The lieutenant gathered his troops about himself. ‘The city has been sealed,’ he informed them, ‘but there may still be a way for us to serve within these walls. Our orders are to go to ground until that way is made clear to us.’
He must have been in contact with his superiors too, although Carwen hadn’t seen or heard it. He had noticed, however, that one of the Guardsmen carried a vox-caster, so it seemed probable that the lieutenant was wearing a discreet comm-bead.
Carwen was relieved when they moved on at last, away from the skyway and its bodies – relieved because it seemed less likely to him now that the ghouls would find them again. Relief soon gave way, however, to a stomach-knotting anxiety, when Carwen tried to envisage his fate instead.
He was following leaders he did not know, men who made him feel uncomfortable, who he couldn’t quite bring himself to trust. The ground shook again as, presumably, another skyway or a part of a building was collapsed somewhere beneath him, and Carwen knew that his dreams of escape, the dreams that had sustained him through the long night, were well and truly dead. As dead as most of his comrades, his friends.
He was still alive, still moving, but towards what he hadn’t the faintest idea. He had been turned around so that, instead of exiting the city, he was heading for its centre – and Trooper Carwen had the strongest impression that his newfound comrades were expecting to die there.
Chapter Nine
Gunthar woke to sunlight, and to distant cracks of gunfire. Looking outside, he saw an empty skyway, and no sign at all that anything had happened apart from a lone autocab sitting at an odd angle to the towers. His chrono, however, read morning-shift already, so the skyway ought to have been teeming with people.
Weber was fast asleep in his watch position by the window. Gunthar shook him awake, and they hunted for food, because they were both ravenous and because it was easier to focus on this short-term goal than to discuss what might happen next. The paste dispenser above the stove was dry, so Weber broke into a room across the hallway. The hab, as it turned out, was occupied: a young woman sat huddled in a corner, two children clutched protectively to her breast, and all three of them screaming and crying in the face of this violent intrusion. It took Gunthar and Weber some minutes to calm things down, to explain themselves.
Weber asked the woman to come with them, out of the city. It was news to Gunthar that they were going anywhere, but he didn’t object. In the daylight, he felt braver than he had last night, and the woman confirmed that they were only a few kilometres from their goal. With the sun to guide them, they could reach the city wall within the hour. There was only one problem.
‘We tried to leave last night with the soldiers,’ sniffed the woman, ‘but the lifters, the external lifters, weren’t working and the soldiers… I couldn’t do what they said. I couldn’t take my babies… Not down there. Not where the mutants live.’
Her words dampened Gunthar’s optimism, and, as he and Weber gulped down scavenged scraps in the hallway, he suggested that maybe the woman had been right. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘it would be best to stay put.’
‘What, and wait to be rescued?’ scoffed Weber. ‘Good luck with that. They’ll send in the soldiers for the Governor’s daughter first, then his friends after her, then the Governor’s supporters after them, and his loyal citizens at the bottom of the list.’
‘I’ve never left the city before, I never realised that… If the only way out is down… Weber, I think the monsters came from, you know, down there.’
‘But it’s quiet right now,’ said Weber. ‘It’s been quiet all morning, and I think I’d rather take my chances in the daylight then wait and see what happens after dark.’
Gunthar nodded gloomily, but he was thinking about the soldiers that had passed his window last night. They hadn’t been like the bestial ghouls, or the insects Weber had described. He had seen from their bearings, from the way they had moved, that they were intelligent, and this scared him more than anything he had seen thus far. Those soldiers, Gunthar was sure, wouldn’t be sleeping away the day, they would be out there somewhere, scheming and planning and searching…
Weber was right. They weren’t safe here. They weren’t safe anywhere.
‘I suppose,’ said Gunthar, ‘as we are so close… We could see what’s out there, and maybe… maybe they’ll have got the lifters working by now, so we can… I don’t know, maybe we should just take it one step at a time.’
