Simon Spurrier - The Culled

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-Cee-En-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.