The Culled

by Simon Spurrier

  He was just staring at the fire, face closed-down. Nothing to say. Nothing to deny.

  I noticed a stain on his trousers and wondered if he’d even noticed he’d pissed himself.

  He swallowed and looked up at me. “I... I just...”

  “Why should you stay with me? Oh, fuck, there was all that shit about me protecting your life, blah-blah. Didn’t buy it for a second, mate. But then we get to the Secretariat and bang, you’ve got right what you wanted. That big case right there. And I’m thinking... That’s a big place. How did he find it? Unless maybe he knew where to look...”

  “J-Jesus...”

  “And that makes me wonder how you knew we’d be going to the Secretariat at all.”

  His eyes gave it away. In the end.

  Flicked away from my face. A split second, no more, to the green sack hanging on my shoulder.

  The penny dropped.

  “The map...” I said, kicking myself. “Fuck. Of course. Of course.”

  I always knew he looked through my bag, back at the start, as I lay dying on the tarmac. I assumed he’d lusted after the booze, the Bliss...

  But no. He went straight to the map. The New York City map, marked with a bloody-red ring around the UN Headquarters.

  “So you saw where I was heading... Right? And you thought... Well now... Maybe I’ll just... tag along?”

  I glanced up.

  He stared.

  “You didn’t even have the guts to tell me the truth, Nate.”

  I wouldn’t have cared, if he’d been honest.

  I don’t care, even now. Don’t give a shit what he does to himself.

  I just don’t like being wrong.

  He opened and closed his mouth like a fish.

  “Parasite,” I said.

  I stood up and walked away.

  I WENT FOR a walk.

  Took a look around. Found Malice and sat down to talk and draw maps in the sand. Scheming. If she was pissed about the Inferno and the others, she didn’t show it.

  Around midnight I went and fetched Robert Slowbear, and he took me to the Tadodaho. I politely declined anything to eat or drink.

  Around four o’clock the camp moved, all at once, across the great concrete bridge spanning the sinuous lake, and by six I was up to my armpits in cold water.

  By seven we were ready.

  They didn’t keep us waiting.

  THE MEANDER RESERVOIR was a twisting strip of spilled water, dividing Youngstown from the green ocean of fields surrounding it. On the Tadodaho’s map – an ancient and laminated thing, long-faded and well-worn – the lake was an obvious part of a chain, connected by creeks and ditches, that ran south all the way from Lake Erie. It wasn’t a huge watercourse, I suppose. Maybe five or six miles, tip-to-tip. It wouldn’t have taken too long to go around either, if someone’d had to, but what was perfect about it was this:

  The I-80, straight from New York, spanned the lake dead across its centre on a single, exposed, vulnerable and oh-so-deliciously-narrow bridge.

  If ever there was a better place for an ambush, I would’ve liked to have seen it.

  For the record, somewhere – deep down at the rotten core of my mind – I shouted and cussed at myself, waggling a subconscious finger at this daft display of time-wasting.

  Not my problem, it kept shouting. Focus on the mission!

  And my response, my considered reply to this seemingly watertight argument, went something like this:

  Fuck off.

  The Clergymen came out of the quicksmog on the horizon at dawn, and the sound of engines reached us long before we saw them. The air went electric.

  There were three other bridges too – two smaller roads, a mile on either side, that forded the water at its narrowest points, and a larger bridge far to the south where the Ohio turnpike turned northwards, with no easy access or turn-ons. We could ignore that, at least.

  At about the same time we heard the engines, the Haudenosaunee vanished. All of them, dipping out of sight without so much as a word. It was incredible to watch.

  Vehicles bundled off rapidly to the west, parked behind knots of trees and dips in the road. Bikes laid down on their sides and covered with grass and leaves. Men and women lugging improbably huge weapons squatted on the banks to either side of the central bridge, and simply –

  – disappeared.

  One moment there was an army, hundreds strong, arranged silently along the banks of the lake, staring off into the fog. The next: nothing.

  Well. Almost nothing.

  The Inferno had been dragged to the centre of the road on our side of the bridge. It was a sad sight, mangled and unsteady, lolling to one side with its cockpit torn open and its sides dented to hell. But the guns still worked, oh yes, and wedged up on either side of it there stood a pair of Iroquois caravans, untidily blocking the road, holding it upright.

