by Dan Abnett
A lingering early memory was the fear of the aggressive canine his father had kept, a creature that never seemed to tolerate Drusher. During his long years of training and education, he had lived in perpetual anxiety about being bitten or stung or clawed by the lab animals and wild specimens he was examining. Even as a magos, that fear had persisted, making him tentative in his work and his studies. He knew a lot about animal behaviour, and, for the most part, he knew how to avoid the risks and handle potentially dangerous life forms, but the most basic rule of all was that even a magos biologis never knew everything, and that an animal, especially one trapped or surprised, could do the unexpected. The damn sea raptor had remained in its cage for months because he’d been too afraid to get near to it.
Twice in his life, he had faced things that were truly fearful: the unholy xenos specimen that he and Macks had cornered in a mill in Outer Udar years before, and the psychotic killing-thing he had hunted in Tycho City.
Those fears lived with him and woke him at night, even though the dangers had long passed. They were hard-edged fears, and they tasted bitter, like dirty iron pressing on his tongue. They made his pulse skip and his skin go clammy. They made him dull and stupid, as if fear were a weight that pressed common sense and logical response out of his head. Both of those truly fearful experiences had happened when he was in the company of Germaine Macks. She was like a damned jinx that made bad things happen to him. Not insane adventures. That was a euphemistic, jolly term that suggested thrills and excitement. Just bad things. Things that had put him in the path of genuine, violent extermination. Things he didn’t wish to repeat or even remember. The closest he’d ever come to death.
But there in the kitchen passageway of Helter Fortress, with Macks’ stablight – yes, Macks there yet again, the common denominator of his misfortune – with her stablight illuminating the ghastly and impossible as it hobbled towards them, he oddly felt no fear at all.
The figure was simply unbelievable. Old human bones, mottled and stained by loam and mildew and decay, roughly assembled in anatomical order, scabbed and crusted with mould and dried-black blood and residual masses of dead sinew and tissue. The empty eye sockets were dark pits of shadow.
For a moment, time seemed to dawdle, as if waiting for Drusher’s mind to catch up. He became aware of how not frightened he was. Perhaps he was simply denying what was in front of him, refusing to accept it. Perhaps it was just so extraordinary it had taken him beyond the limits of any fear he could register.
Perhaps the day had already been too strange. He had been forced to accept things that his scientific background did not allow for. The workings of the psykanic mind, the notion of speaking to the dead, the post-mortal apparition of an old man. He had, for Throne’s sake, shaken hands with a ghost. Perhaps the strange day spent in the company of Eisenhorn and his curious band of assistants had acted as a crash course, a steep learning curve into the truths of the unknown. Perhaps the day had been like a baptism, annealing his soul and his fear so that it was ready for this moment.
Or perhaps… perhaps it was just too fascinating. Drusher’s curiosity, the appetite for wonder and discovery that had steered him into his profession, had eclipsed all fears. Even the xenos thing he had faced in the windmill all those years ago, that had been definable. He’d been able to know it, to describe it in accurate terms. He’d been afraid of it simply because it had been going to kill him.
But this… this was beyond his considerable framework of knowledge. He wanted to know what it was. He wanted to understand how it could be, how it could exist. It was just organic waste, the skeletal relic of a dead human being. It had no life. It was a broken frame that had once supported life, but that was all. Even on a basic level of organic engineering, the greater part of the mechanism was missing. There were no muscles or tendons left to support or move the bones, no blood supply to feed those muscles, no nerves to stimulate motion and control balance, no heart to pump the blood, no organs to fuel the process, no brain in that cranium to make walking a desire, no eyes to see them with.
But it saw them. And it walked, a precarious, slow walk like a frail old man. It saw Valentin Drusher and Germaine Macks, and it walked towards them.
‘That,’ Drusher said, almost brightly, ‘that is highly unlikely.’
Macks mumbled something that wasn’t properly a word. The approaching figure appeared to shudder slightly. Drusher realised that the powerful stab-beam transfixing it was quivering. Macks’ hands were trembling wildly. He could hear her sobbing and hyperventilating.
