Dave vs. the Monsters 1: Emergence

by John Birmingham

  Most of the power, however, was transferred from his body into the daemon. It began to fly.

  Talons screeched on tiles as the creature scrabbled for purchase. Dave took another step toward his now airborne opponent, swinging Lucille like a baseball bat, swinging for the parking lot. The twelve-pound head caught the beast in mid-thorax. Dave had not thought to check his grip on the weapon. If he had, he would have made sure to attack with the cutting edge of the axe lest he strike any sort of armour. But it was the dark metal fist of the sledgehammer that struck the Sliveen.

  The daemon exploded, flying apart with a dull, wet roar of detonation. Viscera, bone shards, purple-black ichor, and flesh all expanded outward in a foul blast of organic chemistry. So great was the force of the blow that it spun Dave around, turning him away from the sight of the carcass, which was trailing long strands and loops of offal. He turned back in time to see most of the corpse land in the middle of the crossroads.

  As if released from suspension, fleeing residents suddenly sped up. The tyres of the pick-up screeched as they bounced down and the rubber bit into the tarmac again. The odd, distant damping effect on Dave’s hearing cleared, and he could hear screaming and sirens and gunfire. A shaky breath leaked out between his trembling lips.

  Turning slowly around, taking everything in, he observed the scene back at the po’boy shop, with medics running to attend to the wounded and the dead and the SWAT and SEAL teams still hunkered down around the command unit for whatever cover they could find. He saw Ashbury punch Compton on the nose, and he actually laughed as another quarter turn found him facing west, where the beleaguered marines were bunkered down at the abandoned McDonald’s on Claiborne.

  The laughter died at the back of his throat.

  *

  Dave hurtled toward the marines without thought or intent or any notion about what he might do when he landed. The muddy, weed-choked lot in which the helicopter had crashed was a good half mile away, but he covered at least a third of that distance with one convulsive leap. He did not hit fast-forward this time. The world did not slow to a crawl around him.

  For a moment he was able to watch Heath and Allen and Ostermann whipping their men into action, and then his forward flight carried him away from them and into the airspace occupied by five helicopters. Two were civilian, carrying news crews, and the crash of their colleagues in the Bell had induced at least some caution in those pilots. They stood off a ways, circling the burning wreckage, their spotlights picking out the charge of the Horde across the wasteland toward the downed aircraft and the small contingent of marines who now defended it.

  He landed on the road surface, which buckled slightly under the impact. Two more strides and he leaped for the stars again, taking care this time, as he had not before, to note the short looping flight paths of the military helicopters that swarmed and swooped and raked at the thrall with their guns.

  Wouldn’t do to jump into a rotor blade.

  Dave wondered why the choppers didn’t just unleash seven kinds of hell on the orc swarm, hosing them down with everything they had, but it was no mystery. The thrall was so close to the marines and the survivors of the chopper crash that letting fly meant killing any number of people, too.

  And so he sailed on, not quite sure what the fuck he was doing but carried forward as much by Lucille’s sweet song, which now sounded undeniably real and human inside his head, as he was by the power of his leap. That power was even more unexpected and frightening to him than it had been when he had intercepted the flying barbell back at Camp Mysteryland.

  It felt as though there were no limits to what he might do. Jump hard enough and perhaps he’d find himself in the vacuum of space after a few minutes. A ridiculous thought, but how much more ridiculous than whatever he was doing right at that moment?

  What am I doing? he thought.

  So did the pilot of the Cobra gunship as Dave flew past him, winking and cocking a thumb and finger play gun at the guy, whose mouth hung open in abject confusion.

  ‘Yeah. Be cool. Super Dave’s got this,’ he said.

  *

  Ahead and below, the double scythe formation of the Horde swept around the downed helicopter. For a moment the flames and the coordinated fire of the marines held them back. Dave could easily imagine, or even remember, the stinging sensation as the heat and light tightened the creatures’ hides. It might have been enough to protect and shield the survivors and the handful of uniformed men and women – yes, that was definitely a woman in full battle kit down there – if a couple of Grymm had not targeted them with . . . what was that?

