The Culling

by Charles Ray

  “I’m not leaving them leaderless, citizen. Citizen Wainwright will assume command of the monitors effective immediately.”

  That told Gravius all he needed to know. Wainwright had probably even talked Cruz into the damn mission in the first place, knowing it would fail. “I knew the son of a bitch hated my guts, but I never thought he wanted my fucking job as well, or that he’d risk the entire community in order to get it.”

  “As you wish, citizen,” he said. He removed his flechette pistol and laid it carefully on the table. “I will be in my quarters.” “And, I hope the two of you rot in hell.”

  He turned slowly and with his back straight walked out of the room.

  38.

  The two Freelander forces separated after reaching the river. Hiroshi’s group headed due south, following close to the river bank, while Moses led the other group across the river and turned south paralleling the other force on the east bank. At times the two groups could see each other.

  Moses kept the boy Washington Benedict close at his side. The kid was completely lost in the wild, making as much noise as a wounded elk and tripping over every root, limb or rock in the trail.

  “Listen up, son,” he said to Washington as they approached the last rise before the border fence. “When we get to the top of that rise yonder, I want you to find a place to hide and wait until I send someone for you.”

  Washington looked at the older man, a puzzled look on his dark face. “Why? I should be with you to show you the best places to go,” he said.

  “Once we’re past the fence, you will. But, there’s going to be a lot of shooting making that happen, and I don’t want you to get hurt, so just do as I say.” “Besides, with you making so much noise, the shooting might start before I want it to.”

  They found a flat spot bordered by thick bushes at the lip of the ledge leading down toward the fence which could be seen in the distance. Moses stayed on the ridge for a long time, observing the fence. Something about the scene worried him – there were only six monitors guarding the gate, and for the past two hundred yards they hadn’t noticed any signs of patrols. It seemed too easy. Nothing, he knew, was ever handed to you on a platter.

  An accomplished hunter, Moses decided to do a little flushing. He pulled one of the men clad in a monitor uniform aside, and then divided the remaining force in half. He sent one group to the right and the other to the left.

  “Now, son, here’s what I want you to do,” he told the man he’d kept behind. “Just go stumbling out of the bushes like someone’s chasing you, and head straight for the gate.”

  The man smiled, pulled down his helmet visor and turned toward the fence. He was no more than twenty yards from the sentries, when what had looked like innocent bushes were flipped aside and ten more monitors rose, all with their weapons aimed at the oncoming man. Suddenly, though, the monitors found themselves staring at a variety of weapons on their flanks, including flechette pistols held by figures dressed in monitor uniforms. As brave and well-trained as they were, this was a situation that had never been addressed in any of their training or experience, so they did what prudent people do under such circumstances – they dropped their weapons and raised their hands.

  Moses had them disrobed, trussed and stashed in the pits they’d been hiding in, and left two of his men to guard the gate. With Washington guiding them, the Freelander force began its trek toward the center of New Liberty.

  “Stay alert,” Moses said. “If you see anyone with a weapon, use your judgment, but don’t shoot at unarmed people.”

  Having won their first engagement without firing a shot, the men were energized. Several pumped their fists in the air. Even young Benedict seemed pumped up, after seeing a large group of the dreaded monitors so easily defeated.

  Moses, on the other hand, walked along with a sober look on his face. “This must be what it was like long ago, when young men marched off to battle, so full of energy and bravado. I hope they’re all alive at the end of this day to celebrate a full victory, but Lord knows, I can’t guarantee it.

  39.

  Armand Wainwright rode across the bridge nearest the scene of the fighting between the monitors and the proles. The black uniform he’d had in his quarters for months – from the time he’d decided he wanted Gravius’s job – fit him perfectly. He sat in the front seat with the driver, his back erect, like the warrior he pictured himself to be.

  His plans were working perfectly. It had been child’s play to convince Cruz to take punitive action against the proles after the chanting incident, which the little popinjay took as a personal insult. Prole resistance had been fortuitous. His original plan had been to claim that Gravius had overreacted and killed more proles than necessary, which would negatively impact on production quotas. The fool’s inability to complete the mission quickly was perfect. It hadn’t taken much prodding to make Cruz believe the former monitor commander was incompetent. “My first plan was a masterpiece, but this is just as good,” he thought smugly. “There’s always a plan B.”

  As the vehicle neared the fighting, he could hear the rumble of voices, punctuated with the occasional burping sound of a flechette pistol. Rounding a corner, he saw a group of monitors behind piles of discarded furniture, facing a four-story building from which the occasional object was thrown to crash down on the sidewalk near them. A monitor would fire a volley of darts at the building, only to see them bounce ineffectually off the brick walls.

  Wainwright gruffly ordered the driver to stop the vehicle. He got out and stomped up to the men.

  “What the hell do you men think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  A broad shouldered, tall monitor turned from the barricade and stared down at him. He knew the man was a citizen, and wondered what he was doing here wearing a monitor uniform without helmet and visor. “Who the fuck wants to know?”

  Wainwright pulled himself up to his full height, six inches shorter than the man he faced, and puffed out his chest.

