by William King
I tried to picture the map of the trench complex in my head. I thought I had it all down. My battles along this front line had given me a great deal of familiarity with the layout over the past six months.
Up ahead I caught sight of the first of those brown-clad, mud-covered, sickly looking soldiers. I crouched low, held the shotgun ready, took a deep breath and prepared for combat.
I raced forward and pulled the trigger, blasting a hole deep in the enemy ranks. I pumped it and fired again and then again. The heretics went down like puppets with their strings cut. They had not been expecting this attack. They had thought that the fighting was still a long way ahead of them.
They reacted sluggishly, as they usually did, with the lethargy of men long confined to sick beds, or whose minds were slower than they should be. They were not very good soldiers, those vat-born heretics. There were just a lot of them.
I saw the uniform of an officer and I shot him, knowing that would slow their responses even more. In these sorts of regiments, the enemy officer corps were the only ones among the heretics who seemed remotely normal, who could respond with alacrity to any new threat. Their followers obeyed them implicitly. In a very real sense they were the brains and nerves of the enemy army.
The officer went down along with a bunch of his minions. Ivan swept by me, lobbing a grenade, and then pulling the trigger on his laspistol. Anton moved up to my side and began shooting with his sniper rifle at any enemy that even hinted at turning in my direction. The rest of our men moved forward sending a hail of grenades and small arms fire into the heretics. We smashed into their line like a bayonet tearing through diseased flesh. In my mind’s eye I could picture other squads of Lion Guard on the far side of the salient doing the same thing. The jaws of the trap were starting to close. The question was, who was being trapped, the enemy or us?
We charged forward through the trenches, killing as we went, blowing them up with grenades, setting them alight with incendiaries, blasting them with shotguns and lasrifles. They could not stop us; we had them flanked and we were far, far better fighters. Most of the heretics were worse than even the greenest recruits, but there were just so damn many of them. We cut through them, cleaving their line, but such were their numbers that they simply filled the gaps we made like water flooding into a trench.
I smashed the head of one foe with the butt of the shotgun, stuck the barrel into the mouth of another, which broke his teeth. When I pulled the trigger, his skull disintegrated and the heretics behind him fell. Clouds of smoke were everywhere from the small fires started by the incendiaries, chemical blazes that not even the constant rain could douse.
I faced a heretic officer. He was huge and blubbery, with rolls of fat that distorted the shape of his uniform. A tiny red mouth was visible in parchment-pale skin. He was a head taller than me and weighed three times as much. Numerous chins compressed against his neck as he screamed and gurgled his hatred. Like most of their officer class, he did not seem to have any boils or rashes. His eyes were pink, though, and a mesh of tiny red veins was visible beneath the skin of his cheeks and forehead.
His movements were slow and lumbering. I pointed the shotgun at him. A body came falling from my right and deflected my aim as I pulled the trigger. The giant loomed over me, and I found myself locked in a bear-like embrace, my face pressed deep into folds of fat, flabby fingers pressing at my throat. I smelt sweat and something sickly sweet, like curdled milk.
I tried to pull away, but for all his softness the giant was strong. I heard his breath come out in phlegmy wheezes. I heard his stomach gurgle. I had dropped the shotgun. I brought my fist around and buried it in his belly. It was like poking the side of some huge balloon. My hand sank in and then simply recoiled as if I were hitting rubber. I looked up and saw that he was smiling serenely as he choked the life out of me, a look of dreamy satisfaction on his blubbery face.
I reached down with my right hand, hoping to grab his nads and squeeze them, and I found nothing. He was a eunuch. Absurdly I wondered if all the officer caste were. I slumped down, faking a loss of consciousness, my fast-weakening fingers fumbling for the bayonet I had strapped to my boot. I pulled it free from the sheath and I stabbed upwards into that vast belly.
He gave a high-pitched scream and his hands spasmed, and I feared in that moment he was going to crush my windpipe. He toppled backwards, clutching at his stomach, a dark red stain spreading across his uniform tunic. I stabbed again, aiming below the ribs, into the belly once more, blade pulling upwards to cut internal organs. His shrieking continued.