  Dave dropped down closer and closer to the encounter and strained to make out what sort of weapons the elite warriors used. Crossbows, it looked like. Whatever, they worked. He saw a couple of blurred streaks shoot out from their hands before two of the marines spun into the dirt, their own weapons spraying ribbons of tracer fire into the sky. The Grymm worked furiously at their tiny handheld weapons, loading and cocking them, but to no purpose this time.

  A Sliveen warrior loped up out of the half-light and put three war bolts into the remaining survivors before the Grymm could fire again.

  Gravity steadily took hold, and Dave Hooper began to descend again, dropping below the nearest news chopper, moving down toward the marines of First Platoon, who were precisely thirty-six strong. They had been forty-one before the squad was cut down around the flaming wreckage of the WVUE helicopter.

  ‘Oh, hell, no,’ he barely breathed when he realised that the better part of the platoon had broken from cover and the relative safety of the McDonald’s and was advancing in stages, fire and movement, toward the main body of the thrall. He dropped rapidly through the night, preparing to land. The thunder of the thrall’s charge was loud under the dull thudding of the helicopters, the industrial jackhammer of heavy weapons, and the percussive thump and crunch of grenades. A last quick glance back over his shoulder showed the SEALs and New Orleans SWAT racing toward the thrall on foot. He could see Heath falling behind the more able-bodied men and struggling to stay in contact with them.

  Hundreds of civilians, maybe a thousand of them, in front of the strip mall across the main road had scattered when the Horde had bellowed its battle roar. Some were so freaked, they had run toward the engagement, and the others were spreading out through the nearby streets, making the job of herding them to safety all but impossible.

  Dave was almost down, but ready with the perfect comic book hero landing this time. Then he had trouble focusing. A fast-growing headache tried to drill through the bone between his eyes.

  Lucille chose that moment to become impossibly heavy.

  If the splitting maul could speak, Dave, who felt a powerful wave of nausea sweep over him, imagined she would be telling him the same thing his wife frequently told him all the way down the broken road that was their marriage.

  I tried to warn you.

  The ground rushed up with impossible speed. Tucking in his shoulder, Dave ploughed into the dirt as he attempted to roll off some of the momentum and energy he had built up. Lucille fell from his grip and landed next to a startled marine who looked all of nineteen. Dave probably had ass pimples older than this kid, who was sporting an impressive spray of his own acne. He looked only slightly more freaked out by the man who’d fallen from the heavens than he did by the rapidly approaching wave of slavering monster flesh.

  All this Dave took in as a strobing, washed-out colour wheel of imagery while he rolled over and over, not stopping until he hit the remnants of a chain link fence, bending a thick steel pole.

  ‘Ouch,’ he said.

  ‘Corpsman!’

  Dave stood up and shook himself off.

  The world responded by suddenly tilting, spinning, and dropping him back on his ass again. A giant iron vice snapped around his head and squeezed like a bastard.

  ‘Dude, are you all right?’ a
soldier asked. Or maybe a marine. Or even something else. Possibly just some helpful asshole who had wandered out of a Cheaper Than Dirt gun barn loaded for orc. Dave couldn’t make him out through the migraine aura blooming across his visual field. Not that he could really tell any of these characters apart, except for the SWAT guys in their natty black outfits. ‘Mr Hooper? You jump out of a chopper or something? Did you break anything?’

  This guy knew him?

  He tried squinting through the distortion that lay over everything now.

  ‘Feel . . .’ Dave grunted, ‘. . . sick.’ He rolled over onto his side, curled into a foetal position and vomited.

  ‘I got Hooper here. He says he’s sick,’ the man shouted into a helmet mike.

  Dave rolled over. ‘The Hunn . . .’

  ‘We got them,’ the marine said without sounding for a moment like he believed it. Hooper struggled up onto one elbow and tried not to retch again. His vision cleared slightly, and he realised he knew the marine. It was . . .

  Everly? Enderson?

  Everding!

