15.2

Walker’s comms unit flared up with white noise.

A distorted voice conveyed a message and Davey idly wondered how anyone ever understood anything on them.

‘Copy that, Squeaky. They’re all clean. Awaiting transport.’

Another squall of white noise.

A few minutes later, a sleek black limo appeared.

The neon lights of the entranceway were distorted in its pristine paintwork.

The windows were blacked out, making it impossible to see who was inside.

‘Get in,’ Walker said.

Still the red lights danced around them like a miniature disco.

The rear door facing them popped open with a smooth click.

The decadent smells of polished leather and cigar smoke flooded out.

‘Well, ain’t this a pretty motherfucking picture?’ said a gruff voice. ‘Sit your sorry asses down.’

Davey got in first, scowling as Walker shoved him in the small of his back.

When they were all in the limo, Walker got into the back with them.

He and one of the other cullsmen slowly and deliberately handcuffed each of their captives to a handful of metal rings set into the back of the front seats.

The screen between the front and the back came down to reveal a well-built man in a sharp navy suit.

A dense ribbon of scars ran down behind his left ear and across his throat.

Thick tufts of black hair sprouted from his hands.

He had small pale scars round his eyebrows.

‘Squeaky here is at your fucking service, gents,’ he said, smiling. A gold tooth gleamed in the front of his grill. ‘I will be your guide today.’

A few other cullsmen were in the front, aiming their guns back at them in case of unrest.

They wore sharp suits too, making a very strange ensemble when combined with the gas masks over their faces.

‘I thought the City was clean?’ King Solomon said, indicating the gas masks with a sideways nod of his head.

‘City is clean,’ Squeaky, the only one not wearing a gas mask, said. ‘But these fellas are scared of getting anything. They’ve seen the shit out there in the Bleak and they ain’t taking the risk.’

‘So why aren’t you wearing one, Squeaky?’ King Solomon said.

Squeaky waved the question away. ‘Squeaky doesn’t have time for that shit. I take three showers a day, and that’s not counting the ones I have coming in and out of here. I ain’t gonna get anything like that.’

‘What’s the Bleak?’ Davey asked, feeling a lump grow in his throat.

‘Now that you don’t want to know, kid,’ Squeaky smiled.

His hairy fingers drummed on the wheel. ‘We’re gonna have to go. The Mayor is not a man who likes to be kept waiting.’

The car spun in a tight circle.

Stainless steel doors that looked like elevator doors, only much bigger, opened at the other end of the tunnel.

Daylight flooded into the entranceway, making them cover their eyes.

‘Look at that,’ Squeaky smiled, jabbing a stubby finger at the view from out of his tinted windshield. ‘Don’t that just take the breath away?’

*

Buildings towered over them.

Davey had lived here and he had never seen it like this.

The City was vast.

Skyscrapers so tall you had to look backwards to see their tops towered overhead.

A hundred storeys up, a man was dangling upside down from a rope attached to a small platform.

‘What the hell is he doing?’ Papa Grim said.

‘Cleaning the buildings,’ Squeaky said. ‘Mayor Craven likes his shit gleaming, just like my good self.’

He flashed his lights at a perspex window to the left of the doors.

The doors slammed shut behind them.

They were in the City now, whether they liked it or not.

Huge buildings made up this part of the city.

They seemed like office blocks, though what administrative work there was to do in this day and age was something that puzzled Davey immensely.

The office blocks slowly changed to factories, these the same greyish white concrete, but much more stained.

The huge stacks belched out smoke, but this seemed to be contained in a vast glass container which took it up into the sky.

Davey had never seen this part of the city. He’d lived in one of the residential areas.

The number of factories was in the hundreds, although again Davey was puzzled as to what they were making in there.

‘That’s the bullet factory,’ Squeaky grinned, pointing at a monolithic building. ‘They’re all in there behind the glass to keep the fumes away from our lungs. Mayor Craven sure is good to his people.’

Davey and Solomon exchanged a bemused glance.

The factories were lumped together in a rough square, then came a row of tower blocks which Davey recognised as being accommodation for the workers.

He felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for his life before the cullsman’s boot had come through his family’s front door.

Life after had been grim, but at least he had been lucky enough to have his family.

A few people were walking the streets, wearing the uniform of the workers.

They looked weary, limping, backs slumped forward, dark bags under their eyes.

Pale.

Skinny.

The cattle who’d emerged from Solomon’s warehouses looked almost as healthy.

‘The workers, God bless them,’ Squeaky said, giving a mocking salute in their direction.

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As they passed the buildings, they saw a bunch of black-cloaked figures in the alleys between.

‘The Grims, Gods bless ’em,’ Solomon muttered.

