Simon Spurrier - The Culled

I leaned down until I was close to his ear, senses alive with the drug, tasting his fear. Enjoying it.

"I will if you will." I said.

"Wh… what d… do you m…?"

"The children, Abbot. You were about to tell us about the children. About how you 'raise them up.' That was as far as you got. Why not… tell us about that?"

"B-but… But I…"

"Now, now. The world watches, your Holiness." I pressed harder with the pin. "Let's not scrimp on details."

And so he told them.

He told them how he'd survived. He gibbered and snotted and cried as he went, and he dressed it up in holiness. Didn't matter. Still came across like a desperate man polishing a turd.

It wasn't murder, he said, it was the Touch of God. It wasn't blood, it was divinity itself.

Listen: people might be a little short-sighted when confronted with miracles. And okay, maybe humanity has a hole in its common-sense where the idea of deity sits nice and firm. Maybe there's something to be said for the infuriating fucking gullibility of mankind, but here's the thing:

You can only push it so far.

I think the message got through.

I think what they heard, out there, clustered round TVs for weeks to come, as the message looped and re-looped over and over, was not a divine prophet delivering words of hope and purity…

…I think what they heard was a wretched little freak, explaining with patience and politeness how he'd stolen the blood of a thousand kiddies, how he'd convinced the world of his perfection, how his acolytes had flocked to serve him, just to fend-off the virus that was killing him.

He told them that there were no 'marks.' No angels pouring out their vials onto the earth. Nothing. Just people with a particular type of blood. Whole ethnic groups, with genetic traces that he neither understood nor cared about, but had nothing to do with the wrath of God.

He told them that the virus was just that: a virus. Biological. Predictable. It killed certain people and left great swathes of others alive. The O-negs. The Native Americans. Eastern Asians. Australian Aborigines. He told them he knew this because he'd been with the group who found it all out. They'd seen what the virus killed and what it spared, and they'd failed utterly to find out how to stop it. They'd hidden away down here in the bunker until the virus caught up with them too, and there was a time of madness and… and things he couldn't remember, and then…

Then he was reborn as John-Paul, the Holy.

Stealing blood to stave-off the virus. Whole transfusions of O-neg, to replace the juices the Blight guzzled every day. Injections of plasma from Iroquois captives, to plant whatever genetic armour they possessed deep inside him.

He told them everything. Then his voice went quiet and his face went slack, and he told them that children were better than adults.

Purer, he said.

More perfect. Like drinking the blood of an angel.

More beautiful.

And…

And when they were weak from blood loss, he said, when the Light Of God was in them…

They never said "no" to anything…

He went on and on and on, and when he was done I patted him on the head like he'd done well, pushed the silver needle into his jugular so the blood went out of him like a balloon losing air, and when he was on the ground I stamped on his head with a noise like a cockroach crackling.

And there were choirs of angels singing, and shafts of light, and the warm gaze of divinity to assure me I'd done well. But then again I was hallucinating like a motherfucker, so I ignored the whole stupid show and told myself – one way or another – I'd made the world a slightly better place.

"Architects of tomorrow." John-Paul had said.

Heh.

Sometimes architects have to tear down before they can build-up.

Predictably, the place was in uproar. Things were moving too quickly now, cascading towards a shit-littered abyss before anyone could even prepare for the fall. I wondered why. I wondered what was going on. I wondered why I couldn't give a damn.

Tangled cords of scent-trails braided and split apart in the air of the bunker; a three-dimensional map in the hallucinogenic chambers of my mind that documented fear and panic and confusion. Men in Clergy robes sprinted along corridors, rushing up tangled stairwells and queuing five deep at the cavernous elevators. Somewhere high above, on the first or second sub-level, shouts filtered downwards. Everyone seemed to be ignoring me.

The drug made me giggle. Or maybe I just felt like it. I don't know.

With my senses on overdrive – whole body thrumming to some internal beat, like an iron butterfly flapping great wings inside my chest – it was all too much to bear. The noises and smells and sights. Eventually I stopped paying attention, turned away and just… walked.

I found myself, eventually, back outside the Comms room, and slumped to the floor on the opposite side of the corridor. Just staring. Wondering.

Was she here, once?

Did she… did she die here?

Where are the bodies?

I killed some time picking lumps of brain and bone out of my boots.

The drug was doing something to me. Not just hotwiring my senses and overloading my brain, but picking away at parts of my mind, doing something insidious and unwelcome. Something that involved the wolf, somehow. Something that tugged at the upper layers – those useless skeins of civility and rationality – and went nestling below, into the 'Old Brain', into the scratching suspicions of the subconscious and paranoia.

Something gnawed at me. Something that had been gnawing for a long, long time… Something I'd noticed and disregarded, or ignored without concern. Something that had been clanging and shouting to grab my attention, formless and silent; beginning to piece things together moment-by-moment, to build me a message.

To show me something.

It had to do with Bella, I think. With something she'd said.

Doesn't matter. Not your proble No, not that. That was solved, now. I'd made it my problem. For her and Rick, and the crew of the Inferno, and the scavs and citizens and misguided klansmen and everyone, I'd made it my problem. A regular little hero. But that wasn't it.

My brain itched.

What else?

What else did she say after we'd fucked, in the pub outside Heathrow, as we lay on the barrel chute and I curled my fingers through her hair, thinking of someone else? My Jasmine. Thinking of my Jasmine and feeling guilty and dirty and wrong, and not evening listening to what the poor girl, poor little Bella, was saying.

Further along the corridor, a hurrying Choirboy limped towards me, hood-up, a red pack slung over his shoulder, with a medical stand used as a support. I knew it was Nate without even looking around. The drug made him smell of sweat and fear and chemicals.

And guilt.

What?

"T-that you?" He said. "What you doin'? We gotta get out of here."

I stared at the door of the Comms Room. Was I ready for it yet?

Instinctively, I felt it should be the last thing that I did. It should be the last mystery to be solved. I should get everything else out the way first.

Don't you get distracted, boy.

Don't you let things slip.

Know everything. Cover the angles.

"Just thinking." I said.

"Yeah? Well… well you do it and walk, man. Crazy shit goin' on." He leaned down and waved frantically at the other goons, face buried in the folds of his robe. I didn't ask where he'd got it. "They saying… they saying the Abbot's dead. You know 'bout that?"

I shrugged.

"They saying there's boats out on the lake. Circling round and round. They saying one of the choppers been knocked-out. They saying it's the… Hau…Howdenoh…"