  It looked like the world’s crappiest blockade.

  Rick – Hiawatha, whoever he was – had volunteered to man the Inferno. He’d done so with the chin-jutting defiance of someone too young to know better, trying to prove something; to himself, I guess. If it’d been down to me I would have told him to stop being a macho prick and leave it to someone more capable.

  “Good,” the Tadodaho had said. “Good.”

  The youngster opened-fire right on time.

  Down in the shade cast by the bridge, covered in a loose mesh of twigs and brambles, I had a perfect view. Malice grinned openly to my left, and even Nike – sprawled in a mess of splints and crutches behind her, with Moto mothering him wordlessly – chuckled to himself. Could’ve just been the painkillers, I suppose.

  The bikes came first.

  And went down like dominoes.

  Outriders; scouting ahead of a far larger convoy that could barely be seen amidst the far fringes of the quicksmog; Clergy corsairs with white helmets and dark robes, some on military bikes with sidecars containing Uzi-waving idiots, others sprinting ahead on powerbikes re-sprayed grey and white.

  Rick exploded them one by one.

  The shape of the road funnelled them naturally, drawing them together, bunching them like skittles. As they ripped onto the far span it was to be greeted by a wave – a wall – of lead and fire and shrapnel. They should have been more cautious. They should have looked ahead at the obstruction and taken their time, but no. Straight in. Still accelerating when the ordnance closed on them and the world shook.

  Thunder and smoke and muzzle-flare, and the first two bikes skidding in hot rubber and screaming chrome, and torn leather and blood on the road, and the next idiots flipping head-over-saddle as they smashed into their fallen comrades, and then – only then – did the brakes slam on and the situation slow.

  By which time it was far too late.

  The kid aimed with only the vaguest accuracy. He simply poked a cautious head through the Inferno’s turret, steered the great mass of oiled death mounted there towards the far edge of the bridge, and held down as many triggers as he could.

  It was like...

  Bonfire Night. Or the Fourth of July, depending.

  Or maybe just a war zone. Maybe just a field-spotter’s guide to hasty death.

  The Mk19 lobbing its tumbling shells, spit-crack-flare-smoke; a brace of machineguns vomiting spent cases and angry tracers; dust and tarmac rising up; splinters of air and rock tumbling; bikes shivering in haloes of sparks and then dissolving – just going away – behind great balls of incandescence. The whole bridge shook with each grenade-flare, and underneath it all came the sharp ring of Rick’s voice, shouting and laughing.

  On the edge of the bridge, through curtains of hot smoke and fire clinging to shattered bodies and disassembled bikes, the blunt shadows of blockier shapes nudged at the edge of the quicksmog. Beside me, Malice’s face dropped. The rest of the convoy, perhaps.

  If Rick had noticed, he didn’t care. The Mk19 spat its last grenade and whirred on, empty chambers cycling uselessly, but the rest of the arsenal kept going. Thr
owing curtains of dust and sparks at the far shore, as if daring the knot of bikes that had turned aside and backed away to come get some...

  Nobody seemed keen to oblige.

  The blocky shape began to solidify; angular panels and reinforced glass, painted sky-blue in defiance of camouflage. I recognised the boxy nose of an armoured vehicle – some ex-military ground car or other, heavy with ablative plates and sensor-gear – and let my eye wander quickly to the gun in its rear. Autocannon. 25mm, maybe 30. Against a crippled fire truck with armour made of corrugated iron, frankly, it wouldn’t make much difference.

  The bikes zipped off in either direction, clearing a corridor. Rick’s petulant salvo rattled uselessly off the AFV’s hull, and after a second or two he allowed the guns to fall silent, uncertain, letting smoke waft across the bridge.

  Everyone held their breath.

  The autocannon opened fire.

  A lot of fire.

  Somewhere deep in the tedious equip-details drummed over the years into my mind, I recognised the sound. The angry rattle, the hollow retorts of heavy calibre shells thumping – stamping – against the Inferno.

  M242 Bushmaster. 25mm chain cannon, 200 rounds a minute. Probably ripped from some heavy-arsed Bradley tank and installed messily, incongruously, in the rear of that stupid little AFV. The whole thing shuddered and shifted backwards with the recoil, brakes clawing at the earth, but it didn’t matter. Didn’t make a fucking spot of difference.

