The Culled Part 23

"Yeah. And then the baby came. A-and... 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?"

I tangled a finger through the ringlets of hair next to her ear, then realised what I was doing and stopped. All these little betrayals, all these guilty little things.

If she noticed, she didn't show it.

"Then The Cull."

"He died?" I said.

She laughed, bitter.

"No. No, he didn't die. Stuck about for a while. Just long enough to see little Shayla hit one. Went out every day for food and togs, came back... now and then.

"Then one day he just didn't come back at all. Left a note. 'Couldn't handle the responsibility'. p.r.i.c.k."

More quiet.

"Sodding cliche, ain't it?" She said. I jerked back awake, realising I'd been slipping off.

"What?"

"Single mother, whingeing on."

"Yeah. Maybe. Though it's kind of different when you can't just nip to the local supermarket for nappies."

"Exactly. Anyway." She shrugged again. "We survived. Me and Shayla."

"And Claystone?"

"Pfft. Saw him about, once or twice. Heard about him all the time. Everyone knew Claystone. He worked for everyone, sooner or later. Had a way of... of finding the best groove. Like... things got tough, he knew a comfier slot. Gold f.u.c.king medallist at living an easy life."

Her voice dripped bitterness.

"But he never came looking for me. Vanished, eventually. Wound up in the river for all I know. All I care.

"p.r.i.c.k. p.r.i.c.k! Well shot of him."

Somewhere outside the pub's shattered windows, a fox loped by with its weird baby-scream call. Bella shivered.

"You know what it's like, when your whole world is focused on one thing?"

I scowled, uncomfortable with the thought. "Yeah." I decided. "Yeah, suppose I do."

"And then six men in robes come one day and take it away from you, and kick the c.r.a.p out of you into the bargain, and put things in your mouth, and tell you to behave and do what you're told, then scuttle off into the night. And then you hear that thing - that... that centre of your universe - get loaded aboard a plane and f.u.c.ked-off to Yankland.

"What then, mate? What do you do then?"

I didn't answer.

We lay like that for a long time, and I could tell from her breathing she wasn't asleep.

Eventually she mumbled: "Doesn't matter. Not your problem. But that's why I'm going."

I was already asleep, and heard it only on the fringes of a dream.

I woke up, and almost shat.

There was a face about a foot from my eyes; curved nose sharp like the edge of a scimitar, mouth tugged down at each corner, lost across a jutting chin to a network of weather-lines. Its hair - long, perfectly dark - was trussed-up in loops of red and yellow PVC-tape, so it stood upright like a tower then spilled down on either side to box me in.

From the hairline to the bottom of the eye sockets, the man was black. Not just Afro-Caribbean black, but black like ink, pressed-up tight against dark eyes that shimmered inside their puddle of shadow. But below the eyes - face bisected in a straight horizontal line across the bridge of the nose and down each angular cheekbone - the man's skin was tanned a ruddy red. He looked savage. He looked terrifying.

He looked like an ancient G.o.d of war (or rather, how I a.s.sumed an ancient G.o.d of war might look, never having met one), and in the fuzzy moments of half waking, with my whole head throbbing from the sharp pain in my scalp, I remembered the wax figures in their diorama displays in the museum, and wondered if one of them had come back to teach me a lesson for using him as a decoy.

The only detail that somewhat spoilt this scowling character's prehistoric spectacle, was the head-to-foot biking leathers in blue, black, red and white.

"He's awake." The effigy proclaimed, rising up and away from me. At a distance, he stopped being the most terrifying thing I've ever seen, and became a young man wearing face paint. I relaxed my sphincter.

"What? You what?" A familiar voice. I felt myself smiling, happy at the note of familiarity in the midst of all this oddity. Nate appeared on the edge of my vision like a man possessed, pushing the boy aside and stooping down to poke and prod at me. He was no longer sweating or shivering; a total transformation that left him grinning ma.s.sively and mumbling to himself.

"Ow," I said, as he pressed his crinkled fingers against my temple. He did it again.

"Miracle." He said, grinning, cigarette hanging off his bottom lip. "That's what it is. d.a.m.ned miracle. a.s.shole all but opened you up."

He t.i.ttered to himself.

I picked myself up slowly, fighting the urge to vomit every inch of the way. My head felt like a meteor had hit it - or possibly a speeding elephant - and judging by the dry tightness of my cheek it was appropriately blood-splattered. Added to the bandaged remains of what had once been an ear, the slashes and scars across cheeks and forehead, the aching wounds - messily fixed-up - in my left arm, right shoulder and nape of my neck, I imagined I was starting to look just as patchworked as my coat. One of these days, I decided, I was going to have to find a functioning shower.

I tottered to my feet, lost the battle with my gyrating inner-ear, and barfed like a trooper. I was hungry enough to consider asking someone for a spoon.

Nate watched me cautiously, like he expected me to fall down any second. His pupils looked even bigger than usual, pushing against the bright whites of his eyes, and he was clinging to a red plastic box - like a power drill case - like it was a lifeline. Where he'd got it and what the h.e.l.l it was were queries I never got around to asking. My surroundings swam into focus, and my senses came online.

The prevailing sound was: engines.

I was back at the Wheels Mart. The same raggedy little tent, by the looks of it, that Malice met me in before. Through the tattered openings I could hear the braying crowds and see the spastic danglings of the MC, shouting out his endless stream of nonsensical bid-acceptances. The smell of cooking meat underwritten by the heady chug of noxious fumes, the whooping and arguing of punters. It made my head hurt, if possible, even more than it already did.

