Sepulturum - Nick Kyme

by Warhammer

  It wouldn’t last, the barrier. She hadn’t been lying about that. Fighting in a bottleneck… maybe they could wear the pallid down, find a way out. It was all about attrition now. At the least, it might give the survivors a few more minutes and that was worth something. The look on Fharkoum’s face was worth immeasurably more.

  The merchant paled, his mouth lolling open like a dullard. He hesitated, calculating, deciding, until he whispered, ‘Do it.’

  Kharata pulled up short. ‘Master?’

  ‘I said fucking do it. She is Inquisition, you idiot!’

  Kharata had opened the gate and the first of the survivors were coming through when the barricade collapsed in on itself and the horde rushed in.

  Then the lights cut off as the power failed, and everything fell into darkness.

  Chapter VIII

  Maggots

  Something moved in the agri-fog.

  They had reached as far as the old mills when Celestia stopped. She appeared nervous, but Cristo could hardly blame her. Mercifully, the wind had turned and the smoke and the stench of burning drifted across the Iryn Mere half a mile or more behind them. It couldn’t carry away the images though, the screaming; that was ingrained now, and as bad as it was for Cristo to remember, he could only assume it was magnitudes worse for the Sister-novice.

  ‘Are you sure…?’ he hissed, squinting into the murky brown fog. Karina slumped fitfully in his arms. About halfway from the priory, once the ruins had been out of sight but not out of mind, they had stopped in the lee of a metal overhang where the hive layers had accumulated to create a sort of crag. Condensation had made it slick, and tiny cataracts of coppery watery ran off its rough edges. He had set Karina down, agitated at having to stop but knowing she needed urgent medical treatment. Celestia had applied a balm and given her a tincture from a small silver phial. Cristo hadn’t known what the phial contained, but it had brought Karina round briefly before she descended back into a deep slumber.

  ‘She’ll sleep. Heal,’ the Sister-novice had said. Then they had moved on and had been making decent progress until the mills.

  Now the light was fading, surrendering to night, and cast deep shadows that had the aspect of claws.

  Celestia put a finger to her lips, urging silence. She listened hard, poised at the threshold of the fog that snagged at the hem of her robes as if trying to pull her in. Cristo listened too. He heard the groan of old metal, the creak of grotesquely oversized roots and the rustle of leaf litter.

  Then a crack, and Celestia turned her head at the sudden crepitation.

  A shape shifted in the fog, a lightly swaying silhouette.

  Cristo felt a bead of cold sweat run down the nape of his neck. Suddenly his breath seemed inordinately loud and he fought the temptation to hold it. He strained his eyes, attempting to discern the silhouette more clearly. Definitely humanoid, upright. He didn’t remember any signs of habitation when he passed this way earlier but the old mills covered a large area, and they had come farther west than before. He considered the dead, for he could think of them as nothing other, that had assailed the priory.

  Had to have come from somewhere…

  Vanquish rattled in Celestia’s grasp and Cristo reached out a hand to gently tap her shoulder. She had barely moved since they had stopped but almost leapt back as he touched her. Daggers glared Cristo’s way and he apologised with his eyes, before putting Karina down and then taking the sword, only having to overcome a little resistance.

  It felt light, well balanced, though small in his hand. An arti­ficer’s weapon. Blade held in front of him, Cristo edged into the fog. Beyond the threshold, the reek of the old mills and their spilled guts became sickly and noisome. His eyes watered, impeding his ability to properly make out the silhouetted figure. It swayed still, its head lolling, feathery hair ruffling gently in the breeze. It smelled bad, worse than the saccharine root sap and botanical mulch underfoot. There was meat rot and putrefaction.

  Dead.

  Cristo felt a lump in his throat like a lead ingot, and swallowed hard to clear it.

  Then he ran, full tilt, muscular strides eating up the yards, and swung hard. The blow caught the figure around the neck, shearing through papery skin and sloughed muscle, releasing a truly appalling odour and a vicious swarm of carrion flies interrupted mid-feasting.