  The Inferno simply tattered. The shells didn’t dent the sides, they ripped them. Metal shredded like cheap fabric, panels peeling back in lacerated strips, exit-wounds worthy of cranial trauma that blasted an organic gore of shrapnel and slag through the blockade’s rear quarters.

  Only a matter of time before the fuel tanks went up.

  And then Rick was running, hopping between geysers of fire and dust, leather trousers ripped and bloody where shards of concrete had jumped up to slash his ankles, and the gunner swept the cannon to find him – thunderous blasts picking apart macadam, drawing close to his heels –

  – and he was gone, diving with a shriek over the edge of the bridge, lost to the waters below. The gunner turned back to his first target with a dogged sort of well-I’ll-be-blowed-if-I-don’t-get-to-have-some-fun determination, and finally – throbbing at the air like a stuttering bass – found the fuel tanks.

  The Inferno tried to fly. A heavy jet of black flame glommed from its belly, blew out its arse, lifted it up in a halo of flapping damage and slammed it down, keening on its side, to creak and vent fire.

  “That’s coming out of your deposit,” Malice whispered. I smirked.

  From across the lake came an uproarious cheer, broken and muffled by the fog, but loud. Wide. Spread out. Hidden there in the fog, waiting to emerge, were a lot of people.

  And onwards they came. The AFV jinking to one side, making way for a lumbering colossus that might once have been a truck-cab but now – via the careful application of welds, armour plates and a fucking enormous dozer-scoop – looked a little more like a medieval dragon, lower jaw hanging open.

  The Iroquois remained hidden.

  Behind the hulking machine came others like it. HGV cabs bristling with guns, AFVs plugging gaps, converted civilian vehicles painted in the Clergy’s colours and distorted by weaponry, spikes, ramming-noses. It poured from the quicksmog like a tide of filth, like an armada emerging from sea fog; robed figures standing at arms on every surface. Behind it came the carriers. Vast lorries, armoured but unarmed. Buses and coaches riding low on their suspension, figures crammed behind mesh windows. Plated limousines and SUVs, blue-and-scarlet flags fluttering like a presidential cavalcade.

  I realised, then, why the resistance had been so lacklustre at the Secretariat building. Why so few Clergymen were left to guard the gates, and why so many ran, as we swarmed inside, towards the other parts of the compound.

  They’d known we were coming. Cy’s timely warning, spies on every street. They’d known we could wash across them despite their sternest defences, and so they’d loaded themselves aboard a long-prepared convoy, and taken the only course open to them:

  Exodus.

  And now here they were. All of them.

  I understood, abruptly, why the Tadodaho had brought me here. Why this moment was so important to him, and Rick, and the rest of the tribe. And more than that: to the scavs in the cities, to the people back home in London, to Bella – if she’d been here to see it...

  To me.

  A chance to cut the heads off the bloody Hydra, if you like. Not my business, nothing to do with me, not my problem, but still. Something I had to do.

  The Iroquois remained hidden.

  The dozer-scoop behemoth inched towards the flaming wreck of the Inferno, preparing to shunt it, and the caravans beside it, to one side. I wondered how big a threat the Clergy had estimated this curious little blockade to be, and sincerely hoped the answer was:

  Not big enough.

  The radio in my pocket hissed.

  “...kkk...orth bridge...”

  “Go ahead,” I whispered, watching the convoy crawl cautiously forwards.

  “...ot outriders up here... crossing now. Ten bikes, two AVs...”

  A second voice cut in – the thoughtful tones of Slowbear:

  “...ame here. South bridge. They’ve sent a lorry over as well...”

  “Stand by,” I said, feeling the adrenaline coming up, imagining the two groups away through the haze, one on each of the smaller bridges, sneaking round to flank us. I saw them smirking and tittering, feeling oh-so-bloody-clever, mumbling bullshit about classic pincer movements, surprise attacks, blah-blah-blah.

  I fished in my other pocket and handed a small black box to Malice, pointing to the top button. “The honours,” I said. It seemed only fair.

  She smiled, dipped her head with faux graciousness, and stabbed at the button.

