Simon Spurrier - The Culled

"Well…" I said, a touch too sarcastic. "You'll notice I'm technically alive..?"

"Mm."

"Then obviously I'm O-neg… What the fuck is th-?"

"I, on the other hand, am not."

He stared at me. His face was still. And in his eyes, oh fuck, I could see, I could just tell:

He wasn't lying.

"You're…? I don't underst…"

"Nor do we. Not fully. I tell you this because it will help you to understand why we have brought you here. We know you have desires of your own. Agendas. It is our hope that ours might briefly… compliment your own."

I swallowed. My mouth suddenly felt dry.

"Tell me more. About the… about how come you're still alive."

"I cannot. I do not understand such things. What I know is that of all my people alive before The Cull – my true people, stranger, by blood and birth – less than one half perished. Regardless of blood type.

"This, we hope, is welcome news to you.

"This, we hope, will give you some hope of your own."

He knows.

The old bastard, he knows what I'm looking for…

But if he's right. If he's telling the truth, then couldn't it mean that – don't even THINK it! Don't even dare to hope – that there's a chance?

That I didn't come here for nothing?

I must have looked thunderstruck. Sitting there, mind back flipping. The Tadodaho was tactful enough to say nothing, watching my face, and when five old ladies magically appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, each bearing a wooden bowl, each bowl smelling like it'd come direct from an all-angels edition of Masterchef, even then my excitement at the feast couldn't quite sever my thoughts.

Some people. Some people lived through it, who shouldn't have.

Look at these folks.

Look at John-fucking-Paul.

Wasn't it possible?

I started eating like a man possessed, nodding thankfully to each woman as they delivered venison, sweet-potatoes, beans, sour-bread… In the confused fug of my thoughts – made sluggish by surprise and smoke – I noticed the last of the entourage wore flowing robes of a particularly vibrant red and had a cute little radio-mic clipped to what passed for her lapel. I squinted, trying to remember why this was significant, but couldn't. I thought the group might shuffle out of the room as they'd come in, but they gathered instead in a huddle of smiling faces and crinkled skin behind the Tadodaho, and stood there staring at me.

"The men of the Church," the old man said, watching me eat, "have their own interest in our survival."

I scowled, wiping sauce off my chin. "Why?"

"We don't know. All we understand is that their Collectors come to our lodges every day. In greater numbers. With guns and bikes and metal cords. Every day they come, every day they steal away our people."

"They take your kids?"

"There are no children left to take, Stranger. They have… widened their attentions. Any Iroquois, by birth. Any redskin. Any who survived the Cull, who should not have.

"They are killing us, little by little, Englishman. And we would like your help."

I stopped eating. I hadn't expected him to wrap-up so soon, and it felt like every eye in the room was boring into me.

Worse, the eyes shifted. Swirled. I shook my head to clear the sensation.

"And… and that's why you brought me here?" I mumbled, trying to stay focused. "To help you beat-off the bastards?"

The room suddenly seemed far less angular. Tapestries became rocky walls. The steam from the kitchen was an underground river, spilling through sweaty caves.

"Sorry." I said, shaken. "My fight's not with the fucking Clergy. They got in my way, I took what I wanted. End… end of story."

Somewhere, a million miles away, I felt the bowl fall from my hands and spill across my legs. I felt the room move sideways. I felt the skins drooping from the roof writhe and flex.

"We understand." The Tadodaho said. "We know. And do not think us so crude that we would attempt to convince you otherwise. You are a stubborn man, Stranger. We have always known it."

"Then… thuh… then why… brng…me here…?"

Slurring.

Not good.

Something in the food.

Drugged.

Panic.

"I told you," the old man's voice said, from far, far away. "You are here to talk with the highest Authority within our Great Confederacy."

"Buh… But…" Every word was a struggle. Every syllable a living beast that fluttered from my mouth and scuttled across the air, leaving trails of purple and green fire. "But we bin… bin talking alrrrrrdy…"

Somewhere out in the soup of my senses, the Tadodaho's face coalesced.

"Not me." He smiled. "Not me."

And then five shapes – five woman-faces that rippled like ploughed earth and swarmed with a host of stars and fireflies – bulged together around me, hooked soft fingers beneath the skin of my mind and dragged me down to the past.

They're watching me, but maybe there's not much I can do about that just now.

They're in every detail. Flaws, mainly. Like when you remember something with such crystal-clarity that you know every line, every shape, every resonance…

…and then you look up expecting to see London's grey skies, and there's a face looking down instead.

…and then you shake the blood off a knife, or finish retching with the force of your anger, and the droplets splattered on the floor form eyes, and stare right at you.

These memories, they're full of rage and violence and weirdness. And the thing with weirdness is, there's always room for more.

Things keep changing. Time keeps jumping. There's a roar in my ears like I'm underwater, but I'm not scared. They're watching me – those withered Injun women – but so what? They're talking to me, too, and their voices are pretty, and maybe I'm talking back or maybe I'm not, but either way: they're in here with me. Spying on my past.

Back to the start.

Back to London.

After I got the signal, in the comms room of the old MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross, where I'd whored myself to the SIS for years and years, I sliced up some people good. Clergy. I don't recall how many. I was too focused.

We'd all seen the planes. Every rat-human crawling in the filth of London knew they were there. Blue-painted, marked with the red 'O' of the Church, going up, coming down. Why? Who knew. Who cared.

I went to Heathrow. My mind was a needle. Too angry to speak. Too focused to negotiate.

PANDORA

PANDORA

PANDORA

Like a mantra, see?

Nothing would turn me. I'd impale anything that dared get in my way.

And I waited. Cut and slashed in the night. Hacked open necks. Cut off fingertips. Made grey robes run red.

Not because I hated the Clergy.

Not because they had anything to do with anything.

Not for any reason except they were convenient, and they had something I wanted.

Took me three days of torturing to work my way up to a Clergy-bastard of sufficient hierarchical power to be worth taking hostage. I think – I know – I stopped being me for a bit there. Let the animal thing take over too much. Let the rampage-instincts out of their box.

It was a weird time.

I made sure everything felt significant, everything felt like a step in the right direction, and by god's own piss it felt good. I let everyone I came across seem responsible, took it all out on them, mixed up the anger with the focus, just like they taught me in training:

Made it personal.

So what I did, back at the start, I strolled into the airport as bold as brass, with this pigshit priest under my knife, telling every gun-wielding arsehole who came near to back off or get splashed.

And this guy, this hostage, this high-up canon or whoever he was, he leaned down so the knife was pressed up against his neck… and he shook his head.