  His name tag read everding. The guy from the Longreach. The big private who hadn’t been able to lift Lucille more than an inch or so off the deck.

  ‘Hey. I know you. Do you know a guy called Swindt?’ Dave asked groggily, feeling as if he’d just had a hit off a nitrous tank. ‘Likes to work out?’

  ‘Who?’

  He squinted at their surroundings. He was at the edge of the worst of the fighting now, stuck out on the end of the marine line, as best he could tell. The platoon had moved forward, taking what cover it could, denying it to the enemy, which was caught on open ground. A great tactic against a human foe, but against a daemon thrall intent on overrunning you no matter the cost? Not so much.

  They had forced the Hunn, their leashes of Fangr, and a few sundry daemonum back from the downed chopper, where four marines frantically worked on one of their comrades who was showing signs of life. Dave squinted and turned his head over on its side, lining up an unaffected area of his eyesight on the scene. It was the woman Dave had spied a few moments earlier. The long shaft of a Sliveen arrow had entered her body at the hip and emerged from the opposite shoulder, but she was screaming, which meant there was breath in her body. Muzzle flashes from her comrades lit up the night. Gunfire raged in a storm of superheated steel. Tracers whipped from dozens of glowing, smoking muzzles, lashing at the thrall, cutting some down and knocking others back. Every now and then a bright yellow strand of tracer fire as thick as a fire hose and as bright as Vegas would light up a daemon. Like, for real. Causing it to burst into flames and scattering the monsters around it. In this way the marines broke three daemon charges that Dave witnessed up close through the shifting veil of pain and distortion that had fallen over him. The Horde shivered under the firepower of the marines. Fangr and Hunn alike went to ground, diving into shallow holes and behind whatever meagre cover offered itself, only to be thrashed, kicked, and manhandled back up onto their haunches by the tallest and largest of their number, a creature that made Urgon look small.

  The BattleMaster, Dave thought, without being able to do a damn thing about it.

  He had a bad hurting on him, way more serious than the worst hangover or fever he’d ever known. This felt like a sickness of the fucking soul as much as the body. A medic dashed over to them, yelling questions at Everding and then yelling more at Dave. But he had trouble understanding the corpsman.

  That was what Everding called him: ‘Corpsman’.

  The marines threw grenades like confetti and swapped out magazines constantly as they tried to wear down their foe. Bursts of pepper-black explosions bit into the front ranks of the Horde. Fire teams darted from cover, pushing forward through the spotlights of police and news choppers. Dave could smell the alkaline tang of the human warriors’ fear and something more. Something seemingly at odds with the terror. Their killing joy. They reeked of it, the madness and glory of it.

  The thrall leader pointed his cleaver at the marines, who had formed a firing line to the left and right of the downed news chopper. As bullets sparked and flashed off his chain mail and plated armour, and dug bloody chunks where they struck thick hide, the giant Hunn opened his broken-fanged mouth and a deep-throated heavy bass growl reverberated through the ground, bouncing off brick and wood, asphalt and concrete. It rattled the back of Dave’s wisdom teeth, drowning out every other sound except his own weak, thready heartbeat. Which sounded like a tom-tom inside his head. The BattleMaster’s war shout – his shkriia – made the previous call to slaughter sound like a feeble cough.

  Everding cursed, eyes going as big and round as dinner plates.

  ‘Uh oh,’ the corpsman muttered. ‘This cain’t be no good.’

  The great mass of surviving Hunn and leashed Fangr suddenly rose up from where they had cowered and burrowed into whatever cover they could find in the rubbish-strewn lot. They stepped into the incredible volume of fire, ignoring the loss of an acolyte next to them, a warrior in front.

  And then they surged forward, looking like a landslide of bristling muscle and tusk and hard-armoured, tattooed flesh.

  ‘HUNN UR HORDE!’

  Slowly at first but soon gathering speed, the Horde moved en masse toward the marines, the front ranks absorbing the bullet storm, warriors falling, Fangr shrieking and tumbling in broken tangles.

  ‘HUNN UR HORDE!’