He knew, under any other circumstances, he would be doing the same thing. His mind would have closed down in the choking paralysis of fear.
‘Germaine?’ he said gently. ‘Germaine?’
He put his arm around her shoulder. She was shaking so badly it felt like she was vibrating. She was making an odd, mewling sound. She couldn’t not look at it.
Drusher couldn’t look away either. But he reached out with his free hand and took the riotgun from her, keeping the stablight aimed at the walking thing. He squeezed his arm tight around her quaking shoulders.
‘Germaine? Come on,’ he said. ‘Come with me. Take a step backwards. That’s it. And another.’
He edged them towards the parlour door. She shook against him. Drusher could smell the thing advancing towards them. He could smell rot: not the gross, gagging stink of putrescence, but the faded, dry fragrance of end-stage decomposition.
‘Germaine? Another step.’
They had reached the parlour door. He pushed Macks into the room, and she almost fell through the doorway.
Drusher turned back to face the walking thing.
‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘Can you speak? You shouldn’t be able to, but then you shouldn’t be able to walk either. Can you tell me what you are? Can you tell me how you are possible?’
The figure could not. It simply continued its inexorable trudge towards Drusher. Its right arm began to rise, as if it were reaching out to touch him.
‘I’d like an answer,’ said Drusher. ‘If you won’t answer or you can’t, I’d like you to go.’
By the light of the torch fastened under the barrel of Macks’ heavy weapon, Drusher saw that some kind of energy discharge was crackling over the walking bones, like a faint bioluminescence. It was an electric-green, which reminded him of deep-sea leachfish, or the cave worms, Nematodus cryptus, that he had catalogued in Southern Gersha. The glow came and went, never totally present. For a moment, it shimmered around arm bones, and he saw the brief, ghostly traceries of veins and capillaries. He saw phantom tendons and intercostals come and go across stained ribs. He saw spectral organs pulse in the abdominal void. Some kind of energetic pattern, a light-echo of the lost soft organics. Green pinpricks lit in the empty orbits of the skull sockets, the ghosts of eyes.
‘If you don’t answer, then we’re done,’ said Drusher. ‘This will be good night. I won’t allow you to come any closer. I have a gun. It will shatter what little is left of you.’
The skeletal thing took another wavering step closer.
‘I warned you,’ said Drusher. Very calmly, he thumbed off the weapon’s safety, braced it in a low grip because he knew it would kick, and fired.
In the tight confines of the passageway, the boom was deafening. The blast hit the figure in the sternum.
The explosive force dissipated like steam. Drusher heard flecks of shot patter onto the stone floor, all force spent. The figure kept coming, as though nothing had happened.
‘Throne,’ said Drusher. He charged the pump grip and fired again, then repeated quickly. Each shot blew out like vapour as it reached the advancing thing.
Only now did fear begin to register in Valentin Drusher. He felt it creep into his joints like frost, numbing him. He got the first taste of bitter metal on his tongue.
He fired one more shot, then ran into the parlour and slammed the door.
ELEVEN
At the Threshold
He locked the door behind him. As an afterthought, he dragged one of the old armchairs over and shoved it against the door.
Macks was staring at him. Her eyes were red, and she wiped at her dripping nose with her sleeve.
‘We, um,’ he began.
‘Did you see it?’ she whispered. ‘You saw it too?’
He nodded.
‘I shot it,’ he said. ‘Several times.’
‘Did you…’ she asked, her voice very small, ‘did you kill it?’
‘Not… no,’ he said. ‘Not really at all. I don’t think it can die, because it’s not alive. Something odd happened with your gun. Is it loaded… I mean, did you put some kind of blanks in it?’
‘What are you even saying?’ she gasped at him, incredulous.
‘Blanks, you know… pooofff!’ he said. ‘The shots didn’t do any damage. Like they were just dummy rounds.’
Macks swallowed hard. She took a step forwards and snatched the gun from his hands.
