Sepulturum - Nick Kyme

by Warhammer

  Pain and panic took hold. There were perhaps thirty patrons in the bar and Morgravia battered through most of them, shoving people aside as they scurried or hid. Her pistol led the way but she couldn’t get a good shot through the terrified throng.

  The drover was ahead of her, taking aim, twin autopistols quickly in his grasp. He shot the cannibal thing through the forehead before Fharkoum’s hired gun could unleash further collateral damage. She fell this time and did not rise again.

  He slickly holstered his pistols, twirling them with the panache of a carnivale gunslinger, then exchanged a look with the hired gun who said gruffly, ‘I had it handled.’

  ‘Sure you did,’ answered the drover, a glance taking in the carnage the flechette burst had left in its wake. ‘I reckon you’d have killed another six people before you got your mark, but you’d have done it all right. Good for you.’

  The hired gun stepped right up to the drover, eyes bulging with fear, trembling with adrenaline from the stimms. He had a roughly shaved face, the stubble an affectation rather than laziness. A slabbed forehead protruded slightly, an indication of a primordial mindset. Carefully cut cheekbones had been crafted cosmetically and his black hair was sculpted, a coiled serpent shaved into the left temple, the symbol of the consortium whom he served. His custom bodyglove had fibre tracing like sinews that enhanced strength. It reeked of sweat.

  ‘Want to make something of it?’

  The drover smiled, feigning charm. ‘Now you look like the kind of man with an enlarged amygdala. Is that the case? Are you suffering from an overabundance of aggression, my friend?’

  The hired gun’s finger twitched on his sidearm and he looked like he might use it, until he felt the pinch of a heavy-gauge stub pistol in his side.

  ‘I would not advise that…’ Morgravia said with quiet menace. She jabbed the pistol harder. ‘At this range, that fancy bodyglove might as well be parchment. Let it go.’

  ‘Kharata…’

  The hired gun turned at the mention of his name, Fhar­koum summoning his lackey. The other courtesans cowered near his bulk, too afraid to move, staring glassy-eyed at the bloody remains of their former associate.

  Grunting an expletive at the drover, the hired gun obeyed his paymaster and returned to his side. Morgravia watched him depart.

  ‘A man could get ideas, seeing a woman come to his rescue like that.’

  Inwardly, Morgravia groaned. ‘Get some different ideas.’

  The drover smiled, not remotely dissuaded.

  ‘You don’t look like a hired gun,’ she said, scornful.

  ‘Not everyone is always what they seem.’

  Sighing, Morgravia took in the situation. As of yet, none of the patrons had fled, which she took to be a good sign. They looked nervous, but curiosity overrode their fear as a few shuffled closer to the corpse killed by the drover.

  Morgravia crouched by her side. In death, she appeared relatively ordinary. There were no obvious mutations, and she didn’t bear a witch’s mark or evidence of possession. This was no alien horror or plaything of the daemonic. It was a woman, a bullet-maker judging by soot stains on her fingers and burn marks on her upper arms.

  ‘Ever seen something like that?’

  The drover had sunk down next to her, the fragrance of some balm or oil wafting off his skin. It was not unpleasant, Mor­gravia decided, finding his presence less irritating given his sudden sincerity.

  ‘Tell me what you see,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing, and that’s the strange thing. She’s just a low-hiver. I thought maybe a stimmer or obscura addict with a bad batch, but…’ He shrugged. ‘She’s ordinary.’

  ‘She is far from ordinary.’ Morgravia felt his regard as he turned.

  ‘I’m thinking you have some idea, then.’

  ‘And you’re hoping I share that with you?’

  ‘Oh, I know you can’t say anything here, not with these folks gathering like sump flies around shit,’ he smiled, and Morg­ravia’s ire rose anew, ‘but perhaps later?’

  ‘There is no later.’

  ‘I am afraid that is not entirely accurate.’ The Broker had emerged from the shadows, the exceptional circumstances pushing her into the open. ‘A cipher will verify your credibility to the Empath. Without it, she will not treat with you.’

