The Culled

by Simon Spurrier

  Three years later I was still killing people for Her Divine Majesty’s Government, only now I was looking forward to the weekend just like every other guy, bored of his job.

  Jasmine Tomas was my weekend.

  The cannula was in my arm, somewhere. Fitted to the tube that was fitted to the machine. I couldn’t see behind my back.

  My arse continued to hurt.

  The aide flicked a switch with a devotional smile towards his master, then stood with his back to me, fussing over the machine.

  And the tube – oh, fucking hell, I understood – the tube that led from me to the machine to John-Paul, it filled with blood like a long thermometer; red mercury bulging upwards.

  My arm felt warm and cold at the same time. A prickling sensation. Pins and needles, killing my cells, spreading across me. And oh, Jesus fuck shit, I got it; I got it, you withered old bastard, and I felt sick and weak and faint, but I kept talking because it’s all I could do.

  I said:

  Listen.

  I was never really designed, you know, for the romantic thing. Wasn’t sure how to do it, I guess. But then nor was she, so we got on fine. Squabbled and sniped and smarmed our way through it all, awkward as you like. Never happy for long, but never sad for long either. Fuck fairytales. Fuck ‘perfect.’ We loved each other like nobody else, and that’s enough.

  So she decides to move in. I asked her, she said yes. The thing is, she works all day, every day and I’m... out of the country. Business trips. Frequent flyer, blah-blah. So we figure we’ll see more of each other if it’s all cosy. All domestic. No need to schedule it every time.

  Then the disease started. You remember? Right at the very beginning, it was just... some new thing. Nothing to worry about. They sent me to the East, to... well. It doesn’t matter where or why. I got back and Jasmine Tomas was supposed to move in that week, and all I got was a bloody text message telling me we’d have to postpone.

  She’d been reassigned. Couldn’t say where. Couldn’t say why.

  So I waited.

  And the world died around me.

  John-Paul just stared.

  With my blood pouring out of me, filling him up like a greedy mosquito, bringing colour and warmth to his shrivelled face, he just stared and listened. He groaned once in a while, like a man in the throes of passion, and it made me feel sick to imagine him balls-deep in someone, grunting like a pig.

  I felt sick in a lot of ways.

  The world wobbled around me. Nothing was the right shade. Greyness was creeping out of every corner, and stinging the insides of my arms. My eyes rolled. My arse hurt.

  I twitched my fingers behind my back, certain now that the aide was too busy watching the machine to turn around. I worked with all the speed and focus I could muster as everything slid away into bloodless limbo.

  I kept talking. I kept fucking talking.

  It was all I could do to cling on. To stay awake. To stay alive.

  I said:

  I did some digging. Pulled some strings at the SIS; found out what she’d been sent to do. Where she’d gone, even.

  UN mandate. That’s all I got. Reassigned to a secret location as part of an international research team. Supposed to find a cure for the AB-virus.

  ‘Project Pandora,’ it was called.

  John-Paul looked up.

  And moaned, softly.

  My fingers moved behind my back.

  My arse stopped hurting.

  Blood moved on my hands.

  I said:

  Listen.

  Everybody died.

  Jasmine Tomas, who I loved in that old-movie way... I never heard from her again. Not for five years.

  People died and lay on the streets, ambulances rushed back and forth, the world shat out its own guts and sat there like Elvis, poised on a toilet, dying by degrees.

  I went back to Vauxhall Cross. I checked her records. Blood-type AB+.

  As good as dead.

  John Paul wasn’t listening any more. Not so you’d know it, anyway.

  His eyelids fluttered and his lips twisted in a smile, and I could see the strength filling him up, my own blood giving him life, turning him back into that man in the photo, the man on the TV, the calm and peaceful saint.

  He communed with God through the medium of my fucking blood.

  Blood-type O, rhesus negative. Safe to transfuse into anyone, more-or-less. Not quite good for him, not quite recommended. Risk of anaphylactic shock if conducted too fast, but still, but still...

  My fingers twisted.

  My body slumped. My brain started to slip away.

  Something clicked quietly behind me.