"Brought you here in a car!" Nate whooped, doing a little dance. He was clearly on something. "Borrowed it, yes we did. f.u.c.king Clergy, heh!"

"What... what happened?" I murmured, wincing at my own voice. "What happened to the priests?"

"f.u.c.ked off!" Nate sat down suddenly, cross-legged, and nodded like a flapping wing. "Trucks, hidden-away. Took-off all at once. You scared 'em off! City's free!"

Then he slumped against the wall of the tent with no warning and just... switched off, smirking. He dribbled a little.

High as a kite.

Hmm.

The young man in the leathers stood nearby, leaning against a tall wooden pole, arms folded; watching it all without movement. I found myself looking for the bow and quiver of arrows over his shoulder - hating myself - and dipped my eyes back up to his own to cover the up-and-down staring.

He didn't move a muscle.

"You saved me, huh?" I said, remembering the red and blue blur behind Cy, the knife cracking through his skull.

He shrugged. "You needed saving."

Nate tsked quietly behind me, then giggled again.

I held out a shaky hand to the boy, which he took with a suspicious sort of glance and shook firmly.

"Hiawatha," he said.

I nodded. "Pleasure. Want to tell me what you were doing on the thirty fourth floor of a hotly-contested building swarming with insane priests, Hiawatha?"

He smiled. Sort of. I don't think there was much humour there.

"Saving you." he said.

Uh-huh.

Which is around about when Malice came in. Different.

She looked bigger, for a start. It took me a while to figure she wore body armour beneath the black threads. Pointy football-pads over each shoulder, skateboarding shields on elbows and knees, and a b.l.o.o.d.y enormous anti-stab vest that made her look like a samurai. Guns and knives poking from belts and straps on every conceivable surface - and that included the baby's wicker support-cage, still humping from her back like a dorsal fin.

She looked like an ice hockey player who was too hardcore to bother with a helmet.

Oh, and someone had beaten the s.h.i.t out of her.

"Still alive then," she said, not even bothering to make eye contact. She sounded disappointed, dumping an angular bag on the floor with a metallic crash.

"Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess." I tried to stop staring at her bruised face. "What happened?"

She rummaged industriously in a couple of crates nearby, then paused to glower at me. "Clergy happened, r.e.t.a.r.d. You're a popular guy."

I suppose I should've guessed. Back before The Tag and the siege and all that, when Cy dragged the big Mickey-chief back to the UN with tales of the Limey psycho driving about on a clapped-out quad. Wouldn't have taken the Choirboys long to work their way back to the Wheels Mart.

I wondered whether she'd told them anything worth a d.a.m.n.

"Sorry," I said.

"Skip it. We're ready to roll when you are."

"Excuse me?"

"We're loaded-up and ready. Awaiting your pleasure, your majesty. And payment, of course."

"Sorry, I'm... I'm not with you..."

"I said," Nate grumbled. "Didn't I say? Let him wake up, I said! Just G.o.dd.a.m.n wait! Let him decide himself!"

Malice ignored him, hooking a thumb towards Hiawatha. "Last of the Mohicans here said you'd want a ride. Long distance. Heavy protection. No expense spared."

Hiawatha stared at me.

"But..."

"North-west," Malice said. "That's what he told me. You saying he's been wasting my f.u.c.king time?"

She didn't look in the mood for games.

I groped in my pocket and felt the crumpled sheet of paper I'd taken from the Secretariat with its REa.s.sIGNMENT LOCATION and the smooth photograph. Undisturbed, right where I'd left them.

I stared at Hiawatha.

"How did you know that?" I said, off-balance. "What's...how... how did you know?"

"Lucky guess," he said, then turned back to Malice, pointing a finger at the bag she'd brought with her. "That's mine."

"And?"

"They confiscated it at the door."

"And now I'm bringing it back Tonto. Keep your f.u.c.king scalp o..."

"No, I mean... I mean you might as well keep it. It's for you anyway."

He strolled over and kicked open the drawstrings, letting dozens upon dozens of glossy guns - rifles, pistols, autos, semis, weird spiky things I didn't recognise and antique b.l.o.o.d.y revolvers - spill into the dirt.

"Figure that'll cover the rental costs," he said, into the silence.

Malice gaped.

The Inferno was waiting for us outside.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The kid came too.

Right before we left, I had a half-hearted sort of attempt at talking Malice out of it. Over the roar of the fire-truck's engines (extensively tinkered with, a sweaty little man called 'Spuggsy' told me, to "purr like a lion on stee-roids an' go like a cheetah got a rocket up its a.s.s"), I appealed to her sense of responsibility, reminded her we were taking the Inferno instead of some suped-up speeder because we might easily blunder into trouble, and finally had a stab at convincing her the little brat would keep us awake at nights.

It was pretty lame.

Malice just glared, scratched absent mindedly at the split lip the Clergy's goons had left her with - as if to remind me whose fault it was, and who therefore had no f.u.c.king right to be suggesting anything - then went back to loading ammo-belts into the truck's hold. I'd half expected her to be vaguely grateful - it was arguably thanks to me that the Clergy had been kicked out of the city - but evidently she either refused to believe the news coming out of Manhattan or was a grudge bearer of championship standards. She pretty much ignored me after that.