  Morgravia scowled, her wrathful gaze moving from the Broker to the drover. ‘I assume he has it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The drover gave her a playful wink. ‘Like I said, “later”.’ Then he frowned, his expression clouding. ‘You hear that?’ he said, drawing his guns as he looked towards the entrance.

  Faint at first, it grew louder with each passing second.

  ‘Got caught by a badlands herd once,’ said the drover, rising to his feet. ‘Damn bovids went crazy. Sumpkroc had got into the paddock. Started killing. Bovids ran like hell, broke open the gate. Came thundering down on me like the wrath of the God-Emperor.’

  ‘A stampede,’ said Morgravia, now on her feet too.

  Fharkoum had shuffled to the other end of the bar to remonstrate with the owner, his harem and the violently predisposed Kharata following in train. Plenty of other patrons still loitered near the entrance and they turned in eerie synchronicity at the steadily loudening clamour. The bar floor shook.

  It began like heavy hail. A dense thud hit the outer walls of the bar, then another and another, until a rattling thunder of mortar reverberations rippled through the brickwork. Cataracts of dust spilled from rafters. Shutters dented, pale fingers reaching through the razor-edged gaps in the metal. It kept on going. Impact after impact, like a flock of suicidal raptors striking a viewport. Bones broke. Slicks of blood oozed through the cracks in the battered shutters.

  Morgravia bellowed at the barkeep, ‘Shut the damn entrance!’

  But it was much too late for that.

  The patrons nearest the entrance started to run, but then something spilled in.

  Hurtling through the gaping doorway, careening off the sides of booths and each other, creatures with pale skin and fever-red eyes sprang upon the hapless serfs, scriveners and hawkers. A slaughter began. Teeth bit skin, nails clawed hair, fingers dug into flesh. Bloody, raw gobbets clutched in skeletal hands were held up like offerings and devoured. A foaming red frenzy descended, undercut by screaming.

  Muzzle flare from the drover’s autopistols lit up the horror in stuttering, monochrome bursts. The heavy boom of Morgravia’s stubber joined it. Her heart was drumming, all her old instinctual training kicking in to keep her sharp and alert. To blunt the horror welling in her gut.

  ‘Close the damn door!’ she cried at the barkeep, her attention on the pallid things piling through the gaping entrance. The ammo counter on her pistol clicked into the red.

  Barak heard the woman, and was trying to extricate himself from the argument with Fharkoum, edging his way to a panel at the back of the bar. No sole proprietor worth his salt, or still breathing, would set up a place at the edge of the badlands without adequate precautions. And Barak was nothing if not cautious.

  He struggled to focus. Jana was out on stage somewhere, and Veran with that damn theremin. How he hated that instrument and would have gladly smashed it to kindling but for the creds it yielded. Jana was his priority. Even a glance of her face would have done, just to know she was all right. He’d had trouble before. No badlands bar endured as long as Hallow’s End without a few battles and a few scars. But this wasn’t gang strife or even overzealous proctors pressing their protection rackets. Barak had no earthly thought what this was that had come to his door, but it scared the shit out of him.

  Hands shaking, he fumbled the lid clasp over the panel and it got stuck.

  ‘Shit!’

  That fat bastard, Fharkoum, raged at his manservant. Barak didn’t speak the dialect but knew a stream of expletives when he heard them.
Then he felt that same ire directed at him, acutely aware of the patrons battering at the mesh cage behind him. How he wished Jana was in here with him.

  He glanced at the archway leading to the storeroom out back. He had servitors in there. Hefters. Not fighters, but they were strong. Maybe one of them could…?

  No time for that.

  Barak wrapped his meaty fist around the clasp and pulled, hissing a curse as he slipped and cut his hand. Blood leaked from the jagged wound.

  The rattling against the mesh grew worse. His patrons shouted, pleaded. Behind him, people were dying. He reached and grabbed a case off the wall, yanking it open. An old service-model combat shotgun, a ‘man-stopper’, sat inside it. The polished black stock shone, replete with sad memories. He wrenched the gun loose from its housings and turned it on the clasp.

  ‘Fucker!’

