Simon Spurrier - The Culled

If it hadn't been for the blood drying in thick streaks down his cheek, the matted tangle of gore-splattered rags on his back – once patched in every conceivable colour, now stained to a uniform brown-grey – and the glossy rifle hung nonchalantly over his shoulder, nobody would have looked at him twice.

"Where," the man said, into a silence as deep and dark as the sky above his head, where the QuickSmog oozed out of the stratosphere, "are the Children?"

Hiawatha shivered.

No, no… scratch that.

The whole fucking crowd shivered.

As he stood there, playing the reaction like a pro, the stranger was patched-up and fussed-over by an elderly black man wearing the most ridiculous clothes Hiawatha had ever seen. It was all part of the spectacle, he supposed; holding an ever-growing host spellbound.

"I don't see them. Do you?" The stranger glanced about theatrically. "Look. Look at you. Not a single kid in the whole place."

Here and there people muttered, but whether in anger or fear Hiawatha couldn't tell. The bright stars above the crowd – figments of his imagination, he was pretty sure – had turned to an angry scarlet, pulsing along with Hiawatha's own heartbeat.

"I'll tell you where the kids are, shall I?"

He smiled, almost paternal, just a little too sweet to be genuine.

"They're sleeping. Just over there." He nodded off to the horizon, to the south east. The crowd muttered just a little louder. "Like little angels, they are. Come from all over the world, the dears. Sleeping-off a hard day of… of dutifully learning their scriptures. Preparing for big things. Getting ready to… lead the world into a new age of glorious civilisation. Right? That's right. That's where they are."

He sounded sincere. It was hard to believe he was being sarcastic, hard to believe he was forming dangerous words, but the crowd were off-balance. What was this? Rebellion or respect-paying?

And then the stranger leaned down low to the front rows, dipped his head so he was staring from beneath grimy eyebrows, and shouted so loud that everyone jumped.

"Bollocks! Fucking bollocks!"

Hiawatha didn't know what bollocks were, but he got the gist. Everyone got the gist.

"If they're locked away," the stranger growled, "in that… that fucking prison, why don't we see them? Why do they never come out? Didn't you people ever stop and think? Didn't you ever smell a bloody rat?"

Somewhere near Hiawatha, a couple of rows to his left, a woman started crying. It was a mystifying reaction. In any other place, at any other time, he would have expected the crowd to rise-up against the sanctimonious prick giving them a dressing-down; to react with fury at the open-blooded accusations.

But no. No, this crowd was a chastised kid. A naughty child who knew it deserved to be punished.

The stranger rung his hands together. "Didn't you ever… Didn't y…" his voice tailed-off, lost to the frustration. He stood silently for a moment, and Hiawatha wondered if he'd run out of energy, if the anger gobbling him up had overtaken him.

But:

"Fuck!" He shouted. "Fuck – come on! Even if those shits-in-dresses are telling the truth, even if your sons and daughters are hidden away in there, don't you tell me you're happy. Don't you tell me you handed them over with a… smile and a fucking song in your heart. Don't you tell me that!

"No, no. You gave them up because you were told to. I get it. Because… because maybe if you said 'no' they would've just been taken anyway. Because you're nobodies. Because the shits in the Klans with the… the guns and the drugs, they said that's what you scavs do. That's what you're for. Right? And maybe you told yourself over and over it was for the best, that the kids would be going somewhere better, somewhere more hopeful… But people, I don't believe that. And I don't believe you believe it either.

"Here's the truth, ladies and gents. These people… these fucking scum…" and here the stranger raised a crooked finger towards a line of men stood at the back of the podium, held in place by scrawny scavs with knives and guns "-they've.

"Stolen.

"Your.

"Children."

Silence.

Thick, heavy, accusatory silence. On the stage the hostages shuffled their feet and traded glances. Scarlet eye-rings hiding furtive fear and the first glimmerings of tears. One of them – the scrawniest, whose face was contorted not with fear but with hatred – wore ruby-red sunglasses, as if to protect his eyes from the moonlight's glare.

Their robes had been stripped away, their weapons taken.

Neo-Clergy, fallen from grace.

Hiawatha almost snarled with joy to see them so humiliated.

And then, as had happened in every crowd since creation began, the prerequisite asshole at the front opened his mouth.

"For the glory of the New Dawn!" Came a shrill voice; a scrawny man in stained rags leaping up and down, stabbing a finger towards the podium. He had a scarlet tattoo around his left eye, and a pistol raised in his right hand. "Your selfishness betrays you!" he shrieked, drawing a bead on the stranger. "Your wickedness shall…"

He never got the chance to fire. A blade snick-snackered in the crowd somewhere behind him, hands reached out to snake around his neck and his arms, and within an instant the mob had swallowed him up and closed over him. His cries went muffled, then tailed-away into silence. The crowd's head twisted, as one, back towards the stranger.

He sighed.

"Any other morons?" He said, letting his eyes rove, like a teacher peering across a rowdy classroom. "Any other stupid bastards? Anyone else thinks their kids are better-off cuddling a bible instead of their own flesh and blood? Anyone else want to tell me they did the right thing? They like it how it is? The Klans and the killings and the fucking Tags? Anyone else want to tell me they believe the Clergy?"

He was almost shouting. Voice hoarse. Anger dribbling over his eyeballs and into his words.

"Because, people, they're building us all a better tomorrow. Remember? That's what they say. And wouldn't it just be the best thing in the world to believe them? Wouldn't it just be so easy to shout 'hallelujah!'? To pray every night and… go with the flow? To feel like you did the right thing, letting them take your kids? Wouldn't that be the dog's-sodding-bollocks?

"Too right it would."

He spat on the floor. He took a deep breath.

And he drew a long knife out of his pocket.

The crowd stopped breathing.

"But believing it – really and truly, I mean – in your guts, people. That's a tough call. That's a tricky business. And I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say I really don't think there are many of us who do. Not really. Not deep down.

"So let's find out. Let's cut the crap."

He smiled.

"Let's see how many of you really love the Clergy. Let's see who's willing to stop me."

And he turned to the line of men, those captive Choirboys stood behind him, and he smiled.

"I came here from across the ocean," he said loud enough for everyone to hear but aimed directly at the hostages. "It was hard fucking work, let me tell you. But I came. I didn't let them stop me, your pals in London, though they tried. I had to kill all sorts of people on the way. And all because I wanted to ask you a question, matey, face-to-face. Nice and simple."

He leaned down towards the first goon.

"What I wanted to ask you, is:

"Where are my children, you kidnapping psychotic indoctrinating pieces of cancerous shit?"

The goon stared at him. The goon spat in his face with a sort of doing-it-by-the-script doggedness.

So the stranger cut out his throat.

The crowd made a noise. Not quite a cheer. But definitely not a scream of horror.

The man went down, his legs shivered and thrashed, blood oozed, and in Hiawatha's eyes something dry and unpleasant fluttered up from the corpse to lose itself in the spreading QuickSmog.