Children's Crusade

Chapter Four

I actually saw the muzzle flash as Guria took out the Ranger.

He was about halfway down the street, just behind the Rangers, in the top window. I opened the door and ran into the road, ignoring Dad's calls to stay put. I didn't really have a plan; I just wanted to stop Jane being cut to pieces in the inevitable crossfire. As the shot man fell, and Jane ducked, I saw one of the Rangers raise his bow to finish me off. I shouted at him to stop, but he wasn't having it. I dived out of the way and heard an arrow whistle past, far too close for comfort.

I was a dead man if I stayed in the open. I had no choice but to hare over to the nearest house and dive inside, sliding on my stomach over the slime that had accumulated in the once pristine hallway carpet. I stood up feeling soggy and sick. My best chance of ending this was to get to Guria and take over the rifle. He was about fifteen houses up on this side of the road. I glanced back out the door and saw Jane had made it to cover across the road. That was a relief. Then the minibus roared past me, bullets pinging off its roof as the snatchers joined the fight from their compound.

Events were moving too damn fast. I ran out into the alleyway behind the house and raced up to where Guria had been hiding. Somehow I managed to get all the way there before any of the Rangers emerged into the alley to make their own escape. Or maybe they were digging in for a fight.

I reached the kitchen door of what I was reasonably sure was the right house, and brought my SA-80 to bear. Guria was one of us, but this was the first time he'd fired in anger. I had no idea what state he'd be in when I found him, and I wasn't going to let him shoot me dead in a moment of hyper-adrenalised panic.

I grasped the old Bakelite doorknob and pushed. The door had been left locked but the wooden frame was rotting away; the lock fell off and crashed to the kitchen floor as the door opened with a wet smack. So much for stealth. I checked inside but there was nobody there so I stepped in and pushed the door closed behind me.

"Guria," I said, loud but not shouting. "You there?" There was no reply so I made my way through the ground floor to the foot of the stairs. There was a skeleton lying sprawled across the bottom steps, the black stain that had seeped into the carpet around it all that remained to indicate it had ever borne flesh.

I stepped over it and climbed the stairs, which creaked alarmingly. They could go at any minute; this house was not a safe place to be, even without the threat of being shot. In the five years since The Cull, the elements had started to eat away at the infrastructure that civilisation had left behind. The endless persistence of water, probing every crevice and crack, with no houseproud DIYers to hold it at bay with supplies from Homebase, had started gradually eating away the houses and schools, shops and offices, and all the places we'd built to shelter us from the cold. There was no-one still trying to live by scavenging the scraps of what was left behind — it had all been corrupted by time.

I reached the landing and spoke again.

"Guria, you there?"

There was no response from behind the door to the front bedroom, which was pushed to. Had I miscounted, got the wrong house?

I pushed the door and stepped inside.

"Guria?" I said softly.

I heard a crash in the distance and the sound of a car horn.

The boy was crouched at the window, still facing the street, grasping the sniper rifle. I could see he was breathing.

"Guria, you okay?" I stepped forward.

He turned his head, as if finally registering that I was there. He was white as a ghost, pupils dilated, staring into the middle distance. He was in shock.

"Oh, hi Sir," he said, as if from the bottom of a deep well. "I just shot someone."

"I noticed."

"His head kind of went pop."

"Yeah, they do that. Good shot, by the way."

"Like a melon."

"Hmm. Can you pass me the rifle?"

"Oh, do you want a go?" He stood up and turned, holding the rifle out to me.

"No, get away from the window!"

But it was too late. He turned sharply, as if he'd heard something, and then Guria, silhouetted in the window, looked down in puzzlement at the arrow shaft sticking out of his chest.

"Oh," he said, and dropped dead at my feet.

The Rangers weren't our enemy. This was all a horrible misunderstanding. There was no need for this to go any further.

I knew all this.

But I looked at the dead child lying at my feet, with his wide eyes staring at the ceiling as his brain slowly cooled and died, and I felt a hard cold certainty in my chest.

Calmly, I reached down, picked the rifle up and raised it to my shoulder. Keeping three steps back from the window, hidden by the shadows of the room, I raised the powerful sight to my eye and switched through the options until I hit the heat sensor. And there he was, the man who'd shot a thirteen year-old boy who'd been my responsibility.

Lurking in the shadows of the bedroom directly facing me, he had no technology to aid his sniping. He felt confident, secure in the murk.

I took careful aim.

"Not a mercy killing this time, Nine Lives," said the voice in my head that had remained silent for two long years.

"No," I replied out loud; the first time, I think, I ever answered him audibly. I squeezed the trigger, putting a high velocity round through the man's heart. He stayed upright for nearly ten seconds before he crumpled like a discarded puppet.

Confident that the immediate danger was past, I stepped forward and scanned the eerily quiet street. At one end the snatchers were emerging from the schoolyard gate, rifles and shotguns raised, looking bewildered, trying to work out what the fuck had just happened. At the other end the car horn still blared, and I saw a wisp of smoke drifting across the road mouth, evidence of whatever accident Dad had driven into.

There was no sign of any of the other Rangers. I assumed they were all hiding on the same side of the street as me. But the snatchers presented a tempting target. There were five of them now, in plain view.

I sighted on the rearmost. The cold hatred in my chest was still there, lending me an almost supernatural calm.

"Oh this is good. I like this," said the voice.

I counted to three and then caressed the trigger once before letting fly. Within five seconds four of the snatchers were lying on the ground — head shot, chest, chest, head. They lay on the cobbles, blood pooling and mingling, running to the drains. The last one standing was left alone, surrounded by the corpses of his colleagues.

"Let him sweat," said the voice.

I held my fire. The man didn't know what to do. He was waiting for the inevitable kill shot, shaking in terror. A dark stain spread from his crotch as he wet himself. He dropped his gun and raised his hands, staring left and right, desperately trying to find me, as if locating me would allow him to appeal directly for clemency.

It took more than a minute for him to decide to turn his back and run. I let him take two steps before I shot the cobbles at his feet. He stopped and fell to his knees then shuffled around to face down the street towards me again. He was crying, hands pressed together in supplication, his chin wobbling as he screamed for mercy.

I let him go on like this for a minute or two, regarding him dispassionately like I would an ant underneath a magnifying glass on a hot day.

Then I blew his heart out through the back of his chest.

"Phew. I don't know about you, Nine Lives," said the voice in my head. "But I've got a blue steel boner that a cat couldn't scratch."

I smiled; so did I. To my surprise, I was quite glad Mac was talking to me again.

That should have been the first clue that I'd crossed some kind of line.

I went down on one knee and leaned over Guria. I gently closed his eyes and brushed away a lock of hair that had fallen across his face.

"Sorry," I whispered.

My business here was done. I had three more Rangers to hunt down. I got to my feet, turned on my heels and stared straight down the shaft of an arrow, notched and ready to fly.

"Drop it, you sick motherfucker," said the Ranger.