  I said:

  For five years, I didn’t exist.

  I was just... alive.

  And then one day the machines in the SIS comms-room chattered to life, and the correct passwords slotted into place, and the power fluttered through the consoles, and in a string of exchanged information a single word rushed-by.

  ‘Pandora.’

  And a voice said:

  “Are... Are you there?”

  And it’s a long shot. And maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe it’s fluke.

  She should be dead. I know that.

  But...

  But you listen to me, you fucking leech. You listen to me, because you’re still alive and you should be dead, and so nothing in the whole world – you hear me? – nothing, no one, no fucking old reptile or his gang of delusional pricks, would stop me from finding out.

  So here I am.

  And John-Paul Rohare Baptise smiled, like he’d been catching-up on what I was saying, and his eyes weren’t sunken any more, and his lips were red, and he said:

  “Mm, yes. Yes. Here you are. And... hah... And maybe you aren’t the arch-Satan after all. Maybe you didn’t come to get me, eh? Maybe I just got in your way? That’s it, I think. But it doesn’t matter, you see? No. No, it doesn’t. Because here you are, and here you die.”

  And I smiled despite the weakness. Despite the nausea. Despite the rushing in my ears.

  “It won’t be as perfect,” he said to himself, eyes closed, rapturous, “as a child. A child is perfection. The communion is... perfection. Yes. Mm.”

  His eyes opened.

  He looked right at me.

  “But you’ll do. For today. It’s only fitting. After all the trouble you’ve caused, mister. It’s only fitting that you make a donation.”

  I smiled and I dropped the handcuffs to the floor by my feet, and the sliver of metal that had been buried in my arse tinkled from the lock – the lock it had helped me pick – to the floor.

  And John-Paul Rohare Baptise was opening his mouth to protest, to shout for help, to cry out in baby-like shock, but it wouldn’t do the old fucker any good, because my fist was already in his face and his teeth were already shattered, and I was already moving onwards and head butting the aide and cracking his nose, and he went down quick and quiet, and I was turning back to the groping old bastard with my knuckles bare and bloody, and this time I didn’t stop until he was silent on the floor, and lying in his own juice.

  Scratch that:

  My juice.

  And then I pulled out the tubes from my arm, and threw up like a trooper.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHEN CY CAME blundering in fifteen minutes later, things were a little different.

  I wasn’t naked any more, for a start.

  “You wanted me, your holin – ?” he started.

  And stopped.

  I tried to imagine how he must have seen things, in that cold moment when we all froze and stared at each other. But I didn’t know him, and could only guess what his brain did in moments like this.

  Would he have fixated on the blood? There was certainly enough of it about: great thick pools, already congealing, from where Nate’s shaking hands had tried to puncture the comatose aide’s artery with the crude transfusion tube. Third time lucky, in the end.

  Or maybe Cy’s eyes, hidden away be
hind those stupid shades, went straight to his Lord and Master? The great Abbot John-Paul, slumped on the floor with his teeth smashed out, whimpering as consciousness came slinking back?

  After I’d cut Nate free, as the old junkie staggered and whinged and gagged, he told me I needed more blood – quickly. I’d wanted it from the Abbot – take back what he’d stolen. It seemed only fair.

  But no, no, no. Nate had shook his head, eyes unfocused, shivering in need of a fix, telling me no. The old man had a different blood type.

  “’Member... ’member the TV show?” he grumbled. “’Member the clumpin’ cells? Clots inside. Wrong type. One way only.”

  So he’d swapped the tubes and let me leech off the spindly little aide instead. I would’ve felt bad, if I had the energy. If I gave a flying fuck.

  So John-Paul was still lying where I’d left him, moving slowly, scrabbling in the blood. Was that what Cy saw first, when he stepped in?

  Or was it me? Maybe that was it. Instant fascination. The English bastard who’d blown-up his airport, who’d wiped out his unit of grunts, who’d run rings round him in New York, who’d almost executed him following the Tag, who’d led the army that ejected his gang from their base, who’d held his attention as an honest-to-God red injun snuck up and stabbed him through the skull, and who’d beaten up the withered old man he worshipped.

