The Culled ac-1

by Simon Spurrier

  Somewhere ahead, in a copse of spindly trees, a great cheer went up. It seemed to hang in the air. Hundreds of hands clapping, voices laughing and shouting, and a single booming tone raised above the others. The rodent-like people nearby seemed to be gravitating towards it, sticking to little groups of two or three for as long as possible, then awkwardly mingling as the numbers locked together. Hiawatha saw luminous tags hanging above each one's head, wrapping ethereal chains and brambles around each neck. He understood without knowing how that these vision were brands declaring each persons' ownership. Each to a different tribe; like the Beaver-Lodge tattoo on his own left shoulder, but far harsher – symbols not of familial ties but of property, like a name tag sewn into valuable clothes. The peoples' cautious movements marked them out as rivals, awkwardly picking their way into someone else's territory at the mercy of their curiosities, unaccustomed to mixing.

  Hiawatha began to understand this was unprecedented. A crowd like this; a gathering like this. Hopeful glances traded between bitter enemies, slaves electing a new master…

  In his mind, there was a blanket of gold hanging above the park.

  It was all deeply peculiar.

  Every now and again a better-dressed man or woman – most in red, with feathers pinned in their hair – would point and shout accusations, snarling "you fucking Globies get outta the park!" or "Gulls only! Gull scavs only! No fucking Mickies! No fucking Strips!" Their shouts meant little to Hiawatha, and went mostly ignored anyway. Eventually the crowd just surged around them, and they wandered off, forlorn, towards the edge of the park, casting hateful glances back towards the source of all the cheering.

  He began to catch snatches of conversation as he picked his way through the trees, letting the cheers grow up around him; feeling the excitement of the hordes. But what little he overheard seemed nonsensical at best, and he scowled and forged on through the storm of random commentary.

  "…figures he told 'em if they wasn't with him, they was out on they fuckin' ear, man…"

  "…got fresh rat here, fresh rat, barter for clothing, barter for burns… fresh rat…"

  "…says any 'n all welcome. Never seen nothing like, man, and I bin here years…"

  "…wassa wassa wassa fucking Liiiiimey? Never hearda no Liiiiiimey…"

  "… sent the rest to tear down the territory poles… got plans, he says…"

  "…rabbit meat and rats, rats and rabbits, get 'em while they're hot…"

  And so on.

  On the shores of a truly revolting pond (which formed a great miserable face in Hiawatha's mind, moaning plaintively for aid) he found the stranger; stood on a ramshackle podium built of logs and sheets, set-up in front of a great ghastly building that sprawled across the lawns like a living ooze.

  He also found the largest crowd he'd ever seen.

  In the ravages of his memory – from a time before his mind was prised open by the expedient application of mystical mumbo-jumbo and hardcore perception-altering pot, from a time even before the great Cull – he remembered concerts he'd visited, student rallies, great gatherings where all personal differences were thoughtlessly disregarded in the shared reverence of a single band; a single demagogue, a single voice.

  This was like that.

  But more so.

  The stranger spoke surprisingly softly. He had the look of a character unused to such attention; far better suited to the quiet application of force in secret, covert places. Hiawatha guessed that under other circumstances the man would have passed for utterly unremarkable. A forgettable face, cropped hair, a physique neither tall nor short, vastly over inflated or ultra-weedy. Just a guy with a crazy accent and a hopelessly British manner, whose words managed nonetheless to silence a crowd thousands strong.

  If it hadn't been for the blood drying in thick streaks down his cheek, the matted tangle of gore-splattered rags on his back – once patched in every conceivable colour, now stained to a uniform brown-grey – and the glossy rifle hung nonchalantly over his shoulder, nobody would have looked at him twice.

  "Where," the man said, into a silence as deep and dark as the sky above his head, where the QuickSmog oozed out of the stratosphere, "are the Children?"

  Hiawatha shivered.

  No, no… scratch that.

  The whole fucking crowd shivered.

  As he stood there, playing the reaction like a pro, the stranger was patched-up and fussed-over by an elderly black man wearing the most ridiculous clothes Hiawatha had ever seen. It was all part of the spectacle, he supposed; holding an ever-growing host spellbound.

