I'd shaken my head, unable to bring myself to agree, but I could see what he was getting at. Just.
"And what if you're not helpless?" I'd said. "You've still got to… toe the fucking line. Join up, act like a piece of property, get branded like a sodding cow."
"Yes you do. Yes you do. But the only way is up. And what happens when you impress one of the hotshots, huh? Or maybe cosy-up to the Klanboss? Or kill someone in the communal bad-books?"
I'd shaken my head again.
"Promotion." He grinned. "Become a Klansman. Free to carry weapons. Free to roam. Work your way up. Maybe one day challenge for the top spot."
"And if you fuck up?"
His voice had gone quiet, all but lost behind the crackling fire.
"Then you out on your ear. And you better hope you can take care of yourself, or else find someone who can."
Talking about himself, again. Just like always.
Nate said the Klansmen wore gang colours, and let their brands heal over. They got to carry weapons and administer internal justice and expand territories and all the other bullshit war games you can imagine. They played at being generals, gladiators, law enforcers and conquistadors. They got all the best gear. They had first choice of any scav, ate the best pickings, collected on debts, upheld the Klan's integrity and generally acted big.
I told Nate I was shaking in my boots. I'm not sure if he knew I was joking.
Back to the power plant.
"I don't have a brand." I told the guards.
"You ain't a scav?" One of them ran his eyes up and down my pitiful clothing. "Look like a scav."
"Fully paid-up Klansman." I said, smiling, knocking-out my best US accent and still managing to sound (in my head, at least) like I was taking the piss.
I was.
"Yeah?" The guard said, looking like he'd already had a bad day and couldn't be arsed with it getting any worse. "What Klan?"
I thought for a moment, smiled sweetly and said:
"The Culled."
They let me through, eventually, and as I passed him by the biggest goon grumbled, half-hearted.
"No Klan business inside."
I grinned and told him to perish the thought.
As we passed the checkpoint and wound our way further into the facility, I caught Nate staring at me, like some freakish version of a pirate, uncovered eye twinkling.
He'd been carrying my pack since the airport – to spare my shoulder, he said – and now he unslung it carefully onto the floor, staring at me with a curious smile.
I wondered for the fiftieth time what he was hoping to get out of all this. Out of helping me. Out of saving my life and bringing me here.
Call me cynical, but Nate didn't strike me as the sort of guy to do something for nothing.
"Take another cigarette?" He asked.
He'd earned it. Of course he had.
Currency's currency.
"Go ahead."
But as he dipped his hands inside the pack they moved with a speed and confidence that betrayed all kinds of stuff, if you're a paranoid bastard like me. If you know what you're looking for.
Familiarity.
Confidence.
Avarice.
When he saved my life, when he made the choice to attach himself to me rather than kill me, as I lay with a dying man's blood pulsing into my veins, he'd had hours and hours to go through the bag. Was that it? Was that all there was to him staying with me?
He'd seen the goods and wanted to earn his share?
No. No that made no sense. He could have just let me bleed out, let me die there on the runway, then taken it all for himself.
What then?
That same scratching. That same itching something at the back of my mind.
Something not quite right.
Something not adding up.
"Nate."
"Mm?" He said, sparking the cigarette.
Just ask, dammit…
"Why are you helping me?"
The air smelt of salt and car fumes. For a long time, there was silence.
He watched me. Eyes unmoving.
"Thought we'd established that." He said, slowly, as if I was being ungrateful. As if I'd told him I didn't need him.
"Try again." I said, gently.
He sighed. Pursed his lips.
"I walked out on the Clergy, pal. Saved my own skin when I shoulda… shoulda died like a martyr. That's what they expect. Thoughtless obedience, you understand?"
"So?"
"So if they catch up with me, it's… It'll be…" He looked away, face fearful, and coughed awkwardly. Another long suck on the cigarette, calming his nerves.
"Anyway," he said. "I seen you in action."
