Emergence (29 page)

‘You have shortened my leash,’ the Hunn said in clear English.

Then Dave realised it hadn’t used English at all. It had spoken in the Olde Tongue, but he had understood it as clearly as he would understand Brian Williams reading a headline.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ Dave spat back at him, but it came out as a choking gargle, and he swallowed half a mouthful of Everding’s lifeblood before gagging and vomiting again.

The Hunn understood well enough what he meant, though, and roared like a wounded bear. It stomped on Everding’s head, crushing helmet and bone alike with a sick crunching pop. The Fangr snarled and strained at its invisible leash, which Dave could actually feel, the same way you feel the vibrations of a church bell inside you if you stand close enough when it strikes the hour.

The dead and the dying were all around. Screams and groans mingled with cries of fear as some of the laggard daemonum stopped and feasted on the fallen men. Sporadic gunfire cracked through the humid air, adding the slightest tincture of more hot copper and spent powder to the night scent of blood and iron. Tyres squealed and sirens wailed. Above them somewhere gunships pounded away, their rotors counting a drumbeat cadence to measure the pace of the massacre he, David Hooper, had spectacularly failed to prevent. In the distance, almost drowned out by the uproar, he could pick out the bass thump from someone’s overpriced car audio system. Pink. Telling Dave to keep his drink and just give her the money.

He felt tired beyond endurance, wanting to just lay his head down and wait for the end. The zoo sounds of the Hunn and Fangr seemed to fade away. Everything faded away.

He thought at first he was losing consciousness. The nausea, the deep-body aches and burning pain, so many aches and pains that it was impossible to distinguish one hurt from another, the sense of futility and sorrow – they all faded as dark flowers bloomed in front of his eyes. He blinked, the eyelids sticking together with Everding’s blood. And then he blinked again at the statue of the Hunn and its evil butt monkey.

They roared no longer. They moved not at all.

Nothing moved, and no sound came to him except for one sweet high note of song. An old battle hymn. Old before men had the language to sing hymns.

Lucille
.

The pain vanished, washed away on her song. His strength and all his energy came surging back, carried in on the same channel. When he moved to stand up, the world did not spin around to plant his ass in the dirt again. His arms and legs were no longer immobile and leaden. He was able to spring up onto the balls of his feet and perform a playful roll to gather up the splitting maul, which honest to God
sighed
as his hands closed around her.

‘Marty Grbac says hi,’ he snarled, and with one overhead blow collapsed the Hunn from head to foot into a shower of broken bone, torn flesh, and blood. Still nothing moved. Not any speed that a hyperaccelerated Dave Hooper could perceive as movement, anyway. He stepped toward the frozen Fangr and swung Lucille at its head like Barry Bonds aiming for the cheap seats. He imagined knocking the thing’s skull into orbit, but it merely disintegrated in a disgusting explosion of gore. A slow, strange geyser of thick daemonic ichor erupted from the creature’s neck, the physics all wrong, and time slowed down again.

Until a sudden jump cut fast-forwarded the world back into sync with Dave.

He spun around with the force of the blow to find a few dozen members of the thrall stopped in their tracks, distracted by their appetites. They hunkered down over human remains, tearing into the corpses and occasionally one another as they fought over the choice pieces. Many of the Hunn staggered about, snorting in a way that Dave recognised as laughter. Urgon had snorted at him in just the same fashion. They were drunk on the freshly decanted bloodwine of the First Platoon.

He found himself caught between the urge to charge in and start laying about him with Lucille and the more rational response of getting the hell out of Dodge. Running back to Heath and letting him figure out what to do.

After all, Dave had proved pretty conclusively that he wasn’t Marvel material. He’d jumped in here, hadn’t he, and look at the results of that. Thirty plus men and women dead a minute later. Hundreds more dying now as the main body of the thrall ran them down and tore them apart.

He started to back away from the creatures, mopping Everding’s tacky drying blood from his eyes, ignoring Lucille, who seemed to be humming sweetly that she thought having at the thrall would be a fine and manly course of action.

The squeal of tyres caught his attention. A deep bass thrumming rolled across the killing field from Claiborne. Tupac declaring his intent to ride on the enemy. Doors popped open and slammed shut as men and women, all of them black and gunned up, emerged from behind the Pizza Hut, walking down on the Horde with an arms bazaar of weaponry: everything from comically small pistols to AKs and one belt-fed monster that reminded Dave of the old Rambo posters.

T-Qube, Dave thought.

The first rounds cracked out, targeted on the monsters feasting before him.

Not wanting to find out if he was bulletproof now, Dave did the only sensible thing.

He hit the dirt.

‘Light them niggaz up!’

A wall of sound rolled over the battleground. The discrete pops and bangs of single-shot pistols, the hammering crack of a full auto, and the heavy pounding of what had to be the big belt-fed gun.