  "I don't see them. Do you?" The stranger glanced about theatrically. "Look. Look at you. Not a single kid in the whole place."

  Here and there people muttered, but whether in anger or fear Hiawatha couldn't tell. The bright stars above the crowd – figments of his imagination, he was pretty sure – had turned to an angry scarlet, pulsing along with Hiawatha's own heartbeat.

  "I'll tell you where the kids are, shall I?"

  He smiled, almost paternal, just a little too sweet to be genuine.

  "They're sleeping. Just over there." He nodded off to the horizon, to the south east. The crowd muttered just a little louder. "Like little angels, they are. Come from all over the world, the dears. Sleeping-off a hard day of… of dutifully learning their scriptures. Preparing for big things. Getting ready to… lead the world into a new age of glorious civilisation. Right? That's right. That's where they are."

  He sounded sincere. It was hard to believe he was being sarcastic, hard to believe he was forming dangerous words, but the crowd were off-balance. What was this? Rebellion or respect-paying?

  And then the stranger leaned down low to the front rows, dipped his head so he was staring from beneath grimy eyebrows, and shouted so loud that everyone jumped.

  "Bollocks! Fucking bollocks!"

  Hiawatha didn't know what bollocks were, but he got the gist. Everyone got the gist.

  "If they're locked away," the stranger growled, "in that… that fucking prison, why don't we see them? Why do they never come out? Didn't you people ever stop and think? Didn't you ever smell a bloody rat?"

  Somewhere near Hiawatha, a couple of rows to his left, a woman started crying. It was a mystifying reaction. In any other place, at any other time, he would have expected the crowd to rise-up against the sanctimonious prick giving them a dressing-down; to react with fury at the open-blooded accusations.

  But no. No, this crowd was a chastised kid. A naughty child who knew it deserved to be punished.

  The stranger rung his hands together. "Didn't you ever… Didn't y…" his voice tailed-off, lost to the frustration. He stood silently for a moment, and Hiawatha wondered if he'd run out of energy, if the anger gobbling him up had overtaken him.

  But:

  "Fuck!" He shouted. "Fuck – come on! Even if those shits-in-dresses are telling the truth, even if your sons and daughters are hidden away in there, don't you tell me you're happy. Don't you tell me you handed them over with a… smile and a fucking song in your heart. Don't you tell me that!

  "No, no. You gave them up because you were told to. I get it. Because… because maybe if you said 'no' they would've just been taken anyway. Because you're nobodies. Because the shits in the Klans with the… the guns and the drugs, they said that's what you scavs do. That's what you're for. Right? And maybe you told yourself over and over it was for the best, that the kids would be going somewhere better, somewhere more hopeful… But people, I don't believe that. And I don't believe you believe it either.

  "Here's the truth, ladies and gents. These people… these fucking scum…" and here the stranger raised a crooked finger towards a line of men stood at the back of the podium, held in place by scrawny scavs with knives and guns "-they've.

  "Stolen.

  "Your.

  "Children."

  Silence.

  Thick, heavy, accusatory silence. On the stage the hostages shuffled their feet and traded glances. Scarlet eye-rin
gs hiding furtive fear and the first glimmerings of tears. One of them – the scrawniest, whose face was contorted not with fear but with hatred – wore ruby-red sunglasses, as if to protect his eyes from the moonlight's glare.

  Their robes had been stripped away, their weapons taken.

  Neo-Clergy, fallen from grace.

  Hiawatha almost snarled with joy to see them so humiliated.

  And then, as had happened in every crowd since creation began, the prerequisite asshole at the front opened his mouth.

  "For the glory of the New Dawn!" Came a shrill voice; a scrawny man in stained rags leaping up and down, stabbing a finger towards the podium. He had a scarlet tattoo around his left eye, and a pistol raised in his right hand. "Your selfishness betrays you!" he shrieked, drawing a bead on the stranger. "Your wickedness shall…"

  He never got the chance to fire. A blade snick-snackered in the crowd somewhere behind him, hands reached out to snake around his neck and his arms, and within an instant the mob had swallowed him up and closed over him. His cries went muffled, then tailed-away into silence. The crowd's head twisted, as one, back towards the stranger.