"And?"
"I kept you alive, raggedy-man. Now all you got to do is return the favour."
And it was an explanation, I suppose. It made sense. It all added up.
And underneath it all the dark voice in my mind, shouting:
Don't you fucking give up, soldier.
Don't you get distracted, boy.
Don't you let things slip.
Sir, no sir, etc etc.
Nate was helping me. Because of him I was healthy enough to carry on; to get the job done; to go after it like a flaming fucking sword. Everything else was just dross. Everything else was just peripheral shit that didn't matter. Who cared why Nate was helping me? He'd given his explanation. Now move on.
Except, except, except.
Except that as Nate dropped the cigarettes back into the bag his hand paused – a split second, no more – next to the battered city map with its New York scrawl and red ink notes, and his lips twitched. A fraction. Just a fraction.
Then he caught me staring, and closed up the pack with a friendly smile, and led me further inside the power plant.
I took the pack and shouldered it myself.
"How you feeling?" He said, as we walked. "Got your strength back? Lot of blood you lost, back there."
Reminding me. Keeping me indebted.
Not subtle, Nate.
"I'm peachy." I told him, a little colder than I'd meant.
Basic training, year two:
Call in favours. Get people good and beholden. Make friends. Make the fuckers owe you one.
But don't you let yourself owe anyone anything. You hear me, soldier? Don't you get yourself in arrears. Don't you feel obliged to take care of anyone.
People are parasites, boy. They see something strong, they clamp on.
They slow you down.
They complicate shit.
"Just peachy," I mumble-repeated, morose.
CHAPTER SEVEN
By then, the TV broadcasts were getting random.
The signal itself was okay. Would continue to be for another year or two, up until the power died and the generators sucked dry on fuel and all the diehards up at White City gave up. By which time barely anyone had a TV left working anyway.
But at the start, loud and clear, picture-perfect, 100% dross.
Mostly it was repeats. A computer governed the scheduling, I guessed, to cover holes and overruns. Endless episodes of Only Fools and Horses, long-gone seasons of Porridge and The Good Life, a smattering of game shows whose contestants won or lost years before. Friends reruns, over and over and over and over, and anyone who gave a shit waited in vain for an episode called 'The One Where Everyone Dies of an Unknown Flesh-Digesting Virus.'
No one was making anything new. No documentaries about the present emergency. No one had the time or energy to programme the channels.
Everyone was too busy staying alive.
This was at the beginning. This was during The Cull itself, as The Blight swept the country, as the infrastructure gave way like a dam made of salt and all the comfortable little certainties – advertising, street-sweepers, hotdog stalls, the Metro newspaper on the underground, discount sales, pirated DVDs, free samples in supermarkets, full vending machines – all the little frills you never fucking noticed, just slo
wly…
…went away.
Except the news. Sometimes, anyway. "God Bless the BBC!" People would say, as they passed in the street, tripping on bloody bodies and dead riot cops. Sometimes days would piss past with nothing – no bulletins at the top of the hour, no "we-interrupt-this-antique-comedy-to-bring-you-breaking-news" – and out in the rain all the uncertain crowds who couldn't work out why they weren't coughing and dying like everyone else were all anxiety and confusion, waiting beside the screens. But once in a while… once in a while.
I imagined a skeleton crew, struggling on bravely at Television Centre; sleeping and living in its ugly bulges just to get the word out. I imagined them feeling pretty good about themselves, like the fireman who goes above and beyond to save a crying kid, like an artist who doesn't sleep for a week to get the right tones, the right shades, the right effects. Like the soldier who keeps going, who never gives up, no matter what.
In a civilised – and I use the word with the appropriate levels of irony – world, news is just another commodity. It so rarely affects you. It so rarely intersects with the sheltered, blinkered universe of your real world. It's just another entertainment. Another distant work of fiction (or as good as) to be picked apart and discussed in the local boozer, over tea or coffee, sat on the train, wherever.