Another heretic closed with me and I slashed his throat. I looked around desperately for my shotgun, a weapon I had carried through more than two decades of campaigning, and which had saved my life on multiple occasions. I had a superstitious dread of losing it. I saw it lying in the mud and I dived for it, almost shaking with relief when my hand curled around it. I returned my bayonet to its sheath and checked the shotgun to make sure it was working.
A brief lull settled on the position. For a moment there was a quiet that sounded almost like silence compared to the roar of battle that had gone before it.
I saw Anton looking at me and glanced around to make sure Ivan was all right. He stood propped up against the side of the trench, his bionic arm covered in blood. The rest of the squad were stretched out behind us. Everyone looked tired, but moved with the nervous brittle energy that adrenaline and the knowledge that you are standing on the knife-edge between life and death brings.
‘Tougher than he looked, that last big frakker,’ Anton said, ‘but I knew you could take him.’
‘You could have lent me a hand.’
‘You didn’t need one and I was busy with some heretics of my own.’
‘What now?’ Ivan asked.
‘We push on,’ I said. ‘We try and link up with the boys from Plague Hill. I reckon we’ve only got about another league to go.’
‘What about holding the line?’
‘Leave it to the lads coming up behind us. We need to break on through and seal off the salient if we’re going to have any chance at all.’
Ivan raised an eyebrow and directed a look of the uttermost cynicism towards me. Clearly he felt that our chances were not great. What could I tell him? We needed to follow on through to give ourselves a fighting chance.
Anton’s eyes suddenly narrowed and I heard his gasp of fear. I turned to see the corpse of the officer pull itself upright, its fat arms stretching out and its pudgy fingers flexed like claws. An obscene gurgling sound emerged from its mouth – there was an awful suggestion of humour in it. Its glance swivelled to meet mine and I saw hunger and hatred there.
Five
‘Hell,’ Anton said. ‘Not again.’
The rifle rose to his shoulder and he pulled the trigger. The body of the fat officer fell over backwards, head removed.
‘You can’t say I didn’t help you that time,’ Anton said. ‘I put the fat frakker down but good.’
He had too. I wondered at the way the heretic officer had risen. I glanced around and saw some more of the heretics pulling themselves upright. A few of them shambled forward, arms outstretched, and I was reminded of the way their leader had reached for my throat. I blasted one down with the shotgun. It wriggled forward for a bit before it stopped moving.
Of the enemies that had fallen only a few had managed to pull themselves upright and even they had fallen down once more, like wound-up toys losing their motive power.
‘You see that?’ asked Ivan, pointing at one of the fallen corpses. I did. It was as if all the blood vessels in the corpse’s eye had burst and turned all the white to red. A red film had spread over the iris and only the tiny pinprick of the pupil was visible. I checked all of the bodies that had come back from seemingly fatal wounds and they all shared the same red eyes.
‘Some new form of disease,’ Ivan said. He sounded thoughtful.
‘Looks that way,’ I said.
‘What sort of disease
makes a dead body get up and run around like a headless chicken?’ Anton asked.
‘This one,’ I said. ‘I thought that much was obvious. Anyway, we don’t have time for this. Push on!’
We headed on down the trench, chopping our way through more of the heretics. A few more of the bodies rose – not many, but enough. I came across a few more corpses whose stomachs had exploded like the ones on Skeleton Ridge. There were no wounds on them. It was as if they had fallen down dead where they lay, victims of some terrible disease.
Over a few of the dead something seemed to hover, a sort of foul disease spore. The area around their fallen bodies was discoloured by more than just the remains of their innards. It was as if some vile chemical had been produced by their death and tainted the very earth around them. I began to do some calculations in my head. Whenever we were near a spot where the corpses picked themselves up, we found one of these stomach bursters. They were obviously some terrible new weapon. I was grateful for the fact that they did not seem to work very well.