Somehow, the declaration had sounded more certain in his head. Still, Weber agreed with him – and, seeing the relief in the storekeeper’s eyes, Gunthar realised that despite his outward confidence he too had been seeking reassurance.
They emerged into the cool morning air, and although the skyway was still quiet – almost preternaturally so – Gunthar felt all his logic, all his brave resolutions, draining into his shoes. He felt isolated out here, exposed.
He prayed he wasn’t making a fatal mistake.
It didn’t take them long to find the scars of last night’s attacks.
Gunthar saw the holes in the skyline first. He tried to believe they might always have been there, that the towers might simply have been built further apart in these outskirts of the city. Then, turning a corner, he and Weber came upon a collapsed hab-block, perhaps the same one on which they had trod before, and he could lie to himself no longer.
He saw a mangled body and, although he didn’t want to look, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. It didn’t look like a ghoul, but without a closer inspection – and Gunthar had no intention of getting closer – he couldn’t be sure. He was relieved when, through unspoken consent, he and Weber turned and began to skirt the ruins rather than attempting to cross them, although this would lengthen their journey.
There were more bodies on the skyways. They lay where they had fallen, and some had been stripped of their flesh, their exposed blood vessels glistening in the sunlight. However, there was life here too. Gunthar and Weber weren’t the only stranded citizens to have ventured, blinking, out into the new day.
Many of the others were like zombies, shuffling shell-shocked through the wreckage of their lives. Most, Gunthar realised, were waiting for somebody to tell them what to do. Occasionally, someone would turn to him in hope, seeing through the blood stains on his fine grey tunic, evidently wondering if he was the one to lead them, and then Gunthar felt ashamed because he couldn’t be that man.
Even so, as he and Weber proceeded, they picked up a small group of followers, attracted by the very fact that they were going somewhere. Weber neither encouraged nor discouraged these tag-alongs, he just plodded on in grim silence.
They found a PDF half-track and, littering the skyway around it, the remains of a PDF squad. They disturbed a wild-eyed young man who had been in the process of looting one of the corpses; he levelled a stolen lasgun at them and triggered it by accident. Fortunately the beam hit no one, but the sound of the weapon’s report echoed along the skyway like a treacherous alarm call. Gunthar wanted to back up and get away from there but, to his chagrin, Weber was intent on talking the boy down first.
A minute later, Gunthar learned the reason why. Weber wanted the soldiers’ weapons for himself. He acquired a lasgun, hefting it in both hands then putting it to his shoulder, squinting along its sights, getting the measure of it. When Gunthar protested that he was making himself a target, the storekeeper, rifling another soldier’s webbing for spare power packs, grunted, ‘We’re targets already, all of us.’
Gunthar was still considering that wisdom when the last of the guns was claimed. There were four of them now among the group – a few more had been destroyed – and he had to admit that their presence made him feel more comfortable. He had seen one ghoul killed by lasgun fire, he reminded himself, it was possible, and surely even that slim chance was better than none.
There was some talk about taking the half-track too, but no one knew how t
o operate it and, when one woman managed to start its engine, its roar was deafening. Gunthar pointed out that, with so much debris about and the lifters inoperable, the vehicle couldn’t have taken them far anyway.
An old man wandered the skyways, his voice booming out to anyone who would listen. He was preaching that the Emperor was dead, that Hieronymous Theta had been abandoned to the mercy of the Ruinous Powers. A day ago, maybe even less than that, he would have been spat on for such heresy, if not summarily executed by the proctors. Today, as his motley group resumed their uncertain journey, Gunthar couldn’t have said for sure that the preacher was wrong.
One more tower. Gunthar could see just one more tower, and beyond that nothing but the sky. It might have been a sky choked with dust and smoke, and streaked with black from a thousand funeral pyres burning across the city, but still it was a welcome sight. Gunthar allowed his hopes to rise, but they were dashed in an instant.
