Children of the Cull

by Cavan Scott

  Didn’t I?

  I wiped a thread of drool from my mouth. Jesus. My scrubs. They were splattered with blood. Eckstein’s blood.

  “Quick, this way. Before the others come.”

  Olive led me into the lab, pointing to a box of paper towels.

  “Clean yourself up, as much as you can. Wash your hands.”

  It was like I was on autopilot, moving over to the sink, running the water.

  “But the blood...”

  “There’s a white coat on the back of the door,” she told me. “Put it on. It’ll cover most of it up, until we can get you changed. There are clothes in the bunker. It’s going to be all right.”

  “Olive, I...”

  She was beside me again as I slumped over the sink. “He’s here, isn’t he? You saw him, on the screen.”

  I looked up, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. “Did you see him too?”

  “Of course I did. I’m your eyes and ears on this base. Always have been. You want to see him, don’t you?”

  “Yes. More than anything.”

  “Then sort yourself out. Head up, back straight. Get a coat and get a grip.”

  I laughed, covering my mouth. “Yes. Yes, you’re right.” I grabbed another paper towel, dabbing my eyes, wiping my lips. Turning on the cold water tap again, I stuck my mouth under the stream and took a gulp. The cold liquid set my teeth on edge, but I swilled it around my cheeks and spat it out into the sink. “What would I do without you, eh?”

  Olive rolled her eyes. “I’ve been telling you that for years. Coat, now.”

  I rushed to the door, grabbing the lab coat and slipping my arms into the sleeves. It wasn’t a bad fit, a little bit big, but it would do. At least most of the blood was covered up.

  “Right, I’ll get Allison to move the children and then go and look for him.”

  “Sound like a plan. But aren’t you forgetting something?”

  I peered at Olive, not understanding.

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “The case. Don’t forget the case.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  KILL

  IT HAD BEEN her; the voice I’d heard every night when I slept. I’d worried for a while that I would forget what she sounded like. I already struggled to remember what she looked like. But not now. She comes to me as soon as I heard her voice.

  Smooth skin the colour of coffee; dark curly hair; wide, expressive eyes that seemed to reach all the way to her soul.

  And then there was the laugh. Oh, God, that laugh. People would turn and stare when she got going—and smile. Talk about infectious. She could start a pandemic, eyes gleaming, head thrown back without a care in the world.

  She exuded passion in every way possible. In her laugh, in her work, in our arguments—and where it mattered most, too. Life was for the living, as far as Jasmine was concerned, and woebetide anyone who stood in her way.

  That’s why, even after all this time, I knew that she had survived, even when the universe told me that it was impossible. Blood-Type AB+. Cursed. Doomed.

  But I’d heard her voice, all those years ago, by complete and utter chance, over a machine in the SIS comms-room. Just four words.

  “Are... are you there?”

  And there it was, my reason for living. The knowledge—because that’s what it was—the certainty that I would find her again, would hold her in my arms, would pick stupid rows and laugh at stupid jokes and just be the way the universe intended us. Together.

  And yes, I know that’s enough to make you reach for the sick bucket, the kind of crap that’s spouted in a thousand and one rom-coms full of beautiful people with beautiful lives, but I don’t care. That’s how I felt, how I feel.

  And I was right. I’d followed her here—or rather, followed rumour and hearsay, from one continent to another. The trail had brought me to Bristol, to this place. I’d told Brennan I wanted drugs: it’s what she wanted to hear, made me less threatening. The junkie who could get them into the base, with a one-track mind, thinking of his next fix.

  I guess I should have felt guilty. All those people who had died. The guards, the gang-members. But hell, they were fighting for what they wanted, for a place to belong in an increasingly batshit crazy world. For a purpose.

  So was I.

  For years, as I’d drifted off to sleep at the end of every day, my prayer had been the same. Who gave a shit that I didn’t believe in God? It didn’t mean He wouldn’t hear.