  He sighed.

  "Any other morons?" He said, letting his eyes rove, like a teacher peering across a rowdy classroom. "Any other stupid bastards? Anyone else thinks their kids are better-off cuddling a bible instead of their own flesh and blood? Anyone else want to tell me they did the right thing? They like it how it is? The Klans and the killings and the fucking Tags? Anyone else want to tell me they believe the Clergy?"

  He was almost shouting. Voice hoarse. Anger dribbling over his eyeballs and into his words.

  "Because, people, they're building us all a better tomorrow. Remember? That's what they say. And wouldn't it just be the best thing in the world to believe them? Wouldn't it just be so easy to shout 'hallelujah!'? To pray every night and… go with the flow? To feel like you did the right thing, letting them take your kids? Wouldn't that be the dog's-sodding-bollocks?

  "Too right it would."

  He spat on the floor. He took a deep breath.

  And he drew a long knife out of his pocket.

  The crowd stopped breathing.

  "But believing it – really and truly, I mean – in your guts, people. That's a tough call. That's a tricky business. And I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say I really don't think there are many of us who do. Not really. Not deep down.

  "So let's find out. Let's cut the crap."

  He smiled.

  "Let's see how many of you really love the Clergy. Let's see who's willing to stop me."

  And he turned to the line of men, those captive Choirboys stood behind him, and he smiled.

  "I came here from across the ocean," he said loud enough for everyone to hear but aimed directly at the hostages. "It was hard fucking work, let me tell you. But I came. I didn't let them stop me, your pals in London, though they tried. I had to kill all sorts of people on the way. And all because I wanted to ask you a question, matey, face-to-face. Nice and simple."

  He leaned down towards the first goon.

  "What I wanted to ask you, is:

  "Where are my children, you kidnapping psychotic indoctrinating pieces of cancerous shit?"

  The goon stared at him. The goon spat in his face with a sort of doing-it-by-the-script doggedness.

  So the stranger cut out his throat.

  The crowd made a noise. Not quite a cheer. But definitely not a scream of horror.

  The man went down, his legs shivered and thrashed, blood oozed, and in Hiawatha's eyes something dry and unpleasant fluttered up from the corpse to lose itself in the spreading QuickSmog.

  The stranger turned back to the crowd. No one made a move. No one breathed.

  Hiawatha could see the lie. He could see the red taint of dishonesty hanging above the stranger, glittering and mewing like a mutant cat. This man, this unstoppable Brit with his boring face and his quiet voice, he had no interest in the scavs gathered in Central Park. He didn't care one bit about punishing the wicked. He couldn't give a damn for doing the right thing.

  All he had was an agenda – whatever the hell it was – and Hiawatha could see, burning bright in his third eye, that this man would do anything to get what he wanted. He would lie about an abducted family, just to make a crowd of allies empathise with his anger. He would slaughter his way through as many hostages as it took, to show them they didn't need to fear the Choirboys.

  He wouldn't stop until he got his way, and whilst Hiawatha couldn't bring himself to admire such apathetic selfishness, such casual manipulation, it just so happened that the Limey bastard's goals and his own were – briefly – aligned.

  So he smiled, and started to clap.

  And the whole crowd picked up the applause.

  Later, the second goon went the same way, though his resolve left him as the stranger's question went unanswered and the knife blurred upwards towards his throat. He cried out wordlessly, gurgled, then dropped.

  The fifth man in the line – the wiry one with the thick glasses, whose aura seemed to crackle with an orange edge – shouted something to the two remaining thugs. Hiawatha caught the words 'reward' and 'heaven', and could imagine the rest.

  The town goons sprang forwards, rushing the scavs who held them at gunpoint, shouting and snarling as their naked flesh rippled in time to their meaty swipes. The black man with the bandages dived to the floor, hands over his head; the stranger shouted – more angry than surprised – and the scavs opened fire.

  The crowd shuddered. Muzzlefire lent the whole drama a lightning-storm animation, and between freeze-flashes specks of blood appeared across the faces of the crowd.

