Nate and I had bumped into a few of the little shits on the stairwell on the way inside. Mostly they were sprinting down from above, guns and heavy packs stowed on their backs and crooked beneath overladen arms, and I’d been obliged to shoot them as they came clattering down the last flight without waiting for them to arm up. I’d be discreetly ashamed, if I could be bothered. No; more worrying was the reason for the sudden evacuation. These grunts weren’t dashing off to join the defence of the outer gate, or form a second layer of repulsion. They were getting out. All possessions carried, scampering off through the vast lobby (now strewn with military netting and a blotchy mural of John-Paul) and out, towards the wide shape of the General Assembly Building.
Something was going down.
I couldn’t give a flying fuck.
On the third floor we came across a shattered desk covered in telephone switchboard pins, and I rummaged through piles of discarded paperwork whilst Nate stood watch with that same nervous foot-to-foot hop. Amidst crumbling cards and files I found, finally, a yellowing printout of floor designations. Thirty-nine levels; thirty-nine busy little worlds dedicated to ‘World Peace.’
A spray of stray bullets knocked out the windows beside me. Kind of ironic.
‘32-35,’ the printout said. ‘SCI/TECH RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION,’ with a list of departmental names as long as my arm and the telephone extensions of each. Someone had ringed one of the entries in green ink, with the bored assiduousness of someone who was tired of being asked for the same department over and over.
Towards the end, I guessed, as the Cull turned the city outside into a ghost town, the phones would never have stopped ringing.
Fl 34. Ext 34033. Epidemiology.
“Right,” I said.
“You found what you been looking for?” Nate grunted, trying not to look too interested. He’d been pretty good so far, I supposed, at not asking out loud what the hell I’d dragged him into. He’d got his payment. He’d got his protection, and a little sliver of fame as the guy who’s with the stranger. He was doing okay, and the Clergy hadn’t tried to kill him yet.
But you could see it in his eyes. The curiosity was killing him.
I wondered if I should take him with me.
But.
Something not quite right...
Still that sensation of disquiet. His eyes twinkled over his soggy dogend, his teeth sparkled with every smile. He cooked a fine rat. He told a fine story. He looked a clown and acted a clown, and his shaky-handed approach to medicine had saved my life at least twice. Nothing to dislike about the guy, right?
Right.
But no. No. Something not right.
Something besides this new twitchy, sweaty routine he was going through, something besides the weird behaviour since yesterday.
A little tentacle of memory uncurled. A voice cut-through with exhaustion and inebriation, curdled with heavy breathing and fresh sweat.
BELLA.
I only knew her a couple of weeks. Planning for the airport, mostly. Getting provisions, working out where to hit, how to get through, who to target. Mostly.
Except the one night we got smashed on whatever brain-killing homebrew the local survivors had been cooking up in their bathtub stills. Lost track of our conversation.
Ended up fucking on the bar in the abandoned pub we’d been using as home.
Even off my face, even after five years of hardcore celibacy, even in a world as careless and repercussion-free as this one, the guilt!
Didn’t matter, in the end. We fell asleep all cuddled up on the trapdoor behind the bar, and as I dozed off I got confused and kept kissing her forehead, like she was someone else. And she started telling me things. Stuff I hadn’t asked about, hadn’t expressed any interest in. Stuff I barely bothered to listen to.
When she was finished there was a long silence, then she said:
“Doesn’t matter. Not your problem. But that’s why I’m going.”
BACK ON THE fifth floor of the United Nations Secretariat building, with people shouting and dying outside, I turned to Nate and said:
“Go help the others. Find the kids. Look everywhere.”
He stared at me like I was mad. Half relieved, half terrified.
“But...” He waved a hand, searching for the right words. “Why, man? Ain’t like you care. Ain’t like you expect ’em to find anything. Why the sudden ch...”
Doesn’t matter, she’d said, sweat making the grime on her face streak and run. Not your problem.
I snapped. Just a little.
“Fucksakes, Nate! Just fucking... Just...”
His eyes bugged. I looked away.
Took a breath.
“Just... just go help them, will you? Please? I’m going upstairs. Might be dangerous. Just give them a hand.”
Outside, a fireball licked at the edges of the building and blew-in the rest of the windows, letting in the screams from outside. Nate grunted.
I started to climb the stairs.
FROM THE THIRTY-FOURTH floor I couldn’t even see the fight outside. This high up, the green-glass windows were all intact, and I couldn’t hope to see down to the base of the tower.
I was sweating heavily, by the time I arrived. Not a good sign. Since the Cull robbed us all of a functioning power grid, elevators had been a survivor’s wet dream. Judging from the lack of empty food cans and discarded sleeping-mats, very few Clergy goons had taken the trouble to come this high. Even the walls were mostly free of nonsensical graffiti, and any plundering of office supplies appeared to have been more a matter of overturning desks and causing a mess than looking for useful stuff. If I’m honest, as I climbed the stairs I was quietly entertaining the suspicion that sooner or later I’d come across floor-after-floor of children, packed together in tiny bunks, poring over mass-produced bibles and reciting the day’s lessons like good little acolytes.
Bella’s words, getting to me.
