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  THE AFTERBLIGHT CHRONICLES

  CHILDREN OF THE CULL

  CAVAN SCOTT

  ABADDONBOOKS.COM

  An Abaddon Books™ Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  [email protected]

  First published 2016 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editor-in Chief: Jonathan Oliver

  Commissioning Editor: David Moore

  Cover Art: Sam Gretton

  Design: Sam Gretton & Oz Osborne

  Marketing and PR: Rob Power

  Head of Books and Comics Publishing: Ben Smith

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  The Afterblight Chronicles™ created by Simon Spurrier & Andy Boot

  Copyright © 2016 Rebellion.

  All rights reserved.

  The Afterblight Chronicles™, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-035-3

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  The Afterblight Chronicles Series

  The Culled

  Simon Spurrier

  Kill Or Cure

  Rebecca Levene

  Dawn Over Doomsday

  Jasper Bark

  Death Got No Mercy

  Al Ewing

  Blood Ocean

  Weston Ochse

  Arrowhead

  Broken Arrow

  Arrowland

  Paul Kane

  School’s Out

  Operation Motherland

  Children’s Crusade

  Scott K. Andrews

  Journal of the Plague Year

  Malcolm Cross, CB Harvey and Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The End of the End

  Simon Guerrier, Paul Kane and Cavan Scott

  OMNIBUS EDITIONS

  America

  School’s Out Forever

  Hooded Man

  CHAPTER ONE

  CURE

  I USED TO dream. Every night, without fail.

  The specifics would fade almost as soon as I opened my eyes, the details lost to daylight; but the colours would remain, a lingering afterimage of my nocturnal adventures.

  I liked that. Part of my life that I knew was there, but just out of reach. A comforting echo. A mystery.

  Not anymore. I assume I still dream. Everyone dreams, don’t they, even if they can’t remember it? I haven’t remembered; not once, since the Cull. No more colours. No more echoes.

  Just an empty void from the moment I slipped away to the alarm rudely jolting me back to consciousness the next morning.

  The sleep of the dead, that’s what Mum used to call it.

  THE DAY STARTED like any other. I threw my hand out, trying to find the snooze button on the alarm, anything to cut off that electronic squawk. I lay in the darkness and sighed. Why prolong the inevitable? She would be waiting for me, out in the corridor, like every morning.

  Pulling back the sheets, I swung my legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the light switch. The room came into view with the buzz of ancient bulbs, the nylon carpet cold beneath my feet. I sat there for a minute, staring at the pile of clothes I dropped on the floor the night before. She’d notice the creases, passing judgement if not comment.

  And what do you care? came a voice from the past, my mother standing in our old kitchenette, hands on impressive hips.

  She hated whingers.

  If you have time to complain about something you have time to do something about it, my girl.

  Yeah, yeah, Mum, very good. Now get out of my head. There are enough voices in there as it is.

  Stretching, I pushed myself up from the bed and padded over to the shower. The alarm kicked back in as soon as I’d closed the door behind me.

  “GOOD MORNING, DR Tomas.”

  I jumped as soon as I opened the door. Stupid. As if I didn’t know she’d be there—but standing right in front of the door? What a freak.

  I leant on the doorframe, willing my heart to stop hammering so hard in my chest. “Olive, what the hell are you trying to do to me?”

  My assistant removed her ever-present clipboard from beneath her arm to check something off the top sheet.

  “Sorry doctor, but we have a busy day ahead. You told me to—”

  “I know what I told you.” Sighing, I shut the door behind me, slipping the ID-card from around my neck into the pocket of my medical scrubs so it didn’t swing back and forth as I walked.

  You’re not going out in that! my mother twittered in the back of my mind. Why can you dress like a lady for once in your life?

  Why can’t you stay dead?

  Would mother approve of Olive, in her smart navy dress?

  Of course she bloody would. She’d probably wish that Olive was her daughter, rather than me.

  I watched her sashaying ahead, hearing Mum’s verdict of Olive’s little black dress. Now that’san outfit, sweetheart—tasteful. Cut just below the knee, with a high neckline; close-fitting but not slutty, just tight enough to accentuate the curves God gave you. Why can’t you dress like that anymore?

  Yeah, Mum would have loved Olive.

  I started down the corridor after her, trying not to be annoyed by the sound of my assistant’s heels clicking along the floor. Who wore heels these days?

  “So, what have we got on today?”

  “There’s the morning briefing, naturally...”

  “Naturally.”

  “Followed by your ten o’clock with Dr Atkins.”

  A little bit of me died inside.

  “Do we have to do that today?”

  “You put him off yesterday. And the day before.”

