I considered letting him live. Just a kid, probably. Some speccy troll inducted into the Clergy sometime since The Cull. Looking for strength in numbers. Never imagining he'd wind up huddled against an economy-class aeroplane seat, on its side, with a psychopath who'd just gone through his hardass pals like a flaming sword.
Poor little bastard. I almost felt sorry for him.
Then I remembered why I was here, remembered the signal and the five long years, and the pain and the mourning, and the deep dark voice Don't you fucking give up, soldier!
– and I stepped forwards and shot the little rat through the top of his skull, so his brains slapped out of his jawline like snot into a hanky.
Sir, no sir, etc etc.
Outside the plane, beyond the sputtering of tiny fires up and down the runway, everything was still. Somewhere distant a couple of seabirds cawed, reminding me – with an ignorable spurt of melancholy – of London. But otherwise, nothing.
I lurked, vaguely combat poised, and stared out across the landing strip; torn and pocked by the plane's passage. It shivered here and there with a faint luminosity where fuel had spilled and ignited, like a fiery reflection of the calm waters stretching away beyond. The idea of sprinting across the tarmac – strafing to confuse the bastard sniper who may or may not still be out there somewhere – and diving into the swampy morass held a sudden and unshakeable appeal. I imagined the water washing away the filth and blood that had soaked my coat; all the congealing gore that had spattered me moments before, as I moved up and down the plane with one of the cowboy's pistols, putting an end to the moans and pleas from the monk-soldiers I'd wounded.
No time for last words, no gloating, no fucking power trips. Just step-up, barrel-between-eyes, look away, squeeze trigger.
The lecturers used to call this ruthless mercy.
Second year of training. Major Farnham Dow presiding.
'It's easy – piss-easy,' he'd said, 'to feel sorry for someone you've clipped. He's lost everything. He knows he's for it. He's going to… to blub and piss himself. He's going to ask for mercy, if he can. Talk about his family, maybe. Whatever.
'The point is, the only reason he's not dead is because you missed with the first shot. It's your mistake, soldier, not his. And it doesn't change anything. Does it?
'You think he wasn't trying to kill you too? You think he'll renounce a lifetime of violence if you spare his life? Dedicate himself to charitable-bastard-causes? You think he won't shoot you in the back, if he still can, when you walk away?
'No. Don't be so fucking stupid! A wounded enemy is just a dead enemy who doesn't know it yet…'
Rationalising it and doing it were worlds apart.
I'd exited through the luggage hold, scampering across perpendicular support-struts and cargo-webbing, heading for the chasm of shattered steel and twisted, solidified slag where the forward landing-gear had been rammed upwards into the guts of the plane, tearing a long scar in the fuselage. The exit opened onto the sea side of the strip, away from the airport buildings and – I hoped – the sniper. I spent a good five minutes at the opening, darting glances left and right, sneaking out to check the roof of the wreck and retreating once again. Nothing. Either he didn't have a bead on me at all, or he was waiting for me to come out to play.
I fucking hate snipers.
I stepped out and stayed out. The air smelt of salt and ash; an acrid cocktail that seemed to ride on the light breeze rippling over the waters. The feel of sunlight caught me unprepared, a warmth I'd forgotten in the perpetual greyness of London. Ever since The Cull – ever since the bombs fell, half a world away – England's Pastures Green had become 'Mires Grey'. I once spent half an hour with another survivor – I forget his name, but he was a talented rat catcher – rambling informatively about skyburst radiation and the fucking Gulf Stream. Used to work for the Met, he said.
I tuned out thirty seconds in.
Quite how all this enabled LaGuardia airport, squatting on the watery edge of New York like a growing patch of mildew, to enjoy unbroken sunlight and cloudless skies was quite beyond me. I felt like I'd just arrived at Disneyland.
I let the desire for a dip in the water ebb away; put off by the kaleidoscopic blobs of oil smearing the surface, and the brown tint to the shoreline. With more scratches and open wounds than I cared to think about, it would be less a bath and more a proactive infection.
Enough time wasting.
I edged my way along the length of the fuselage, pressed against the sagging underside in the shadow of the plane's girth. At the cockpit I paused and shouldered the fully-loaded rifle I'd liberated from another of the Clergy goons, and clambered up onto the pitted slope, wincing as I put a little too much weight on the wounded arm. It had started bleeding softly again; one or two of the messy stitches popping open. I swore under my breath and tried to ignore it.
Dangling there like meat on a hook, staying low, I could peer through the shattered panes of the cockpit and take careful stock of the flat killing-ground beyond, spread out on the left side of the wreck.
Wide, regular, empty. No cover.
Shit.
Halfway between the edge of the still-flaming debris field and the distant airport buildings – clustered like toys around the distinctive inverted-lampshade of the control tower – a series of ramshackle sheds and lean-tos had been erected, improbably sturdy, in a rough semicircle. Cables and joists held them in place, stretched out like a high-tension big top built of plastic and wood. A railed gantry ran along their tops, marked at each end with a conning tower plated with corrugated iron. I squinted through the haze coming off the fuel-fires and made out a big sign, graffiti-texted inexpertly and tacked to each end of the rail, hanging down across the front of it all.
I felt an eyebrow ruck upwards.
The sign read: WELCOME TO THE NEW DAWN
…along with all the usual scarlet circles, colourful highlights and other assorted Neo-Clergy bollocks. The whole compound set up looked like it'd been made out of pipe-cleaners and bogrolls at the local school, then scaled up a couple of hundred times.
It was painted bright blue.
It was all a bit pathetic.
I could see the sniper now, through the chinks of shattered glass and mangled instrumentation of the cockpit, standing in full sight on the gantry. He had a loudspeaker slung on a cord across his shoulders and a seriously sexy scope-rifle cradled in his hands, at a guess an M82. I'd only even seen them in pictures.
Shit.
Above a pair of wide sunglasses – tinted ruby-red – a stupid sort of flat-cap was set jauntily on his scalp, somewhere between a beret and a devotional kippah, and his robes were several shades whiter than those of his dead colleagues. So:
The boss.
I tried to get a bead on him, squinting along the barrel of the M16, but at this range I might as well blow snot. He had his back to me, leaning down over the rear of the railing to point and shout at someone below, hidden behind the sign. There seemed to be an argument going on, and in his apoplexy the twat-in-the-hat was stamping and waving his fists in a full-on tantrum.
A violent growl picked up from out of nowhere – an engine, gunning hungrily – and a blocky shape emerged from behind the compound. Fat and square, grinding along slowly. For one awful moment I thought it must be a tank. Some ultra-rare military surplus these insane godbotherers had maintained for years. But no, it was far weirder than that.
It was a school bus, thick flanges of corrugated iron hanging down to protect its tyres, painted the same lurid blue as the buildings and marked with the same great scarlet 'O's on either side. The windows were blocked-up – padded by what looked like dozens of Kevlar jackets marked 'NYPD' – and the front windshield protected by a heavy-duty wire mesh. I couldn't see the driver. I couldn't see who or what was inside. All I could see was this surreal shape lumbering towards the plane, towards me and my complete lack of preparation, and the fucking stupid 'destination' inside the little window above the front: SALVATION (ONE WAY)
I felt like shooting at it on general principle.