“Not your problem.”
It’s a funny thing, convincing a horde that something was a lie whilst dimly suspecting it might just be true. I guess, deep down inside – maybe – there was a little bit of me expecting that the scavs would find their kids. Behind the carefully maintained disinterest, behind the rock-solid focus on my own goals (Don’t you fucking give up, soldier!), it was lurking there, an irritating little piece of humanity.
The looks in the eyes of the women, standing outside the gates last night.
The way Malice rocked her child to sleep in the midst of the Wheels Mart, knowing she had four more years before the little mite was whisked away.
The edge in Bella’s voice.
Was it so unlikely that they’d find them, after all?
Why did the Clergy want the kids, if not for their grand future-shaping scheme? Why fly the little buggers in from overseas, from all over the bloody world, if not to train them in the ways of the Lord, to fill their heads with destiny-based-bollocks? It’s not like the Clergy were running a secret sportswear sweatshop, or mass-producing child meat pies...
No. They had to be here somewhere, somewhere inside the compound, hidden away.
But not here. Not a soul. Just the dim moonlight through thick plate glass, a morass of overturned desks and stalwart filing cabinets, and endless silence.
I started searching.
Once or twice I heard voices from the stairwell, torches wobbling in the gloom, puddles of hard light wafting past walls and windows. I froze every time, hands reaching for the M16, convinced they’d followed me. They knew what I was after.
Then they went clattering past – upwards – and were lost to the endless silence. I half-wondered what was on the roof that was so bloody important, then rammed my head into another heap of cluttered files and forgot all about it.
I found it forty minutes later.
Tucked away in a chrome cabinet (locked, but fortunately not bullet-proof), inserted between vile-green separators like the most unimportant thing on earth, rammed between bulging files marked
PAL-, PAN-, PAO-, PAP-, it was a slender, unremarkable thing. A faded project-report, listing funding allocations, resources, classification levels, diplomatic passes, locations, and personnel.
I had to sit down.
Take a breath.
Look away. Out across the dark landscape and that brightening patch of sky to the east, promising – eventually – a new sun.
Then I looked back and re-read the title:
PROJECT PANDORA
It made me shiver, which is quite a thing to admit when you’ve spent most of your adult life killing people in secret.
I rifled through the loose sheets inside like a man possessed, fingers trembling, spilling useless documents and paperclipped photographs. It all seemed like it was happening to someone else.
I found the name I was looking for near the back.
Vital statistics. Origins. Code numbers. Re-assignment location.
There was a photo pinned to its rear.
I stared at it for twenty minutes.
The sun edged higher.
And then abruptly I was ready to leave, and stuffing the papers into my pockets, and staggering upright, fighting the shivers, and casting my eyes across the photos I’d dropped, stopping to retrieve my rifle, and –
Oh shit.
And there he was. Staring at me. Pictured in black and white, a decade or two younger, smart in dress-uniform and sergeant’s stripes, smiling with officious intensity at the camera.
JOHN P. MILLER.
Lacking only for a vast white mitre, a snowy robe, and an exaltation to the Lord on his lips.
John-Paul Rohare Baptiste.
Why the fuck was he in the file? What the hell was he doing th –
Snkt.
This is a sound I have heard many times. This is a sound I am acquainted with intimately, and have been responsible for creating in the vast majority of cases.
This is the sound of a semi-automatic pistol being armed, in close proximity to someone’s head.
The head was mine. The pistol was Cardinal Cy’s.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
Nobody moved.
“How did you find me?”
“On the way up. Heard a shot. Took it nice and slow.”
Opening the filing cabinet. Bugger.
Still the same, strange voice. Little stammered bursts of thought, tones just a touch too high for comfort.
“Given us a chase. Haven’t you? Troublemaker. Caused all sorts.”
“What’s on the roof?” I said. Stalling. It didn’t matter. He had no reason to keep me alive now. Just showboating. Just being curious. Just playing with me.
“No concern,” he said. “What you looking for? Up here, huh? What’s got you into this?”
“None of your business,” I deadpanned.
He punched me in the kidneys, giggling horribly and as I went down I made it look good, cried out, and staggered, and threw up my hand to ward him off, letting the photo of John-Paul flap about, and –
– and in the confusion sneaked my other hand onto the Uzi in my pocket, and –
– and the gun was back on my scalp, only this time I was kneeling.
“Fuck.”
“Hands. Lemee see. On head.”
He giggled again. Not right in the head.
I did what he said. The Uzi clattered to the ground beside the photo of John-Paul, and somewhere behind those impenetrable red specs I guess he snatched a glance.
“That who I think?”
“Yeah.”
“Looks young.”
“Yeah.”
“What you doing here?”
“Looking for something.”
“What?”
“Information.”
“What information?”
“You really want to know?”
“What information? Fuck! What information?” The muzzle jabbed against my temple.
I sighed.
Tensed.
“I’m after the location of a secret UN research team sent to find a...”
And I struck. Always mid-sentence. Always unexpected.
Turned. Arms swiping across the pistol muzzle. Knocking it to one side.
He got off a shot – angry and loud and shocking in the silence – and the muzzleflash vanished in the wrong direction, and I was standing and snarling, and then wrestling with the gun between us, and oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck...