  Cristo felt the insects biting his neck, his arms, his fingers as he tried to make sense of what he had just beheaded. The flies dispersed, driven off by further swings of the blade, and Cristo was left looking at the headless body of a servitor. Its machine parts had rusted through, fixing it in place like some kind of slowly decomposing scarecrow. The flesh components were rank, barely clinging to bone. Much of it had turned to soup, and was oozing through its biological and artificial orifices.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s just a…’ Cristo was turning around, about to wade back out of the fog when he saw the lie in his words.

  Skulking in the miasma, hunched over, it hadn’t seen him yet. Snorting and shovelling noises emanated from its busy mouth. Something twitched in the fog. A hand, one of the fingers spotted with blood. A wayward traveller. Then the dead thing turned, eyes gummed and red. It raised its head to sniff the foul air, revealing a little of its face. Gaunt, pale. A crimson smear across its features made it look like a lazy clown, but Cristo saw no humour there. A ribcage lay exposed behind it, steam curdling in the air above. Cracked open, the contents either churned in the creature’s distended belly or dangled in gory ropes from between its teeth.

  It had been a woman, this hunched thing, wasted and emaciated now, but formerly human. A scrivener, judging by the ragged, dirty robes.

  Cristo stared, transfixed like prey confronted by its predator, then took to his heels.

  ‘Run!’ he bellowed, hoofing through the fog. He collided with a disused agri-plough, pranging off its rusty shear and tearing a hole in his trousers. A fresh line of blood edged the blade. It drew the creature on, its olfactory senses doing what its eyes could not. It came after him, scurrying low like vermin, sniffing and snorting. A ragged bark articulated its displeasure and raw hunger.

  ‘RUN!’

  Celestia had Karina over one shoulder, her arm draped over the Sister-novice’s back, half dragging her along the edge of the incorporeal fog. She made little headway, lacking the strength to hoist the other girl up and run with the burden in her arms like Cristo could.

  Cristo heard more creatures, their grunting and shuffling made obvious by sudden manic animation. He thought they might be farther off. At least he couldn’t smell them, not like the one champing at his back. The reek of putrefaction made him gag. He had almost reached Celestia and Karina again when he turned, swiping low with Vanquish. The sword met flesh, and kept going until the dead thing’s skullcap and the upper portion of its brain lay on the ground separate to the rest of the head. A lucky blow, but Cristo felt he was due.

  ‘Give her to me,’ he demanded, breathless, pausing only long enough to see the dead thing collapse. He took Karina, his arms aching but having to find the strength regardless, and glanced at the fog and the shapes scurrying through it.

  They ran, skirting the edge of the agri-mills, first heading north and then west. He kept one eye on Celestia. She had the sword again, having traded it for Karina, and it slapped against her leg as she ran. She was falling behind, her long surplice robbing her of movement. Cristo glanced back and saw the determination in her eyes, but she was waning and stumbled, almost spilling over, before she righted herself again.

  One more slip was all it would take.

  Please… she mouthed, the creatures closing on her like bloodhounds. Please…

  ‘Save me’ or ‘don’t let them take me alive’, Cristo didn’t know which.

  Several feet separated them now.

  Cristo turned back around, mindful he needed to watch the way ahead, that an
y serious stumble could be the end. His heart hammered so hard it hurt. All he could think about was Karina, and getting her safe. But letting Celestia die… He felt the imaginary noose around his neck tightening. Another twist of the rope to add to its weight.

  I am a good man… I want to be.

  He stopped, lungs fit to burst, legs shaking, and prepared to fight.

  Celestia had collapsed. The sword was still in her grasp, held there by her sacred oaths and nothing more.

  Of the dead, there was no sign.

  Cristo waited. He looked. He listened.

  Nothing happened. Until it did.

  The sky had darkened to the point of dusk when he heard the engine drone, low and throaty, trembling the earth. The hive lamps flared, little halos of weak fire bullied by the shadows. Urging Celestia to her feet, the three found shelter in the split carcass of an old silo. Rotted grain spewed out of it like innards. Maggots writhed in the mass, but Cristo hunkered down, content to let them crawl across his skin, watching the skies as the drone grew louder.