  “Then he won’t mind if we bump him to tomorrow. If I don’t check the resistance reports today, they’ll never get done. Oh, and I want to schedule a series of allergy tests for Samuel. If we’re going to take him out—”

  The wail of a klaxon cut me off, and my heart sank. Not again. Not now.

  Breaking into a run, I snatched the walkie-talkie from my belt, opening a channel.

  “Control, this is Tomas. Come in.”

  There was a burst of static and an American accent replied. Des Moore, chief of security and almost as much as a pain in the arse as Olive. “It’s another attack, ma’am.”

  “I gathered. How many this time?”

  “The cameras have picked up three. No, wait—there’s four. They jumped the fence to N-4.”

  “At four? I thought you’d secured that?”

  “So did I! A team is on its way to intercept. They won’t get far.”

  “That’s what you said on Monday.”

  “And we stopped them on Monday. Ma’am, I need to oversee this.”

  “Yes, yes. Oversee. And then make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  I killed the channel. Arguing with Moore wouldn’t do any good. The bastard would just dig his heels in. He knew his job, no matter what I thought of him. My first priority had to be the children. Always the children.

  I flicked the toggle on the side of the handset, switching channels.

  “Allison?”

/>   “Jasmine? Can you believe this?”

  The neurologist sounded as frustrated as me, and with good reason.

  “Don’t even go there. How are they?”

  “How do you think? We don’t need another day like Monday.” Her Dundee accent was somehow more pronounced over the radio.

  “Tell that to Chief Moore. Don’t worry. They’re targeting Neighbourhood Four. Obviously after supplies. It should be over soon enough.”

  “Until next time. This is the third attack in a week. Sooner or later they’re going to get lucky.”

  I turned the corridor, decided to take the stairs rather than the lifts. The last thing I wanted was a power outage trapping me in a metal box with Olive.

  “I’m on my way,” I replied, starting down the stairwell. “Monitor the subjects’ reactions to the alarm. We might as well make use of all this.”

  “Every cloud has a silver lining. Will do. See you in a minute.”

  The handset fell quiet and I clipped it back onto my belt, reaching the ground floor. As Olive clattered after me, I yanked open the door to the main corridor and made for the exit.

  “Dr Tomas,” Olive called after me. “If the alarm sounds...”

  I sighed, stopping in my tracks. I hated when Olive was right.

  “All personnel should use the tunnels, yes, yes.”

  I turned on my heels and stalked back to the stairs, Olive standing beside the door, clipboard clutched to her chest. For once, would it hurt her to open a door for me? Isn’t that what assistants were for?

  Still huffing, I stomped down to the basement, pressing my ID card against the card reader. The scanner beeped twice, its lights flashing red.

  Bloody hell.

  I looked up at the camera above the door, waiting for one of Moore’s numpties to check their screens at the hub. What’s the betting it was Lam, playing games in the middle of an emergency?

  “This is ridiculous,” I moaned.

  “The base is in shutdown.”

  The lights flashed green, and with an angry buzz the lock clicked open.

  “One more word from you,” I said, yanking open the door to step out into the tunnel, “and I’ll shut you down, permanently.”

  Olive smiled as if I was joking. I didn’t hold the door open for her.

  “I get why they lock the doors,” I continued, more to myself than to the girl tottering after me. “But why include me in the deadlock? What’s the point of being the project leader if you can’t even open a door by yourself?”

  For once, Olive read my mood and kept her smart-alec remarks to herself. I knew she was still thinking them, though, which managed to annoy me even more.

  Out feet echoed down the low-ceilinged corridor as we walked in the direction of Neighbourhood Two, a route I knew on auto-pilot, even down here.

  “Dr Tomas?” Olive asked quietly.

  I couldn’t repress the sigh. “Yes?”

  “Have you taken your medication this morning?”

  Damn.

  Every day the same question, and always the same answer. You’d think I would remember.

  I fished around in my scrubs pocket and brought out the small brown bottle. A shake revealed that there were only a few capsules left, maybe three or four. I’d have to get Chemistry to make up another batch.

  I unscrewed the lid and shook one of the small blue-and-red capsules onto my palm. Coming to a junction in the tunnel, I popped the pill into my mouth and swallowed it dry.

  I shoved the bottle back into my pocket as we took the corridor to the right. “Happy now?”

  “Just doing my job, doctor,” came the smug reply.

  It was going to be a long day.

  CHAPTER TWO

  KILL

  IDIOTS.

  They didn’t have a clue.

  Their first mistake was going over the fence. They’d thrown blankets over the barbed wire so they could scramble across without slicing their bellies open, but why waste the energy? Better to cut the wire at the bottom, easing it aside. That’s what I would have done. You didn’t need a massive gap, just enough to crawl through. It wasn’t as if any of them seemed to have much meat on their bones.

