The Culled Part 5

There were eight in all. Four down already; dead or disarmed. Three more diving for cover (I caught a fourth as he fell, once in the ribs, again in the leg) and shuffled myself upright. Let Garson tumble to the floor, slippery.

Kept firing. Kept the other a.r.s.eholes ducked down. Got lucky and caught one on the foot. He hadn't hidden from sight. Watched the boot fragment like a leather mine, his gun tumble away.

I was shouting, I realised. An unintelligible rush of animal sounds and half-formed words. Speaking in tongues. Heh.

Behold the Holy Spirit, coming upon him...

I kicked Garson through the mangled tail, letting him spoon outwards onto the tarmac like a man tripping on the edge of a cliff. Kept firing. Started shuffling back into the fuselage.

Outside the plane, whatever was left of Garson was ripped to shreds, silenced munitions plucking frayed tatters off his robes like feathers from a pillow. A trigger-happy sniper, then, somewhere out on the airport side of the strip; getting overzealous. Probably the same guy with the loudspeaker.

Moron.

Two guys left inside. I kept firing. Deliberately off-target. Let them think I didn't know where they were. Let them sweat. Let them pluck up the courage to- "a.s.shole!"

The first one came up like a gofer from a hole. Pistol in each hand - f.u.c.king cowboy - shouting and cursing like a trooper.

Which, let's be quite clear, he obviously was not.

He got off a couple - misses, obviously - and went back down with an expression of ultimate bewilderment. The top half of his head was missing.

Good shooting, soldier.

I stopped firing. Stayed ready. Knew exactly where number eight was.

I could hear him crying.

"Oh G.o.d..." he kept saying. "Oh G.o.d oh G.o.d oh G.o.d..."

I wondered, distantly, if he was playing the same trick I'd played. Get me off guard, then turn with a savage smile and a slicing edge.

No.

The subconscious a.n.a.lysis came online. Bone-deep, beyond thought or effort. Animal instincts peeling back layers of information with scary accuracy.

No, he's terrified. It's in his voice. He knows he's going to die.

I considered letting him live. Just a kid, probably. Some speccy troll inducted into the Clergy sometime since The Cull. Looking for strength in numbers. Never imagining he'd wind up huddled against an economy-cla.s.s aeroplane seat, on its side, with a psychopath who'd just gone through his harda.s.s pals like a flaming sword.

Poor little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I almost felt sorry for him.

Then I remembered why I was here, remembered the signal and the five long years, and the pain and the mourning, and the deep dark voice- Don't you f.u.c.king give up, soldier!

-and I stepped forwards and shot the little rat through the top of his skull, so his brains slapped out of his jawline like snot into a hanky.

Sir, no sir, etc etc.

Outside the plane, beyond the sputtering of tiny fires up and down the runway, everything was still. Somewhere distant a couple of seabirds cawed, reminding me - with an ignorable spurt of melancholy - of London. But otherwise, nothing.

I lurked, vaguely combat poised, and stared out across the landing strip; torn and pocked by the plane's pa.s.sage. It shivered here and there with a faint luminosity where fuel had spilled and ignited, like a fiery reflection of the calm waters stretching away beyond. The idea of sprinting across the tarmac - strafing to confuse the b.a.s.t.a.r.d sniper who may or may not still be out there somewhere - and diving into the swampy mora.s.s held a sudden and unshakeable appeal. I imagined the water washing away the filth and blood that had soaked my coat; all the congealing gore that had spattered me moments before, as I moved up and down the plane with one of the cowboy's pistols, putting an end to the moans and pleas from the monk-soldiers I'd wounded.

No time for last words, no gloating, no f.u.c.king power trips. Just step-up, barrel-between-eyes, look away, squeeze trigger.

The lecturers used to call this ruthless mercy.

Second year of training. Major Farnham Dow presiding.

"It's easy - p.i.s.s-easy," he'd said, "to feel sorry for someone you've clipped. He's lost everything. He knows he's for it. He's going to... to blub and p.i.s.s himself. He's going to ask for mercy, if he can. Talk about his family, maybe. Whatever.

"The point is, the only reason he's not dead is because you missed with the first shot. It's your mistake, soldier, not his. And it doesn't change anything. Does it?

"You think he wasn't trying to kill you too? You think he'll renounce a lifetime of violence if you spare his life? Dedicate himself to charitable-b.a.s.t.a.r.d-causes? You think he won't shoot you in the back, if he still can, when you walk away?

"No. Don't be so f.u.c.king stupid! A wounded enemy is just a dead enemy who doesn't know it yet..."

