Simon Spurrier - The Culled

"Me?"

"Right. Only he didn't. And then you come out killin' every motherfucker left and right, and Cy starts to figure maybe he should stop worryin' what his boss gonna say, and start saving his ass. So he sends out the bus, all packed-up with grenades and shit, to keep you busy. Maybe even kill you, if he's lucky." He nodded towards the shattered school bus. "Soon as old Bertha went kablooie you can bet your ass Cy was hightailing back for the city in the Outrider."

"Just a diversion?"

"Right. Couple of… sacrificial lambs, you might say. Told to go die so Mister-Hat-Wearin' fuck gets to breathe another day. I figure he'll spend the whole journey wondering what to tell the boss. Ask for reinforcements – my guess. Be back here… maybe a day and half? Suggest you get yourself gone by then, huh?"

"And the driver?"

Nate grinned again, and leaned further over. Deep in the shadows of his left eye, all but indiscernible against the blackness of his skin, I could make out the long curve of a scarlet tattoo.

A half circle.

I stiffened.

He waved a set of keys playfully above me, then tossed them over his shoulder.

"Not much left to drive now."

"You're… you're Clergy too?"

He chuckled to himself, lifting up a bundle of something ragged and stinking which I first assumed was a dead dog, and then realised were my clothes.

"Not really," he said. "Not any more."

An hour later, Nate and I sat in the alcove beneath the front wall of the shanty-compound, hiding from the wind, listening to the great Welcome sign flapping above us. The QuickSmog had surrendered to a sudden squall that darted up with no obvious warning, phasing away into the dark.

Out across the waters encircling the airport, the distant smudge that was the northern reaches of the city faded by degrees into darkness. I'd expected – stupidly – the same neon jungle I'd seen in every film, the same speckled star field of glowing tower blocks printed in every guidebook. The same scene of candle-like serenity glossily reproduced on the cover of the city map I'd plundered from a bookshop in Covent Garden, and sat studying for days and days back in Heathrow, as Bella and I planned the journey. It was still in my pack, that much-thumbed map; not that I needed to look at it any more. I knew all its lines, all its labels, all the red blotches marked on its surface…

But no. From a distance the post-Cull city, just like London, was a haunted place; an inky nothingness flecked here and there by the fragile, sputtering lights of nestled survivors, and the brazen fumes of miniature industry.

Nate had moved me into the shadow of the blue compound's corrugated walls, across the grass and away from the wreck, as soon as I'd been strong enough to make the journey, bracing me with one arm and lugging my pack with the other. He said it would be best to get away from the plane before true darkness fell. The local scavengers would be slinking in to take a look at what had caused all the commotion, and it was all too easy to get caught up in the scraps and squabbles as they fought over the spoils.

I got the impression he wasn't talking about coyotes and wild dogs.

Now, on the cusp of night, the air was getting cold and the view growing grim.

The plane still flickered. Things moved in the smoke.

Nate said he was a 'trustee'. He said this meant the Clergy sort of employed him, but didn't expect him to do any of the shit stuff. No evangelising, no indoctrinating, and definitely no acting self-important about the Church's self-assumed manifest destiny in ushering in the New Dawn of Civilisation.

Actually, what Nate said was: "…those dress-wearing assholes couldn't get me down with that bullshit even when they were poking guns in my back" – but he meant pretty much the same thing. "Eventually," he said, "they figured I was worth more alive, tried asking nice instead of just demanding. We've all been getting by just fine ever since."

Until I showed up and slaughtered your mates.

Until your boss ran off like a robe-wearing pussy, and left you behind.

Until you decided to keep me alive rather than kill me whilst you had the chance.

Hmm.

The whole issue of why he'd helped hadn't been entirely covered yet. I'd taken a bottle of supermarket vodka out of my pack to share with the guy – I figured it was the least I could do – and he was sinking it like a fish. I ought to have felt more grateful, I suppose.

Instead…

Those old instincts. Those old voices.

Know everything.

Don't you let yourself owe anyone anything.

Sir, yes sir, etc etc.

Nate said he'd been a little… uncooperative when Cardinal Cy told him to drive out onto the killing-strip just to keep me busy. He said he'd kicked up a fuss at the idea that he should go throw himself into the jaws of the wolf, whilst said Clergyman ran like a custard-coated cockerel. Nate said he'd protested vehemently at the treatment, that he hadn't signed up as a trustee just to forfeit himself to let some vicious little prick live, and that he'd entered into a considerable argument with his fellow sacrificial lamb when ordered to play kamikaze.

He said eventually the guy chucking grenades out the back had to hold a gun to his head just to get the engine started.

That explained why he wasn't in any hurry to rejoin the Clergy. Traitor to the cause. Coward. Deserter. Blah-blah-blah.

Fine.

It didn't explain why he'd gone to so much trouble to keep me alive afterwards.

I asked him.

"More rat?" he said, ignoring me with a bright grin, hacking away at something small and furry with a skinning knife.

I nodded and lifted an empty skewer off the makeshift fire, and jabbed at the slimy morsel he held out. Second only to pigeon.

Over by the plane dark shapes crossed in front of the dancing fires, like inky puddles of moving shadow.

"Still a lot of guns aboard." I said, tense.

And Bella's body.

Nate said the scavs wouldn't be doing any shooting. "Relax," he said, and passed me the vodka with only the tiniest reluctance. He said that whatever the scavs found, they'd present immediately – with all due ceremony and cringing deference – to their bosses in the Klans. He said that if any of the poor fuckers dared waste a single bullet, and word got back to their bosses, they'd be in the hunt pens or skewered on territory poles before they knew it.

I asked him what the Klans were.

He smiled and bit into his rat.

The wind got colder.

Nate said he'd been a doctor, once.

"Kind of," he said.

He said he'd been born in the Bronx and miseducated in Harlem, and but for a lucky seduction in a downstate disco would've wound up still there, scrabbling for cash and crack. He said that twenty years ago – or so – he got lucky with a rich white chick who fell for his unmistakable charms and took him along to England when her company reassigned her. He said she paid through the nose to set him up. He said she enrolled him in night school to finish his basic, then community college, then – pushing harder – medical training. He said every step of the way he worked his balls off, because it turned out he could handle failure and addiction and crime and poverty, but the one thing he couldn't handle was seeing her disappointed.

It was all a bit 'soap opera,' but I didn't like to break the flow.

Nate said he flunked the final exams so bad he would've done better to leave the question papers blank.

"Morphine addiction," he explained, staring off into space.

And that, he said, was that.

"Couldn't you resit?" I asked, picking out rat bones from between my teeth. "Get cleaned-up, try again? Seems a bit late in the day to go throwing it all away."

"Yeah." he said, and his voice was quiet. "Yeah, you're right there. Except Sandra – that's the lady, the… the one who took me over there – she sorta caught me with my pants down."