  “Your new commander wants to know,” he said icily. “And, unless you want to be summarily executed for insubordination, you’ll answer my question.”

  “Uh . . . sorry . . . commander,” the man said. “We’re . . . trying . . . to . . . get . . . the . . . proles . . . out . . . of . . . the . . . building.” The man hadn’t been told that Gravius was no longer commander, but no one would make such a claim if it wasn’t true. He took a deep breath to steady his trembling. “They’re holed up on the second and third floors, and have managed to get three or four weapons off dead monitors. We’ll have them out soon, though.”

  Wainwright looked around. On the sidewalk in front of the building, two monitors and five proles lay in grotesque positions. The door of the building hung askew on its hinges. He could see the edges of furniture piled against the door.

  “You’re not doing a very good job of getting them out,” he said.

  “They have the door blocked,” the man said. “And, every time we try and assault it, they bombard us with stuff. I’ve already lost six men – the two whose bodies you see there, and four more inside.”

  Regarding the man disdainfully, Wainwright was even more convinced that taking the monitors away from Gravius had been the right thing to do. The man was too soft, and it was reflected in the performance of the forces under him. Truly tough soldiers didn’t pull back because of the fear of taking casualties. If his militia wasn’t off on Cruz’s fool mission, it would have stormed the building long before now, ignoring casualties, and killed everyone inside. Gravius’s troops were little more than glorified security guards. Well, he’d quickly change that. This mission would cull the weak, and he’d whip the survivors into a force almost as good as the militia.

  “So, you lose a man, and you pull back like a bunch of cowering girls? You’re a miserable excuse for soldiers.”

  “We’re not soldiers – we’re monitors. Our job is to maintain order, not engage in combat.”

  Wainwright decided that an object lesso
n was in order. The monitors at the barricade had turned their attention away from the building and were watching his conversation with the individual who was no doubt the alpha of this pack. He walked up to the man, who stood stiffly at attention. “Give me your weapon,” Wainwright ordered.

  The man hesitated, but years of conditioning kicked in. He withdrew his flechette pistol and handed it to Wainwright.

  “For cowardice in the face of the enemy,” Wainwright said in a dry voice. “I hereby sentence you to death.”

  He lifted the pistol and pressed the trigger, sending a half dozen of the razor-sharp darts into the man’s chest at close range. The monitor took two steps backward as the steel darts slammed into his chest, and then, with blood gushing from beneath his visor, sank lifeless to the pavement. Wainwright turned to the others.

  “Now, is there anyone else who wants to see what I, your new commander, do to cowards?”

  He stood before them, the weapon pointing at the ground, his free hand on his hip. The men looked from him to the crumpled body of their comrade, lying on his back in a spreading pool of blood. No one spoke.

  “No? Good then,” Wainwright said. “Now, here’s what we’re going to do. You will assault that building. You will ignore casualties – in war, some will die – and you will continue to press forward until you breach that front door. Once inside, you will move from floor to floor. You will eliminate all – I repeat, all – enemy resistance. When that’s done, we will move on to the next nest of rebels and repeat the operation. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, commander!” they said in unison.

  Wainwright smiled. He pointed to a small monitor in the middle of the pack of armed men. “You are in charge,” he said. “I want this building cleared within the next three hours. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, commander,” the man said, darting his eyes nervously at his dead comrade.

  40.

  Hiroshi called a halt at the side of a street about five hundred yards from the armory.

  “Why are we stopping?” One of the Freelanders asked.

  “Listen,” Hiroshi replied. There was a humming sound in the distance. “I hear a truck, and it seems to be moving this way. Get down, all of you, until we know what’s happening.”

  While the rest of the group found suitable hiding places, Hiroshi and Leland stood at the side of the road. Soon, a cargo truck came around a corner, heading toward them, belching clouds of black smoke.

  “Looks like just the driver and one man,” Leland said. “Probably on the way to the armory for more ammunition. What do you plan to do?”

  Hiroshi smiled and pulled his visor down. “That is our ride to the objective,” he said simply.

  Leland pulled his visor down as well and stood beside Hiroshi. The truck came to a halt as it reached them. The driver leaned out the window.

  “What are you two doing here? Everyone’s supposed to be over in the prole community,” he asked.

  “We came from the bridge,” Hiroshi said, pointing toward the nearby bridge over the river. “Some proles were trying to assault our post, and we ran out of ammunition.”

  “Yeah, same thing across the river,” the driver said. “Fucking proles are holed up in buildings, and we’re expending darts at a fantastic rate trying to drive them out. The shit has truly hit the fan.”

  While Hiroshi talked to the driver, Leland walked nonchalantly around the front of the truck to the passenger side. The other monitor, watching his comrade talk to Hiroshi, hadn’t noticed.

  “I was wondering,” Hiroshi said. “If you could give us a ride when we get our supplies?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. We’ve got this new commander now, and he’s a mean ass. We were told to get supplies and get our asses back real ricky-tick, you know. You’ll just have to walk, friend.”

  “That’s too bad,” Hiroshi said. He pulled his pistol and shot the driver in the face.