  Either way, the cameras would have picked them up long before they reached the top. I watched them drop to the ground on the other side, making enough noise to wake several legions of the dead, and wondered how long it would be before the alarm was raised.

  The howl of a klaxon provided the answer precisely twenty seconds later. They hadn’t even made it to the first wing.

  I could have scripted what happened next. The idiots—I counted four of them—dived for cover, making for the corner of the building, where they stopped, waiting for the guards to arrive.

  Mistake number two.

  What did they expect would happen? Even if they survived a firefight, mowing down whatever security forces the base was about to throw at them, what then? Did they really think that would be it? The base would surrender, brought to their knees by the superior force of four scrawny twats?

  I almost didn’t want to look, but couldn’t help myself. It was like picking a scab. Entertainment was hard to come by, so you took what you could, even if that meant lying on the roof of an abandoned supermarket, peering at a botched infiltration through a cracked scope.

  The idiots stayed where they were, guns raised, having literally backed themselves into a corner as the guards arrived. Six guards, clad in full body armour—or as full as you could get, these days—spilling out of the adjoining building. They raced across to a barricade of skips and storage crates.

  There was a shout, one of the guards yelling for the idiots to give themselves up. No reply. That, at least, was promising. The last thing anyone needed in this scenario was bullshit bravado. In the real world, no one came back with a witty retort when facing the wrong end of a gun.

  You’ll never take us alive, copper.

  No shit.

  Then, something happened that actually surprised me. One of the idiots drew back his hand and threw a small canister. It was belching yellow smoke before it bounced in front of the barricade.

  One of the guards let off a shot, but the idiots were already on the offensive, throwing themselves around the corner to pepper the rag-tag blockade with bullets.

  Another shout followed—no, a cry this time; strangled, sharp—and a body was thrown back in the yellow cloud.

  First blood.

  The shooting continued, but the guards had no chance of hitting the targets. They couldn’t see in front of their face, and certainly couldn’t risk breaking cover.

  Now came the bravado. The idiots surged forwards, guns raised as if they were in an old gangster movie, firing indiscriminately.

  That’s it, boys. Show me what you’ve got. MP7s, maybe a 7A; better than I expected. The skip doesn’t stand a chance.

  Maybe I owed the idiots an apology. Maybe they weren’t as incompetent as I’d first thought.

  Then again...

  Without warning, a bloom of red mist obscured the side of idiot number one’s head, and he went down, hard. Idiot two turned in the direction of the shot, a bullet to the shoulder spinning him into a graceless pirouette, the second tap to the back of his head sealing the deal. Idiots three and four at least had the sense to double back, realising too late that they’d rushed into an ambush.

  They didn’t get far.

  A second team of guards had been waiting for the idiots to break ranks. The raiders had been so intent on the barricade that they hadn’t seen them till they were shooting. Now, with the smoke clearing, the first set of guards dropped idiots three and four in a heartbeat.

  The impromptu battlefield fell quiet, save for the alarm that warned any other would-be attackers to keep their distance.

  When it was obvious that none of the idiots were getting up any time soon, four of the guards darted out from behind the blockade, compact rifles up and ready. L22 carbines. Effective enough, but not great over distance. Worth no
ting.

  Splitting into pairs, the first checked the bodies on the ground, while the second made sure no one else was lying in wait. Of course there wasn’t. The attack had been bungled from the start; the guard who’d been shot was unlucky in the extreme.

  I lowered my scope as the siren finally died, a strange hush settling on the surrounding fields. I looked around, taking in more of the landscape. It had been years since I’d been here, long before the Cull. The complex had just opened, the pride of the MoD, the biggest base of its type on home soil. There had been much back-slapping and congratulations among the top brass, but I had found its location as funny then as I do now.

  A classified installation built slap bang next to an out-of-town retail park. Well, I guess civil servants needed somewhere to mooch around during lunchtime, even if it was just Asda. Oh, and Matalan. All those cheap polyester shirts and garish ties had to come from somewhere.

  Stow it, soldier. No need for lip.

  Sir, no sir, etc.

  I suppose the point was that the original occupants of MoD Abbey Wood weren’t soldiers, not the majority anyway. They were pencil-pushers, bean-counters. Put a gun in their hands and they’d have been just as effective as the idiots who’d just tried to storm the place.

  The dead idiots.

  A smile tugged at my lips, pulling at scar tissue that I barely noticed any more.

  These idiots are no more. They have ceased to be. They’ve expired and gone to meet their maker. These are late idiots.

  It’s funny what you miss, even after all this time. I always liked a bit of Python. Can’t remember who introduced me to Graham, John, Terry and the rest; everything before the Cull sort of blurs into one. Could have been my Dad, or old Tony next door, maybe even someone from a school.