by David Gunn
Bemusement turns to . . .
Anger is the wrong word. It’s colder than that.
I watch it happen and – a split second ahead of it happening – watch the fury’s red eyes flick to the rag round my upper arm. That is what’s holding it off. Not my stepping forward, not my size.
‘Sven . . .’
‘It’s sir,’ I say.
Sergeant Leona’s holding out the rusting abattoir pistol. Damn thing’s so large she can barely lift it with both hands.
‘Let me get back to you.’
Don’t know what it means. Something Debro says.
As the fury punches for my ribs, I grab its wrist, and slam my knee into its elbow as hard as I can . . . Hurts like fuck. When the joint doesn’t break first time I try again and something snaps. So I twist, grinding broken steel against itself.
Vile breath hisses from the fury’s lips.
‘Sergeant . . .’
‘Here, sir,’ she says.
Catching the revolver, I thumb its oversized hammer, jam the muzzle into the creature’s neck and pull the trigger. Fuck knows what the calibre is, but that recoil would break most people’s wrists. Bits of spine exit the fury in a spray of metal, wiring and wizened flesh, as the explosion echoes around the square.
‘How many more?’ Anton asks.
‘What?’
‘In total . . . How many furies?’
A memory of the drop flicks through my mind. One pod, a line of maybe ten furies. Five waves of figures falling.
‘No more than fifty . . .’ Yeah, reckon I’m right. Looking at the fury at my feet, I knock the figure down to no more than fifty, minus one.
Taking the abattoir revolver from me, Leona breaks it open to extract the case, pulls a new round from her pocket and slots it into the cylinder, flicking the revolver shut with a satisfying snap. She’s good like that.
Anton is looking appalled.
That’s because another two furies have entered the square. Large bastards too, even bigger than the one we’ve just killed. If that’s possible. And both are heading our way. Ripping Simone’s scarf from my arm, I tear it in three and thrust one strip at Leona. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘Tie it on, now.’
Anton ties one on too.
The fury nearest us hesitates. The one behind bumps into it. Both snarl their irritation. A guttural hissing. Before returning their attention to us.
‘What’s happening?’ Leona asks.
‘They’re deciding whether to attack.’
‘The rags, sir?’
‘Yeah.’ She catches on fast.
‘Sir?’
‘Sergeant?’
‘Looks like they’ve got proper bands. Maybe we could . . .’
She jerks her head towards the colonnade. Killing the fury has brought us to the attention of three militia officers. All wear white bands stencilled with a ferox skull wrapped round their arms.
We’re obviously the topic of their conversation.
‘Good idea,’ I say.
Edging towards them, we bring the furies with us. Never quite attacking, unwilling to let us escape. Our audience wants to back away, but there’s a wall behind, and they’re in the corner of the colonnade.
As we get closer the furies lose interest.
Our makeshift armbands, combined with their official ones, stand the furies down. Instead, the creatures turn for the group of civilians we saw earlier. Three men, one woman and a child, all neatly dressed.
‘Doubters,’ Anton says.
Surprised he can see that from here.
Realizing they’re the new target, the family run for a church door. The battle is brief, brutal and one-sided. ‘Watch,’ I order, when Leona begins to turn away. We need to work out their methods.
See if there’s anything we can learn.
‘But sir,’ she signals our audience, ‘shouldn’t we . . .?’
Join them? Why not?
Sergeant Leona has other plans.
Ripping free her knife, she stabs it into the base of their captain’s skull, jerks her wrist to cut his brain stem, and combines extracting her blade with a rapid sweep that opens the throat of the lieutenant next to him.
Their junior lieutenant goes for his gun.
He exits this life with a broken knee, a crushed larynx and his head twisted far enough to sever his spinal cord. It’s good to find something that dies as it should.
‘Sergeant,’ I say. ‘Who gave you that order?’
Leona looks at me. ‘Sir. You said it was a good idea, sir . . .’
