Day of the Damned (15 page)

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.

Other times they d
ie.
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 d
ie.
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.

Another follows.

Both are puzzled by the stillness of their prey.

Away to the side, a looter claws a stone from the cobbles, and weighs it in his hand as his friends split their faces into grins. Opening her mouth to shout a warning, Leona shuts it again when I shake my head.

What will happen will happen. Legba’s rule.

Plus, I’ve no plan to get killed before I find Colonel Vijay. Actually, I’ve no plan to get killed after that either. Although that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Drawing back his arm, the man hurls his stone.

He’s dead, bullet through his skull before the cobble even lands at his killer’s feet. But the guard’s movement gives the fury its next target. As the creature lurches forward, the other guard sights his pulse rifle. The blast burns through the fury, fries a hole in the guts of a militia corporal behind and sets on fire the hip of a woman beyond.

Makes no difference.

Closing on the Death’s Head NCO, the fury reaches for his heart.

Blood pumps up the creature’s arm and pisses from the hole burnt in its gut. Staring death in the eyes, the NCO thrusts his rifle under the fury’s chin and pulls the trigger.

They fall together.

Scooping out the first guard’s guts, the other fury plunges its fingers into his ribcage and reaches for his heart. The man dies in silence. But he still dies.

Job done, the creature turns and the crowd falls back as it exits the little square. Pot belly protruding from under silver ribs as its minders with their armbands and rags on sticks lead it away.

‘Fuck,’ Leona says.

A corporal beside her nods.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t want their job.’

He’s noticed Leona’s ferox-skull armband, for all that she is out of uniform.

‘Which battalion?’ he asks.

Leona looks at me. The wrong thing to do.

‘Let it go,’ I say. ‘You don’t have the clearance.’

Those magic words. He nods reluctantly, checks out my coat and weapons. Probably without even knowing it. Not sure what he sees. A blood-splattered, one-armed ex-Legion sergeant clutching a hunting rifle, a dagger at his hip, an oversized abattoir revolver in his belt, and an official band wrapped round the arm he does have?

Maybe.

Alternatively, he hears the warning in my voice. Who knows how other people make their choices? Well, maybe you do. I don’t give it much thought.

At the top of the blood-slicked steps, a militia sergeant catches a crowbar, rams it between the door and its frame and dies nastily. A thousand darts dicing him down to chopped meat. What did he think? That the house of General Indigo Jaxx would be undefended?

‘Use explosives,’ someone shouts.

The militia corporal who likes Leona grins.

Pulling a grenade from his belt, he yanks the pin and hurls it at an upper window. I’m out of there, dragging Leona behind me, before his grenade has time to bounce from the bombproof glass and roll back to his feet.

A trooper next to him loses everything below her knees.

The corporal loses his balls. And they both lose their lives shortly afterwards, as their blood spreads out in little rivers from the cobbles beneath them. The crowd’s night of happy looting has just turned sour.

Can’t say I’m upset.

I’m waiting to see if anyone else has a bright idea, when the sound of a battle tank comes from behind us. That obvious rattle of ceramic treads, and the low rumble of an engine designed to grind its way across pretty much anything.

The crowd scatters.

That’s just to give the tank space.

‘Old-model Tusker,’ Leona tells me. ‘RR52-MBT. Heavy plating, fully rotating turret, two main guns, five LMG . . .’

I’ll take her word for it.

Main battle tanks combine heavy and medium capacity. Their plate is thick enough to survive a direct hit. But the chassis is light enough to allow them reasonable manoeuvrability and distance, supposedly.

Never used them at Ilseville. There were no powered vehicles on Hekati. And something that clumsy wouldn’t last many minutes in the sands round Karbonne. Can’t see the point of tanks myself.

Slowly, the Tusker halts.

Its turret begins to swivel. Inside, someone turns a dial or taps a touchpad or whatever the RR52 needs to raise its gun. The barrel steadies, quivers and then drops slightly.

The first shot blows off the door.

Actually, it blows the door’s frame out of the wall, takes a hundred bricks with it and reveals a spider’s web of pipes powering the needle gun. It also demolishes three internal walls and leaves a hole in the back of the house you could drive the tank through.

OK, I’m beginning to get tanks now.

As the crowd cheers and the hatch flips on the Tusker’s turret, allowing the gunner to take his bow, dust billows from the doorway and settles to reveal a man standing halfway up a flight of stairs holding a side arm.

His first shot drills the gunner through the head. And the crowd’s cheers turn to anger.

‘Jaxx,’ shouts a voice.

‘Get him,’ someone screams.

They’re shocked by their own courage. It’s the courage of crowds.

Everyone is shouting and no one wants to make the first move. Even the senior militia officers look stunned as General Jaxx descends broken stairs towards his missing front door.

None of them raises his own side arm.

