Jade Dragon s-5
Page 25
“Ko?” said a sleepy voice. “Where are we going?” Nikita shifted on the edge of wakefulness.
“Just a little country drive, Niki,” he told her, “Everything’s fine.”
She pointed out through the windscreen. “Look, Ko,” she said dreamily. “I can see blue. ”
Above, through the clouds, he saw it too; a pale cobalt sky, drawing them towards it. “Yeah. That’s where we’re going.”
Ko pressed the accelerator to the floor and left the jeeps choking on exhaust fumes.
Colonel Tsang walked gingerly through the cavernous interior of the wrecked building; the engineers assured him the stone stub that was all that remained of the Yuk Lung tower was in no danger of collapsing. Still, he was wary. The ruined skyscraper reminded him of an ancient burial mound, heavy with dust and the scent of death. There were pieces of torn cloth everywhere, and his boots crunched on shards of plastic. He nudged something with his toe; it appeared to be part of a porcelain mask. Tsang glanced at the sergeant and his men, each bearing a rifle and a sensor wand. “Anything?”
The sergeant frowned at the scanning device in his hand. “Sir, I’m not sure.”
The man came apart in a ripping shower of gore, cut in two. Tsang cried out in shock as a tattered shape like a heap of rags flashed through the other greenjackets, cutting them down. The colonel was rigid with shock, his hand an inch from his holstered pistol.
The thing slowed and approached him. It was human, after a fashion, a broken agglomeration of smashed skeleton and torn flesh. Tsang’s stomach twisted as he realised that the attacker was using a blade made from the bones of its right arm. The thing replaced the makeshift sword and flexed it experimentally. With care, it knelt and tore off the sergeant’s face, chewing on it.
Finally, Tsang’s instincts caught up with him and he grabbed at his pistol, but there were a mouthful of teeth in his neck before the gun ever cleared leather.
For a while there was only the sound of eating and tearing. Then through damaged and torn lips, the killer spoke aloud. “The Path of Joseph,” said Heywood Rope, “is thorny.”
About the Author
James Swallow’s novels include the Warhammer 40,000 novels Faith and Fire, Deus Encarmine and Deus Sanguinius; among his other works are the Sundowners series of “steampunk” Westerns, the Judge Dredd novels Eclipse and Whiteout, Rogue Trooper: Blood Relative and the novelization of The Butterfly Effect. His non-fiction features Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher and books on genre television and animation; his other credits include writing for Star Trek Voyager, Doctor Who, scripts for videogames and audio dramas. He lives in London, and is currently working on his next book.
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