The Culled Part 32

All he could see of the rec.u.mbent figure directly next to him was a pair of boots. Muddy and b.l.o.o.d.y, fastened over tattered combats and the hem of a raggedy coat. Blazing, from the corner of his eyes, with a warm fiery glow.

The Stranger.

Beyond him was Malice. Her face was gone. Her skin was charred and burnt, her hair singed away in great b.l.o.o.d.y patches all over her scalp. If she was still alive, she didn't look it. Her eye was open. Unblinking. Staring straight at him.

Next to her were Nate's feet. Crazy red sneakers with army regs tucked into them, tied-together with a single loop of wire. He couldn't see past Malice's charred body to check if the old junkie was still alive or not.

All three lay, like him, on their bellies; arms twisted into the smalls of their backs, where pairs of black cuffs held them in place. Rick tried to move his own arms, unsurprised to feel a fresh tsunami of agony (all a million miles away, not worth worrying about) swarming along his left wrist. They felt impeded, sure, but there was something loose about the whole arrangement, a sort of dried, gluey stickiness rather than metal solidity.

Weird.

He tilted his head as best as he could, to peer down towards his own feet; hogtied, just like everyone else. Next to them, the Stranger was looking at him. Eyes open and alive, jaw clenched. Blood and flesh covered his face, and it was difficult to tell how much of it was his. They stared silently at each other for a moment or two, then the Stranger's eyes flipped downwards towards Rick's back.

Then back up again.

"Your hand's gone." He whispered.

"Shut the f.u.c.k up!" One of the Clergymen screamed, stamping hard on the Stranger's head and mashing one lacerated cheek against the grille. Rick barely noticed, exploring his own body with a morbid sense of certainty.

The stranger was right. His left hand. His left hand was gone.

Well, s.h.i.t.

It felt like they'd bound it up, maybe. Rags or bandages, tied at pressure, holding the arteries closed. Then they'd slapped the same old cuffs over the top of it and left him to it, maybe expecting him to die from blood loss, maybe just not caring.

He could move his wrist. He could unglue it from the sticky mess of dried blood and pull it free from the cuff. And if he could do that, it meant his other hand - no, his only hand - would be free to move.

Hiawatha sang a new song. The wind against the back of his head, from that great drop beyond, tousled his long hair and whispered strange things in his ear. Something about... about a gift?

He shifted his weight, trying to determine if any other interesting parts of his anatomy were missing. The pockets of his leathers had been chock-full of ammunition and handguns before the blast knocked him out, but now all he could feel about his person was a s.h.i.tload of bruises and something tiny - sharp, but swaddled-up - in the zip-pocket on his a.s.s.

The wind giggled.

The gift, it told him. Remember?

And then he knew what to do.

Poor kid.

Sh.e.l.l-shocked, I thought. He's been blown up. He's woken-up dangling over an abyss surrounded by fanatic goons, and he's got a b.l.o.o.d.y hand missing.

s.h.i.t, I'd be sh.e.l.l-shocked.

Outside, the green blur of land streaking past began to turn sooty and black. A sharp smell - like burning oil - filled the chopper, and above my head the three Choirboys muttered to one another, shuffling discreetly towards the open bay to see below.

The Haudenosaunee camp, I guessed, set-up far back from the war zone at the bridge. I couldn't see past the edge to whatever they were marvelling at, but I could imagine it. Blackened vans and charred wagons. The Tadodaho's weird mobile-home collapsing in embers and smoke. What else could it be?

We'd been roundly beaten; us plucky idiots with our ambush and our rebellion. Slaughtered and routed for our hubris. Taken prisoner. Taken away.

The smoke got thicker. I decided not to look.

Nor, evidently, did Rick. With the guards distracted his arms were moving slowly, gingerly releasing the swaddled stump of his left wrist from the cuffs and, thus freed, his right hand easing - inching - towards the pocket of his trousers.

What did he have in there, I wondered? What had the idiot-goons missed when they went through our stuff, rifling for weapons? What cunning escape plan was he cooking up?

"Lord Almighty," one of the Choirboys grunted, half reverential, half cursing, staring out into s.p.a.ce, now almost completely choked with black smoke. The dancing light of flames lit his face from below, giving him and his comrades an eerie, devilish look. I imagined the tribal Matriarchs screaming as they burned. The Tadodaho coughing on the thick pall. Malice's baby, left in their care, breaking its silence and starting - briefly - to wail.

Rick drew a folded rag from his pocket. Manipulated it with careful fingers, unwrapping it millimetre by millimetre. The cloth fell away with a dreamlike slowness, and I discovered myself holding my breath; desperate to see what he'd squirreled away.

My heart dropped.

It was a silver needle. Long and sharp, barely thicker than a hypodermic, slightly distorted by its time in his pocket. Not quite the weapon of ma.s.s destruction I'd envisaged.