He was laughing.
He was stronger than me.
The gun came up slowly like the sunrise outside, like a perfect black ‘O’ opening to swallow me, and I pushed and fought and put everything into it, and –
Don’t you fucking give up soldier!
Sir, no sir! etc, etc.
– and it still wasn’t enough.
Hooked a leg behind his knee. Tipped us up. Rolling on the floor. Grunting, dribbling, spitting, sweating. The cords in his neck stood out like ropes, and still he wasn’t going to stop laughing, the bastard, still he was giggling like his sides had bust.
He took a hand off the pistol, and for a second I thought I’d won. Redoubled my efforts. Forced everything I had into snapping his wrist.
But it made no difference, and he was still laughing, and he was still stronger than me.
With all the time in the world, he picked up my own rifle in his spare hand – fat fist wrapped round the muzzle – and hit me so hard on the head that my teeth rattled, my lips went cold, my eyes burned with a sudden whiteness and faded back to an awful half-gloom, and the sound that reached my ears shivered around inside my empty skull like an endless echo.
Still laughing. Standing over me, gun in hand.
Still laughing in between telling me he’s going to shoot off my kneecaps and let the Abbot have his fun. Spitting on my forehead. Warm rain.
Still laughing when he aimed the pistol and took a breath.
Still laughing when the blurred shape that had been creeping up behind him for the past thirty seconds – tall and dark, dappled with stripes and patches in blue and red – swatted his wrist to one side, ignored the spastic misfire of the pistol, and jabbed a hunting knife so hard into his skull that it slid inside with a crack and stayed there.
And then he stopped laughing, the shit.
Which is about when I lost consciousness, and went skidding off into my own head.
FROM SOMEWHERE, THE sounds of engines. Big engines. A lot of engines.
People were shouting (“They’re going! They’re getting out! Stop them!”), guns were chattering like woodpeckers in a distant forest, and two voices were arguing.
“Fuck were you doing?”
“You mind your business, man! The hell are you, anyways?”
“What’s in the pack? Hey! Hey, I’m talking to you!”
“You back off, Tonto!”
“What did you call m...”
And so on.
Oh, and an ugly throb of motorised something, slinking off into silence.
...thrpthrpthrpthrp...
I didn’t even bother opening my eyes. It was all too much trouble.
“I HAD A kid,” she said. “That’s all.”
She was beautiful, I suppose, in a stretched-out way. Gangly almost, but not clumsy. Not my type, but I could appreciate her. With little beads of sweat catching the fire on her compact little breasts, and her legs sort of wrapped over-then-under mine, any man could.
The sex had been... okay. Nice.
A little awkward, maybe. Heart-not-quite-in-it, but...yeah. Nice.
“They took her last year. Just turned five. I hid out for months, moving about. Eventually some small-town fuckwit sold me out for a bottle of meths and a new shirt. I kicked his bloody teeth in, when I could walk again.”
I pressed my nose against her hair. It smelt of dirt and damp and woman.
Oh-ho, the guilt...
“You’re lucky they didn’t kill you,” I said. “The Clergy. Not big fans of tithe-dodgers.”
“Nah.” He
r shoulders shrugged against my chest. “Why bother? Another woman left alive, another baby-machine to spit out more brain-dead bible-thumpers.”
Then quiet. She was a deep breather and didn’t fidget quite as much as –
As some people do.
“Who was the father?” I said, trying to sound interested. In truth the guilt was eating me up, chewing on my stupid prick-controlled-brain and cursing the nettle brandy (or whatever the hell it was) I’d been drinking all night.
Not that I wasn’t interested in what she had to say, exactly. Just that I’d heard it – or something like it – a hundred times before. Just that I had my own worries.
Shit, five years since the Cull it was still a selfish motherfucking world.
“No one,” she said, and her voice said otherwise. “Just some... guy.”
“Before the Cull, right?”
“Yeah. Year or so. Prick.” She sighed and nuzzled her way backwards until her bum was squidged up against my groin, and pulled the blanket we’d found tighter round herself. “Seemed like he knew everything, at the start. Smart guy, capable. Knew everyone.
“You get to feel like you’re safe with someone like that. You know? I mean, Jesus... I was only... what? Twenty-one? Living on the street. Spoilt rotten as a kid, I was. Ponies, swimming pools, four-by-fours, you name it. Thus the flying lessons. Got bored of that too. Same as anything.”
I was already tuning out. I know, I know. I’m scum. “I only got halfway through uni,” she said, building up momentum for an entire bloody life-story. “Had a bit of a... hiccup. Took a look at myself. All the money, the materials. Probably got a bit too far into the whole student thing, if I’m honest. Just kind of... backflipped. Dropped off the radar. Wound up on the streets, getting by. That’s where I met Claystone.”
“That’s the father?”
“Yeah. And then the baby came. Aaand... and give him his credit, you know... he hung around. Brought in some money, once in a while. Knew who to ask, get favours. Fingers in all sorts of pies. We got ourselves a little place, no questions asked – proper little family. Even tried to clean ourselves up. Stop using, y’know?”
The Culled Page 20