One by one, the members of his group stumbled to a halt as they saw what lay ahead of them. The skyway that should have swept them towards freedom took a sharp plunge instead. Its support struts had been blown out, at least one of the buildings to which it had been anchored demolished. Feeling the skyway flexing and straining beneath his weight, Gunthar edged forward as far as he dared. Even if they had had ropes, if they could have climbed down, they would have alighted upon a compacted heap of rubble some twenty floors below, which stretched further than he could see.
That last tower was unreachable.
It was a long time before a word was spoken. Then Weber, reluctantly accepting his de facto position as group leader, suggested they turn back and find an intact staircase. Perhaps, he said, there was still a way out, beneath the devastated area. His defeated tone inspired nobody, Gunthar least of all, but then neither were there any better ideas. However, as the dispirited refugees trudged back the way they had come, Gunthar noted that a few of them allowed themselves to be left behind.
They were down to seven by the time they had found a sturdy-looking hab-block, by the time they had torn down a man-made barricade and cleared a route downward. Four men, three women, three weapons left between them. With two bodies ahead of him and the rest behind, Gunthar felt hemmed in on the narrow, dark staircase. He wished he had picked up a lasgun after all.
They walked for almost forty minutes, and Gunthar lost count of the number of floors they had descended. They came to a second barricade, and resignedly set about its disassembly. This one had been reinforced with barbed wire, which Weber had to carefully untangle, cursing every few seconds as a barb tore his flesh. Gunthar’s feet ached and he couldn’t reach the barricade past Weber to help, so he sat on a stair and rested his head in his hands instead.
They sought food and rest in another abandoned hab. It was smaller than Gunthar was used to, a squeeze for the seven of them, and the walls were covered in vile, blasphemous graffiti. They were obviously nearing ground level.
Gunthar braced himself for all kinds of horrors as they stepped outside. He was surprised to be met by sunlight, relieved too until he realised that it was the loss of so many towers that had dispelled the shadows down here. The skyway before them was littered with debris and looked little different to the ones above, wholesale destruction being a great leveller. A few shabbily-clad people picked their way through the wreckage, again as above, but Gunthar could see no obvious signs of mutation on them. Perhaps the mutants had escaped through the gate already, he thought, or better still been dealt with by the PDF.
Unfortunately, this level offered no more hope than the other. Barely ten minutes later, they found the skyway they were following blocked by rubble. They sagged against it, too weary to contemplate a further descent, drained of all hope that the risk might pay off. ‘We could try another direction,’ said Weber without enthusiasm. ‘There might be a way through to the north or the south. I doubt it, though. This isn’t random vandalism. Someone has done this on purpose, penned us in here. I should think the only way out of Hieronymous City now is to be airlifted out – and like I said, you’d have to be the Governor’s daughter to merit a flyer.’
As if to underscore his words, the skyway trembled gently. A railing swayed, and masonry skittered down the heap at Gunthar’s back.
‘Hanrik doesn’t have a daughter,’ he murmured distractedly.
‘Daughter, niece,’ said Weber vaguely, ‘whoever that woman was.’
‘What… which woman?’
‘I said, didn’t I? The fellow I talked to last night, the one who told me about the insects… Before they appeared, he said he saw a member of the Governor’s family.’
‘You never told me that,’ said Gunthar, aware that his voice was rising. ‘You didn’t say one thing about–’
And then the shooting started.
Multiple las-beams slammed into the rubble behind Gunthar, one striking uncomfortably close to his head so that a ricocheting plascrete shard cut his left ear. He tried to push himself to his feet, locate the source of the threat at the same time, felt the mountain of rubble shifting beneath his hands and floundered. Fortunately, Weber and one of the other lasgun-holders had reacted faster than Gunthar had, and they were returning fire.
There were shadows at the edges of the skyway, stooped, inhuman figures, and it was a measure of all Gunthar had been through in the past two days that he was almost relieved to identify them as mere mutants. Evidently, the sight of the city in disarray had emboldened them, and they were seizing this chance to claim some quarter of it for themselves. They had also scavenged two lasguns, at least.