I take the ferox-skulled armband she offers, nodding as she ties the next one to her own arm. Interesting. She kills the officers in order of seniority. Now she’s handing out their bands according to our rank. I get the first. She gets the next. Anton’s rich, but Leona’s decided he’s a civilian and disposable.
Wonder if he realizes that.
Stuffing my original band inside my shirt, I rifle the nearest man’s pockets for what I can find. Five gold coins and a handful of silver from off-system. Plus a bundle of high-denomination notes.
The paper’s worthless, obviously.
Anton says nothing when I pocket the gold.
Doesn’t need to, his scowl says it all. The man’s had money so long he’s forgotten what it’s worth. Leona takes the silver I offer with a smile.
‘Take this,’ I say, thrusting the safe conduct and ferox-skulled ring at Anton.
He shakes his head.
Anton’s not keen to re-cross the river.
Why would he be? All the same, the safe conduct and ring are going to make it easier. ‘Send her,’ he says. His comment is contemptuous enough to make Leona bridle. Worries me that he doesn’t notice.
‘I need you to go.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the Aux know you.’
Anton can’t deny that. He’s Aptitude’s father. The Aux met him when he and Debro came to collect her from Golden Memories, the day after his audience with OctoV. Neither Debro nor Anton told me what our glorious leader said.
Doesn’t surprise me. He saw them separately.
I doubt they’ve told each other. Our glorious leader can be very persuasive when he wants you to keep things to yourself.
‘Find Neen,’ I say. ‘Tell him to hurry. I want full battle rattle, but no Death’s Head patches and I want them fully armed. If you can steal armbands on your way up, that’s good. If not, tell Neen to collect some on his way down.’
‘Sven-’
‘We need to find Colonel Vijay. Then we need to get both of you out of here and back to Debro’s. We have to make sure Wildeside is safe.’
‘Wildeside’s not in danger,’ Anton says.
It’s not in danger?
He’s said too much. But a pack of furies are loping from under an arch, as the stink of blood on the hot wind draws them our way, and Anton decides I didn’t notice his slip; or I’m too stupid to put things together if I did.
‘I’d better go,’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You had.’
Chapter 30
On the corner of a street south of the river, local militia smash a jeweller’s door from its frame with a sledgehammer. They’re drunk to the last man. Cheering the corporal with the hammer to keep their courage up.
‘Fucking heretics,’ one says.
Two of the others spit. Doubt they even know they’ve done it.
The door goes down and the jeweller dies in his own doorway. I see it happen as we walk past, protected by our ferox-skulled armbands from the militia and the furies. Fuck knows what’s on the bands to make the furies docile around us.
‘Pheromones,’ Leona says.
She has to tell me what these are. They’re animal stinks that trigger fucking or fighting. Leona says humans don’t produce pheromones. I ask her if she’s sure.
A woman drops a baby from an upper window. The child is still alive after hitting the sidewalk. It survives as long as it takes an NCO to stamp on its head.
The woman doesn’t know it’s dead, because she’s trying to lower herself by her hands, but she slips and lands badly. Slamming her face into the sidewalk, the NCO holds it there as he pulls her nightie to her hips and spits on his fingers.
She keeps trying to look round.
Wants to see the kid on the sidewalk behind her.
The NCO cuts her throat a second before he pulls out. An accidental kindness, since she dies with the dead baby unseen.
Leona has never seen a city sacked before.
At least, that’s what I assume. She looks outraged at my suggestion. Seems she’s seen cities sacked, just never seen one sack itself. Have to admit, that’s new to me too. And the crowd around me is getting bigger by the minute and more out of control. According to my old lieutenant there’s a sliding scale for these things.
You get people, crowds, mobs and riots.
I’m wondering where we are on that scale . . .
A grinding of gears announces the arrival of a scout car, complete with machine gun, searchlights, a dozen militia hanging from the back, and a freshly painted and still wet stencil of a ferox skull. It’s obviously been allowed over the bridge.