  I guess you couldn’t blame him for being a tad grumpy.

  Was that what he focused on, as he came marching in? Me standing there, looking and feeling like I’d died, wanting nothing more than to curl up and sleep for a year, letting my body adjust?

  No.

  Fair enough, the freaky shithead pulled a gun on me the second he appeared – quicker than I could see – but his heart wasn’t in it. He wasn’t going to shoot.

  No. What Cy looked at as he stepped inside was this:

  Nate’s bag.

  “Ah,” he said. “Hm.”

  “K-kill... kill them...” the Abbot groaned from the floor, bent double. “Look what... they did...”

  “Yes, holiness,” Cy said, voice flat, not even looking down. “Get out now, sir. I’ll deal with it.”

  And so the Abbot John-Paul Rohare Baptiste, spiritual head of the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn, turned his back on the arch-Satan and wobbled away on his hands and knees, trailing blood. The door swung closed behind him.

  And then it was just me, and Nate, and Cy. And a gun.

  And Bella saying:

  Not your problem.

  “Well, now,” said the Cardinal.

  Nate was a wreck. Sweat poured off him. The effort of dangling there off the cell bars, then thinking straight long enough to hook me up to the whitewashed aide, must have finished him. He could barely stand, snot and tears and vomit decorating his face. I wondered how long it had been since his last fix. Certainly since before the battle by the bridge. I wondered what sort of weird-arsed home-made shit he’d been chasing anyway.

  “Nigger looks like death,” said Cy, grinning.

  Nate swayed where he stood. “J’s... Jus’ need my... my...” He blinked, trying to focus. “Medicine.”

  A lot happened at once.

  Nate lurched towards the red pack with his arms outstretched, gurgling from his guts upwards. Cy moved even faster, gun shifting to freeze the man on his spot. He had the sense to stay.

  And I took my chance.

  Pounced.

  Fists raised. No way he could turn back to cover me in t –

  – fuck, he’s fast –

  The pistol muzzle sat on my forehead. Cy smiled.

  “Now,” he said. “Just you back up. Back up, there.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Limey. Limey, you hear?”

  I worked my jaw. “I hear you.”

  “You back up. Or the nigger gets shot.”

  “Not me?”

  “Hah. Not you. No guns for you. Not ’less you make me.”

  I didn’t move. Didn’t care.

  Let him go for Nate.

  (But –)

  No buts.

  (But he saved my li –)

  No excuses. You know the rules.

  Don’t you let yourself owe anyone anything.

  Don’t you fucking give up, soldier!

  (Sir, no sir, etc, etc.)

  Let him do it.

  Let him try.

  The second the gun moves, he’s mine.

  Cy said: “Don’t say. Didn’t warn you.”

  And then Nate was on the floor, and a gunshot hung in the air, and the stink of guns and the shock of movement, and the pistol was back against my forehead – hot, singeing my skin – before I’d even tilted forwards.

  Too fast to see.

  He, I decided, isn’t natural.

  Nate screamed. His foot was a wreck. Bones poked at fractured angles from a fragmented red sneaker, fountaining blood and singed fabric.

  “Back up,” Cy said again, and still the grin. “Back up. Or next. His face.”

  I backed up. Nate’s screams turned to moans, then whimpered away. Cy kept the gun aimed squarely at me, sidestepping around the growing slick on the floor, squatting to his haunches beside the heavy case. The muzzle never wavered. The dagger-pommel poked from his head like a rubber cock, and I bit down on the cheap joke.

  “Didn’t have time,” he said, smiling like a Cheshire cat, “to grab my own. Back at the Secretariat. Shit, limey... you shoulda seen the stashes. Junk coming in from all over. Collectors collecting. Scavs bartering. Even had us a team of geeks. Geeks making it. New kinds. Mixing it like fuckin’ artists.”

  “Drugs?” I said. The word sounded... naïve.

  “Best currency.” He licked his lips and rummaged in the bag, not even looking. “’Cept for God. Heh. ’Cept for kids.”

  He withdrew a sealed hypoderm. Bit the rubber flange off the needle and spat it away.

