Simon Spurrier - The Culled

"And perhaps this holy man, this John-Paul, this withered thing… Perhaps he knows where you're headed. Perhaps he sent word to slow you down."

"How the fuck would he know?"

I remembered the personnel file. The name. The photo.

Cy, staring over my shoulder.

Hiawatha ignored the question and stared off into the night.

"Tomorrow," he said. "We'll find the rest tomorrow. They sent out these two to take us in the dark. Explosives, yes?"

I grunted, patting the pockets of my coat. There'd been four sticks of C4 on each corpse, with some surprisingly sophisticated remote detonators. Out in the dark, when the fat fucks had stopped shivering and bleeding and trying to shout with their windpipes torn-through, I'd helped myself.

"So if we're lucky the rest won't know we survived."

Hiawatha smiled and nodded.

We weren't lucky.

We hit Ohio first thing, and they were waiting for us.

Outside a town called Hubbard, rammed up against the edge of the I-80 like a gaudy reminder of a long lost time, was Truck World. Truck World did exactly what it said on the tin.

There must have been twenty or so vehicles. Vast things, these fuckers; like whales built for the road, basking outside a long derelict burgers-n-barf joint and a once snazzy truck wash. And not the poky little beasts we used to get in the UK either, but monsters. Bloody great behemoths with bulging engines and recurved exhausts, chrome snouts and brightly painted bodies. And yeah, they'd been grafitied and smashed up – what hadn't? – but they were still awesome to see, lined-up like that. Like hibernating ogres, waiting for a wake-up call.

I was still staring at them through the window when Malice hit the brakes.

Still staring when Hiawatha – who had his eyes closed – shouted: "Fuck! Fuck, they're waiti…"

Still staring when Tora – bless her cotton socks – opened fire with the Mk19 and everything went nuts.

The Collectors weren't stupid. Their two boys didn't come home to them with the dawn. They'd taken precautions – obvious, really – and big dumb precaution one was to block the road.

Truck World, when all was said and done, had represented one big sodding barricade on wheels. They'd strung them out across the interstate, those road-whales, two deep and three across, with no room to edge the Inferno past and no hopes of ramming through.

And the Collectors – leather junkies with artfully matted hair and once-expensive sunglasses, silver jackets patched and frayed, bowler hats arrayed like a long line of tits, lounging back on purring choppers like middleclass morons who'd watched Easy Rider once or twice too often – they swarmed.

The day before, when the little gang went zipping by, there'd been maybe six or seven. Lightly armed. All mouth and no trousers.

Now there were twenty, easy, and as the Inferno squealed to a halt and Malice wrestled to reverse, swearing inventively as she went, the windshield blew in like a metaphysical fart, glass frothed through the air, bullets rattled like drumbeats on the firetruck's skin, and everything shook.

Bikes. Engines growling in every direction. Smoke-bombs and sound overkill. Voices whooping and shouting, closing in. Someone with a fucking boom-box, playing Metallica at double speed.

Thump-thump. The Mk19.

Thump-thump, then – distantly – the hard-edged crack of a detonation, tarmac spewing and smoke gushing. One of the bikes fell apart, lifting up and out on the rim of a fireball, and Tora shrieked like a joyful psycho, chugging-out lead with the autos whilst re-sighting with the grenades.

Nike and Moto opened fire, which meant the arseholes had surrounded us. Heavy things thumped against the walls of our dark little cell, and I found myself torn between the frustration of sightlessness to the rear, and confronting the ugly situation through the windows at the fore. The Inferno twisted and flexed on the road, three-point-turning under a withering storm, and every whirligig impression through the flying glass and shifting landscape was a scene of spinning rubber, gun flare and snarling faces with too many piercings. Nate started screaming – fucking junkie probably didn't even realise what was happening – and outside Tora found another target. Another shuddering clash of sparks and steel, and a scream lost to the rolling thunder.

But it wasn't enough, wasn't enough, wasn't enough…

One of the tyres exploded.

The Inferno pitched to one side, wobbled. Malice shouted. A deeper growl came out of the tumult and Spuggsy was yelling like a kid – "No! Oh no, no! No!" – staring through his window, eyes wide.

Then he was just…

Paste.

It was another juggernaut – though I didn't figure it out until the world stopped rushing backwards and the Inferno went back to standing still. They'd taken the opportunity as we crept sluggishly away from the blockade, firing-up the nearest HGV and ploughing directly into the cockpit; an acute angle that left the ramming truck speared on the Inferno's jagged nosecone – driver chuckling insanely through shattered glass and bloody teeth, his ride mashed all to fuck and venting radiator steam into our cab – but it'd done its job. Spuggsy was crushed, with barely time to scream, and as the impact shunted us away he was a thing of fractured angles and limp bones, head lolling, skull slack, porn mags fluttering uselessly amidst broken glass.

And then footsteps. Heavy thumps on the roof. Collectors scrambling off the cab of their own truck onto the Inferno's back. One hopped down onto the hood, sleek black auto ready to fill the interior with lead, but Malice calmly shot him in the forehead and watched him sag out of view.

Not enough. Not enough.

The baby started to cry.

Moto and Nike were firing continuously now, screams and shouts intermingled with stamps and boot falls on the ceiling, and Tora's dangling rig swivelled round and round like a drunken ballerina, spitting grenades and bullets at whatever target she fancied. She was shouting too, high voice clearly discernible above the racket – "Too many! Too many!" – and a world away Malice was fighting to restart the truck, its engine coughing uselessly.

"We're screwed," she said, quietly, calming the baby in a maternal little bubble of her own.

"Fuck that!" Tora wailed. "Fuck thaaaat!"

Thump-thump, thump-thump.

Bikes detonating. Men screaming.

Didn't matter.

Faces leering at windows, batons crashing against reinforced glass. I leaned out the window and emptied the last clip of the mini-Uzi into the fuel tanks of a dirty red Harley, smirking as the rider was shredded, his whooping comrades doused in burning gas, his bike reduced to a rubberised shrapnel-bomb.

But it wasn't enough.

Then Tora was just gone. Vanished upwards through her circular lookout, feet thrashing, screaming and spitting and calling for help. The voice was carried off, away from the truck, dwindling to an echo of a scream on the smoky air.

And then they came in.

Three of them. Bullet-vests under leather, hockey-masks over heads. A knife and a pistol each. Shock troops.

Repelling assault-squads. Kill the last one first.

Advanced training, year two.

He's the best. He'll send cannon-fodder ahead. Useless rookies.

He'll come last, wait 'til you're tied up.

So you kill him first.

Nice thought. But the Inferno wasn't a big space, and by the time bastard-number-three slid down the chute, I was up to my elbows in the first two goons.

Savage again. Reacting without thinking.

"They made you a wolf…"

Well woof-the-fuck-woof.

I killed Number 1 pretty quick. Only fired once – back on the M16 again – but the startled motherfucker grew a hole in his forehead and another in his cheek, knocking out his lower jaw and spraying us all, so I figured Malice was playing along too over my shoulder.