Legion of the Damned

by Rob Sanders

  Immediately, Brother Omar saw the reason for the cavalcade’s halting. The ground about the bike’s chunky tyres was mushy and both bodies and body parts lay strewn across the crossroads in pools and puddles of blood. Several hovels were on fire, while a tiny market and a nearby brewhouse were beginning to take, streaming with smoke and filling the air with a murky haze. Omar rode around and between the bodies. Beyond the cenotaph the slaughter continued, and as the Scout idled the bike up to the far end of the hamlet he could see the lychway beyond littered with bodies. Cemetery worlders pounced upon, beaten, torn, bitten and ripped apart. A cavalcade just like the one Omar was riding along.

  Parking the bike, Omar dismounted. Taking several squelchy steps out onto the lychway, cloaked in haze, the Scout squinted through the darkness. Something was moving up ahead. A dark shape making its way along the road towards Little Amasec. A man in rags. He slipped and stumbled amongst the bodies, several times having to pick himself up.

  ‘What happened here?’ Omar called, demanding an answer. The man did not reply, though. The dark shape’s head seemed to suddenly angle. He looked up at the Excoriators Scout, framed in the burning village, before breaking into a run.

  The neophyte’s brow furrowed. ‘Answer me, Certusian,’ he ordered. The man ran on. He was unarmed but something in the cemetery worlder’s gait told the Scout that he was not running to him but at him. As the figure closed and the cenopost flames flushed his features, Omar saw the madness in his face. Mindless, animal fury. With teeth bared like a snarling mongrel and sunken, bloodshot eyes, the cemetery worlder came at him.

  ‘Halt!’ Omar ordered, but the boom of his voice did nothing to the wretch. He came straight at him, leaping at the Excoriator as one might scale a statue. Omar’s boot came out in a simple but brutal front kick. The Certusian’s face cracked and he flew back towards the floor. With his shoulders striking flat into the grit, the man slid a little way through the gore before coming to a chest-heaving stop. Omar spun around and put the heel of his other boot across the madman’s neck, positioning his toe-tip against his chin.

  The Certusian’s nose was now but a bloody crater in his face. Omar knew such a kick could have killed the mortal and should at least have knocked consciousness from him. There he was, however, spitting up teeth and gobbets of tongue that he’d bitten off. Something primal within the wretch would not let go, and before the Scout knew it, the lunatic was scratching and tearing at his boot like a rabid dog.

  Brother Omar had heard of unfortunates afflicted with xenos infections and the infamous Zombie Plague, but the wretch seemed to demonstrate no evidence of alien contamination or living death. Inside his scrawny ribcage a lean heart beat with rage; blood boiled through his veins; his eyes crackled with single-minded, murderous desire. Nor was the cemetery worlder enthralled or possessed by some denizen of the warp. His wrath was all his own. Omar could only reason that the Keeler Comet, blazing its bloody path through the Certusian skies, had some part to play in the strange phenomenon.

  Looking up, Omar’s enhanced vision detected further movement in the darkness. Smoke swirls and shadow overlapping shadow that betrayed the presence of more figures in the gloom. A horde of maniacs, blank and spent, wandering about the grave stones and cemetery fields, spleen-fired to instant rage by the sight of the Excoriator. He heard the unintelligible, glottal rasp of bestial intention and watched the first of the psychotics break ranks. They streamed towards him through the smoke – one, then two; ten, twenty, many more. The lychway was suddenly swamped with the running wretches, accompanied by others, scrambling across the gravestones, statues and stone sarcophagi of the burial grounds.

  Omar snorted. Words would be of little use here. Twisting his foot, he broke the neck of the wretch beneath his boot. The man’s limbs suddenly spasmed and then fell. Satisfied that the maniac was dead and not some necromantic puppet, the Scout stomped back to his bike. Slipping his combat shotgun from its holster on the bike subframe, Omar worked the pump action. The weapon was a work of squat inelegance. From the brute curves of its stock, through the angularity of its breech and barrel and the yawning darkness of its muzzle, the shotgun was a monster. Bringing the stock to his shoulder, the Scout brought the weapon up to face the oncoming horde.