Another beam stabbed out in Gunthar’s direction and struck a pale-faced, puffy-eyed woman beside him, slicing through her right elbow. She gaped disbelievingly at the cauterised stump of her arm, then fainted. One of Weber’s las-beams, in return, punched through a mutant’s throat, and it squealed and died.
Gunthar was an easy target where he stood. He wanted to run, as he had always run before, but this time there was nowhere to run to. He started forward, looking for shelter, and more figures rose before him. The mutants were more numerous than he had initially seen; there were eight or nine of them. A lasgun swivelled his way, but its holder came under fire and Gunthar was reprieved for a second or two.
His only, desperate, hope was to close with the mutants, to deny them the advantage of their ranged weapons. It was a terrifying plan, but it was all he had, so he lowered his head and he rushed a gaunt, foul-smelling, pustule-covered creature, hoping that his momentum would lend him the strength he needed to bowl it over. He cannoned into the mutant, but it had seen him coming, set itself against him, and it absorbed the impact of his charge without giving a footstep.
The mutant had the strength of an enraged grox. It flipped Gunthar onto his back and pinned him down with a bony knee in his chest. A rancid mouth loomed over him, and showered his face with spittle. He was trying to hold the mutant’s arms back as it scrabbled to gouge out his eyes with dirty, calloused fingers.
He was saved by another earth tremor, this one more violent and protracted than the first. The mutant lost its balance, and Gunthar kicked and unseated it from him. He couldn’t match its strength, so he made to run, but the treacherous quake stole his footing and the mutant was upon him again, tackling him around the ankles. As Gunthar fell, his hand found a brick on the skyway. He snatched it up, twisted around, swung for the mutant’s head and struck true. The impact jarred the brick from his stung fingers, but the blow had had the desired effect. The mutant crumpled.
Gunthar didn’t know where it had landed, didn’t know if it was still fighting to reach him. It seemed the entire world was shaking now, so vigorously that he was seeing double. He couldn’t stand, couldn’t even try, he could only hug the skyway for dear life and pray to the Emperor that it wouldn’t give way.
The earthquake subsided; Gunthar heard footsteps and gingerly raised his head to see four mutants scam
pering away in fright. He looked for the one he had fought, and caught his breath at the sight of its lifeless body sprawled beside him, black blood pooling beneath its fractured skull. He fought with conflicting emotions. He felt proud because, this time, he had fought back, done the Emperor’s bidding, but at the same time he was appalled that his hands had snuffed out a life, even a mutant life.
It could so easily have been him instead, lying there, an empty shell.
Gunthar heard a scuffle behind him, and turned to find his fellow refugees bearing the final mutant to the ground, holding it down while one put a lasgun barrel to its temple. He closed his eyes so as not to see the moment of the mutant’s death, but the sound of the las-shot nevertheless evoked the image too clearly in his mind.
Then a woman’s voice shouted for help, and Gunthar realised that somebody was down. The woman was over by the rubble heap, and Gunthar’s heart sank as he saw a thatch of black hair and recognised Weber’s body beside her.
He ran to his newfound friend’s side, although he didn’t know what he could do for him. Weber was still breathing, but raggedly, and there was a sucking wound in his chest. His face was caked with sweat, and his pupils had contracted as if he was staring at something a world away. ‘Can’t anyone help him?’ Gunthar cried. ‘Didn’t anyone take a… a medi-kit or something from the soldiers?’
‘Just… winded, that’s all,’ wheezed Weber, and with a supreme effort he lifted his arm and took Gunthar’s hand in one of his own larger, rougher ones. ‘Need a moment to… catch my breath…’ It was plain in Weber’s face that he didn’t believe his own words. He was holding on to Gunthar’s hand with a bone-crushing ferocity, as if hoping to cling to life through muscle power alone, and there was a desperate appeal in his eyes, one that Gunthar didn’t know how to answer.
Honour Imperialis - Aaron Dembski-Bowden Page 68