There was a time, once - somewhere in the Middle East, I recall, on business - when I got into some bad s.h.i.t and found myself up against a knifeman with nothing to defend myself but a table fork. Don't laugh. This s.h.i.t happens.

For the record, he perforated my right lung before I got close enough to stab him through his eyeball - and that was without having a bruised and battered body up-front. Without gun-wielding maniacs watching. Without sodding handcuffs. With a f.u.c.king hand missing.

Good luck, kid.

Rick was staring at me again, needle held concealed in his hand.

"Sorry." He whispered. Then: "Trust me."

And then he was moving. Sudden and unexpected, face contorted, hefting himself off the floor and onto my back, flexing his legs to get towards me.

"f.u.c.king limey a.s.shole!" He snarled. "f.u.c.king p.r.i.c.k! You said you'd stop them! You said you'd save us!"

"What? I hissed. "But..."

"Kill you, sonuvab.i.t.c.h! Look what they did! You said you'd stop them! Just f.u.c.king die!"

And then he was pressed over me, and his mouth was next to my neck, and oh my G.o.d he was biting me. Trying to rip out my b.l.o.o.d.y throat. I shouted and hollered - more confused than anything - and tried to shake my body to get him off. The guards were reacting slowly, turning back from their sightseeing in a chorus of curses and exclamations, throwing horrified glances up and over my shoulder to the bulkhead that led into the chopper's c.o.c.kpit.

From where - cold and forced, like steel sc.r.a.ping cobwebs - there came a voice.

"What." It said. "The f.u.c.k. Is going on?"

Rick's teeth dug in further, but in an abstract section of my brain - not actively shrieking and demanding answers of this ludicrous situation - it occurred to me that by now he could have killed me if he'd wanted to. He wasn't even biting that hard.

The guards grabbed him and tried to wrestle him off.

And between us, in the secret concealed shadows of the ruckus, something sharp and tiny punched into the fleshy meat of my right b.u.t.tock, buried itself there, and went still.

What the-?

And then Rick was gone, hauled away, severed hand squirting blood through its disarrayed bandages. The guards clung to rails and handles, bracing him, facing the owner of that cold, grating voice.

"Sir?" one said.

"Hold him," it hissed. I recognised it, sort of. It was sharper than before, more strained, like it'd been pushed through a filter of trauma and hate.

It can't be- But it was. He stepped over me, dainty steps untroubled by the chopper's shuddering, and crouched down to stare directly into Rick's face.

The boy smiled. "I should've pushed harder, huh?" He said.

Cardinal Cy snarled.

The knife was still embedded in his head. From behind, I could see its ghastly angle, hilt decorated with antiseptic patches and freakish lumps of bandaging. It had gone deep. Deep enough to f.u.c.k with his brain.

It didn't seem to have slowed him down.

He put a hand - almost tender - on Rick's cheek. "Old man says... old man says. Bring troublemakers to him. Ones who caused all this. Fuss. Likes to tidy things up personal. Y'see?"

Rick spat on the surface of his red gla.s.ses.

"Mm." Cy smiled, wagging a finger. "Mm. Except, except, except. Never even saw you, did he? Doesn't even know. So. Maybe you're too much trouble, eh? Don't you think? Maybe I should tidy-up. Personally."

He twisted Rick's face to the side, hand digging deep into his cheeks and brow, forcing him down and round, making him stare out into the empty sky below the chopper.

I stayed silent. Wondered at the weird pain in my a.r.s.e - the silver needle, I supposed - and watched. Waited for Rick's face to contort in horror as he saw the remnants of his tribe's war party burning away.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

"Lake Eerie." Cy said. "Know what I heard? Used to be... So much s.h.i.t came downriver, man could almost walk across. Some years, surface caught fire. Believe that?"

He pushed Rick's head further down, forcing him out, smoke billowing round him, held up only by the arms of the guards.

"Course... nowadays, all sorts. Weird s.h.i.t pouring in. Oil from them... big refineries up north. All deserted. Gas, debris, timber. You name it. And pal... No f.u.c.ker left to put out them fires.

"Now, the old man. When he kills a guy, just got one way. But me? I'm understanding. Got mercy. So what it is... Giving you a choice. How to die.

"Three options. Number one. You drown. Number two. You burn. And number three. You fall from on-high."

The Cardinal put a hand on Rick's chest.

"Decide on the way down. Huh?" He said.

Rick said something in a language I didn't understand. His face changed.

Smoothed-out.

And then he smiled at me, and I cried out something wordless, and Cy pushed, and he was gone.

Below, wow!

Below, thunderbirds soared on fiery thermals. They keened and screamed as he fell, and squabbled to catch him.

And the trees sang and the wind murmured, and far away buffaloes grunted moronic greetings, and he settled as light as a feather on the back of the greatest fire-crow of all. It laughed and laughed, and so did he, and in its eye was lightning, and as it rose across the burning lakes Rick-Hiawatha felt something dull and insubstantial continue to fall away from him: something heavy and clumsy and solid, which he didn't need anymore.