  The first wretched specimen, a gaunt-faced fosser, simply vanished in the path of the blast – turning into a bloody smear on the darkness. This did not dissuade a feral vestal, who surged past the gruel before Omar took her legs out from beneath her with a second shot. A hearsier lost his head to the shotgun, followed by three further cemetery worlders cut to ribbons by fat pellets of scattershot. Brother Omar worked the pump-action on his weapon, calmly hammering the front line of the fast-advancing mob. As the shotgun clunked its emptiness, Omar brought his eye out from behind its sights to watch the second wave of maniacs run through the remains of the first and fly at him. From over his shoulder the Scout heard screams. These were not the shrieks of shock members of the cavalcade had made upon discovering the carnage at Little Amasec. The cavalcade was under attack.

  Thumbing shells into the breech of the shotgun, Brother Omar backed towards his squat-set vehicle and re-mounted. Thumbing the gimbal lock on the handlebars, the Scout pulled the triggers on both grips. The belt-fed boltguns mounted on the front of the bike jerked to rhythmic life.

  Omar swept the next line of gall-fevered crazies, aiming low and chopping through knees and groins with his automatic fire. The wretches tumbled and fell, creating a hurdle upon which much of the next wave faltered, falling themselves. Omar swept back across the line. The maniac cemetery worlders had looked up at the Excoriator with red eyes and hatred as they scrambled to pick themselves up. The Scout replied with bolt-rounds to the head as one by one, along the line of the prone and fallen, he split skulls and blew off faces. A verger, still wearing his cocked-hat and smashed spectacles, cleared the corpse mound with a half-naked hearsier close behind. Twisting the handlebars, Omar cut the pair in two with a savage stream of bolt-fire.

  With the first few waves of maniacs put down and the darkness beyond giving birth to an unending horde of murderous unfortunates, Brother Omar secured the gimbal lock on his handlebars and revved the bike’s heavy engine. Wheel-spinning around and spraying the livid masses with blood and grit, the Scout tore back across the crossroad at the source of the screaming. A curtain of sodden cemetery world earth followed the bike as Omar shot across Little Amasec, swerving shacks and hovels before blasting through the black and burning remains of the cenopost’s tiny market. With flames licking at his wheels, Omar hit the crowded lychway.

  The cavalcade of Certusians were fleeing. Some were heading into the deserted hamlet but most were climbing for their lives across headstones and graven sculptures. Like a spooked herd they had bolted off the lychway together, away from a roaring horde of degenerates who were scrabbling across the crowded cemetery architecture on the other side of the road like animals. Several fossers tried to stand their ground with picks and shovels, but went down under sheer savagery and weight of numbers. With the fossers having their eyes gouged and throats torn out by their fellow Certusians, Omar resolved to give the escaping cavalcade every chance to get away from the berserk and blood-crazed.

  As the cemetery worlders he was escorting were melting into the burial grounds, Omar had the luxury of the lychway largely to himself. Clutching at the triggers and with muzzles flashing, the Excoriator cut down the degenerates throwing themselves mindlessly across the road at the fleeing cavalcade. Bodies and body parts bounced off the Scout and the front of the bike as he surged through the bloody mist he was creating. Slamming home the brakes, Omar turned and skidded around, taking the legs out from two more crazies. As the bike came to a stop, he slid his shotgun from its side-holster and began blowing growling wretches from the prone forms of the felled fossers. The neophyte was too late to save the gravediggers, however, the fevered degenerates having already ripped their victims’ bodies to shreds.

  H
olstering the emptied combat shotgun, Omar surged up the lychway at the hordes spilling out onto the grit. Once again the Excoriator let rip with his twin boltguns, cutting a gory path through the mob and providing a barrier of explosive firepower behind which members of the cavalcade could flee for their lives. The neophyte thought about voxing for assistance. One of his brother Scouts could not be more than an hour’s ride away. He also considered calling for one of the Fifth’s Thunderhawks to provide air support and an evacuation for the fleeing cavalcade of cemetery worlders. He discounted the thoughts almost immediately. He would not be a burden to his squad, his whip or his company. The cavalcade’s safety had fallen to the Scout and the Scout alone. The wretches about him were mindless savages; they were great in number but only mortal, and they were his enemy to vanquish.

