The Cull
John Irvine 2007©
Angela slithered into a dark corner behind the Anglican Church rear steps… her Mossberg 500A Persuader riot shotgun already racked in anticipation. Crossed bandoliers holding a couple of dozen cartridges were slung across her generous bosom. As she squatted there, waiting in ambush, Andy Bellamy, from his vantage point on the roof of the Southern Baptist Evangelical Holy Reunion Church, carefully adjusted the rangefinder on his H & K PSG1 sniper rifle, peered onto the scope and centred the red dot in her mouth. Her foul and disgusting mouth.
She would be his first kill. He'd chosen her to be his first, so for Andy this kill was very special. He recalled his childhood and adolescence grimly as he checked his weapon for the tenth time, how for years she had made him her whipping boy, teasing and insulting him in front of her friends. Taunting him with her gross breasts, licking her lips and stroking her groin, making grunting noises at him while her friends laughed. Bitch.
Emmylyne was his second tormenter, really his worst persecutor. She was the one who had caused him the deepest angst. He wanted her to die very much, but he had a neat mind, one that needed things to be in perfect order. Angela first, then Emmylyne.
He had plenty of both time and tags.
This was his first year in the Cull of course, sixteen being the legal age, and he wanted to keep it all neat and clean. All hits accounted for and legally tagged by the Cull Police. No mistakes. He looked down at Angela, a tiny smile forming on his lips. She was dead meat. He eased his rifle over the stone sill, never taking his eye from the scope's sight.
***
It was eighteen years since the governments of the world had finally admitted that there were just too many people on the planet. More people were living, fewer people were dying. Advances in medicine now elongated worthless lives to twice their old length. The planet was groaning in agony. The joint governments had come to an impasse… unless something drastic was done urgently the planet would roll over and tip its contents into the wild cosmos in about a decade.
Someone who'd seen the 100-year-old movie Rollerball starring future ex-president James Caan came up with a unique solution. Why not, once each year for 48 hours, allow people to kill whomever they wanted? Twelve kills per person, maximum. Let them collect a weapon of their choice, with as much ammo as they like, from a regulated government depot and spend the next two days hunting down and killing those people they don't like. All signed and sealed for. Legal. No indiscriminate rampages, of course. Just cool and collected campaigns against personal enemies. One at a time. No armour, no shielding.
The idea met with instant approval from the redneck states that already had more guns collectively than the military. The current President was from Raleigh, Mississippi, and rumour had it that on his nights off from the White House he donned the white sheet and burned what he referred to as no-account ‘niggers and Jews and queers' for fun. He signed off the proposal commenting that it was one of the most profound suggestions ever to be put before Congress. However, to help keep the game ‘honest,' each bullet issued by the government carried its own unique signature. Each body harvested was required to be transported to a government assessment station for inspection verification and tagging by the Cull Police, so every kill had to be kosher. Those who eliminated citizens with non-approved ammunition, and were caught, were themselves destroyed without recourse.
For eighteen years the plan had been spectacularly successful. In the US alone, in the first two years, more than eleven million unnecessary citizens had been eliminated. The half million unsanctioned kills were, of course, regrettable, but considered to be ‘acceptable collateral damage.' Their perpetrators had also been eliminated of course. It was all win-win for the government.
***
Dusk was creeping in. Andy flicked a switch on the scope painting Angela's environment a ghostly shimmering green with red hotspots. He drew a slow breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger.
His face flew out over the sill, muralling the stonework around the window aperture with slimy gore as it passed through. His body slumped over the sill, emptying what was left of the contents of his head into the courtyard below, the rifle spiralling silently down onto the grass.
Angela Bellamy stood up and pumped one fist up and down. It had been a risk, but the ruse had worked. She'd been the bait to draw Andy from cover. Placing her monocular to one eye she smiled… from the bell tower of the Mississippi Methodist Church two streets back she saw her sister Emmylyne pumping one arm back at her. Angela smiled, and placed the Mossberg down carefully on her coat. From its case she lifted her take-down CheyTac .408 M100 sniper rifle, assembling it by feel. After removing the caps from the scope she peered through it and saw Emmylyne doing her silent war dance way up there. She loaded one hollow point round.
Angela's single shot took Emmylyne neatly between her tiny breasts, the hollow point round blowing a 6” exit gap through her spine. Angela watched dispassionately as her despised younger sister tumbled from the tower.
Two down, two to go…