Up ahead of us now, we heard the sound of bitter fighting, of grenades exploding and lasguns pulsing. I heard officers shouting orders in Imperial Gothic and saw men in the uniforms of the Lion Guard in front of us. We had made it to the rendezvous. We had linked up with the force from Plague Hill and cut the enemy force in half. Of course, that just meant that as soon as the enemy realised what had happened we were going to be attacked on two sides, front and rear. Suddenly the Undertaker’s plan did not seem nearly so clever. I glanced out into the darkness from which the heretics had come. For the moment all was quiet. The enemy had fallen back. One of their commanders had clearly realised that something was going wrong and had halted the advance, quite possibly temporarily. It gave us some breathing space.
Behind us the other half of the enemy continued to advance towards our second line. They had not yet realised they were out of touch with their own reserves. A captain emerged from the Plague Hill lines and went to greet our officer commanding. They chatted for a bit and then Lieutenant Creasey came over.
‘Sergeant Lemuel, you and your men will hold this section of the line. The rest of us are going to take those heretics in the rear.’ He said it with the utter confidence that a certain sort of field officer feels he needs to project.
I snapped off a salute and said, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Mighty quiet around here,’ said Anton, staring out into no-man’s-land. He was wrong, of course. Behind us we could hear the sounds of combat as our fast-moving assault squads overtook the rear of the heretic breakthrough.
I kept the periscope focused outwards, wondering when, not if, the next wave of heretics would come in. I had a sick certainty that they would attack again in overwhelming numbers, and it was hoping for too much that they would not. In the past few months they had shown no shortage of men and weapons, so it seemed unlikely they were going to start now.
‘Too quiet,’ Anton said. Ivan made a tut-tutting sound.
‘Are you going to just stand there spouting clichés from a prop-nov all night?’ I asked.
Anton nodded. ‘Yep. It passes the time.’
‘You can pass the time checking our position,’ I said. ‘Make sure everybody has enough ammo and that their rebreathers are tight. The heretics are going to be on top of us soon and I want everybody ready.’
‘Your wish is my command, milord,’ Anton said. I glanced around to make sure there was no officer in position to overhear him cheeking me, or worse yet, none of our men.
‘You want me to head in the opposite direction and do the same thing?’ Ivan asked. I nodded. It seemed like a good idea.
Anton scowled. ‘Typical. We do all the work and he just lazes around playing with his periscope.’
‘Get going, corporal,’ I said. They got. I was left standing in the trench, checking no-man’s-land and feeling my leg beginning to ache again. I looked down and noticed there was a sort of green ooze on my trouser leg, level with the wound. It might have come from a heretic, but I did not trust it. I checked the leg – the gauze was leaking the pus right enough. I did not like the look of that at all.
I adjusted my gear again and checked the shotgun, cleaning it with a cloth. I counted the number of cartridges I had left. Only a dozen or so. I suspected there might not be any more forthcoming. Supplies had not arrived on Loki for some time, and shotguns were not the most common weapons among the Guard. Only my exalted position as part of Macharius’s bodyguard had kept me in supply for this long, and here on the front line even that was not going to help.
I kept my gaze focused on the war-ravaged land in front of me, at the lakes of mud, the rolls of barbed wire, the piles of bodies, the smashed remains of what had once been tanks. I watched clouds of mist swirl over the battlefield. Where was the enemy? What were they waiting for? Why was there no attack?
I heard a wounded man call out, then the footsteps of a medical orderly rushing to his aid. What was the point? He was most likely going to die anyway. I sneezed and then I coughed. I felt as if a clot of something was stuck within my lung. My breathing had the gurgling quality I associated with the heretics. Damn, it looked like I definitely had caught something. That was not good. The fighting rumbled on behind us; our boys were giving the heretics hell by the sound of it. At least I hoped they were. The thought of any other result was discouraging.
Ivan returned, followed by Anton a minute later. I coughed and wheezed. Ivan’s head tilted as he examined me. ‘You don’t sound so good, Leo,’ he said.