  Rather than the Certusians, the seething rabble were now very much intent on venting their quenchless wrath on the Space Marine. A whippet-like child leapt from an angelic statue with thoughtless abandon, landing on the Excoriator’s shoulders and clawing into his carapace and face with her sharp nails. The momentum almost unbalanced the Scout who took to snatching at his back with one hand. This cut his firepower in half. Although the single, mounted boltgun continued to acquit itself in ploughing through the lean bodies of the savages, it failed to stop a stonecutter who dashed his head with the opportunistic swing of a recovered shovel or a pair of madmen running an abandoned cart into the path of the oncoming bike.

  The bike’s front wheel began to waver, and with only one hand on the handlebars and blood streaming down into his eyes from the gash on his forehead, Brother Omar strayed onto the burial ground verge. The bike smashed through two headstones before striking a sarcophagal monument at high speed. Omar flew off the bike and over the stone architecture. He felt his legs pass over his shoulders and the back of his head smack through the top of another grave marker. The Scout finally struck the base of a saint’s statue with a bone-quaking jolt before coming to rest, upside down – his head askew and shoulders on the ground, while his back and legs rested against the side of the plinth.

  Taking a few moments for himself, Brother Omar blinked sense back into his being. He could see the broken body of the crazed child nearby. She had not survived the crash. Shapes were moving in the darkness about him. Blood-mental savages, intent on slaughter. Within seconds the Excoriator was buried in pummelling fists, eye-scratching claws and stamping boots. There were lank bodies everywhere. The horde – like a school of predatory fish or a flock of raptors, redirecting their path – were upon him.

  The frenzy continued. Rolling around and getting his boots firmly on the ground, Omar pushed for the sky. Degenerates rained about him, tumbling from the blood-furious mound they had formed. Shaking a ragged usher from his shoulder, Omar brought up his bolt pistol – freshly drawn from his belt. Single bolts thudded through the foreheads and faces of the savages. He spun around, felling the mob gathered about him. As a chorister scrambled to right himself, the Scout shot his jaw off before turning and grabbing the usher – who had flown back at the Excoriator with his bad teeth bared – burying the bolt pistol in his stomach and sending the last of the bolts through the unfortunate.

  The pistol was empty, but it had bought him a few moments. In the distance, Brother Omar could hear fresh screams of the dying. The screeches and calls for help were coming from the cavalcade, who had escaped the horde that had come down on him but had seemingly ran into another, prowling the necroscape and moving in like wolves on the commotion at the cenopost. Omar couldn’t imagine how many groups of cemetery world refugees had wandered into the bloodbath trap that was Little Amasec.

  There were degenerate Certusians everywhere, in front and behind. Omar had stirred up a nest of stingwings in announcing his bombastic resistance with the shotgun and bike. Wretches from both the burial grounds and the crossroads were coming at him. All Omar knew was the gnashing of blood-stained teeth and the thuggish barrage of fists and feet that the mob threw at him. The savages even came from above, with maniacs so desperate for a piece of the Scout that they climbed up the backs of their compatriots and leapt at him. Taller than all of them, Omar commanded a view of his enemy, a sea of madmen and mayhem as far as he could see into the darkness. Omar was angry at himself. He’d underestimated the mortals’ numbers.

  He had no time to reload the pistol; besides, he needed a weapon that took life at a faster pace and didn’t rely on ammunition. Brother Omar unsheathed his combat knife. Neophytes trained with the honourable gladius but were not deemed worthy of an Adeptus Astartes blade until they attained the rank of Space Marine. With its clip point, cross guard, machete-length and cleaver-like cutting blade, a ‘Scout’s-only-friend’ – as Squad Whip Keturah called them – was still a graceful taker of lives.

  Brother Omar slashed and hacked through the wall of rabid flesh. He clipped heads and limbs from torsos; he cut blades from shovels and improvised clubs in half; he sliced, speared and stabbed, gutted and butchered his way through the horde. His cloak was heavy with gorespill and the ivory sheen of his Scout carapace was stained claret-red with the sheer volume of blood gushing, spraying and spurting about him. Wiping blood from his eyes all he could see were further faces, screwed up with malice presenting eyes that glinted murder.