  The gun didn’t waver.

  “Put it to good use. Trickled it out. Some to Klans, some overseas. Let them know who’s boss. See? Rewards for good boys. Sweeties for ignorant masses. Heh. Manna from heaven. Always kept the best shit for ourselves.”

  His stupid syntax was pissing me off. “Until the ignorant masses rose up and kicked your arse, you mean?”

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “’Til this nigger stole it.” He kicked Nate’s ruined foot, drawing up another round of tortured screams.

  Then he lifted the hypoderm to his neck, still staring right at me, punched through the skin and squeezed the plunger. His whole body went tense, cords straining.

  “What is it?” I said, morbidly fascinated, watching the liquid vanish inside him.

  His lips peeled back.

  He hissed, like a boiler reaching critical mass.

  Then grunted.

  Then he yanked out the needle with a girlish giggle and chucked it away, letting it smash on the floor.

  “The fuck knows?” he said, voice abruptly smooth, body moving with a weird liquidity. He stood up straight and peeled off his glasses, ignoring the tiny dribble of blood hanging on his neck. “Gave up reading labels years back.”

  His eyes were almost red. So bloodshot that they bulged, capillaries swollen and angry, pupils dilated to swallow dark irises that brooded at the heart of hot, insane scarlet.

  It took me a moment or two to find my voice.

  “Good to see there were no adverse effects, mate.”

  He giggled and winked. It looked painful.

  “Now then,” he said, moving slow. “You recall the Secretariat? You recall before the injun arrived?”

  “What about it?”

  He grinned. And then carefully, letting me see what he was doing every step, he tucked the pistol away in a holster inside his robe and cracked his knuckles.

  “Let’s... pick up. Hm. Pick up where we left off?”

  The first lunge was almost too fast to follow. Maybe I was still groggy.

  Maybe I was just too slow.

  It didn’t matt
er, really. I knew it’d be a feint before he’d even started, and was ready when he blurred left-right-left – confusing and showy – then sent a foot arching down towards my shins.

  Looking flash, playing dirty. Trying to break my ankle, the arrogant fuck; that or push me backwards, keep me on the defensive, box me against a wall.

  Best form of defence is –

  I stepped forwards, through and under his guard. Took the force out of the kick with a sideways swipe of my right hand and rolled with the weight, down on one knee – letting fists strike uselessly at the air above my head. My left hand snapped palm-open, thrust forwards with a tiny snarl on my lips.

  There’s no word for what happens when you hit someone as hard as you can in the balls. It’s like... it’s like somewhere between a crunch and a squelch. It’s like hard-and-soft altogether, and you can barely do it without wincing in sympathy.

  What I did was: gripped.

  Fact: it’s possible to kill a man this way.

  We must’ve stood like that for a second or two. That shocked sense of calm after a flurry of blows and kicks too quick to be handled intelligently. You just react. You just let it flow.

  I waited for him to crumple.

  And waited.

  And looked up.

  He winked again, then laughed.

  And then his fist was slow-mo-ing and my cheek was all white light, and I was on my back, and the world came back bit-by-bit.

  He stepped back and shook his arms, like an athlete warming up. Like there wasn’t a great bloody stain oozing through his robes around his crotch.

  “Round two.” He giggled, every muscle shivering. “When you’re ready, limey.”

  Fuck.

  I stood up carefully, overplaying the grogginess. Hamming it right up. I swayed on my feet, waving him forwards with the punch-drunk bravado of an amateur. Trying to be clever about this... He was quicker and stronger and meaner, but if he was as dumb as he looked maybe I could –

  Now.

  And he was on me again. Expecting it to be easy; an elbow thrown out at my cheek as he spun past, a low leg orbiting at the edge of the curve. I took the elbow in both hands and wrenched, letting his weight overbalance him, chasing him down so the roundhouse arced uselessly. I fucking pummelled him, knuckles mashing on cheeks and lips, knowing it did no good but enjoying it anyway, leaning my arms on his chest as his back hit the ground, forcing the air out of him and feeling his ribs crackle, then planting both fists in his guts.