baghdad, or an earthquake widow, or a disgraced politician. Suddenly they all knew what it was like to switch on the box and hear all about themselves, their own world, their own shitty lives, discussed in the same autocue-serious tone as every other dismal slice of bad news.

  It must have been a weird sensation.

&
nbsp; (Not for me, though. I’d been making the news for years, one way or another. And I mean ‘making.’ Some weeks it felt like foreign affairs correspondents would’ve been out of a job but for me and mine, though they didn’t know it. And no one ever said my name.)

  On this particular day, the eagerness to receive fresh information was stronger than ever. All throughout the blistered wastes of London, little knots of people had formed – their clothes not yet raggedy, but getting there; their faces not yet malnourished and gaunt, but getting there – to crowd around flickering sets in front rooms and electronics shops, tolerating the dismal repeats on the off-chance of a new bulletin.

  Two days ago, they’d mentioned the bombs falling in America. Rumours of atomic strikes, attacks all across the world, missiles going up and tumbling back down, EM pulses like technological plagues and supertech ‘Star Wars’ defences misfiring; farting useless interceptors into lightning storms and spitting heat seekers into the sea.

  When they’d made that announcement – a couple of days before – it had been tricky to know how much was confirmed and how much was fabrication. Concocted, one suspected, by the dishevelled creature sat behind the news-desk, staring in terror at the trembling camera. It was difficult to imagine the usual BBC specimens – bolt upright, faces slack, Queen’s English spoken with a crisp enunciation that bordered on the ridiculous – stammering and coughing quite so much as the nervous girl huddled behind her sheaf of papers, as she told an entranced London that nuclear Armageddon was right around the corner, then sipped carefully at her water.

  It had been a tense couple of days, since.

  I sat it all out in the flat. It had changed since that gloomy day when I got the text, when the removal guys failed to show up, when the ambulances streaked past one after another. Now the fish tank lay smashed on the floor, the CDs were all off the shelf in a heap, a couple of pot plants were turning slowly brown with their stalks broken and roots unearthed, and the front door sported a few splintered little holes where I’d shot it – for no reason other than to let the neighbours know I was armed.

  I’d had a tantrum or two, that’s all.