  The blast tore off the clasp, taking part of the lid with it. Trying to drown out the screams, praying he wouldn’t recognise Jana’s voice amongst them, Barak threw the lever inside and whispered thanks to the Emperor as the mechanism kicked in.

  Chapter VI

  Burning the dead

  Meagre was gone, swallowed up like a town lost to flood and sunk beneath the sea. Forgotten. No one would come. The old structures meant to preserve order had broken down. Mankind had begun to eat itself. Literally.

  A sick feeling twisted Cristo’s gut. He tried to deny it, like a deserter tries to deny the firing squad’s bullet, but they’d both probably die if he didn’t find help. He took side streets to avoid the crowds. The rioting was everywhere. Habitats lay deserted, manufactoria empty. Even the great bell tower that stood at the heart of Meagre and could be seen from anywhere in the township, calling the hours for labour, for worship, for sanity, had fallen silent. Fires had broken out, either started deliberately or through misadventure, and coloured the air with the scent of burning. Ash drifted from the smouldering pyres of vellum-makers. The scent of crackling pig fat made him hungry and wretched at the same time. Although Cristo passed a few other citizens, hiding in their dwellings or staggering around lost and dumbfounded, no one challenged him. Despite taking byways and half-forgotten tunnels, they could still hear the desperate clamour of the riots. Eventually, it became background noise that gnawed at Cristo’s nerves. Even during rare moments of quietude, spared from the aural horrors, the memory of it lingered so viscerally that he could no longer tell the difference.

  It haunted him, a heavier burden than the daughter in his arms.

  He went north, reasoning that both east and west had likely been overrun or else occupied by the gangs, and southward would take them deeper into the township and trouble as yet unseen. He didn’t trust the protection of the proctors. It was possible there were no proctors left, at least not in any meaningful sense. Whatever had befallen Meagre had infected the populace. Therefore, the greater chance of survival was away from people. Cristo avoided the mag-trans too, reckoning that large swathes of the surrounding populations of Low Sink would be headed that way.

  Even on foot, it didn’t take long to reach the outskirts of town. The industrial and habitation districts gave way to wilder and unkempt terrain. Old agri-mills stood like ruined monuments, colonised by massive fungal growths, bulging at their ferrocrete seams like overstuffed fruit. Roads were choked and cracked by massive roots, and floating spores thickened the air. Attempts had been made to cut back or otherwise burn off the roots and fungus but nature had repulsed every sortie and so continued its besiegement.

  A thick brume drenched the land here, the colour of dirt and reeking of loam. Cristo had torn strips of cloth, first wrapping one around Karina’s mouth and nose, then his own, to fend off the worst of the smell. It was heady and strong like bad grain alcohol. Mercifully, the passage was uneventful and they soon broke clear, emerging into a rugged landscape of shallow metal escarpments and old rubble mounds.

  Here the land swept up in a gentle ridge that overlooked the edge of an under-lake known locally as Iryn Mere, so named for its hue and the ferrous deposits that poisoned its grey waters. A jagged fissure in the ridgeline offered a narrow slice of the water. A few junkers and old tugs still plied the dead expanse, though nothing had lived in it for decades or more. They were salvagers, searching for sunken wrecks. The ships Cristo could see looked quiet, abandoned. That was strange, the sight of the barges and their patchwork hulls creaking as they lolled on the water. A couple had collided, prow to prow, and nudged against one another. He dismissed them and Iryn Mere. The under-lake was self-contained and led only to the hive edge. They wouldn’t find salvation there. He needed to find the tower.

  An order of Hospitallers had built their priory here on the high ground. Called Saviour’s Rock, it had harboured the sick and injured since before Cristo was a boy. None were refused alms and as such the priory had garnered a sort of respect, even amongst the less salubrious types of low-hivers, that saw it ride out the vicissitudes of the years intact. Only when he smelled the smoke, and tasted its bitterness on the breeze did Cristo consider this indomitable history might have reached its terminus.

  As he crested the western face of the ridge and the scudding smoke parted, Cristo saw them. Fleeing. Fire ate through the priory and shadows of the Sisters danced in its flames, except they weren’t dancing, they were burning.

  Writhing.

  Dying.