  A shape moved in the darkness, too black to really see, but it was big and hovered above the old mills like a night raptor searching for food. Something fell from the shape, spindly and agile, landing quietly in a crouch. A faint red eye burned like a hot ember, strafing the agri-fields.

  Cristo shrank back into the ruptured silo, it the cave and he the primordial man recoiling from fire. It stalked, the shape, its syncopated movements like that of an avian. Its head canted and turned in the same manner. A lamp flicker caught the edge of a blade: a pair, one held in either hand. Something insectile persisted about its appearance, though the shadows obscured any detail.

  It turned its head, its multifaceted eye-lenses flaring as if suddenly kindled.

  Then it took a step towards them, twitching in that avian way, clicking, whirring.

  Cristo found an old piece of brick and held it tightly, maggots squirming over his fingers.

  Another step, and the blades lifted a fraction. Sharp enough to flense skin from flesh from bone. He thought of the precise butchery they could reap, the monomolecular steel hot as it cut into his body. A frenzied surgeon at the scalpel.

  The brick felt useless in his grasp, faced by this thing. A killing thing, a cold thing unconcerned by mercy or pity. A machine.

  Clicking, whirring, then the chirrup of detection as the lenses expanded.

  Cristo braced himself. He dared not move, but felt Celestia’s trembling presence behind him. The maggots quested, infiltrating his clothes, his hair… squirming across his face. He tried not to think of them feasting on his dead flesh, coring out his body, and the stripped-bare bones he would leave behind. He fought the urge to scrape them off, to flee the wretched silo with its rot and its stench. He should not have come this way. He should have headed straight for Hallow’s End. He had no business here, but wishing it all otherwise would not make it so.

  He remained still as the machine seemed to regard him, only ten or fifteen feet between them, the fog creeping slowly outwards to obscure the distance.

  A dull chime sounded and it turned, loping away on reverse-jointed legs. In seconds it had gone, off to some grim purpose, and the hovering shape went with it.

  Cristo waited six more minutes before he scraped off the maggots, urgently, disgustedly. Then he emptied his stomach, coughing up a puddle of hot bile and little else. It didn’t help the fear or the bone-aching fatigue. His muscles burned. He wanted to stop, to sleep. On his hands and knees, spitting out the acerbic taste in his mouth, he considered it. Karina stirred, a little moan escaping her lips. He rose, slow but back on his feet.

  ‘West…’ he said to Celestia. She looked as pale as marble, but gave a weary nod.

  They returned to the fog, resigned to its monsters.

  Chapter IX

  No way out

  The watchman, Gunter, died first. The pallid took him quickly, screaming into the black, a trail of finger marks clawed into the floorboards in his wake. Blood dashed Morgravia’s cheek, hot, arterial. A cry suggested it belonged to the road warden. Other sounds followed, chewing and rending. She shut them out, already moving, eyes adjusting to the darkness as she fumbled for the gate, wishing her gun wasn’t empty.

  The trapper snapped on a lamp attachment for her crossbow, and swung it madly to try to get her bearings. The grainy beam alighted on corpse faces, hungry and malicious, stained red and fouled by strings of meat. She recoiled, tripping, and went down. They fell upon her like a pack of carrion-eaters. She screamed, and fought, until the screams rose higher and more desperate as she became aware of what was being done to her, of how she was being unmade and consumed. And then there was no more, just snorting and ripping, and the frenzy of the feast.

  Part of the barricade collapsed on the dockhand, almost burying him. He fought his way free, the fallen lamp’s beam lighting up his struggle in staccato flickers. He was almost out when a clawed hand grasped his face. Nails tore into his cheek, pulling a part of it away as he shrieked, his youth laid bare by his fear. He kept moving, despite the red pouring from him, until another hand snatched at his ear and ripped it off. Another clamped across his forehead, digging furrows in his scalp and flensing part of it free. Another dug around his other cheek, pulling. Flesh tore like wet paper. Then his neck. Teeth biting into his shoulder, the meat of his forearm. In the end, he was so disfigured as to be barely describable as human.

  Morgravia clamped her mouth shut as she witnessed his cannibalisation, turning away as he became no more than meat. The lamp fizzed and shut out, crushed underfoot as the pallid swallowed it beneath their masses.

