The Culled Part 33

There was someone in a wheelchair with them, and it struck me that every now and again the crowds' gesturing hands would freeze, their heads would twist to stare down, and then a fresh wave of nodding and sc.r.a.ping and bowing, in response to whatever the chair bound figure had said.

John-Paul, then.

The group disappeared behind the great stone column in an excited bundle, and I waited for them to emerge from the other side, pleased to be watching something mildly diverting. They never reappeared. They'd vanished.

"Huh." I said to myself. Nate glanced at me, briefly, as if maybe he thought I was about to talk to him.

I looked away.

My a.r.s.e hurt. More specifically, my b.u.t.tock hurt where a tiny silver pin had been rammed into it, and every now again I felt a fresh dribble of blood down the back of my leg. Every time I moved it stung, like it was worming deeper into the muscle, and every time that happened it made me think of Rick.

Tumbling off into smoke and death with a smile.

And that made me think of Malice.

Dumped, thoughtlessly, over the edge of the pier where the chopper landed, when one of the Choirboy crew bothered to tell Cy she looked like she'd croaked during the flight.

And that made me think of Bella.

And that made me think of... of something else.

And that made me think of all sorts of s.h.i.+t, which made the hole in my stomach burn and writhe, and my teeth clench, and my eyes sting, and- You get the idea.

So I stopped thinking about the pain in my a.r.s.e and ignored the voice growling - no, shrieking - in my skull: Don't you f.u.c.king give up, soldier!

Dull, dull, dull.

The ferry docked. The trucks rolled off. Someone shouted at someone else.

Gulls wheeled overhead on smoky updrafts. A hundred miles south and east, a bunch of dead Iroquois were going hard in the sun.

The chopper headed back across the lake. Somewhere in the distance came a short burst of gunfire, and I figured the goons must have found a local or two after all. The chopper wheeled off on a new course, vanis.h.i.+ng into the smoke.

Time stretched on.

My a.r.s.e continued to hurt.

In my head, Rick continued to tumble backwards, smiling.

Malice continued to sink and burn beneath the waters.

Spuggsy squished, Tora dragged off to be squabbled-over by human animals, Moto shot.

Bella screaming and thumping like a boneless doll against the insides of the pla- "You think they'll kill us?"

Nate was looking at me. There was something like... pleading, in his eyes. Something that cut through all the s.h.i.+t, all the anger at how he'd used me, tagged along to get his fix, lied. Something that whispered frostily in my ear: But didn't you use him too?

"Yeah," I said, not unkindly. "Probably."

I looked back at the monument. It was something to stare at, I guess. Didn't move, didn't change: just stood there, defying the wind, a granite p.r.i.c.k raping the sk- "Whoa," said Nate.

The monument moved.

At the top, the tip of the great upturned basilica creaked, squealed in protest, then opened.

"Well there's a thing," I mumbled.

It was like a flower blossoming. Petals rattling into place, unoiled pistons groaning deep inside the rock. Without being entirely sure when it changed from one to the other, I suddenly wasn't looking at an enormous phallus any more.

I was looking at a b.l.o.o.d.y gigantic broadcasting dish.

And then Cy was standing in front of me, sneering.

"Time to go," he rasped.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

With each new room, a new calamity of memory. A new disastrous, deadly (wonderful) explosion of sights and smells and sounds, bubbling-up from the past, like liquid pouring into a mould; taking its time to slip into the deepest recesses.

Or, like dust blowing free from a hidden treasure.

Like cataracts dissolving.

His Holiness the Abbot John-Paul Rohare Baptiste allowed his minions to wheel him through the great, secret facility beneath South Ba.s.s Island, saying nothing, and felt his memories slither back one by one. They gathered pace the deeper he went, with each new level, each new string of concrete walls, each new dim light fixture that flickered and illuminated as it sensed movement.

Until eventually he remembered it all, like it had just been yesterday.

He'd arrived here, on the Island, five years ago: angry and bitter. It was below him, he'd thought. A man of his experience - of his record - sent to keep an eye on a bunch of backroom nerds.

Sergeant John P. Miller, the rea.s.signment form had said. NATO Liaison Officer.

It should have said: f.u.c.king nursemaid.

But still the facility had been a pleasant surprise. Hidden away beneath the monument, below vaults supposedly for the Lake Eerie dead - in fact crammed with generators and feeds from the solar panels above - down creaking elevator shafts and plunging stairwells. Always the drip-drip-drip of condensed water.

Oh-so-very exciting. Oh-so-very impressive. It almost made up for the ignominy.

Here and now in the present, his a.s.sistants wheeled him past doors marked LAB#1, LAB#2, LAB#3...

He didn't like using the chair - it created the wrong impression - but it'd been an exhausting journey from the city and he wasn't as spry as he was. He was forty nine years old. He looked approximately seventy.

This was living with anaphylaxis. Constant pain.

This was living with AIDS, and more drugs than he could count administered by Clergy-doctors who'd have their t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es ripped-off and fed to them if they breathed a word to anyone.

This was three anti-coagulation shots every day, and antihistamine solutions three times a week.

This was the AB-Virus, eating his blood cells every second, staved-off only by communing with the divine.

This was living by numbers.

This place, it'd been a nuclear bunker once. So his superiors told him. Secondary or tertiary governmental; an alternative to the presidential chambers beneath Was.h.i.+ngton and NY. Somewhere safe to rule an irradiated country. Somewhere cosy for a ragged government to sip clean water and make comforting addresses.