  But never stopping, never faltering, just coming on with the mindless fury of beasts. Dave struggled to raise himself, but his limbs were weighed down by some impossible burden. He was not paralysed. He could feel and move his fingers, but he could no more push himself up off the ground than Everding had been able to lift Lucille off the deck back on the Longreach.

  ‘HUNN!’

  ‘HUNN!’

  ‘HUNN UR HORDE!’

  The first marine fell, cleaved asunder by one great swing of a blade that looked half axe and half machete. His dying shriek as the top of his body separated from the lower limbs cut through Dave’s miasma as cleanly as the edged weapon had passed through the man. Dave’s vision cleared, but not the crippling inability to move. He saw the firing line overrun. Hunn and Fangr and one lone, loping Sliveen vaulted over their own dead and wounded, knocking aside guns, ignoring ineffectual bayonet thrusts. Fangr fell on marines in threes and fours, pulling them apart with fiendish and violent glee. The awful sound of limbs torn from sockets with a sucking, popping sound would stay in Dave’s memory for the remainder of his days.

  In less than a minute, the firing line disintegrated and the vanguard of the rampaging thrall broke out into clear ground, running straight toward the hundreds of civilians who had not fled quickly enough. The great mass of daemons was heedless of Dave and his two companions hunkered down in the shadows on the far left flank. But not all of them.

  ‘Behind you,’ Dave grunted.

  The corpsman stood up with his weapon held low at the hip. Some sort of assault rifle. Normally it would have intimidated the hell out of someone like Dave, who had never had a thing for guns, a distaste that was only confirmed by his brother’s death. But in the hands of the corpsman, spraying fire at a charging rhino-sized Hunn dominant, it looked utterly ridiculous. A toy. The corpsman emptied the full magazine into the Hunn, ignoring the smaller, more agile Fangr that bounded along beside it. Tracer rounds flashed and flared off the creature’s armour. Armour-piercing ammunition punched through boiled leather and dull grey metal plate, but to no avail. The killing frenzy had come over this one, too. Raked by deep gouges and bloody welts, the Hunn roared in pain and outrage, swatted the rifle away with the point of its cleaver, and kicked the corpsman in the chest. The giant horned claws impaled the screaming man, and the Hunn shook off the carcass the way Dave might try to shake off a piece of paper stuck to his boot by dog shit.

  Still Dave could not move. Still he lay helpless in the dirt as Everding shout
ed useless obscenities and unloaded a full mag of tracer and penetrator rounds at the Fangr leash. The 5.56-millimetre ammo scythed into the three daemon slaves, cutting two of them down with extravagant sprays of blood and gore. The third beast jagged to the left and sustained only a few grazing shots.

  ‘Run, Hooper! GO!’ the marine yelled at him. But Dave could not. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t even crawl to where Lucille lay a few feet away. All he could do was lie there and wait to die.

  Some fucking big league superhero he’d turned out to be.

  Wounded, coughing dust and pink foam, Everding tried to draw his knife before the Fangr reached him, but it was moving with animal swiftness, and then it was airborne, jaws clamping shut around Everding’s neck before he could even raise the tiny-looking blade. Man and daemon tumbled over together, fetching up in a writhing, caterwauling tangle on top of Dave, who could not even squirm out from underneath them. Everding lashed out weakly with his bayonet before the Fangr tore out his throat.

  Hot blood poured out of the terrible wound, blinding Dave, getting into his nostrils, flooding his mouth with the coppery sweet taste of violation and death. The great dead weight of the marine who’d sacrificed himself in vain suddenly lifted clear of his chest.

  The Fangr loomed over him, a snarling, stooping vision of horror painted in human blood, jaws festooned with man meat. Dave’s heart was beating like a hammer just inside his rib cage.

  Beside the leashed killer the Hunn stood bleeding and panting and regarded him with slow deliberation. Dave could feel the will of the dominant creature, the physical force of it restraining the leashed inferior. The battle or its aftermath raged on elsewhere, but the world, which he was about to depart, contracted down to the small dark circle in which the three of them eyed one another.