The thunderbird kept pace with a garishly-painted helicopter for a moment, then veered off into the smoke, heading for the sounds of the plains.

It'd end here. I'd figured that much out already.

Don't call it a hunch, or a spooky sensation. Call it reality. Call it there's-no-f.u.c.king-way-I'm-getting-out-of-here-except-dead-or-victorious.

Call it: I know when to stop chasing.

It would end on this green-and-brown splat of land, choked-up by curtains of smoke that hid the horizon and denied the mainland ever existed. It would end, for better or worse - probably worse - in the middle of a sludge-like lake, whole patches of which were flaming-away happily, with a trail of dead people behind me, a psychotic cardinal with a knife in his brain bearing a grudge, and a throbbing pain in my right b.u.t.tock.

Way to go.

They'd chained me to a sign. Mottled and half-cracked where a small golf-buggy had toppled into it (and indeed sat there still, crumpled and rusting in the tall gra.s.s) it was the only thing to keep me amused whilst the world turned-on blithely around me, and I'd read it several times already.

It announced that in 1813 a bloke by the name of Oliver Hazard Perry kicked the s.h.i.t out of a fleet of British ships on Lake Eerie. I'm paraphrasing. It was a minor engagement, all things considered, but had a knock-on effect that ensured that a year down the line the peace talks were in full swing. Eventually some bright spark decided a memorial to the guy in charge was exactly what was needed, and it only took a hundred years to raise the cash. This was considered a triumph of human persistence rather than a lamentable token of inefficiency.

The sign was obviously intended to enlighten any visitor unfortunate enough to find themselves stranded on South Ba.s.s Island, and was crammed with interesting facts regarding the construction of said monument. At any other time I'd have expected to see fat tourists cl.u.s.tered around it making "ooh" sounds and taking pictures.

Alas, today, there was n.o.body but me to enjoy the info-feast. Instead there were dozens of armed Choirboys - men and women alike - spreading out across the tiny a.r.s.ecrumb of land to convert any locals from their savage un-Christian ways to- -well, death, probably. As it happened they hadn't found anyone yet, though they continued to kick-in each mouldering door and holiday-home porch with optimistic enthusiasm. In the meantime I'd been left chained here with Nate - still not talking - to watch the two Clergy choppers ferry people from the sh.o.r.e. It was boring. It was boring and it was underscored by the imminent probability of my own death, which made it even worse. It was like these p.r.i.c.ks had dug a hole in my stomach, told me to make peace with my maker, placed the gun against my head, then told me to amuse myself for a while.

As they dragged me out of the chopper I'd asked Cy what happened to the rest of the Haudenosaunee. He'd sneered and ignored the question. I couldn't work out if that was good or not. I couldn't work out if I cared.

The monument itself, for the record, stood nearby. I glanced up at it for the fiftieth time, on the off-chance it might be doing something interesting. Like so many military monuments it was basically a giant p.e.n.i.s, cunningly disguised as a three-hundred-and-fifty foot Doric column with a bronze 'urn' (11 tons, you'll be fascinated to learn) in the place of a throbbing glands, which was constructed, apparently, to inculcate the lessons of international peace by arbitration and disarmament.

Which was odd, because to me it looked a lot like it had been built to inculcate the lessons of international one-upmanship, specifically by stating: My c.o.c.k's Bigger Than Yours.

A foghorn blasted nearby, and I watched with a minor flicker of interest as the clapped-out old ferry they'd found deserted at Port Clinton made its third journey towards us, this time bearing two blue lorries and a school bus, undoubtedly crammed with scared kids in white robes. Next to me Nate stiffened, reminded of the innocuous job he'd held down for two years before all this mad s.h.i.t started with a plane crash and a- No. No, hang on.

'Innocuous' my a.r.s.e. He was driving kids to a prison, or worse. And he knew it.

I hadn't entirely made my mind up yet how I felt about Nate.

I leaned back against the pillar of the signpost and sighed.

The long and the short of it was: The Clergy had invaded a nowheresville island in the middle of the burning Eerie, en-ma.s.s, and were in the process of transferring their entire stock of idiots, a.r.s.eholes, a.r.s.enals and initiates. Don't ask me why. Don't ask me what they expected to find here, or how they thought it would advance their march towards a new future. I didn't know.

All I knew was that this place, this island, this dull little s.h.i.thole, was where I had been diligently trying to reach too.

That sheet of paper from the file in the Secretariat, remember? The photo.

REa.s.sIGNMENT LOCATION, it said.

UN INSTALLATION SAFFRON. SOUTH Ba.s.s ISLAND, OHIO.

The tourist map they'd chained me to didn't mention any UN installations. That would've made it too easy, I guess.

I sighed again.

There seemed to be a lot of activity around the base of the column. I couldn't see clearly from where I stood, but it looked like a lot of figures were waving a lot of hands, pointing and nodding profusely.