The Cull changed all that. The Cull made it so everyone was living the news, all the time. Suddenly all the people – the quiet little nobodies who called themselves 'normal' and never made a fuss – knew what it was like to be a native of Baghdad, or an earthquake widow, or a disgraced politician. Suddenly they all knew what it was like to switch on the box and hear all about themselves, their own world, their own shitty lives, discussed in the same autocue-serious tone as every other dismal slice of bad news.
It must have been a weird sensation.
(Not for me, though. I'd been making the news for years, one way or another. And I mean 'making'. Some weeks it felt like foreign affairs correspondents would've been out of a job but for me and mine, though they didn't know it. And no one ever said my name.)
On this particular day, the eagerness to receive fresh information was stronger than ever. All throughout the blistered wastes of London, little knots of people had formed – their clothes not yet raggedy, but getting there; their faces not yet malnourished and gaunt, but getting there – to crowd around flickering sets in front rooms and electronics shops, tolerating the dismal repeats on the off-chance of a new bulletin.
Two days ago, they'd mentioned the bombs falling in America. Rumours of atomic strikes, attacks all across the world, missiles going up and tumbling back down, EM pulses like technological plagues and supertech 'Star Wars' defences misfiring; farting useless interceptors into lightning storms and spitting heat seekers into the sea.
When they'd made that announcement – a couple of days before – it had been tricky to know how much was confirmed and how much was fabrication. Concocted, one suspected, by the dishevelled creature sat behind the news-desk, staring in terror at the trembling camera. It was difficult to imagine the usual BBC specimens – bolt upright, faces slack, Queen's English spoken with a crisp enunciation that bordered on the ridiculous – stammering and coughing quite so much as the nervous girl huddled behind her sheaf of papers, as she told an entranced London that nuclear Armageddon was right around the corner, then sipped carefully at her water.
It had been a tense couple of days, since.
I sat it all out in the flat. It had changed since that gloomy day when I got the text, when the removal guys failed to show up, when the ambulances streaked past one after another. Now the fish tank lay smashed on the floor, the CDs were all off the shelf in a heap, a couple of pot plants were turning slowly brown with their stalks broken and roots unearthed, and the front door sported a few splintered little holes where I'd shot it – for no reason other than to let the neighbours know I was armed.
I'd had a tantrum or two, that's all.
The phone hadn't rung. There were no more text messages. Nothing.
Oh, and, PS: nuclear bombs may be about to fall.
Not the best week of my life.
The point was, on this day, when the catchphrase comedy was blissfully interrupted and the serious little NEWSFLASH screen cut-in without announcement or music, pretty-much every poor beleaguered fucker in the entire city leaned a little closer to the set, and held their breath.
It was a new face behind the news desk – even younger than the last one, with an untidy mop of hair and a thick pair of glasses that reflected the shimmering blue of the autocue off-puttingly – and he cleared his throat agonisingly before beginning.
What he said had nothing whatsoever to do with bombs.
"Good afternoon," he said. I almost laughed. "A UN-sponsored team of researchers based in the United States have today released a statement regarding the unknown sickness that is now estimated to have struck two thirds of the countries of the World, and shows no sign of abating. Despite the poor quality of the signal, agencies still in contact with the BBC across the Atlantic have confirmed it to be genuine, though its source is as-yet unknown.
"According to the report, the disease targets particular biological conditions with a precision formerly unknown in medical science. Referred to by the unnamed author of the report as the 'AB-Virus,' the infection – which is airborne and requires no physical contact to transmit – attacks red blood cells at an unprecedented rate; causing muscular, respiratory and cardiac failure within days."
A cut-rate graphic appeared on the screen: a crude image of eight identical human silhouettes, in two rows of four columns. Headers across the top of the table read A, B, AB and O, whilst the rows were marked with simple mathematical symbols for positive and negative.
"Oh shit…" I whispered. The penny was beginning to drop.
