Simon Spurrier - The Culled

You did not fuck with the Inferno.

Secondary and rear-angle tertiary gunmounts were placed further along the vehicle's spine, each one protected by small forests of steel jags and corrugated shields. The whole thing was painted as black as sin, except the rims of the wheels and the hood above the windshield, which stood out in vibrant red like the belly of a Black Widow.

It was something of an effort to form words. "How many… does…?"

"Four crew. Five if you want the big guns out, but that's extra. Room for as many passengers as can hold on."

"And how much… ah. How much would it cost to…?"

She stared at me. She wasn't smiling.

"A lot more," she said, "than you've got."

So that squished that one.

Long story short: I ended up embarking on my perilous quest on the back of a fucking quadbike, which sputtered and farted every time I throttled it, and it cost me everything I had except a single can of dog food, a sodding cashmere blanket and a packet of condoms. Malice said I'd got myself a bargain, and filled the whiny little vehicle up for free.

I settled into the driver's seat – feeling pretty good, letting the engine tick over – and turned to thank her for her help. She was already walking away, disappearing into the tent, and the last I saw of her was her baby staring at me owlishly from her shoulders, dribbling with a smile. I sighed, wondering what I felt.

Attraction? Loss?

Guilt?

Nate was staring at the quad with a sort of disgusted fascination. I sat back in the seat and folded my arms. Let him choose, I thought, feeling nasty. Let him ask.

"So, ah…" he shifted from foot to foot.

Then tsked.

Then started clambering on.

"Whoa, whoa… hang on…" I waved him off. "You're coming just like that?"

"Too damn right."

"But, you're… I mean…" I gaped, earnestly astonished. It felt a little like a limpet had attached itself to me, and no matter how long I held it over the fire it wasn't going to let go. "You don't even know where I'm headed!"

I watched his face.

There. There it was again.

The hesitation.

The eyes flicking to the pack on my back, then away again.

"Don't matter." He said, forcing a smile. "I'm game."

"And if I wanna go on alone?"

"Then I remind you how I saved your life."

"But…"

"And I add – seeing as how you're bein' so hardass about it – that my price just went up. I get bodily protection, plus one blanket, one can dog food."

"You want all my shit too? For what?"

He smirked, white teeth electric beside me.

"Travelling medic." He said. "Keep you outta trouble."

And then it was too late, and he was perched on the pillion and pointing ahead like a general giving the order to advance, and that was that.

Good, I tried to tell myself. He's a resource. He can help. He knows the area.

But always the itching. Always the uncertainty. Always the suspicion.

What's your ulterior motive, doc?

And even deeper than that, drummed-in at a genetic level, the angry lectures splitting open my head; a tac-command feed direct into my skull.

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.

"Oh, hey," he grinned. "And throw in them rubbers, too."

My train of thought derailed itself in a blur of disbelief. "You want condoms?" I gaped.

He seemed vaguely affronted. "Damn straight! You think I wanna be a daddy aga…"

He stopped himself, mouth open, then blinked once or twice and started over; coughing his way through the hesitation. "You think I wanna be a daddy, my time of life?"

I stared at him for a moment, wondering what to say, how to react, then shrugged and tossed him the rubbers.

"Fine," I grinned. "Clean me out."

He scrambled onto the saddle's pillion like a scarecrow mounting a horse, and I gunned the bike along the Mart's central promenade with a fierce sensation of freedom, letting the customers still pouring in take responsibility for not getting run down. Even so, as I stopped to retrieve the rifle and pistols I'd lodged with the goons at the check-in, there was something grinding in my mind. Cogs interlocking, memories grinding. Something about Nate. Something he'd said, maybe.

Something not quite right…

We churned through the Mart's main gates, bobbing uncomfortably over untended tarmac and roadside debris, and took a sharp right. Nate leaned down and shouted over the roar of the wind.

"What I said!" He called, voice hoarse. "Earlier on! About the Clergy!"

"What about them?"

"About… About what if they catch up to me! They… They got these… what's it called, man! Jesus-Cross!"

"Crucifix?"

"Yeah! Right! They got a shitload! All ready for any motherfucker pisses them off!"

Visions of medieval tortures and Inquisitorial nastiness slipped through my head. I kept seeing that scene from Spartacus; the main road flanked on both sides by crucified rebels, and saw me and Nate swinging in the breeze. "Oh yeah?" I shouted. "Where's that?"

"Midtown, man! Manhattan! Biggest territory there is! Centre of the fucking universe!"

I let the quadbike bring itself to a trundling halt, feeling the engine die-down, forming words carefully.

"What you doing?" Nate blurted, prodding the quadbike. "Is it busted?"

"No, no, it's… ah."

"What?"

I tried to grin. Failed.

"Well, it's just… you'll never guess where we're headed."

Interlude

Raymond – or Ram – caught up with Rick somewhere in the city suburbs. The first he knew about it was a speck in his single remaining wing mirror, gathering size as it tore toward him at top speed.

At first he thought nothing of it. He'd seen little of anyone during this last leg of the journey, but the few people he'd spotted were enough to relax his nerves, where before he would have stiffened and fled from anyone. Out here, beneath the ever-changing sky (one hour burning bright, the next choked with fog, the next boiling with turbulent clouds; but always on a scale that seemed somehow too big, defying the eye) his only company were the occasional figures distantly glimpsed across the hills, tending fields or felling dead trees. Once or twice he'd even passed vehicles, always heading west. Mostly monstrous pickups and HGVs crammed to the gills with filthy-looking people, who stared at him with dead eyes as the trike gunned by, manoeuvring awkwardly around the abyssal potholes and gaping cracks that striated the roads. Some of these travelling groups were surrounded by little clusters of motorbike outriders, who glared suspiciously as they hurried all other traffic off the road. Each time he saw them Rick stiffened, expecting more silver-jacketed Collectors, imagining Slim's bloodless body stretched-out in the hardware store back in Snow Hand.

None of the bikers so much as looked at him.

Other trucks bristled with quills like porcupines: men with rifles and swivelling arms-mounts, suspicious of everything that moved. He wondered who they all were, where they were all going, what they did all day long – then promptly forgot them as soon as he reached the next corner.

He was in a slightly fragile state of mind.

The I-80 was an endless grey snake, cracked and mud-drenched, pocked with deep wells and unexpected fissures that crept-up on the unprepared traveller, wending its way through hills and fields of green and brown. Here and there old heaps stood and rusted – breakdowns that no one ever bothered to tow clear – and only the twittering of unseen birds, and rabbits scampering for cover, disturbed the hypnotic progress of the tarmac serpent.

Rick was beginning to relax about the Harley too. At first it had seemed an unnecessarily flashy addition to his equipment: a mid-life-crisis on three tyres. It roared like the end of the world every time he gave it some throttle, and along with its dayglo paintjob in yellow and red, it conspired to be the absolute opposite of 'inconspicuous.'