Simon Spurrier - The Culled

"Three options. Number one. You drown. Number two. You burn. And number three. You fall from on-high."

The Cardinal put a hand on Rick's chest.

"Decide on the way down. Huh?" He said.

Rick said something in a language I didn't understand. His face changed.

Smoothed-out.

And then he smiled at me, and I cried out something wordless, and Cy pushed, and he was gone.

Below, wow!

Below, thunderbirds soared on fiery thermals. They keened and screamed as he fell, and squabbled to catch him.

And the trees sang and the wind murmured, and far away buffaloes grunted moronic greetings, and he settled as light as a feather on the back of the greatest fire-crow of all. It laughed and laughed, and so did he, and in its eye was lightning, and as it rose across the burning lakes Rick-Hiawatha felt something dull and insubstantial continue to fall away from him: something heavy and clumsy and solid, which he didn't need anymore.

The thunderbird kept pace with a garishly-painted helicopter for a moment, then veered off into the smoke, heading for the sounds of the plains.

It'd end here. I'd figured that much out already.

Don't call it a hunch, or a spooky sensation. Call it reality. Call it there's-no-fucking-way-I'm-getting-out-of-here-except-dead-orvictorious.

Call it: I know when to stop chasing.

It would end on this green-and-brown splat of land, choked-up by curtains of smoke that hid the horizon and denied the mainland ever existed. It would end, for better or worse – probably worse – in the middle of a sludge-like lake, whole patches of which were flaming-away happily, with a trail of dead people behind me, a psychotic cardinal with a knife in his brain bearing a grudge, and a throbbing pain in my right buttock.

Way to go.

They'd chained me to a sign. Mottled and half-cracked where a small golf-buggy had toppled into it (and indeed sat there still, crumpled and rusting in the tall grass) it was the only thing to keep me amused whilst the world turned-on blithely around me, and I'd read it several times already.

It announced that in 1813 a bloke by the name of Oliver Hazard Perry kicked the shit out of a fleet of British ships on Lake Eerie. I'm paraphrasing. It was a minor engagement, all things considered, but had a knock-on effect that ensured that a year down the line the peace talks were in full swing. Eventually some bright spark decided a memorial to the guy in charge was exactly what was needed, and it only took a hundred years to raise the cash. This was considered a triumph of human persistence rather than a lamentable token of inefficiency.

The sign was obviously intended to enlighten any visitor unfortunate enough to find themselves stranded on South Bass Island, and was crammed with interesting facts regarding the construction of said monument. At any other time I'd have expected to see fat tourists clustered around it making "ooh" sounds and taking pictures.

Alas, today, there was nobody but me to enjoy the info-feast. Instead there were dozens of armed Choirboys – men and women alike – spreading out across the tiny arsecrumb of land to convert any locals from their savage un-Christian ways to – well, death, probably. As it happened they hadn't found anyone yet, though they continued to kick-in each mouldering door and holiday-home porch with optimistic enthusiasm. In the meantime I'd been left chained here with Nate – still not talking – to watch the two Clergy choppers ferry people from the shore. It was boring. It was boring and it was underscored by the imminent probability of my own death, which made it even worse. It was like these pricks had dug a hole in my stomach, told me to make peace with my maker, placed the gun against my head, then told me to amuse myself for a while.

As they dragged me out of the chopper I'd asked Cy what happened to the rest of the Haudenosaunee. He'd sneered and ignored the question. I couldn't work out if that was good or not. I couldn't work out if I cared.

The monument itself, for the record, stood nearby. I glanced up at it for the fiftieth time, on the off-chance it might be doing something interesting. Like so many military monuments it was basically a giant penis, cunningly disguised as a three-hundred-and-fifty foot Doric column with a bronze 'urn' (11 tons, you'll be fascinated to learn) in the place of a throbbing glands, which was constructed, apparently, to inculcate the lessons of international peace by arbitration and disarmament.

Which was odd, because to me it looked a lot like it had been built to inculcate the lessons of international one-upmanship, specifically by stating: My Cock's Bigger Than Yours.

A foghorn blasted nearby, and I watched with a minor flicker of interest as the clapped-out old ferry they'd found deserted at Port Clinton made its third journey towards us, this time bearing two blue lorries and a school bus, undoubtedly crammed with scared kids in white robes. Next to me Nate stiffened, reminded of the innocuous job he'd held down for two years before all this mad shit started with a plane crash and a No. No, hang on.

'Innocuous' my arse. He was driving kids to a prison, or worse. And he knew it.

I hadn't entirely made my mind up yet how I felt about Nate.

I leaned back against the pillar of the signpost and sighed.

The long and the short of it was: The Clergy had invaded a nowheresville island in the middle of the burning Eerie, en-mass, and were in the process of transferring their entire stock of idiots, arseholes, arsenals and initiates. Don't ask me why. Don't ask me what they expected to find here, or how they thought it would advance their march towards a new future. I didn't know.

All I knew was that this place, this island, this dull little shithole, was where I had been diligently trying to reach too.

That sheet of paper from the file in the Secretariat, remember? The photo.

REASSIGNMENT LOCATION, it said.

UN INSTALLATION SAFFRON. SOUTH BASS ISLAND, OHIO.

The tourist map they'd chained me to didn't mention any UN installations. That would've made it too easy, I guess.

I sighed again.

There seemed to be a lot of activity around the base of the column. I couldn't see clearly from where I stood, but it looked like a lot of figures were waving a lot of hands, pointing and nodding profusely.

There was someone in a wheelchair with them, and it struck me that every now and again the crowds' gesturing hands would freeze, their heads would twist to stare down, and then a fresh wave of nodding and scraping and bowing, in response to whatever the chair bound figure had said.

John-Paul, then.

The group disappeared behind the great stone column in an excited bundle, and I waited for them to emerge from the other side, pleased to be watching something mildly diverting. They never reappeared. They'd vanished.

"Huh." I said to myself. Nate glanced at me, briefly, as if maybe he thought I was about to talk to him.

I looked away.

My arse hurt. More specifically, my buttock hurt where a tiny silver pin had been rammed into it, and every now again I felt a fresh dribble of blood down the back of my leg. Every time I moved it stung, like it was worming deeper into the muscle, and every time that happened it made me think of Rick.

Tumbling off into smoke and death with a smile.

And that made me think of Malice.

Dumped, thoughtlessly, over the edge of the pier where the chopper landed, when one of the Choirboy crew bothered to tell Cy she looked like she'd croaked during the flight.

And that made me think of Bella.

And that made me think of… of something else.

And that made me think of all sorts of shit, which made the hole in my stomach burn and writhe, and my teeth clench, and my eyes sting, and You get the idea.