"Each person," the voice continued, settling into a sort of cod-documentary narration, "possesses one of four distinct types of blood – known as phenotypes. These are characterised by the various protein markers, or 'antigens', upon the surface of each red blood cell. So, people of phenotype 'A' have A-antigens," here the first column of the table lit-up in lurid yellow, "and people of phenotype 'B' have B-antigens. Those whose blood-type is 'AB' have antigens of both varieties, whilst those with no antigens at all belong to phenotype 'O'."
In each case the strip of yellow highlighting clunked its way along the table. I felt like I was watching one of those godawful educational videos they used to crack-out in biology lessons at school, with the unconvincing sexual metaphors and the pulpy innards of rats and frogs.
"The practical effect of this system is to determine what blood-types are safely viable for transfusion into medical patients. Patients of blood type 'A,' for example, cannot be safely given blood of any phenotype containing 'B' antigens and vice-versa."
The voice drew a breath. It was hardly compelling viewing, but I didn't envy the poor bastard delivering it. It was like 'Doomsday-By-Boring-Science.'
I guess even then, at the back of my mind, knowing as I did that I hadn't felt a twinge of sickness, and being all too familiar with my own medical stats, I knew what was coming.
"The categorisation is further complicated," the voice droned, "by the presence in most people's blood of a further protein marker: the so-called 'rhesus' antigen." Here the entire upper row illuminated, like a bad version of a Connect-Four game show. "Any person with Rhesus-positive blood cannot viably donate to those with Rhesus negative blood, whose bodies contain natural antibodies to defend against the antigen."
I caught a sudden mental picture of filthy people all across London, clustered into makeshift bomb-shelters, trading bewildered glances and muttering "Wassefucken' talkin' baht?"
The newsman continued, a little shakily.
"The UN report makes it clear that the virus, once contagion has occurred, will specifically target red blood cells bearing antigens of any type. So any person of phenotypes A, B, or AB; or of Rhesus-positive blood, is s
usceptible to infection."
On the screen, the little graphic changed, a crude red 'X' appearing upon each and every cell within the table, except for the last one.
"Subtle." I said to nobody.
The camera cut back to the guy behind the desk. He looked tired, and someone had nipped-in to yank off his glasses during the off-screen monologue, so now he was squinting comically at the autocue.
"If the report is correct," he said, "less than seven percent of the population of the United Kingdom – those of phenotype O-Negative – are safe from infection."
He coughed quietly, glanced off-camera for a moment, and then licked his lips. He knew what was coming.
"The report ends… The report ends with a summary of the research team's attempts to develop a treatment for the 'AB-Virus'. Viewers… Uh. Some viewers may find the following audio file disturbing."
I laughed again, bitter.
"Yeah…" I said. "Yeah. Because telling nine-out-of-fucking-ten people they're going to die isn't at all disturbing, mate, is it?"
The poor kid was up out of his chair – face crumpled in disgust – before the image even blurred away into a bland red screen with the astin 'UN RESEARCH REPORT.'
A man's voice – American – came out of nowhere:
"As to our findings regarding the… ugh… the… hnh…" A thick bout of coughing broke through the signal; ugly sounds of spittle flying and phlegm being swallowed, which lapsed by degrees into silence. Machinery and murmuring voices sounded quietly in the background. The voice started again, dry and uncomfortable. "-the treatment of the virus. We've… We've found nothing. No way to stop it. It obeys all these… these rules we don't understand, but even so… every division is a… a new strain. You treat one – kill it, even – the next one's different. It… hnnk… it can't be sto…"
The voice broke off again, the coughing far uglier this time, interrupted with staccato grunts of pain and short curses. It softened slightly – the speaker moving away from the microphone – but the obvious pain of the fit was hardly diminished, and I found myself wincing in sympathy.
And then everything changed.
It was only quiet, but I heard it. There's no doubt. No fraction of uncertainty in my mind.
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