I suppose I always felt I was lucky. Due a fall, surely, but there I was, winning a lottery I never even bought a ticket for. Outside there's priests and nurses and charitable souls rotting on the pavement, and here's me – he's a fucking killer – breathing clear.
It didn't seem right.
It's a weird thing, feeling guilty for being alive.
'Anyways,' said Nate, flicking a chunk of wood onto the fire from a stack beside the corrugated wall, 'that put the cap on doctoring.'
He said he'd wandered in London for a year or two. He hinted he'd done his best to help where he could – triage, treatment, tidying – but I guess there was always a price.
Nate didn't exactly radiate selflessness.
After two years the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn was up and running. I remember that too. The Abbot broadcasting his miraculous sermon every Sunday, the crowds gathering, the scarlet tattoos and chanted prayers.
The robe-wearing creeps strolled straight out onto the charred remains of the world stage, and declared that they alone – as an entity embracing values of community, integrity, intelligence and of course faith – could sweep aside the horrors of the Cull and work towards a new, restored civilisation.
They said that they alone could overcome the 'inertia gripping humanity' and rebuild, recreate, restart!
Those.
Arrogant.
Fucks.
They came to London and spread the word. I ignored them.
They said for most people it was too late. The world they'd known was long gone. They said the people could console themselves with living as best they could, embracing Jesus, making the most of their lives in the rubble. They said devoting oneself to the Neo-Clergy was the only expression of purity and hope for the average man.
But for the children… For the children there was so much more. Innocent, unsullied by the calamities of the past, not responsible for the sins that had visited the Cull upon the world. For them the future was clear. So said the Clergy.
They must build a new dawn.
So the priests came and got them.
At gunpoint, sometimes. But mostly they didn't even need to threaten, mostly it was parents waving goodbye, smiling, proud of their contribution to the world, and that was the worst thing of all.
The church ferried the kids off in blue-painted planes, and ignored the tears and shrieks, and told everyone, everyone involved:
Be grateful.
They were going somewhere better, the Clergy said.
Sitting there in the cold, listening to Nate's story, my eyes plucked at the huge banner above me. I shivered.
'They brought them here,' I grunted, shaking my head. 'The kids. Didn't they?'
Nate nodded.
'Why? What do they do with them? Where's this… this fucking new tomorrow?'
Nate shrugged, took a slurp of water from a screw cap cantina, and carried on with his story like he'd barely stopped to breathe.
Nate said the Clergy found him on the streets of London. They'd heard he was a doctor. They said they might have a need for someone like that. They might even raise him up to a state of grace. Besides, they said, he was already American.
They had two conditions:
'Number one,' he said, 'they told me I got to have faith. I told them if they gimme a job and food and somewhere warm to sleep, I'll believe whatever the hell they want.
'And number two, they said I gotta go back to New York.'
He stopped, and looked for a second or two like he wasn't going to continue. It was strange to see. Nate's natural state was 'droning', and every time he stopped to stare off into the darkness with those spotlight eyes it was… disconcerting. 'So you came back,' I said. 'And did what?'
He looked at me for a second – proper eye contact, for the first time – then away again. Someone screamed playfully out by the wreck.
'Same as before, more or less. Ironic, huh? Just like the Albanians. Checking over the produce when it arrives. Making sure it's fit to travel. No sickness, no frailty. Clergy only wants the best.'
'You inspected the kids?'
'Right. Shit, I was in charge of them. Clumsy old guy with a friendly face and a dumb costume. Made jokes. Patched up cuts and scrapes. Told 'em all everything would be just fine. Drove the bus into the city, came right back for the next batch. London, Paris, Moscow. Planes comin' in from all over.'
'So you're the ferryman to the New Dawn?' I said, trying out a little sarcasm; seeing how the old man would react.
Know everything.
Check the angles.
He smiled, a little too slowly, then nodded. 'I like that.' He said. 'Yeah, I like that.'
Something rustled nearby. A spreading whisper of cloth and feet. My hand tightened on the M16, eyes scanning the shadows, but Nate waved a laconic hand in my direction and grinned.
'No need, man.'
Not reassuring.
Something oozed out of the dark. Something hesitant and filthy, matted and feathered down each flank of its raggedy form. Something that broke-up as the firelight caught it; separated down by degrees into an aggregate. A crowd of people.
Staring, all as one, at the meat roasting over the flame.
They came into the light like a single entity, scuttling on far too many legs. They looked – random thought here – like extras from the set of a war film: recognisably human but coated in the makeup department's finest emulations of soot, dirt and dried blood, scampering with that expression of people who don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it. Several had fresh wounds – nicks and cuts from knives and teeth – and eyed each other warily.
The ones at the front carried themselves with a seniority based on whatever Byzantine pecking order was at work, clutching in their dirty hands stolen guns, scraps of clothing, bundles of chemical ephemera and all types of other salvage taken from the plane. One was holding a seatbelt buckle, smiling with the smug expression of someone who'd outperformed herself. Another one – a young man – had Bella's jeans slung over his shoulder.
The M16 felt good in my hand.
Let it go, soldier.
Sir, yes sir, etc etc.
'Well, then…' said Nate, reclining back against the compound wall with as much disinterested ease as he'd shown before the darkness disgorged them. 'What can we do for you?'
I think I half expected them to speak in grunts and moans, if at all. They looked so devolved, so fucking prehistoric, that at that point it wouldn't have surprised me if they'd dropped down and worshipped the 'Great Fire Makers'.
It sounds arrogant, now I come to say it. I mean… why should they be any less coherent than me? Why should their five years of hardship and filth be any less dignified than mine?
'We smelt the rat,' a tall woman said, near the front. She reminded me of someone, and a shiver worked its way along my spine.
Shut that shit down, soldier. Job to do.
Nate shrugged. 'And?'
'And we thought maybe you'd trade.'
Nate shook his head. 'No trades.'
'But… see?' The woman plucked a plastic drinking beaker out of a raggedy pack, brandishing it like a jewel.