Rationalising it and doing it were worlds apart.

I'd exited through the luggage hold, scampering across perpendicular support-struts and cargo-webbing, heading for the chasm of shattered steel and twisted, solidified slag where the forward landing-gear had been rammed upwards into the guts of the plane, tearing a long scar in the fuselage. The exit opened onto the sea side of the strip, away from the airport buildings and - I hoped - the sniper. I spent a good five minutes at the opening, darting glances left and right, sneaking out to check the roof of the wreck and retreating once again. Nothing. Either he didn't have a bead on me at all, or he was waiting for me to come out to play.

I f.u.c.king hate snipers.

I stepped out and stayed out. The air smelt of salt and ash; an acrid c.o.c.ktail that seemed to ride on the light breeze rippling over the waters. The feel of sunlight caught me unprepared, a warmth I'd forgotten in the perpetual greyness of London. Ever since The Cull - ever since the bombs fell, half a world away - England's Pastures Green had become 'Mires Grey'. I once spent half an hour with another survivor - I forget his name, but he was a talented rat catcher - rambling informatively about skyburst radiation and the f.u.c.king Gulf Stream. Used to work for the Met, he said.

I tuned out thirty seconds in.

Quite how all this enabled LaGuardia airport, squatting on the watery edge of New York like a growing patch of mildew, to enjoy unbroken sunlight and cloudless skies was quite beyond me. I felt like I'd just arrived at Disneyland.

I let the desire for a dip in the water ebb away; put off by the kaleidoscopic blobs of oil smearing the surface, and the brown tint to the sh.o.r.eline. With more scratches and open wounds than I cared to think about, it would be less a bath and more a proactive infection.

Enough time wasting.

I edged my way along the length of the fuselage, pressed against the sagging underside in the shadow of the plane's girth. At the c.o.c.kpit I paused and shouldered the fully-loaded rifle I'd liberated from another of the Clergy goons, and clambered up onto the pitted slope, wincing as I put a little too much weight on the wounded arm. It had started bleeding softly again; one or two of the messy st.i.tches popping open. I swore under my breath and tried to ignore it.

Dangling there like meat on a hook, staying low, I could peer through the shattered panes of the c.o.c.kpit and take careful stock of the flat killing-ground beyond, spread out on the left side of the wreck.

Wide, regular, empty. No cover.

s.h.i.t.

Halfway between the edge of the still-flaming debris field and the distant airport buildings - cl.u.s.tered like toys around the distinctive inverted-lampshade of the control tower - a series of ramshackle sheds and lean-tos had been erected, improbably st.u.r.dy, in a rough semicircle. Cables and joists held them in place, stretched out like a high-tension big top built of plastic and wood. A railed gantry ran along their tops, marked at each end with a conning tower plated with corrugated iron. I squinted through the haze coming off the fuel-fires and made out a big sign, graffiti-texted inexpertly and tacked to each end of the rail, hanging down across the front of it all.

I felt an eyebrow ruck upwards.

The sign read: WELCOME TO THE NEW DAWN.

...along with all the usual scarlet circles, colourful highlights and other a.s.sorted Neo-Clergy b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. The whole compound set up looked like it'd been made out of pipe-cleaners and bogrolls at the local school, then scaled up a couple of hundred times.

It was painted bright blue.

It was all a bit pathetic.

I could see the sniper now, through the c.h.i.n.ks of shattered gla.s.s and mangled instrumentation of the c.o.c.kpit, standing in full sight on the gantry. He had a loudspeaker slung on a cord across his shoulders and a seriously s.e.xy scope-rifle cradled in his hands, at a guess an M82. I'd only even seen them in pictures.

s.h.i.t.

Above a pair of wide sungla.s.ses - tinted ruby-red - a stupid sort of flat-cap was set jauntily on his scalp, somewhere between a beret and a devotional kippah, and his robes were several shades whiter than those of his dead colleagues. So: The boss.

I tried to get a bead on him, squinting along the barrel of the M16, but at this range I might as well blow snot. He had his back to me, leaning down over the rear of the railing to point and shout at someone below, hidden behind the sign. There seemed to be an argument going on, and in his apoplexy the t.w.a.t-in-the-hat was stamping and waving his fists in a full-on tantrum.

A violent growl picked up from out of nowhere - an engine, gunning hungrily - and a blocky shape emerged from behind the compound. Fat and square, grinding along slowly. For one awful moment I thought it must be a tank. Some ultra-rare military surplus these insane G.o.dbotherers had maintained for years. But no, it was far weirder than that.