‘Over there. Doubters.’
Three men freeze in the glare of the searchlight.
A fury flicks its gaze towards them. In its grip is an old woman, whose head flails from side to side as she screams. As the fury hesitates between the meal it has, and the larger one it could have, a group of youths swagger from the shadows into the brightness of the scout car’s light.
They’re not militia. But they are organized.
One holds the torch, now redundant. The rest have knives stolen from a food stall. Crudely painted skeletons drip from their clothes. A single white line for the lower leg, a blob for the kneecap, and a thicker line above. The hips, ribs and arms are equally crude. Whitened faces and darkened eyes make them look as though they’re celebrating the Day of the Damned.
Blood splatters their ankles and boots so thoroughly it looks as if they’ve been wading through puddles of the stuff. Fanning out, the gang keep half their attention on the fury and the rest on their new targets.
One of the doubters tries to flee and falls to his knees with a cleaver in his back. The boy who throws it stops to take a bow. Amateurs. My least favourite kind of killer.
‘Out of here,’ I tell Leona. ‘This way.’
‘What about them?’
She means the gang in their festival clothes.
‘Who knows?’ I say. ‘If we get lucky the fury will kill them.’ Having finished with the old woman, the creature now flicks its attention between the gang and the doubters. Personally, I know which I’d kill.
A doubter family lie in the courtyard of their own home. Rich merchants from the look of it. A hunting rifle rests near the dead man. His wife has a bullet through her head. So does he. His son died fighting. Aged thirteen, maybe younger.
All the boy’s wounds are at the front, apart from the one that killed him. A bloodied brick shows how he died. His sister lies behind him. A year younger still, her gown ripped open.
‘Fuck,’ Leona says.
Yeah, I agree. No one who kills for a living likes killing children.
Eyes watch me kneel to take the rifle and I realize the girl is still alive. Her throat’s been cut. The problem with amateurs is they’re amateur. Furies leave nothing but dried husks behind. And troopers, even militia ones, don’t leave jobs like this half done.
‘It’s going to be OK.’
Hard to tell what colour her eyes are. She tries to speak but the words are lost in bubbles from her throat. The cut ends just before her artery. All it needed was half a second’s more professionalism and she’d be dead.
I place my hand over the gash.
‘Help me,’ she whispers.
‘Of course,’ I say, bending closer.
‘We have a regeneration tank,’ the girl tells me. ‘In the cellar.’ She tries to look to where her mother sprawls behind me. ‘Is she . . .?’
‘Unconscious.’
‘Really?’
‘A bad fall.’
Takes Leona a while to work out what my back-stretched arm means. And then she kneels beside me and I feel the warmth of a wooden handle and the comfort of a blade that takes the girl under the ghost of her breasts.
A single flicker of shock signals her end.
Don’t have a prayer to say over dead children. So I recite the only prayer I do have. The one which wishes dead comrades deep sleep and a better life next time. My voice is distant. Cold as ice. Has to be me speaking because I can taste the bitterness of the words and feel the anger behind them.
‘Sir?’
‘I’m going to hunt down whoever ordered this. And I’m going to kill him, slowly . . .’
‘Do we find Colonel Jaxx first, sir?’
Good question.
Taking the rifle, I drop out its clip and find it empty. Spent cases tell me why. The militia have removed their own dead, and left their victims. Come morning, this whole area will be an abattoir.
The gun room is at the back of their house. A steel cupboard lies open, with its safety chain left hanging slack in the owner’s hurry to fetch his rifle. A box of .762 is tipped on its side. He should have taken those too. His son and daughter might be alive if he had.
‘Doubt it, sir,’ Leona says.
She’s right, of course. But he could have extracted a higher price. That would be worth something. Fastening the suppressor into place with a single twist, I thumb ten rounds into the clip and find I have enough .762 left over to make my pockets heavy.