‘I don’t feel so good either.’
‘You want a medic?’
‘There’s others have more need. I can hang on for a bit.’
The words were no sooner out of my mouth when I heard the drumming start up again from the front of our position. It looked like the second wave of the enemy had arrived and was getting ready to attack. I loaded more shells into my shotgun, snatched up a lasgun from a nearby corpse and set it near at hand. I was going to need it when the ammo was all gone.
‘These boys just don’t believe in giving up, do they?’ said Anton.
‘Neither do I,’ I said.
More and more of our own troops filtered along the trench line. I felt my nerves subside a bit. The door of the trap was being shut. Grosslanders and Lion Guard alike were starting to fill these trenches, most of them currently facing inward, and cutting off the retreat of the heretics behind us. I propped myself up on the trench wall and fought off waves of dizziness. The skull moon beamed down from the darkening sky. It seemed to be smiling, which was not a reassuring sight.
The drums and the chanting had stopped. Despite my fears the next wave of heretics had not rolled in. It looked like we had successfully stopped the latest enemy offensive. Anton was whistling cheerfully. Ivan had produced a flask and was sneaking a sip from it as he oiled the joints of his prosthetic. I crunched on stimm tabs and painkillers and felt a little better. There was a satisfying sense that it was all over, that we had somehow snatched victory yet again. You could tell from the jaunty air of the soldiers. They were chatting in an almost relaxed manner, despite the occasional sounds of combat still coming from within the salient.
It was then that the shells started to howl overhead. I swear they sounded like no other shells I have ever encountered – they made a Banshee whine as they fell, like the voices of souls in torment. Some of them left a trail of greenish phosphorescence in the air behind them, whizzing across the sky like dim star shells or ghostly meteors. I wondered what they were being aimed at. They were falling in front of us and behind us. It was perfectly possible the heretics were aiming at their own men, but they did not seem to care.
At the first sound of their falling, I threw myself into cover, with Anton and Ivan beside me and other Lion Guard all along the trench line. I heard a weird sound, like a muffled explosion deep underground. It sounded again and again as the barrage rained down and I realised after a while that it was the shells going off. They were not high explosive.
That was for certain.
‘What are they up to now?’ Ivan asked.
‘Some new trick no doubt,’ I muttered.
Billows of greenish, glowing mist spurted down into the trench. I heard a man cough and retch, and I realised we had yet another case of faulty filters. The man did not fall or start to scream or hallucinate. He just stood there coughing.
‘Gas,’ Anton said.
‘They’re covering a new attack,’ said Ivan. That was the logical inference certainly. I stuck the periscope up over the lip of the trench and studied no-man’s-land. Shells were falling thick and fast out there, huge columns of greenish mist leaping upwards in great plumes and then sinking and spreading. Almost directly ahead of me I could see a shell, big as a man, sticking out of the mud. The detonator had failed to go off, obviously, but small trickles of gas and some greenish viscous liquid were leaking from it. I could see it had oddly curved fins on it, which doubtless were the cause of the wailing sound they made as they fell.
I couldn’t see any signs of an enemy advance, though, and I could not hear any chanting or drumming. I turned my head and saw more of the shells still falling behind us. It seemed like the heretics were determined to cover the whole area in gas.
Whatever it was, it did not seem to be working very well. Even men with faulty rebreathers were doing nothing more than cough. I saw Mikals remove his mask and begin to fiddle with the filter pack, his face completely exposed. His eyes were watering and he was grimacing, but he did not seem to have been poisoned. I tossed him one of my spares and told him to put it on right away. He gave me a thumbs up, sat down, still hacking and spitting, and fitted it over his face. Shortly thereafter his coughs subsided.
I turned my attention back to the killing ground in front of us. Nothing seemed to be happening out there yet.
‘Looks like we’re not the only ones getting faulty gear,’ said Anton. ‘They should put whoever made that gas in front of a firing squad. It’s not done anything yet.’