The Culled Part 29

They're watching me, but maybe there's not much I can do about that just now.

They're in every detail. Flaws, mainly. Like when you remember something with such crystal-clarity that you know every line, every shape, every resonance...

...and then you look up expecting to see London's grey skies, and there's a face looking down instead.

...and then you shake the blood off a knife, or finish retching with the force of your anger, and the droplets splattered on the floor form eyes, and stare right at you.

These memories, they're full of rage and violence and weirdness. And the thing with weirdness is, there's always room for more.

Things keep changing. Time keeps jumping. There's a roar in my ears like I'm underwater, but I'm not scared. They're watching me - those withered Injun women - but so what? They're talking to me, too, and their voices are pretty, and maybe I'm talking back or maybe I'm not, but either way: they're in here with me. Spying on my past.

Back to the start.

Back to London.

After I got the signal, in the comms room of the old MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross, where I'd wh.o.r.ed myself to the SIS for years and years, I sliced up some people good. Clergy. I don't recall how many. I was too focused.

We'd all seen the planes. Every rat-human crawling in the filth of London knew they were there. Blue-painted, marked with the red 'O' of the Church, going up, coming down. Why? Who knew. Who cared.

I went to Heathrow. My mind was a needle. Too angry to speak. Too focused to negotiate.

PANDORA.

PANDORA.

PANDORA.

Like a mantra, see?

Nothing would turn me. I'd impale anything that dared get in my way.

And I waited. Cut and slashed in the night. Hacked open necks. Cut off fingertips. Made grey robes run red.

Not because I hated the Clergy.

Not because they had anything to do with anything.

Not for any reason except they were convenient, and they had something I wanted.

Took me three days of torturing to work my way up to a Clergy-b.a.s.t.a.r.d of sufficient hierarchical power to be worth taking hostage. I think - I know - I stopped being me for a bit there. Let the animal thing take over too much. Let the rampage-instincts out of their box.

It was a weird time.

I made sure everything felt significant, everything felt like a step in the right direction, and by G.o.d's own p.i.s.s it felt good. I let everyone I came across seem responsible, took it all out on them, mixed up the anger with the focus, just like they taught me in training: Made it personal.

So what I did, back at the start, I strolled into the airport as bold as bra.s.s, with this pigs.h.i.t priest under my knife, telling every gun-wielding a.r.s.ehole who came near to back off or get splashed.

And this guy, this hostage, this high-up canon or whoever he was, he leaned down so the knife was pressed up against his neck... and he shook his head.

Slit-slat-slit.

Faith. That's what. Obvious really. Never take any w.a.n.ker prisoner who's prepared to die for his beliefs.

So bang went my clever-clever attempt to hijack a plane alone, which is all I ever wanted out of those child-stealing s.a.d.i.s.tic delusional f.u.c.ks. Bang went my momentum, bang went my anger, bang went the feeling of progress, of inertia-less drive. The juggernaut rolled to a halt.

Cue running away, hiding, rethinking.

Cue a realisation or two: doing it alone wasn't going to work. Focus wasn't enough.

Enter Bella.

I found her waiting outside the airport, just standing and staring. Like she was sh.e.l.lshocked, maybe, except it looked like she'd been that way for years. Watching every plane, mumbling to herself. Waiting for something to happen.

I happened.

Cut forwards in time.

Bella telling me she knew how to fly.

Recon of the airport.

Preparing. Arming-up.

Getting drunk one night and f.u.c.king, and not caring except to feel the guilt, and letting down the shields for five seconds and discovering - holy s.h.i.t - I'm still human after all.

Telling myself I didn't care what her story was. Listening anyway.

They took her kid.

They took a thousand kids. Every week, another load. Off across the ocean. Off to be with the skeletal b.a.s.t.a.r.d Abbot off the TV. Off to a better life, or a worse one, or who knew what, except that it was OFF.

Scared. Crying. Can't you just imagine them?

(The faces in the clouds are watching and nodding, and saying yes we can, and wiping tears and telling me to get on with it.) And then there was Bella, saying: "Doesn't matter. Not your problem. But that's why I'm going."

And then the time comes and we make our move, and con our way inside, and kill our way further, and gather guns and steal drugs, and then it's sprinting across tarmac, and guns opening fire, and pain in my shoulder, and Bella dragging me up the steps, and then- And then away. Stateside-bound.

And then the story started.

And Bella died in fire and pain and chaos.

And Nate and the city and blah blah blah.

"Doesn't matter," Bella told me, as we clung to each other in the dark. "Not your problem."

After everything she did for me. After she flew me and died for me. After she gave me back my humanity, and stuck a booster up my hope.

"Not your problem."

And all the others. The people of London who bartered and fed me, and said h.e.l.lo every day, and didn't care that I didn't say h.e.l.lo back. The scavs of New York, who died and cried and followed me, despite my lies, into the jaws of h.e.l.l. The Iroquois, who sent their scared little envoy to watch over me, then saved me themselves on the road.