  When it was over, when the gun smoke cleared and the scavs were cooling-off and the crowd was in uproar, four naked goons lay bleeding on the stage, and the rat-like bastard with the sunglasses was gone, pushing his way through the recoiling crowd, through trees and undergrowth, shouting and laughing all the way.

  The stranger swore. Loudly.

  The crowd swore with him.

  By four in the morning it was no longer a crowd. It was an army.

  It was a tired cliche, but that didn't make it inaccurate. As Hiawatha watched, buffeted by awe and abstraction, he could think of no better description:

  It was like a tidal-wave.

  The captured AV went first, followed by the smattering of vehicles the stranger had liberated from the Red Gulls. As their new de facto leader he was more than entitled to requisition them for his own ends, but a gutsy minority of the Klansmen had reacted badly to the idea of throwing-off the feudal yoke and rising-up against the tyrants, and had holed-up inside the Gulls' base to stop anyone getting in.

  In the end, the stranger had had to kill pretty much all of them.

  Hiawatha had stayed out of the way. It wasn't time yet. He'd sat to one side, beneath the great boughs of old, dead trees, and listened to the spirit-voices whispering mournfully inside them. As the first fires started burning deep inside the Gulls' lair, he had taken the stick of blacking-paint from the bottom of his pack, and began to slowly mark his face, chanting quietly to himself, feeling the silver needle in his pocket chiming-along with his words.

  Afterwards, when the armouries were opened and their bounties distributed, the crowd didn't wait for the dawn. It was like a crusade; a great wedge of people, shifting together along empty streets, swelling as they went. A magnetic pull.

  And on the edge of the city, in Hell's Kitchen, squished up against the black waters of the East River, they faced the United Nations building, and advanced.

  He – the stranger, the man whose name no one had bothered to ask – went first. It was all deeply medieval. All deeply mythic. But as the crowd roared as one and the vehicles gunned their engines and the guards inside the compound shouted and shit themselves, it felt right.

  The AV ploughed through the main gates of the UN headquarters like a harpoon through whale meat, bullets rattling off its sides; slivers of shre
dded steel and tangled barbed-wire thrashing in its wake. Even as it sat steaming in the forecourt, dents opening-up across it, the Clergymen in the guard-nest were realising their mistake. Betraying their positions in the darkness with tapered candles of muzzle-fire.

  The second wave of vehicles thundered through, guns firing. Sandbag-packed nests ruptured, grenades tumbled from heavy-launchers and choked out red-black plumes of soot and smoke and people dying. Somewhere up on the roof of the Secretariat a heavy auto opened fire – thundering its payload down into the crowd – but at such a range and in such darkness its accuracy was far from perfect, and the spooky trails of tracer-fire stitched themselves neatly through panicky Clergymen as evenly as rioting scavs. Eventually someone had the presence of mind to order the ceasefire, and the artillery fell silent.

  In odd corners, fires took hold. Sparks billowed and roiled, and beckoned with tongues of white light at the crowds waiting in the shadows, eyes gleaming. It was like an invitation.

  The horde swarmed from the streets, in every hand a weapon, in every mouth a scream, and everything went straight to hell. Gunfire above grenade-blasts above human roars above dying screams above engine purrs and the horrified gasps of unprepared Clergymen.

  Cy had forewarned them, maybe. But still. But still.

  Yeah, Hiawatha thought. Just like a tidal wave.

  It surged and boiled, fuelled by years of bottled anger. It lapped against the walls of the compound and spun in eddies of violence. Whirlpools with isolated Choirboys at their centres, screaming out as the mob circled and slashed and shot. It frothed at its edges; the glowing foam of muzzleflash and the warm spume of impact-craters, spitting dust and mortar and blood.

  The AV gave up the ghost in a spectacular fireball, fuel-tanks finally punctured, hefting itself in warped fragments off the crowd to spin lazily in the air; but by then the crew were well clear, and its messy end served only as a distraction to the true violence, close and personal and vicious. In dark corners men and women pushed blunt blades into robed sides, struggled muzzle-to-muzzle to bring poorly-tended pistols to bear on the thugs who had terrorised their worlds, beat and battered with crowbars and tyre-irons at the tattooed faces of the pious pricks.