  Just let me hear her say my name again, one more time.

  That’s all I wanted—and it could happen today.

  “Is this the way?” Brennan asked, striding ahead of me.

  I looked up, surprised by the question. “What’s that?”

  “The place on the screen? Is it this way?”

  What did she want me to say? “I guess so.”

  “You guess so? Did you hear that, Brennan? He guesses so! I thought he was supposed to be the fucking expert!”

  Fenton had been bad enough before. Now, it was all I could do not to snap his raw-boned neck.

  “There weren’t any hospital wings when I was here before,” I snapped back. “They’ve obviously had some work done.”

  “Yeah,” Brennan muttered darkly. “For these ‘experiments.’”

  I picked up the pace, storming past Fenton. The sooner I got this over with...

  “But from what I could see on the screen, it has to be on this floor. Old conference suites, the only place big enough to fit in all those beds.”

  There were swing doors coming up on the left. I was sure I’d been in there before, staring at boring PowerPoint presentations, counting the seconds until I could escape.

  I marched up to the doors, swinging them open... and froze.

  Keep moving, soldier. Whatever the world throws at you. Keep moving.

  Sir, yes, sir, etc.

  The conference rooms had been partitioned into curtained cubicles, each containing a bed. Most were empty, but a few contained bodies wired up to life support machines, all tubes and wires and electronic beeps.

  They were all so thin. Emaciated. A memory surfaced, a documentary I’d watched about holocaust survivors, from the concentration camps, living skeletons. Jasmine had made me turn it off. It wasn’t upsetting her. It was making her angry.

  How could they do that to another human being?

  But this was worse, much worse. As I walked the length of the room, I realised that all the patients were children.

  Experiments.

  The technician had said experiments.

  Is this what he meant?

  “Jesus!”

  It was a woman’s voice, to my right. She’d walked through a door between wards, checking notes. Young, perhaps early thirties, tall and slim, with dark skin and short curly hair. Now her folder was on the floor and she was running back the way she came.

  “Stop her,” Brennan yelled, and Fenton was off like a greyhound after the rabbit. He tore past me, quicker than I would have thought, and soon caught up with the woman, grabbing her shoulder. She screamed, trying to pull herself free, and they went down, slapping against the floor, Fenton on top of her.

  “Hey,” I shouted, running after him to yank him back.

  “What’s your problem?”

  “There’s no need to be so rough.”

  The girl scrambled across the carpeted floor, putting an occupied bed between us and her, painting herself into a corner. Stupid, but understandable. She was scared.

  Looking at the kids in the beds, so was I.

  I took a step closer and she flinched, her back against the curtain. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

  Fenton thrust his gun in her direction.

  “That’s not necessary,” I said. “She’s a nurse or something.”

  “Doctor,” she told me. “I’m a doctor.”

  “Sorry—Doctor...?”

  “Ezogu, Betty Ezogu.”

  “Okay, Betty. This is what we’re going to do. My friend h
ere is going to lower his gun—”

  “Like hell I am.”

  I looked at Fenton. “You don’t need it.”

  “Yes, he does,” said Brennan from behind me. She stalked forward, never taking her eyes from Betty. And she had a gun in her hand too, a Glock, pointing straight at the young doctor.

  “Not you as well. Listen—”

  “Shut up.” Brennan talked across me. And to think I’d been starting to like her. “Doctor Ezegu.”

  “Ezogu.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Betty wetted her dry lips. “I was checking on the patients. With everything that’s been going on—”

  “No,” Brennan interrupted. “I don’t mean now. I mean in general.” She took in the ward with a wave of her gun. “All this. We were told you were conducting experiments. What kind of experiments?”

  Betty paused, considering her options. At the moment, with an idiot like Fenton pointing a gun at her, they were limited.

  “It’s... classified.”

  Brennan laughed. “I need authorisation, is that what you’re saying? This is my authorisation, right here. Seventeen rounds of nine-millimetre Parabellum, pointing at your chest. Who are you working for?”