  An abbess leapt from a high balcony. She plunged like a candle flame, her robes alight. Smoke swallowed her before she hit the ground. Several of the Sisters fought in the courtyard with table legs and candelabras. One wielded a ceremonial sword, its blade slick and black. A mob of rabid figures surrounded them. Cristo thought he recognised the markings of the Red Hand and Death Kings, though the actual gangers were wasted and more cadaverous than before, as if whatever contagion had swept through the districts was feeding on the life of its hosts and burning them out. He saw grimly transformed salvagers too, and suddenly understood why Iryn Mere had fallen silent. They dragged the Sisters down, their heroism as meaningful as a footnote, and tore them apart.

  Old fears resurfaced like a bloated corpse in a river, the horrors he had half-witnessed in the gully still fresh. Cristo wanted to flee, to take Karina and run like hell and not look back, but then he saw the novice, scrambling and falling and desperately trying to live, and he knew he could not. Her robes were simpler than those of the rest of her sorority, and she went unhooded. She wore a plain auburn surplice over rough white robes, her sandalled feet slipping as she strove to put distance between herself and the cannibal flock. A simple leather knapsack was slung over one shoulder, brimming with scrolls and other irreplaceable religious arcana.

  Strange what we find to cling to.

  He couldn’t save the others, but the novice had broken free of the horde. Her Sisters had given her a chance but she wouldn’t make it. Not alone. She was young, as young as his daughter was before they had become estranged…

  But then he thought of Karina as she was now and the fact she needed medical attention. He wouldn’t find it here. He should just leave, turn his back and look for help elsewhere. He knew a place, though he and the owner hadn’t spoken in several years. He thought of those men he had killed, the ones who would surely have killed him. The shame of it burned like the remembered heat of the furnace where he had disposed of their bodies. It had been justified. Running now was justified. No one would blame him. He had his daughter to think of.

  The noose felt heavy enough, more sins than he cared to count. He didn’t want another.

  Gently, he put Karina down and hefted the shotgun.

  Galloping up the ridge, he called out.

  ‘Here!’ he cried, trying to get the novice’s attention.

  She saw him, eyes streaming with tears, hair plastered to her face with blood and sweat and soot.

  So much like Karina was before…

  Whatever decision she m
ade, it happened quickly. Hiking up her robes, she ran, one arm clutched around the knapsack, the other swinging furiously.

  A boom reverberated, and a cannibal spun, its body shredded by buckshot.

  She ducked, almost fell, but recovered and kept moving.

  ‘Come on, come on!’

  Cristo roared and the shotgun roared too. Another cannibal fell, its legs ripped out from under it, practically sawn in half.

  He was moving, hurrying to the novice, then bracing himself in a wide stance before firing off another blast. He aimed down the barrel, like a hunter picking off the herd. After the sixth cannibal-thing had gone down, the shotgun gave a heavy chack, its ammo expended. He might have panicked then but the fury was on him, the old anger he had sworn to leave behind him. Cristo kept on going, using the barrel like a bludgeon. He clubbed the first. It had overtaken the novice, ignoring her for the big angry man laying down fire. Its head snapped back as the nose drove into the skull. It didn’t rise. Cristo caught a second on the swing, using the full weight of the weapon. He broke its neck and near tore its head right off. He was in the slaughter now, grinding through the horde, putting his strength and bulk to killing. Sin after sin, thickening the noose, adding to his rope and his burden.

  They stank; they stank like the dead, for that’s what they were.

  The last of the Sisters fell just as the novice ran past Cristo, his bellowed urges telling her to keep moving. To run and run and run. Perhaps he was being selfish. Perhaps he hoped the novice Sister would find and tend his daughter. And then his burden would be done with. He had failed her as a father but perhaps he could do this one thing. Perhaps he had earned this death at the hands of the dead. Was it penance? he wondered. Did any of it really matter? Only now, as he waded into the thick of the dead, did Cristo realise what he had done. The dead were many and he was just one. It was sacrifice, so they could get away.

  No, it was suicide and cowardice. But if the ends were the same, did it really matter?

  Cristo roared, the bloody club of a broken shotgun clutched in his hands and swinging. It was his death song.