It seemed about a dozen of the Grims were fighting over the contents of a garbage can.

Davey was again reminded of his escape from the city.

They drove on.

*

The residential block was fairly small.

Another car went past them, going the other way.

Davey craned his neck to see who was inside.

It was a futile exercise.

‘It’s rumoured the Cull Crews are gonna hit this borough tonight, but no one bar the Cull Co-ordinator knows for sure,’ Squeaky said, the excitement in his voice impossible to miss. ‘All part of the fun, right?’

He roared laughter, as did the cullsmen in the car with him.

Except for Walker.

‘Cheer up, Walker,’ Squeaky said.

Walker was pointing out of the driver’s side window.

‘Just a sec,’ Squeaky said, pulling the limo to an abrupt halt. He looked out of his window.

Davey looked and saw, beneath the backdrop of one of the soot-stained tower blocks, a ragtag bunch of men, women and children fashioning a crude blockade in the middle of the road.

Bits of wooden boards, mattresses, tables and doors were scattered across the road forming a primitive barrier.

They stood behind it with makeshift weapons.

‘Cull District 6 for a fuckin’ change,’ the sign read.

Squeaky chortled laughter.

‘Six and seven’re always hating on each other,’ he said. ‘They’re wasting their time, poor bastards. Like that’s gonna stop the Cull Crews.’

‘You don’t ever escape the Cull Crews,’ Walker grinned.

Davey had to bite his lip.

Solomon caught his eye and gave him a knowing grin but imperceptibly shook his head.

Squeaky picked up his comms unit. ‘Anti-cull activity in District seven. Southwest borough. Craven Avenue. Can’t miss em.’

‘Gotcha, Squeaky,’ the distorted voice on the comms unit blared. ‘We’ll send a cull crew down to despatch them.’

Squeaky rubbed his hands together with glee.

One of his gas-masked colleagues tapped the clock set into the dashboard.

‘Well, gentlemen, as much as I’d love to stick around and watch, we got an appointment to keep.’

The car pulled away. Squeaky was practically looking backwards to see what was happening.

They’d been gone for a minute or so when half a dozen black cars drove slowly past them.

They were silent: no sirens.

No lights.

Nothing like the cops had been before.

They didn’t want anyone to know they were there until it was too late.

And they were in no hurry because they had all the time in the world.

Squeaky raised a finger. ‘Annnnnddd… now!’ he said, smacking the dashboard at exactly the same time as the first explosion. He hooted laughter. ‘The price of dissent right there, people.’

*

They drove past a big, fenced building.

It was much cleaner than its neighbours.

Gun turrets were set into the roof and the walls.

‘Cull Crews run outta there,’ Squeaky said.

They moved through the rest of this area and came to a slight break in the buildings. Light peeked through the gap in the skyline.

The effect was weird and disorienting.

People were wandering in droves towards a large, square building that looked to be heavily guarded.

A tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire kept the crowds at bay.

As with the outer walls of the City, there were armed cullsmen stationed all around. This time they wore the dark uniform of the Cull Crews.

‘Keep your distance. One at a time,’ Squeaky chuckled, mimicking the cullsmen dealing with the queue. ‘Swipe your City Identification tattoo on the screen and claim your keep.’

Davey watched, fascinated, as the people filed, one at a time, through a thin gap in the fence.

They were subdued, apathetic even.

There was certainly no concept of disobedience, of unrest.

They’re probably too exhausted to even contemplate rebellion, Davey thought, remembering his dad’s brutal working patterns and the aftermath of his shifts.

The line of people filed in, swiped their left forearms against a small screen set into the wall. They then held their hands out for the necessary provisions – which looked even smaller than Davey had remembered – then moved to the left and came out of the fence a bit further along, keen to get home with their rations before the Grims watching them from the cover of the alleyways tried to steal it from them.

‘Doesn’t look like much of a life to me,’ King Solomon said.

‘It wasn’t. But it was all I had,’ whispered Davey.

Solomon smiled sadly at him, squeezed his hand.

They watched as one of the workers unwisely chose to go towards the mouth of one of the alleys.

Within a matter of seconds, the desperate Grims there had beaten him to the ground and ran off with his rations for the week.

Davey noticed he’d been too weak to raise a fist, or even run away.

The cullsmen weren’t even bothered; they just left him, battered and bleeding on the alley floor.

‘One less mouth to feed,’ Squeaky grinned.

The other workers seemed to be clubbing together to guarantee a safe return journey.

Davey watched them until they had faded from view.

‘Poor bastards,’ Solomon said.

‘They’ve got it better than you will, King Solomon, believe you me,’ Squeaky chuckled. ‘When Mayor Craven gets his mitts on you.’