It was a school bus, thick f.l.a.n.g.es of corrugated iron hanging down to protect its tyres, painted the same lurid blue as the buildings and marked with the same great scarlet 'O's on either side. The windows were blocked-up - padded by what looked like dozens of Kevlar jackets marked 'NYPD' - and the front windshield protected by a heavy-duty wire mesh. I couldn't see the driver. I couldn't see who or what was inside. All I could see was this surreal shape lumbering towards the plane, towards me and my complete lack of preparation, and the f.u.c.king stupid 'destination' inside the little window above the front: SALVATION (ONE WAY).

I felt like shooting at it on general principle.

The vehicle took a wide arc around the plane's tail, circling behind the wreckage, shunting its way through lumps of flaming debris with the impunity of something big, impatient and impervious. I dropped quickly down from my shaky vantage and squirreled into the recess beneath the drooping camber of the c.o.c.kpit, the first vestiges of panic rising inside. When it drew alongside, the driver would have to be blind not to see me. What precisely was I supposed to do then?

It didn't take a genius to work out what they were up to. A lazy recon around the perimeter to get a good look at the side they couldn't see from their hickledy conning towers. To flush me out into the open, if I turned out to still be alive.

With the sniper on one side and an armoured vehicle on the other, it wouldn't be hard work to catch me out, pick me off like a flaky scab.

I breathed deep, letting the conditioning guide me. Thinking like a machine.

Only viable place to hide now was back in the b.l.o.o.d.y plane, which I'd just spent half an hour trying to get out of. I considered crawling back. I even tensed, ready to hoist myself out from my pitiful cover and up through the shattered c.o.c.kpit windows, probably lacerating myself all to h.e.l.l in the process, but still... It was better than n- The bus stopped.

Its brakes squeaked quietly as it drew to a halt beside the knotted cavity of the missing tail segment, far off to my right. I could hear voices arguing inside. A hatch flapped-open near the rear and a robed figure leaned out. I froze.

The man tossed something, underarm, into the plane's tail.

"Go!" He shouted, presumably to the driver.

The hatch slammed shut and the bus moved on.

"Oh f.u.c.k..." I whispered.

The tail bulged. The whole wreck shuddered, sc.r.a.ping deeper into the dry gra.s.s. Round the corner of my cover, too far out in the open for me to see clearly, flames and tumbling lumps of metal arced high overhead, shattered fragments of blue-painted hull spiralling in orbital contrails of sparks and smoke, to bounce and break on the tarmac.

A few bits and bobs pinged cutely off the bus. It didn't seem to mind.

They thought I was still inside. It didn't much matter much, either way. Inside or out of the wreck, with the 'Cult Of Unfair Destructive Hi-Tech Gadgetry' around I was as good as mince.

Think, think...

The bus cruised gently forwards, cornering the rear of the plane and pausing beside the next gaping rent in its fuselage, a third of the way along its flank. Again, the hatch flipped open, and like some surreally casual picture - a guy in a park pitching a ball to an overeager dog - the goon flipped another grenade into the wreck.

The bus moved on.

This time the detonation blew off an emergency exit door, straight upwards like a rocket, to tumble over and under back down again. More spilled fuel caught fire as the debris mushroomed out, and for the second time I felt a wave of weakness and nausea pa.s.sing over me. Everything seemed to go grey.

Fuzzy.

Meaningless.

Not now!

Blood loss. Hollow p.r.i.c.kles of heat up and down empty veins...

I- Don't you f.u.c.king give up, soldier!

I brought the rifle up to my shoulder. This time the bus driver would see me. This time they'd be too close. The grenade would blow out the front of the plane, erupt through the c.o.c.kpit like a great pulsing embolism, crushing and breaking and burning me all at once.

The brakes squealed.

The hatch flipped open.

The goon wasn't looking out, bending back inside to shout at the driver, hands curled snugly around the baseball bomb, ready to throw.

I heard: "...f.u.c.king opinions to yourself, grandpa, and let the real men do the..."

He pulled the pin.

I shot him.

The hatch flipped closed, bloodhaze wafting down and out. The grenade sill inside.

The unseen driver shouted.

I pushed myself deep into the recess and curled into a ball.

The bus's a.r.s.e blew off like an overfilled balloon, smoke swallowed the sky, pulsing waves of weirdness sent me flopping like a boneless doll with vomit on my chin, and everything faded to white.

CHAPTER FIVE.

My first worry was that my eyes weren't working properly.

Okay, so I'd just woken up. No need to panic yet, maybe, but the training and conditioning went deep, and the first thing you learn is be aware.

Know everything.

Cover the angles.

Right.