  The dozer scoop in front and above us hit the Inferno’s side and squealed in protest.

  And then ceased to be the main event.

  The light came first. Obviously. From both directions at once; a sudden flicker of white and yellow, pulsing across the entirety of the quicksmog like a firework lost in the clouds, then building more focus as the first flash of the explosion gave way to a pair of dancing fireballs; one on each side, great pyrotechnic monsters that clambered into the air and dissipated into the mist.

  Then the sound. Almost perfectly synchronised; two rolling thunderbolts that echoed and coalesced in the eerie fog, becoming a single sub-aqueous roar.

  And then screams. Even at this distance, even separated by water and haze, the shrieks of the maimed and the groans of the dying. Ghostly. Haunting.

  The Collectors had left behind their C4 and their snazzy little detonators when they tried to kill us in the night. It would have been rude to waste them.

  “kkk... orth bridge... Got ’em... got the fuckers... bridge is down, bridge is down!”

  “...owbear here, same for the south. Hoo-ee! Can’t see for smoke yet, but they’re not coming any further...”

  The dozer-scoop shunted the Inferno like a casual distraction, bashing as it went into the side of the nearest caravan. The driver wasn’t watching. I guessed he was staring in shock at the baleful firelight hovering on either side in the distance, or shouting into a radio, or just wondering what the fuck is going on.

  Distracted, one way or another. Otherwise he might have noticed the cables. Iron cords, tied off to the railings at either side of the bridge, each one carefully tensioned, leading in through the shattered windows of the caravans.

  Each one holding aloft, in the stripped-out spaces inside, a dangling gallery of jam jars.

  Each of which contained a single fragmentation baseball grenade, pin removed, trigger prevented from releasing by the glass of the jars.

  Fort Wayne barracks, Slowbear had told me during the night. One of the few armouries that hadn’t emptied its supplies into the Clergy’s hands. Forg
et bows and bloody arrows. These injuns were packing.

  The first caravan shifted. Jerked against the other, like marbles colliding.

  On both sides of the bridge, the cables went slack. A tinny sound of shattering glass filled the air, and maybe I was imagining it or maybe I suddenly went fucking psychic, but I swear to God I could hear the driver in that colossal sodding rig mutter:

  “Aw, piss.”

  A second or two, with the echoes of the C4-detonations still ringing, and then:

  Think Baghdad. Think Hiroshima. Think surface of the fucking sun.

  It was big, and flashy, and I could feel the heat from my cover. Frag-shrapnel turning the air to razorwire, men somersaulting out of gunner-mounts on the cusp of the blast, flesh sliding off bone, fingers clutching at air then clutching at nothing. The lorry-rig bounced onto its rear, its nose in the air, then crashed down in dust and death on the vehicles behind, bouncing in a way that something that big shouldn’t. Driver and gunners alike screamed and died, sliced to ribbons; soot and black smoke washed over the top of the bridge and the tarmac gaped where the explosives had tripped. The caravans were gone. The Inferno’s shredded corpse was gone. What remained was modern art.

  And finally the Iroquois rose-up from their cover, screamed like an operatic banshee, and let loose.

  IT WOULD HAVE been a massacre. We had them boxed-in. Exposed on the bridge, unable to back out at speed. We had machineguns and grenades and autocannons. We had a couple of rusty old mortars that found their range after two watery explosions (by which time Rick had already clambered, panting, ashore, so no damage there) and a crateful of anti-tank rockets which all the Haudenosaunee had been clamouring to play with.

  Above all we had surprise and stealth, and well-camouflaged men and women using smoke and shadows and patience. We had so much lead and fire raining down on those pricks that they never realised how much knifework went on, how much scurrying and slicing was taking place in the noxious gaps between packed-in vehicles.

  I know. I was there. I was doing it.

  It would have been a massacre. It started out just dandy. The Iroquois vehicles came tearing back up, the bikes slipped onto the bridge to sow madness and death, AVs and lorry rigs popped like fiery bubbles with each shrieking mortar-round, and oh, God yeah it felt good. Malice and me with pistols and knives, scrambling over bonnets and under tankers, slipping grenades through open windows whilst drivers shouted and raged at the back-up, then scuttled off to listen for the boom...