  Omar’s blade suddenly hit something solid. Something that didn’t slice like flesh or merely tug at the blade like cleaved bone. The Scout had swung with all his superhuman might and struck stone. The combat blade had cut into the corner of a gargoyle-encrusted vault, a small building in the shadow of which the melee had raged. Surrounded as he was, the ringing up his arm was the first the neophyte had known of the crypt entrance. When a flick of the wrist failed to retract the broadness of the blade, Omar tugged on the hilt with both hands. The stone refused to surrender the blade, however, and once again the degenerates closed in. Teeth sank through his field smock and into the flesh of his arm, while his carapace back presented the savages with an irresistible opportunity. The Scout soon felt the weight of scores of the maniacs on him, and looking up, watched more scrawny shadows tumble down to join them from the vault roof.

  Releasing the blade, Omar snatched at the wretches and tossed them away. Others he brained with his fists and tore limb from limb. Stumbling about like a hunchback under the sheer weight of crazies with their teeth and nails in him, the Scout began to buckle. A wretched specimen bit into his ear and ripped it off, prompting the Space Marine to clench his head in one fist. Omar took the degenerate’s skull and hammered it into the crypt wall, pounding it until it shattered, crumbled and spilled its insides like an egg. The masses moved this way and that about him, each blood-mental savage wanting Adeptus Astartes blood on their hands.

  Omar suddenly lost his footing, the ground seeming to disappear beneath him. Falling onto his back with literally hundreds of squirming and thrashing degenerates, the Scout came to the conclusion that he had tumbled into a hole. A freshly dug grave. A common enough sight on the cemetery world. There, with teeth in his thigh-flesh, arms and bloody face – with murderous hands around his neck, tearing at and under his shredding carapace – Brother Omar, Scout Marine and Excoriator, realised his fate. To be buried alive in mortal flesh and to be slowly clawed and mauled to his death.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BY THE BLADE

  Zachariah Kersh stood atop the tower-steeple of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Sepulchre. It was much higher than the tiny hermitage tower of the Excoriators’ dormitory. It had the second tallest spire and the best vantage point in the city. The tallest – the Obelisk – had suffered too much structural damage during the Scourge’s battle with the daemon, and Pontifex Oliphant had given the order for his Ecclesiarchical palace to be carefully demolished. The colossal dome of the Umberto II Memorial Mausoleum commanded the best view in the city, but Palatine Sapphira of the Order of the August Vigil had forbidden use of the sacred site as a strategic consideration, the building and the remains of the Ecclesiarch and
High Lord of Terra within rendering the ground holy. It wouldn’t have taken Kersh much to countermand the Sister and force his agenda, but he needed the Adepta Sororitas onside and so allowed the Palatine the illusion of a refusal.

  From a maintenance portico, with a pair of magnoculars to his one useful eye, Kersh surveyed the declining roofline of domes, cupolas, spires, monuments and bell-gables that gave Obsequa City its distinct Ecclesiarchical character. Kersh looked out across the darkness, dialling through the optical spectra of the device. A thermographic representation of the city bleared into view. There were fires everywhere. Running battles between psychotic mobs and the Certusian Charnel Guard could be seen in the streets, the telltale glares of las-fire revealing the true scale of the problem. Kersh could hear the bark of enforcer shotguns even in the streets nearby and imagined Kraski’s men putting down fellow Certusians with scattershot and bitterness.

  Out across the expanse of Necroplex-South, Kersh could see the throngs of cemetery worlders, with simple lanterns and flaming torches dotted through their numbers, pouring into the city along arterial lychways. Kersh had sanctioned the strategy but that wouldn’t have mattered. With the reports he was receiving regarding the nightmarish barbarism afflicting the burial ground communities, the corpus-captain had fully expected common Certusians to flock to the seeming safety of the planetary capital. Whether this was due to the spiritual sanctity they expected the relic-remains of the Ecclesiarch to provide, or the simple security offered by stone walls and thick narthex doors, was unclear. They had arrived in their thousands, and continued to do so. Much of the Charnel Guard were engaged in urban pacification and hastily organised ‘Misery Squads’ – so called for their unhappy duty of hunting and putting out of their misery cemetery worlders who had succumbed to the gall-fever and become a danger to themselves and other citizens. This left few ceremonial Guardsmen to man the city Lych Gates and process the stream of Certusian refugees. In response Kersh had despatched the Fifth Company’s serfs and bondsmen – including his own – to take charge of the admittance and temporary housing of the masses in the crowded city.