  Temporarily blinded by the spray of blood and flesh as his partner’s head exploded, the monitor on the passenger side didn’t even have a chance to reach for his weapon before Leland sent six darts into his chest.

  They pulled the corpses from the truck and stashed them in the bushes alongside the street. Hiroshi signaled for the others to come out.

  “I wonder what he meant by having a new commander,” Leland said.

  “Maybe the guards at the armory will know,” Hiroshi said. “Why don’t we drive down and ask them.”

  41.

  Gravius sat brooding in his sterile, undecorated apartment in a two-story white brick building not far from the headquarters. He was truly only Gravius now. With his dismissal from the position of commander of the Force of Social Monitoring, known as the monitors, he’d lost his numerical designation. Like all monitors, when he’d entered training, in his case at the age of twelve, his surname had been deleted from all records, and that had been so many years in the past he no longer remembered what it had been. His parents had died when he was an infant, and he’d been raised in a series of foster homes until the crèche system was introduced, and after that, he’d lived in crèches until being moved to the monitor training school. Monitors were seldom dismissed, forced to interact with other citizens who had surnames. He would be a marked man – all the more so because he’d been head of the monitors for so long, and because he was such a distinctive figure, with his broad shoulders, shaven head, and dark skin. The only fortunate thing, if anything about his situation could be called fortunate, was that Cruz was unlikely to allow him to live much longer.

  It was just as well. While he could no longer remember his father’s name, he did remember that he’d descended from a long line of law enforcement people, stretching back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when one of his forebears became one of the first black men to become a detective on the police force of the old District of Columbia. Being a cop was in his genes, and if he couldn’t follow that profession, there was little left to live for. He regretted that the years had erased the names of those distinguished forebears from his mind.

  His chief regret, though, was that he’d not resisted Cruz’s stupid plan with more vehemence. Not that it would have swayed the rest of the spineless members of The Committee to his side, but that it might have caused Cruz to back down. That, he felt, had been his true failure, and because of it, many good monitors had died, even more proles had died needlessly, and the future of New Liberty, the community he’d sworn to serve and protect, was in jeopardy.

  He had no personal affairs to put in order. He’d never married, nor in fact had he even had any long term liaisons with any of the female citizens who saw association with the head of monitors as a key to social status. He would not be mourned. His parents, whoever they had been, were long since dead. That was what life had become since The Apocalypse, you’re born, you struggle, whether you’re citizen or prole, and you die. And, when you die, your remains are recycled as fertilizer to grow food which is consumed by those coming behind you. He laughed softly. “Hell, when we die, prole and citizen become equal at last, nothing more than a pile of gray ash to be turned under the earth. I wonder what the proles think about that.”

  So lost was he in his thoughts, he didn’t hear the door whisper open, and didn’t become aware of the presence of another in the room with him until he heard a soft throat-clearing sound. He looked up to see Hector Cruz standing just inside the door, a strange expression on his face. He didn’t bother standing. Under the circumstances he didn’t think it would make much difference.

  “What do you want . . . citizen?” he asked. He made no effort to mask the disdain in his voice.

  The only response Cruz had to this deliberate insult was a minor upward twitching of his brows.

  “I thought you’d be happy to know that Citizen Wainwright has been no more successful in putting down the prole revolt than you.”

  “So, another head for the chopping block.” Gravius laughed mirthlessly.

  “Oh no, citizen,” Cruz said.
“His end will be far more glorious than yours. They will sing his praises for generations, telling their children how he went out in a blaze of glory. Futile glory, but glory nonetheless.” He laughed. There was, Gravius thought, a strange, maniacal note in that laugh.

  Gravius looked up at the man who had once been his boss, someone he’d watched grow into manhood. Even as a child, though, he’d always worried Gravius. “Now, I understand the meaning of the phrase, ‘this child will be the death of me.’” He laughed again. “I get no pleasure in another’s misfortune,” he said. “Even when he brought it upon himself. My one regret is that the community must pay for my mistake.”

  “Why should you care about the proles?”

  “I care about New Liberty,” Gravius said. “It is not just the proles who will suffer because of this misadventure of yours.”

  “Mine? How dare you impute that I am at fault in this debacle. It was your failure to carry out my orders that brought us to this place.”

  Gravius wanted to argue, wanted to make the effort to show the fool how wrong he’d been. But, to what end? Cruz was as capable of seeing his own faults as the sun was of rising in the west.

  “As you wish, citizen,” Gravius said. “It really doesn’t matter now, does it? Many will suffer needlessly for the mistakes that have been made.”

  “Maybe, Citizen Gravius, maybe, but you and I will, at least, be here to witness the glorious end. And, it will be glorious, of that you can be sure.”

  With that, Cruz spun on his heels and walked away. For many minutes after he’d gone, Gravius sat in silence, but his mind raced. He was angry, as angry as he could ever remember being, as he thought about how Cruz had used him and then so callously discarded him, as he was apparently now preparing to do to Wainwright. Then, the phrase ‘blaze of glory’ hit him like a thunderclap. He suddenly felt cold, as he realized what that phrase meant.