‘Breacher rounds,’ she said, popping the slide open to show him the red Munitorum stencil on the yellow sleeve of the ready shell. ‘It will blow a hole in a bloody door. Knock a man down, even in armour.’
‘Do they… do they go off?’ he asked. ‘I mean, do they spoil. If you don’t use them?’
‘You’re an idiot,’ she snapped, staring at him with wide eyes. ‘What are you going on about?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, trying to sound calm even though a degree of panic was now rising in him, as if he were wading slowly and steadily deeper into an ice bath. ‘I shut the door. I locked it.’
‘Oh good,’ she said sarcastically. She sat down in the other armchair, then immediately got up again. ‘You saw it, right?’ she asked him. ‘You saw… that?’
‘I did,’ he said.
‘I’ve never…’ she murmured, pacing. ‘I swear by the Throne, I’ve never been so scared. That was… impossible. I mean, completely and utterly bloody impossible.’
‘In the most literal and scientific way,’ he agreed.
‘Is it still outside?’ she asked.
Drusher looked at the locked door and the chair wedged up against it.
‘Probably,’ he said. ‘I’d prefer not to check.’
Macks looked nervously around the small room. There were no other doors and no windows.
‘We can’t get out,’ she said. ‘If it’s outside the door…’
‘It can’t get in,’ he replied. ‘It will go away…’
She looked at him.
‘You didn’t freeze up,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you freeze up? You always freeze up.’
Drusher shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Scientific curiosity,’ he said.
‘Groxshit,’ she said. ‘You kept it together somehow.’
‘I’ve rapidly developed a high threshold for strange,’ he said. After a moment, he added, ‘I think it’s beginning to hit me now, though.’
There was a soft noise. They both looked at the door sharply.
It was a scratching sound, like a hound pawing to be let in: the coarse, dry scrape of unfleshed distal phalanges clawing at the old wood of the door.
Macks cursed. They both backed away from the door.
‘It can’t get in,’ he said. ‘I locked it. It can’t get in.’
He felt that if he repeated it enough, it would become true.
Something started to happen to the door. It shivered slightly, then a dark patch began to appear at shoulder height, as though a blowtorch were being applied to the other side. The patch grew and spread. The wood began to flake and fall away. It looked for all the worlds of man as if the wood were simply and rapidly decomposing.
Macks swore again.
The decay spread, eating the wood away. Flecks of pulp billowed out from the collapsing surface, as though invisible swarms of boring insects were desiccating the wood and devouring it. Macks and Drusher could smell burned sawdust and mildew.
A portion of the upper panel fell away. The decay spread was accelerating. A powerful corrosive sprayed on the door could not have gnawed the fabric away so fast. A bone hand reached in through the gap, flaking the wood, clasping and unclasping at the open air.
‘Oh Holy Throne…’ Macks murmured.
The door began to collapse in its frame. Parts of it became smoke that boiled with electric-green sparks, motes of dust that tumbled as they burned out. Larger sections fell out whole, bursting into dust as they bounced off the armchair and hit the ground. The figure began to push its way in. They saw the green light of its stare burning from its hollow sockets. They heard the squat legs of the old, heavy chair scrape on the flagstones as it was slowly shoved out of the doorway.
Macks fumbled for her vox.
‘Nayl! Nayl!’ she yelled. ‘For Throne’s sake! Help us! The parlour! The parlour behind the kitchen! It’s going to kill us!’
The vox-channel warbled back, wordlessly.
Drusher looked around frantically. No other doors, no windows… He ran over to the hearth. The firebox was mounted in the stone chimney place, a later addition to replace the original open fire. Black iron pipework vented the flue up into the chimney itself. The chimney was blocked around the main flue with a sooty metal plate.
He tried to move the firebox, but withdrew his hands instantly with a yelp. Though the fire was dying, the metal was still hot. He kicked instead, savagely and repeatedly, trying to dislodge the firebox from the fireplace. It gradually began to shift. The chimney plate came loose at one side, spilling out clouds of choking soot, and the flue split.