  That I could answer, although I kept my mouth shut for now. I had followed Jasmine here by picking up fragments of communications, mainly from Germany, from an organisation that only seemed to be known as the Cabal. The rumours weren’t great. They weren’t good people, but if the ends perhaps didn’t entirely justify the means, they made them easier to swallow. The Cabal carried out sometimes-dubious research, but their work was making things better for a lot of people. Cleaner water. Better drugs. Could have been worse, a lot worse.

  That was glass-half-full stuff, of course, but sometimes you had to believe the world was getting better. It helped you wake up in the mornings.

  But this? Nothing about this smelled right. I picked up a board hanging from the end of one of the beds, reading the notes.

  “You haven’t been healing these kids,” I said, flicking over a page. “You’ve been killing them.”

  “What?” Brennan asked, walking over to snatch the notes from my hands.

  I didn’t need to see any more. I looked at the child in the bed, a girl of eight. A girl with malaria.

  Before she’d been admitted, she had been fit and healthy. She’d had a future.

  I walked to the next cubicle, checking the notes of the boy in the bed. He was nine years old, and had been given anthrax.

  I dropped the folder onto the bed.

  “Why?” Brennan was asking. It seemed inadequate, considering what we had discovered.

  “I can’t—” Betty began.

  “You can, and you will,” Brennan insisted, before a thought occurred to her. “Are we in danger here? Are these things contagious?”

  Betty shook her head. “No, they’re not. We’re all fine.”

  “They’re not fine,” I said. “Are they?”

  “Last chance,” Brennan warned, taking another step forward, gun half-raised. “Why are you doing this?”

  The fight went out of Betty’s eyes. “We’ve been researching immunities, developing... subjects that are immune to diseases.”

  “To the Cull?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “We’re all immune to the Cull, aren’t we? I mean, immune to everything, from the common cold to the deadliest of pathogens.”

  “And what about these?” I said, indicating the beds.

  “Not all the subjects have been successful.”

  I felt sick. Jasmine, what had they made you do? This madness would have been anathema to her, against everything she believed.

  I was going to find the bastards behind all this.

  “What about that?” Fenton was asking, pointing to a sealed room beyond the last cubicle.

  “Quarantine.”

  “Contagious diseases, too?” Brennan’s lips curled into a grimace. “You people are sick.”

  “What kind of diseases?” Fenton asked, panic in his voice.

  “Influenza. Cryptoccossis. Ebola.”

  Fenton circled around Betty towards the isolation room, his morbid curiosity getting the better of him. “What about this one?”

  “That’s Mason. He’s got tuberculosis.”

  Finally, someone with a name.

  “I don’t even know what that is, but I don’t like the sound of it.” Fenton peered through the glass as if he was at a freak show.

  “How many have you got like this?” Brennan demanded.

  “Only six. The other subjects are in good health.”

  “And where are they?”

  Betty hesitated, which would only make Brennan’s trigger finger itchier.

  “You might as well tell them,” I told her. “They’ll find out in the end.”

  “Tell them?” Brennan repeated, a hint of betrayal in her voice. I didn’t get a chance to respond. There was a crunch of boots behind us.

  “Drop your weapons!” came the shout. “Right now!”

  I spun to see two guards standing in the doorway, weapons raised and ready to fire. I was still reaching for my own gun when Fenton yelled a battle cry from beside the quarantine room and unloaded his shotgun; the guard to the right was hit square in the chest and went down. His partner returned fire and Fenton’s cry became an agonised scream, bullets punching through his chest and arms.