The whole thing had been converted at short-notice to the requirements of the UN team. Dormitories and armouries stripped-out, curious equipment s.h.i.+pped-in for days on end. 'Project Pandora', they'd called it. An international attempt to stop the virus in its steps.

Out loud, as his wheelchair squeaked its way down the ramp to the sub-third floor, he mumbled: "When all the evil spills out, there's still a... glimmer of hope..."

Pandora's box.

His chief minder must have heard him. An effete man named Marcus, good for very little but wheeling a chair and kissing a.r.s.e, he gave John-Paul a concerned glance and crouched down to address him, unintentionally condescending. John-Paul approved of ignorance and ineffectuality. The soldiery were all very well; the cardinals and their units served a purpose, but one couldn't trust them. They were too full of their own ideas. Too focused.

"Your holiness?" The man said softly. "Did you say something?"

"Mm? No, no..." he closed his eyes and let the memories absorb him again, enjoying the concern on the man's face. "Everything's fine, Marcus."

He remembered wondering, at the time, why they'd sent the team here. Why not to some scholarly lab in New York? Why not out in the open?

And then the riots had started. They'd listened to the news every day before work, gathered together in the social-room. Riots and police actions and union strikes, and emba.s.sies closing-down at a rate of knots.

Then the diplomatic wrangling.

Then the rumours of Def Con escalation.

Then the standoffs and false alarms and real-actual-genuine-fear-of-Armageddon type talks, and suddenly everyone was living in a bad disaster film, and Sergeant John P. Miller became very very grateful indeed that his superiors had sent him deep underground.

Even then, he'd been bored out of his brain. The team's progress was just so slow.

No - correction: the team's progress was non-existent. It just happened to take them forever to find out how impotent they were.

Outside the world went to h.e.l.l in a handcart, and inside... inside test-tubes clinked and microscopes whirred and men and women in white lab-coats made fussy notes with fussy biros. A lot of them had families. A lot of them looked unwell.

More rooms glided past the wheelchair, now circuiting the fifth level. COMMS, RESOURCES, the door names went, RECORDS, STUDIO, ENGINEERING...

The place was enormous. He remembered thinking that, too, all those years ago. Far too big for the research team. They'd set themselves up in their little corners and got on with it, and with nothing to do but file reports that said 'NO PROGRESS' he'd taken to wandering, exploring, poking in the dark.

A mothballed war room, with its displays darkened and tactical consoles disconnected.

A water purification plant.

A dozen storerooms marked NON-PERISHABLE. All empty.

And the communications room. And the broadcast suite.

And the Presidential Address studio. Plush red and blue walls. Elegantly draped flags. TV cameras jacketed in plastic wraps and rubber covers.

That was it. That was what brought him back here, now. In the flash of a triggered memory - those records unearthed from the Secretariat, presented to him by Cardinal Cy even as the doctors fussed over his bleeding skull - he'd remembered the place, the resources, the cameras and broadcasting equipment and security.

And as the exodus convoy had slipped away from the overrun UN headquarters - lost, futureless, despairing - that crumpled file from all those years ago had been like a bolt from the heavens. A sign. In that perfect instant he'd known, clearly and immediately, where to take his Clergy to find safety and security.

It was perfect. An island with its own tiny airstrip. Easily defendable. Perfectly secure quarters for the luminaries of the sect. Plentiful housing for the soldiery and devotees. Vast holding-rooms below ground where anything could be conducted in secret and silence. Airports a mere spit away in Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit...

And the studio. It couldn't be any better.

Halfway down the main hallway of the fifth sub-level a priest stood waiting, dressed strangely. He wore not robes but overalls - oil-stained and heavy with tool pockets - but in deference to his spiritual allegiance they were pale grey with a scarlet circle on the breast, and the same pattern tattooed over his left eye.

Marcus waved towards him with an introductory nod. "Chief Engineer Maclusky, your holiness."

"Mm. Yes? Yes?"

The man dipped in a bow that combined deference, religious awe and sphincter-tearing-terror. John-Paul resisted a smirk.

"Studio's up and running, your holiness. Cameras work fine. Shocking, frankly, but then again they built this s.h.i.+t to last and I guess we can't be surpr..." The man stopped. His eyes snapped wide as his brain caught up with his rambling and noticed what it'd just said. "Uh... E-excuse my French, your holiness, i-it's n..."

"Please go on, child."

"W-well, uh."

"The cameras"

"Yeah, yeah, well... they ain't maybe as advanced as we're used to, but..."

"That doesn't matter. We can find new ones, eventually. As long as we can broadcast."

"Yeah, yeah." Another mad little bow. "The dish needs some tuning - but no problem. Up and running whenever you want it."

"Good. Very good. One hour."

The man's eyes bugged out again. 'Whenever you want it' clearly hadn't included 'right now.'

"One h...! B-but..."

"That's a problem?"

"B-but... uh, no. No, your holiness, no. It's just... I a.s.sumed you'd want to wait for Sunday. H-how will people know we're going to be broadcasting?"

John-Paul treated the sweating man to a look that contrived to inform him his a.s.sumptions weren't worth a s.c.r.o.t.u.mful of diseased s.p.u.n.k, then broke into a friendly little smile.

He liked to keep people off-balance.

"Aha." He said. "The people aren't my first concern, my child. The Cells need to know we've moved. London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing... All those little mini-churches, happily ferrying the Divine Initiates to LaGuardia. What will they do, I wonder, when they get there?"

The terrified man shook his head. He dripped.