Macks glanced at him.
‘What are you doing?’ she yelled.
‘The chimney,’ Drusher replied as he kept kicking furiously. He said it as if that were explanation enough. She understood his meaning.
‘We won’t fit up the chimney!’ she yelled.
‘Yes, we will!’
‘We can’t climb–’
‘Yes, we can! Help me!’
‘It won’t work, Valentin!’ she shouted.
He paused, breathing hard from the exertion.
‘The alternative is staying in this room,’ he said.
He started kicking again. The firebox shifted with a shriek of metal on stone, and sooty clouds spilled out of it.
Macks looked back at the door. The thing was nearly through. Only the chair stood in its way, blocking it.
‘Nayl!’ she yelled. ‘Assist now, for the love of Terra!’
She hoisted the riotgun and began to shoot, methodically pumping shot after shot at the thing. One round blew out part of the door frame. Another punched through the headrest of the arm chair, filling the air with clouds of white kapok. Each shot that hit the thing itself fizzled into nothing.
It strained on relentlessly past the obstacle. Bone hands clawed at the chair, and decay began to spread out from its touch. The upholstery started to wither and perish, exposing yellowed stuffing, springs and wooden frame, then those too began to disintegrate. The chair gradually decomposed from the seat-back down, dissolving into dust. One arm slumped aside as the back-frame powdered. Hungry green sparks writhed on the remaining upholstery.
Macks turned to Drusher and began to kick with him. The firebox dislodged entirely and fell heavily onto its front. They pulled at the broken vent and the chimney plate, ignoring the burns they got from the metal. Accumulated black filth poured out of the flue, decades of dust and soot. They were both coughing and choking.
The plate fell out with a clang.
Drusher looked over his shoulder. The chair was all but gone. The thing was in the room.
‘Get up there!’ he yelled at her.
‘You first!’
‘Just get up the chimney, Germaine! I’ll boost you!’
She tossed the riotgun and wriggled down into the hot cavity of the chimney place, groping for handholds on the stone. Drusher bent down and made a stirrup from his hands, cradling her right foot to hoist her.
‘Climb!’
he yelled. ‘Climb, Germaine!’
He didn’t dare look behind him.
He didn’t want to see it when it happened.
Macks’ head and upper body were inside the flue. He could hear her scrabbling for grip.
‘It’s too small!’ he heard her yelling, muffled. ‘It’s too tight! I can’t!’
Old, heat-cracked stone inside the chimney gave way. Macks lost her grip and came crashing back out, chunks of stone falling with her. She almost landed on Drusher. They both went over in the hearth.
‘Magos! Stay down!’
Drusher heard the commanding voice. He saw Nayl in the doorway behind the walking thing. Garofar and the other deputies were crowding in behind Nayl, staring in utter dismay at the sight in front of them.
But Nayl’s face was grim, as if he’d seen the impossible far too many times before. He raised his lasrifle.
Drusher grabbed Macks and pulled her as flat as he could, covering her head and shoulders with his own arms and body.
Nayl fired a sustained burst. Shrieking bolts of light ripped into the parlour, striking the figure from behind, doing nothing but making it jerk a little. Stray bolts tore past it, blowing holes in the far wall over Drusher and Macks. Several shots crippled the old wooden dresser pushed against the wall. It shook, sagged and toppled over on its front.
The figure swayed then slowly turned to face Nayl and the deputies behind him.
‘Oh, Holy Terra…’ Garofar gasped.
The figure took its first lurching step towards Nayl. It raised its right hand to stroke his face.
Nayl fired again. The las-bolts pummelled at its ribcage, but their heat and light vaporised on contact, becoming a lambent crackle that radiated out across the skeletal form, and vanished.
Nayl cursed. He stood his ground in the doorway and let go of the lasrifle, so that it dropped hard onto its sling, swinging at his waist. He drew a heavy autopistol from a chest holster, ejected the clip, racked the weapon open and took a single round from his breast pocket. He fitted it into the open receiver, slammed the slide shut and took aim with both hands.