  She made it through the gate, with the lacerations to testify as to how close it had been. Arum Drover slammed it shut in her wake, throwing the heavy bolt before quickly stepping back as a host of gnarled and grasping talons reached for him. The pallid pushed hard against the cage, the mesh biting into the skin of those at the front of the horde and drawing blood.

  The swiftest of looks between her and Drover yielded a slight nod in return. He was an insufferable arsehole, she had decided, but perhaps not an entirely useless or uncourageous one.

  ‘Is there a back way out of this place? A cellar? Anything?’

  The barkeep, whom she had been addressing, shook his head. ‘Sealed it up years ago. Fewer ways in made it easier to keep the place safe from the gangs.’

  ‘Fewer places in, fewer places out…’ bemoaned Drover. He had taken up position near the Broker, evidently honouring his contract to her as a protector. The sommelier stood close by too, and Morgravia wondered again how far the servitor’s skills extended beyond pouring wine for his wealthy mistress. Even in all of this shitting mess, the Broker appeared composed, her arms folded neatly across her body, her hands concealed within the sleeves of her robes.

  The room out the back of the bar enclosed spartan living quarters and also storage. A pair of blank-eyed servitors stood dormant in alcoves, unpowered, their forked lifter arms slack by their sides. They were different to the sommelier. Cruder. Grubbier. Their cyborganics were obvious. Patchwork.

  ‘Can you get them working?’ she asked the barkeep.

  ‘It’ll take time.’

  ‘We don’t have any.’

  ‘Then no.’

  Morgravia scowled inwardly. She looked again. A little light spilled in from outside through ventilation slits, but they were much too narrow to traverse. A lighter shade of brick indicated where the rear door had once been. Racking lined the walls. Barrels and crates, the odd loose bottle or keg, piled up in the corners. No weapons. Nothing useful beyond the space itself. The feckless scribe had survived. He had retreated here, huddled in the dark, trying not to listen, to think. She was tempted to throw him back out and make him earn his place, but given how the mesh was already bending inwards it probably wouldn’t matter soon anyway. Fharkoum had taken up residence too, t
hough sat alone, content to let his hired gun face the dead as he worked his way through a crate of expensive spirits.

  ‘Do something…’ he said, wiping the spillage from his mouth. ‘Or are you not as powerful as you claim?’

  Morgravia yearned for the time not so long ago when he hadn’t spoken her language. Bad enough to listen, now she could actually understand the fat bastard.

  He sneered. ‘You are Inquisition. Your warriors… bring them.’

  ‘There are no warriors,’ replied Morgravia grimly, ‘just me.’

  The sneer deepened, spiced by a little threat. ‘Then you have no power.’

  ‘I have the Emperor’s authority. I have His will and purpose. I have power,’ she declared, strident, giving Kharata the eye by way of warning not to do anything that would shorten his already very likely brief life expectancy. He had wandered up to the doorway when he heard the exchange. ‘I just don’t have the power to save you.’

  The mesh bulged again. The sheer mass of bodies pressed against it caused it to deform like a tumour in the metal, and a corner broke away from its fastenings. The scribe wailed and kept wailing, until Fharkoum leaned over and slapped him so he shut up.

  ‘Not one more sound out of you, wretch.’ He glared at Kharata then, the fear showing in his eyes if not his demeanour. ‘You. Do something.’

  The hired gun nodded, firing a burst of flechettes against the pallid pulling at the breach but only succeeding in shredding parts of the mesh. Hands thrust in through the ragged gaps, flesh tearing and exposing ruddy bone.

  Morgravia gave him a scathing look, which was met in kind by one of unimpeachable arrogance.

  ‘Don’t do that again,’ she warned.

  Kharata had the good sense not to retaliate.

  The available space grew tighter as the pallid started pushing and those behind the bar edged back. They were rabid, the creatures, driven, almost desperate. Something had made them this way, a plague, unnatural or manufactured, one Morgravia felt sure she had been charged to prevent. Its architects must be close; in Blackgheist, maybe even Low Sink. Like tendrils of fog slowly receding before the light, the pieces of her obscured memory started to edge back into focus.