  Brennan threw herself behind one of the curtains—as if the soft fabric would somehow shield her. That left me. Before Fenton had even hit the floor, I was crouching behind the bed, my P99 out of its holster and ready to fire. I aimed at the guard’s visor. The impact knocked his head back and he stumbled, losing his footing. I fired twice more as he fell, aiming for the body armour’s weak points. The guard grunted as he hit the floor, the helmet spinning from his head. I waited to see if he was going to get up, but he stayed down, groaning with pain. My arm extended, I crept from behind the bed, noting dark pools spreading out from beneath both guards. The man I’d shot was coughing up gore, a deep wound in his side belching out blood.

  I put him out of his misery and trained my gun on his compatriot, but he was beyond mercy, eyes staring blankly from beneath the visor.

  “Good work,” said Brennan, emerging from her hiding place. I didn’t answer. I hadn’t done it for her, and I certainly didn’t take pleasure from it. Them or us; that’s what it always came down to.

  A wet cough made me turn. Fenton was lying beside the quarantine room, which had taken a bullet to a window, cracks spider-webbing across the not-so-shatterproof glass.

  “Get me out of here,” Fenton burbled, writhing on the floor. He needn’t have worried about sickness; it was clear he wouldn’t last long.

  A set of doors on the far wall were swinging shut, Betty having got away in the confusion. I ran over to Fenton, not looking at the jagged holes in his chest or the blood flowing freely from a hole in the side of his neck. I snatched his shotgun, reaching inside his vest for spare shells. He grabbed my arm with bloodied hands.

  “You’ve got to help me.”

  I shook him off, not giving him another glance as I made for the door.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Brennan called after me.

  “To find that girl,” I replied, not waiting for her permission as I pushed my way through the doors, “before she brings more guards. You check the rest of this floor.”

  A quick glance up and down the corridor revealed I was alone.

  Of course, Betty could live a long and happy life for all I cared. There was only one person I wanted to find, and until then, I had a job to do.

  I ran up the corridor, heading towards a stairwell. Behind me I could still hear Fenton whimpering until a single shot silenced him forever.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CURE

  GUN SHOTS.

  There were gun shots in the building.

  But who was firing the guns?

  I ran out of the la
b, racing back to the children, who looked to me with more emotion in their eyes than I had ever seen.

  Fear.

  “Did you hear that?” Allison asked.

  Wright didn’t wait for me to answer. “We need to move.”

  He was right. Of course he was. Everything was slotting into place.

  He was here, in the base. He’d come for me, and together we could do this. Together.

  Like it was meant to be.

  I flashed my best reassuring smile at the children and herded them forward.

  “That’s right. Let’s get everyone down to the bunker.”

  Allison’s eye fell on the briefcase.

  “What’s that?”

  “Notes,” I said, surprised at how easy the lies were coming.

  “You can do this,” Olive whispered in my ear. “Eyes and teeth. Eyes and teeth.”

  Wright looked past me, towards the lab. “What about Eckstein?”

  “He’s going to follow us down. We’ve lost contact with Lam. Stefan’s co-ordinating the resistance, at least until we get the children to safety.”

  “Are we not safe here?” Ruth asked, the slightest of tremors in her throat.

  Allison jumped to my rescue. “You’re safe with us. That’s our job, isn’t it? Keeping you safe.”

  “What about the codes?” Wright asked as we shepherded the children along. “If the computer has locked us out...”

  My mind whirled. God, he was right. Assuming we got down there, could we even get in?

  Olive spoke up beside me. “The bunker works on an isolated system.”

  “That’s right,” I chipped in, relieved. “I have the overrides.”

  “To what?” Allison asked.

  “The bunker’s computer.” The pressure must have been getting to her. She needed to keep up. “It’ll be fine. It’s completely separate to the main network.”

  “Allison’s losing it,” warned Olive beneath her breath. “She’s a weak link, like Eckstein was. We should get rid of her.”

  I glared at Olive, but luckily Allison hadn’t heard, her arm around Dawn, telling the girl about the games that we kept down in the bunker.

  Were there any games? I couldn’t remember—but it didn’t matter. It had strong doors; that was all I cared about. I’d get the children into the bunker and then go and find him. Bring him in safe with us.