All of them. Children stolen away. Tears long since run-out. Dead inside, but still fit to help. Still fit to see hope for a better tomorrow. Still fit to smile and think the best, and do something good.

And here's me. Here's me pursuing my own goal and forgetting the rest. d.a.m.n the world. d.a.m.n every motherf.u.c.ker alive. Ignore it. Let it happen. Be selfish, why not?

Nothing to do with me.

"Not your problem," she said.

Well s.h.i.t.

About time I made it my problem.

They were coming. So said the Tadodaho.

(Or, rather, so said the Matriarchs, who whispered and sighed in dark corners then told the Chief what to say and do. It amounted to the same thing.) I didn't bother asking how they knew. Scouts, surveillance, divine-b.l.o.o.d.y-intuition, I didn't know. Or care. I'd just taken a lazy stroll through the psychedelic bulls.h.i.t of my own mind, and if the weirdest thing to greet me on my return was the rock-solid a.s.sertion that the Clergy were coming, here, en-ma.s.se, then frankly it was a taste of rea.s.suring normality.

They were following me, I guessed. We'd got past their psychotic Collectors, but it didn't matter. Their base in NY was overrun and they'd came pelting out here in my wake. Why?

Revenge?

Maybe. But it sounded like a lot of hard work to go to, just to kick the a.r.s.e of the guy who'd rattled them up. So why else? Unless...

Unless they were going to the same place as me.

"What's the plan?" Nate said, hours later, when my head stopped spinning from its heavy barrage of hallucinations and synaesthetic memories. We were still sat at the fire between the caravans, watching the evening roll-in, just the two of us. Nike was laid-up in one of the 'vans, dosed out of his skull, and Moto refused to leave his side. Tora... Tora's body had been found near where the Collectors caught-up with us. I didn't like to ask what state it was in. Malice went and oversaw a quiet cremation outside the camp, and I'd figured it would be rude to invite myself along. She hadn't said anything, but there was an unspoken accusation in her eyes as she wandered off: You brought us out here.

This is your fault.

I told myself I'd imagined it. I told myself they were all mercenaries who'd known the dangers, and it was a little late in the day to start complaining about the risk when two were already dead and one mangled to s.h.i.t.

It didn't help.

So. Me and Nate. Warm and full of food (still chowing, in fact, on a second portion of everything to make-up for the stuff I puked first time round). And again the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d's jaw was lolling, cheeks pinned-back in a rictus-smile, pupils dilated big enough to turn his eyes inside-out.

"What's the plan what's the plan what's the plaaan?" He said, giggling, wobbling around like he was dancing to some silent beat. "Got any more burns? Need a burn? Needaburnneedaburn?"

I stopped chewing. Looked at him and shook my head.

I guessed... oh, sod it. I guessed now was as good a time as any.

I put down my bowl.

"Look at you," I said. "Nate. Seriously. Look at yourself."

"Eh?"

"You're bombed. You're off your face, mate."

It took him a while to react, and his smiling face crumpled like a hollow mountain.

"Am not!" He shouted, far too loud, standing and pointing. "Am f.u.c.king not!"

I just stared, getting bored. Eventually he sat down.

"We had a deal." I said quietly, slurping on more of the homebrewed beer. He reacted jerkily, like he couldn't control his own defence.

"Yeah? Yeah, so?"

"So I paid you good scav and I kept you alive. Right? You were in pigs.h.i.t up to your neck after the airport."

"I know that! Did I say I didn't know it? f.u.c.k you, m..."

"And all you had to do in return was play at being a doctor."

I picked up my bowl again and spooned some potatoes into my mouth. Tasted good. Ignored the old man's rolling eyes and hurt silence.

"And... and I haaaave!" He yelped, like a kicked puppy dog. "Didn't I? Didn't I? I've done good! Patched you up over and over. You know it, you know it, you know it!"

I glared.

"Yeah. And Nike's in a Winnebago over there with his legs shot to s.h.i.t, and you haven't lifted a hand to help."

Nate's lips moved. Searching for words.

"But... H-hold it, he's... but..."

"But he's not part of the deal? Is that it?"

"No! No, I just... I thought your, your Injuns here would take care and..."

"Some doctor, Nate."

We sat in silence for a long time then; darkness spreading above us, fire drooling embers upwards.

"The Secretariat." I said, eventually.

"Wh... What?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "Oh, nothing. Just thinking. Our little deal. Never seemed quite right to me."

"But... I don't understand. What's...?"

"You didn't seem to get much out of it, I mean. I was wondering why you were sticking with me, to be honest. Now I know."

He looked suddenly angry, thick sarcasm souring his voice. "Oh, you know. You know, do you? The f.u.c.k do you know? You gonna make s.h.i.t up and say you know, then you can kiss m..."

"The Secretariat. I sent you downstairs. Told you to go help the others find the kids."