Simon Spurrier - The Culled

Be grateful.

They were going somewhere better, the Clergy said.

Sitting there in the cold, listening to Nate's story, my eyes plucked at the huge banner above me. I shivered.

"They brought them here," I grunted, shaking my head. "The kids. Didn't they?"

Nate nodded.

"Why? What do they do with them? Where's this… this fucking new tomorrow?"

Nate shrugged, took a slurp of water from a screw cap cantina, and carried on with his story like he'd barely stopped to breathe.

Nate said the Clergy found him on the streets of London. They'd heard he was a doctor. They said they might have a need for someone like that. They might even raise him up to a state of grace. Besides, they said, he was already American.

They had two conditions:

"Number one," he said, "they told me I got to have faith. I told them if they gimme a job and food and somewhere warm to sleep, I'll believe whatever the hell they want.

"And number two, they said I gotta go back to New York."

He stopped, and looked for a second or two like he wasn't going to continue. It was strange to see. Nate's natural state was 'droning', and every time he stopped to stare off into the darkness with those spotlight eyes it was… disconcerting. "So you came back," I said. "And did what?"

He looked at me for a second – proper eye contact, for the first time – then away again. Someone screamed playfully out by the wreck.

"Same as before, more or less. Ironic, huh? Just like the Albanians. Checking over the produce when it arrives. Making sure it's fit to travel. No sickness, no frailty. Clergy only wants the best."

"You inspected the kids?"

"Right. Shit, I was in charge of them. Clumsy old guy with a friendly face and a dumb costume. Made jokes. Patched up cuts and scrapes. Told 'em all everything would be just fine. Drove the bus into the city, came right back for the next batch. London, Paris, Moscow. Planes comin' in from all over."

"So you're the ferryman to the New Dawn?" I said, trying out a little sarcasm; seeing how the old man would react.

Know everything.

Check the angles.

He smiled, a little too slowly, then nodded. "I like that." He said. "Yeah, I like that."

Something rustled nearby. A spreading whisper of cloth and feet. My hand tightened on the M16, eyes scanning the shadows, but Nate waved a laconic hand in my direction and grinned.

"No need, man."

Not reassuring.

Something oozed out of the dark. Something hesitant and filthy, matted and feathered down each flank of its raggedy form. Something that broke-up as the firelight caught it; separated down by degrees into an aggregate. A crowd of people.

Staring, all as one, at the meat roasting over the flame.

They came into the light like a single entity, scuttling on far too many legs. They looked – random thought here – like extras from the set of a war film: recognisably human but coated in the makeup department's finest emulations of soot, dirt and dried blood, scampering with that expression of people who don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it. Several had fresh wounds – nicks and cuts from knives and teeth – and eyed each other warily.

The ones at the front carried themselves with a seniority based on whatever Byzantine pecking order was at work, clutching in their dirty hands stolen guns, scraps of clothing, bundles of chemical ephemera and all types of other salvage taken from the plane. One was holding a seatbelt buckle, smiling with the smug expression of someone who'd outperformed herself. Another one – a young man – had Bella's jeans slung over his shoulder.

The M16 felt good in my hand.

Let it go, soldier.

Sir, yes sir, etc etc.

"Well, then…" said Nate, reclining back against the compound wall with as much disinterested ease as he'd shown before the darkness disgorged them. "What can we do for you?"

I think I half expected them to speak in grunts and moans, if at all. They looked so devolved, so fucking prehistoric, that at that point it wouldn't have surprised me if they'd dropped down and worshipped the 'Great Fire Makers'.

It sounds arrogant, now I come to say it. I mean… why should they be any less coherent than me? Why should their five years of hardship and filth be any less dignified than mine?

"We smelt the rat," a tall woman said, near the front. She reminded me of someone, and a shiver worked its way along my spine.

Shut that shit down, soldier. Job to do.

Nate shrugged. "And?"

"And we thought maybe you'd trade."

Nate shook his head. "No trades."

"But… see?" The woman plucked a plastic drinking beaker out of a raggedy pack, brandishing it like a jewel. "Good, see? Perfect for trading, that is. See what I've g…"

Nate's voice hardened a little. His face stayed the same. "No. Trades."

The scavs flitted a few awkward glances back and forth, then the tall woman's eyes went sneaky. Heavy-lidded and intense, like a child conspiring to do mischief.

"We could take…" she said, quietly, acting nonchalant.

Nate chuckled to himself.

"You could," he said. "Yep."

The scavs shuffled, shifted their weight from foot to foot. Here and there a blade twinkled in the firelight, and my heart twisted in my chest: speeding up, blurring time.

Endorphins washed down me.

Muscles tensed.

An old man shuffled to the front, dark blue sweater decorated with stripes of white paint, and I watched him with the targeted eye of a predator.

"What Klan?" He wheezed. "Mm?"

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours." Nate ginned. The M16's grip was warm now, heated by my own palm.

All at once the scavs twitched; a great roiling ball of motion, and without a single conscious thought I was lifting the gun and reaching for the arming bolt and…

Nate's hand sat on the barrel, holding it down. He gave me a look, shook his head, and grunted towards the scavs. They hadn't been attacking at all.

They stood brandishing themselves, like a medical examination taking place en masse. In each case the proffered elbow, shoulder, arm, stomach, neck or ankle was decorated by a small mark. A burnt branding-scar in the shape of a smiling face, eyes like double-arches above a mountainous nose, with a pair of satellite ears protruding on each side.

"Mickeys," said Nate. He gave me a doting smile, like an old man discussing the merits of different chess pieces, and said: "Respectable Klan, that."

"Trade now?" The woman said. "Or we'll help ourselves."

"What Klan?" the old man whispered, hopping from foot to foot. "What Klan what Klan what Klan?"

Nate tilted his head back, letting the fire chase away the shadows beneath the brim of his cap. The scarlet semicircle seemed to blaze on his cheek.

"Clergy…" went the whisper. A fearful susurration rushing around the crowd. "Godshits… Choirboys… Fuckin' Clergy…"

And then they were gone.

Nate and I sat in silence. Eventually I coughed under my breath and asked him, third time lucky, if he'd tell me about the Klans.

He gave me a funny look, smirked quietly, and said:

"Shit, man. What you think I bin doing?"

The Consolidated Edison Power Plant facility, directly off Astoria's 20^th Avenue, was a continental wedge of pipes, cables, depots, spinal chimneys, blocky storage tanks and stark structures like geometric skeletons made from girders. All of it pressed up against the same polluted, watery banks as the airport. There was something undeniably sepulchral about it. A knotted tangle of hip-like joists, vertebral chains linking moving assemblies, and skull-like containers that had long since lost their sheen.

Nate had brought me here at first light, when I'd told him I needed transport.