It’s a game rifle, complete with scope.
A very expensive game rifle.
And I stuff my jacket with round after round until I run out of pockets to take more. Jacking the first shell into place, I hook the webbing sling round my elbow and wrap it once round my wrist.
We swapped our Kemzins for weapons carried by the militia officers we killed, and now I’ve swapped my pick of those for this. Leona gets my previous choice, a light machine gun with curving clip.
Times like this I could do with having both hands.
Mind you, I could also do with my SIG-37, not to mention the sabre General Luc’s sergeant took from me when he removed my combat arm.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Let’s do this.’
Sergeant Leona wants to ask, Do what?
If I knew, I’d tell her. In fact, when I do know, I will tell her. Until then she’s going to have to wait.
Out on the street, four militia NCOs break down another door. They die silently; one after another in the time it takes me to sight. The last one goes down desperately trying to work out where my shots are coming from.
My next round blows half a fury’s head away.
The creature barely notices. Next time I see it, the fury is in an upstairs window, feeding from a girl who tries to throw herself into the street below.
Dropping to one knee, I centre the scope’s cross hairs.
The hollow-point takes the fury under its chin, spreads on impact and blows fragments of spine through the smashed mess I made of its skull earlier. My second shot kills the screaming girl. Like most people in this city she’s beyond saving.
Chapter 31
‘Sir?’ says Leona.
‘What?’
‘You think Anton will get through?’
How the fuck would I know? He’s wearing an armband, and he’s carrying a ring and a half-decent rifle, and he’s got enough rounds to start a small war . . .
But the city’s rioting.
At least, the bit south of the river is. No idea what’s happening across the river. Maybe nothing at all for all we know. But on this side, we have a mob on the streets, unprotected by armbands, but loaded for bear with kitchen knives, iron bars, broken bottles and anything else that looks like a weapon.
They freeze when the furies appear.
Sometimes that is enough.
&n
bsp; Other times they die. The furies kill anything that runs. Unfortunately, the instinct to run when faced with something more dangerous than you overwrites common sense. Doesn’t matter how many times their friends scream, Stay still.
People don’t.
A few of the doubters being slaughtered are high clan. Slightly more are merchants or bankers, the kind of people who own houses along the river or around that square we left behind us. But most are poor, little different to those killing them. And the shout in the streets around us is changing.
At first it was Death to the doubters. Now it’s Death to the general.
The mob works to a pattern. Having watched the militia break down doors, they wait for the furies to go in, and then loot the place when the furies are done. Jewellers, bakers, chemists, computer stores. Doesn’t matter, the pattern is the same.
1) Steal anything valuable.
2) Destroy everything too heavy to move.
3) Burn the shop back to a shell when that is done.
Ash falls like rain around us. Already warm, the wind from the river grows hot as it takes heat from the fires and is sucked into new fires to heighten the flames.
We see a woman carrying an oil painting.
A man pushes a wheelbarrow full of painted china plates. One girl wears a priest’s hat. Another, a senator’s cloak joined at her neck by a silver chain. Both grinning and both blind drunk.
‘This way,’ someone shouts.
Excitement hisses through the crowd around us.
I follow, with Leona behind me, drawn by the word Jaxx. Our group streams into a bigger one, which joins a bigger one still. When the movement stops we’re standing in front of a huge house overlooking a small square. The coat of arms above the door is one I recognize. It’s carved on the general’s pinkie ring.
Two Death’s Head NCOs guard the steps.
Black uniform, silver braid, three stripes on each arm.
Their faces are impassive. They know they’re going to die. All the same, their pulse rifles are ported across their chests as regulations demand.
When they smell vinegar, they know how it’s going to happen.
The crowd freezes as a fury enters the square, herded by militia who wear armbands, and carry rags on sticks to stop the beast from attacking. The creature’s leathery skin reflects searchlights and torches as it approaches the door.