Simon Spurrier - The Culled

That night – the night that London tore itself apart – I could take my pick.

Someone tried to rob me. Emphasis on the tried.

Give the little punks their credit: they had a system. Probably been pulling this shit every day for months, and if it weren't for the fact I clocked them as soon as I saw them, it might even have worked.

Somewhere inside the heart of the Con Ed power plant facility, a broad plaza had been cleared. Intestinal pipes and tanks dragged aside, buildings burned and shattered, the whole roughly-square patch razed to a cracked-concrete wilderness.

It heaved.

The weirdest thing was – and I didn't realise this until later – there were no kids. It seemed natural enough to expect them, somewhere amongst it all. At the heart of the colourful crowds, at the source of the excited shouts and squeals, amidst all the bodies squashed together or dashing through scant open spaces as they blossomed and filled. It was pandemonium. It was human convection in a tattered blend of colours and sizes, pushing and jostling and grunting, haggling out loud, or simply standing tall to yell offers at top volume.

But no kids. In all of New York, just like London: no kids.

"Wheels Mart." Nate said, leaning idly against a rusted pipe and lighting another of my cigarettes. "You want transport, you find it here." His eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly. "Where we going anyways?"

I ignored him and let the sensory overload knock me about, letting my instincts adjust, taking stock.

A hundred and one aromas gusted past – not just the usual filth and stink of too many unhygienic people – but the smoky promise of meat and stew, served diligently by a long row of low stalls, to the colossal queues of hungry customers. Prices were written in arcane barter-notes: weighing cigarettes, ammunition, items of clothing, canisters of fuel and recreational narcotics against the value of ratburgers, dog food gumbo, home-grown potatoes and (fuck me, the smell!) freshly baked bread. My senses kept trying to tell me I'd died and gone to heaven.

All around the outer perimeter of this bustling plaza other stalls were erected, bartering all manner of curious products and scraps of salvage. So wide was the square – and so thick with people – that I couldn't even make out what the distant stock was, though a tent near me held nothing but live chickens and shrieking budgerigars in small wicker cages, and something that looked troublingly like a parrot was turning on a spit over a barbecue. There were no weapons visible anywhere, except those clutched by the small groups of black-clad guards lounging about on walls and turrets around the enclosure, keeping half an eye. The distinctive shriek-scream-grunt of pigs rose from a muddy morass behind another section of the crowd, and most audible of all – over the top of everything else – was the growl of engines. Dozens of them. From all quarters of the mart fumes coiled upwards like greasy fingers, and at regular intervals a fresh cavalcade of bikes throttling, cars backfiring and heavier vehicles rumbling to life sounded above the melee.

The crowd was thickest at the centre, where a tall man in a wide-brimmed Stetson dangled uncomfortably from a series of cables and harnesses above their heads, waving arms and shouting out what I first mistook for unintelligible nonsense. The crowd seemed to be responding in kind – hands raised, necks craned, roaring out and waving bits and pieces of tatty scav every time the pendulous showman wobbled overhead.

It took me a while to realise he was running an auction.

"Four an' five!" He was wittering, almost too fast to catch, "four-and-five, pack of burns, pack of burns? Pack of burns! Anna piglet! Raise me? Best scoot inna house, here! Vespa, onlythabest! Raise me? Raise me?"

The crowd hollered – everyone shouting all at once – and the MB ("Master've bids," Nate grunted) dangled about like a string puppet, pointing fingers, taking offers, and promising new barters. A shiny chrome moped sat on a plinth beside the crowd, guarded by four serious-looking guards.

"Pack of burns?" I asked, flicking Nate a look.

He shrugged and brandished his cigarette, then scowled and looked me up and down.

"You wanna try lookin' any more like a goddamn tourist?"

I realised I'd been blocking the causeway. Sticking out like a sore thumb with my bulging backpack invitingly obvious, bolt-upright and fascinated where everyone else was either rushing about like their arseholes were on fire or leaning, just like Nate, against whatever item of sturdy ephemera they found. There were two correct states of being inside the Wheels-Mart: involved or not involved, and neither one involved any sense of wonderment.

Paying attention; taking an interest; having a bag full of unknown goodies. These were one-way-tickets to getting noticed by someone.

My 'someones' emerged from the crowd to my left, and I knew what was coming immediately. Two young men – early twenties at a guess, maybe even tithe-dodgers – scrapping and squabbling, rolling in muck, dirtied fingernails clutching at torn rags. They sprang and locked again, snarling like ferrets, tripping each other in their clumsy aggression then scrambling upright for a renewed attack.

It was all very convincing.

Except for the glances.

The tiny sideways squints in my direction.

The subtle eyes that told me everything I needed to know.

One of them drew a knife, circling in suddenly to thrust inwards towards the other, who rolled aside theatrically and yanked his own shimmering little shiv out of the hem of his boot. The pair closed again, their angry wrestles and desperate stabs bringing them – as if by magic – stumbling towards me. Choreographed to perfection. Messy and fast and unpredictable, and as authentic as it gets, but I knew.

The body language.

The stance.

Nate was watching them with some interest, I noticed, completely taken-in; face a slack mixture of disapproval and distance. Even some of the crowd – studiously nonchalant of all other things – were twisting to watch the brewing carnage. Everyone was ignoring me, never considering it might all be for my benefit. One or two punters even started calling out encouragement to the fighters, making wagers and shouting advice, whilst others scanned the crowd for the nearest guards.

"No Klan business!" A woman hissed, trying to break them up. The young men shoved her away and kept circling around each other, knives hooking hilt-to-hilt, then twisting back and forth inside one another's guard. Vicious. Personal.

Always heading right for me.

By the time they dropped the pretence and pounced – both at the same time, unlocking from their fake pugilism like a bear trap in reverse, knives outstretched on each side like scissor blades – I was already moving. Diving beneath the double-stab, rolling awkwardly across the backpack and flicking out one orbital leg: roundhousing the first punk – a freckled beanpole with bright purple hair – off his feet. The other darted-in with a snarl, catching a straight-handed chop to the side of his tattooed neck and – as I vaulted upright from the ground – an angry, unsubtle head butt on the bridge of his much-pierced nose. To be blunt I think he was dead from the neck wound already – he bloody should have been, the way I hit him – but I was angry. Sue me.

He went down without a word.

The purple-haired geek got up slowly, shaking his head to clear the fuzz, and backhanded his knife into a downward slicer. I picked up his mate's shiv – dropped from one spasming hand – and grinned at him; letting my body tell him how calm I was, how much I wanted him to rush me, how much I was urging him to come take me o…

His eyes flickered, just a millimetre, to one side.

Cold sweat. That sinking feeling.