That’s going to prove temporary, of course. All the same, it’s impressive to see the whole square still and watch General Jaxx’s sheer presence reduce the crowd to silence. This is the general after all.

He’s tall and thin.

Wire-framed glasses are his only affectation. And his uniform is immaculate. Even the silver and black dagger at his hip looks recently polished. From his neck hangs an Obsidian Cross, with oak leaves and extra crown. The general has dressed for the occasion.

Right down to a ferox-skulled armband.

‘Back,’ someone shouts.

As the crowd scatters and then freezes, three furies enter the square, herded by half a dozen militia with their rags on sticks. Red eyes watch us, snub noses wrinkle at the smell of blood. Needle-like teeth grin from narrow jaws.

The vinegar stink is unmissable.

I seem to be the only person to recognize the cylinder strapped to the general’s back and the nozzle that juts from his hand. A braided hose stretches from cylinder to nozzle. Although the hose is nearly invisible in the dust, shadows and darkness. The hose is black, obviously. Like the general’s boots, his uniform, his cap and the pressure tank on his back.

General Jaxx smiles. A cold, brutal and brilliant smile.

As he steps into the doorway I tell Leona to move. She doesn’t obey quickly enough. So I push her in front of me as I force my way towards the edge of the crowd. A militia colonel watches us leave but breaks eye contact when I glare at him.

The general’s attack comes without warning.

A flash of ignition that lights sticky liquid pumped from the high-pressure cylinder strapped to his back, and then a dripping hose-length of flame. I’ve faced it before, dropped from planes and poured down shafts to burn out underground bunkers.

Most of these people don’t even know flamefire exists. The furies have obviously never met it. Wrapping their leathery skin, it burns so fiercely that skin peels like tissue paper to reveal burning flesh and melting machinery beneath. Steel bones twist with the heat and joints rupture themselves.

The general achieves this without appearing to move.

When a militia NCO goes for his gun, General Jaxx redirects his nozzle, incinerating the NCO, the men either side of him and half a dozen of those behind. The furies died silently. These die screaming.

‘You can surrender,’ he tells the crowd. ‘Or we can play some more.’

‘We’re going to kill you.’

The voice is rough. Too rough. Like someone pretending to be campesino. The general sneers. ‘You think I don’t know that? I knew my time was up the moment our glorious leader decided to cancel his meeting.’

He glares at the crowd. And laughs harshly when they cringe as he twitches the flame-thrower nozzle. Ice-blue eyes sweep over us.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Surely one of you rabble has the guts.’

I’m not sure he can see our faces, because the searchlight on him must put most of us in darkness. We can see him, however. And no one can miss the contempt in his face. Until tonight, General Indigo Jaxx, Duke of Farlight, was the most powerful man in this city. What’s more, he’s held my life in his hand and opened his fingers more than once. I owe him my membership of the Death’s Head and my promotions. For all that he now wants me dead.

An order is given.

Five militia rush the door and burn like candles, falling in flames at the general’s feet. Having kicked the closest down the steps, he searches for the colonel who gave the order and smiles.

‘Guido,’ he says. ‘You can do better than that.’

A cobblestone is thrown, then another. Neither hits, and the general doesn’t react. He is looking over the throwers’ heads to what is behind them. Eight furies and a dozen minders, appearing out of a side street and hesitating at the opposite edge of the crowd.

Seeing this, the crowd moves back and freezes.

The general’s smile widens.

God, you’ve got to love this man.

He might be a murderer, commander of a regiment feared on a thousand different planets, as unremitting as thirst in the desert, and implacable as a blizzard or ice closing over a lake, but his bravery is beyond question.

As the furies advance, he steadies himself.

The rest of us are irrelevant. He sees only the silver-skinned creatures moving towards him with their loping gait and sloped faces. Their fingers flex as the hunger takes them and they head for the kill only to hesitate when they sense his armband.

Three turn to writhing pillars with his first blast.

Another two attack and he flames them as well. All die in silence. No one doubts the intensity of their pain or the depth of agony that drops them to their knees, before leaving them blackened and stinking husks on the cobbles.

‘Sven,’ he says suddenly.

People turn to see who he’s addressing.

‘Come to see me die?’

I shake my head. That’s not my reason for being here.

The general shrugs, and says something too quietly for me to hear. Guess he’s talking to himself. As a fury shambles forward, General Jaxx sets his feet, twists his body, and steadies the nozzle again.

Flame streaks from his hand and bathes his attacker in fire, dripping in molten splashes around its feet.

‘Fuck,’ says Leona.

She’s not talking about the fury.

The general must have known this would happen eventually. The flamefire that roars from the nozzle suddenly splutters, splutters again and begins to weaken. In all, he’s killed nearly fifteen of the creatures.

‘You ready?’ I ask Leona.

‘Always, sir,’ she says.

Reminds me of myself, that girl. ‘Right, then cover my back if needed. And be prepared to fall back when I give the word.’