27

D
ave looked up from the dirt with some dismay as the daemon war party turned away from the new threat and toward the crowded residential area south of the main road. The gangbangers pursued them, ignoring Dave lying prostrate on the ground but stopping to check on the marines. A few took what weapons they could scavenge from the dead. A young boy, too young for this sort of thing, Dave thought, went for a pair of dog tags, and another backhanded him.

‘Show some respect,’ he said. ‘My brother’s in the Marine Corps. Your cousin Tyrell, too, you little asshole.’

Dave couldn’t say exactly how many people lay immediately in front of the daemon stampede, but it had to be hundreds, perhaps even a thousand or more. Many of the blocks were dark except for candlelight or torches, and here and there a burning oil drum. Some of the residents were on the streets, attempting to flee on foot. Some just milled about, talking to one another, checking their phones, attempting to find out what was happening. Others rode in vehicles that weren’t moving much more quickly than the people on foot. But many were obviously staying put, unaware of the danger, not believing it, or perhaps simply possessed of a contrary frame of mind that was about to get them killed.

Once the gangsters were away, Dave took a couple of steps and leaped out into clear air and landed with a grunt in the parking lot of a church. He was moving at normal speed now, as were the congregation spilling out onto the front steps and the residents he’d passed earlier at warp speed walking down the middle of the road. Dave accelerated again, covering the distance back toward the command van in a dark glimmer. He found the SEALs a block down from the truck, running toward the battle.

‘Whoa, what the hell, man!’

Allen jumped back a step as Dave materialised in front of him with a whoosh and a soft pop of displaced air.

Dave tried to get around Allen, but the SEAL stepped in front of him. ‘What happened over there? One minute you’re down and the next minute you’re up?’

Captain Heath limped over. ‘Forty-three marines are down.’

Dave hung his head low, nodding. ‘I know. There’s no time to explain. If you don’t get on top of this, there’ll be a heap more folks joining them.’

He could see medics worked frantically on the fallen SWAT trooper and the navy SEAL back by the truck, but Dave could tell by looking at them that they were gone.

‘I took care of that, by the way,’ he said. ‘Sliveen scout. He’s gone now, but there’s probably a couple more around. That T-Qube guy and his crew are chasing the thrall straight into the neighbourhood. I thought I might be able to help the marines, but something went wrong. I couldn’t
. . .’

Heath looked at him as though he were mad, although that could have been because he was covered in gore and dripping ichor. SWAT officers and SEALs moved past the group, setting up to flank the Horde. Dave wiped some of the Horde off the hammer’s head. Lucille, for her part, seemed satisfied with him. She sighed like a just-fucked prom queen.

A line of SEALs and SWAT officers opened fire from their improvised positions, enfilading the Horde, wearing down its right flank. Just as before with T-Qube’s people, the combined firepower of the SEALs and SWAT whittled away at the weaker members of the Horde. Any other fighting force might have stopped to deal with the problem. The Horde instead sped toward the houses, leaving their fallen comrades behind. The gunfire was having the effect of herding them in the wrong direction.

‘I need that gun run,’ Heath said into his headset, ignoring Dave. ‘How much longer?’

‘Heath, you gotta stop shooting,’ Dave said.

No one listened to him. The noise was too loud.

‘STOP SHOOTING,’ he shouted again. ‘CEASE FIRE.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’ a SWAT officer shouted back.

‘You’re pushing them into the houses, asshole,’ Dave said.

Heath ran over. ‘Do as he says. Cease fire.’

The firing came to a halt. The Horde slowed for a moment to ponder the brief silence before another ragged volley from the gangbangers prodded them forward again.

‘Look,’ Dave said, feeling as though his head might twist right off the top of his body in frustration. He wanted to be able to move as quickly as he had when attacking the Sliveen. Everyone else’s reactions and thoughts seemed to be dragging along at a glacial pace.

‘We’ve got about a minute before they break into the streets at the edge of the field just south of Claiborne,’ he warned. ‘There’s hundreds of people in those two or three blocks alone. They are all going to die unless you can head off the attack.’

Allen appeared beside them. ‘We gotta go, Captain,’ he said. ‘We have to move now if we’re going to get there and set up any kind of blocking force. Second Platoon is still jammed up with refugee traffic. If they get free, they can reinforce us and we can limit the damage.’

Heath glanced briefly overhead, looking for deliverance, but it was hopeless. The sky was still full of news helicopters adding to the confusion, drawing onlookers to the area, and scaring the shit out of the residents. But even if the Cobras had a clear shot at the daemons, they were about to lose that advantage when the Horde got in among the residential streets. The one free gun run Dave had witnessed had seemed heavily constrained by the proximity of all the civilians who had gathered outside the strip mall on Claiborne to watch the show. He was no soldier, but it looked to him as though the choppers had held back.

‘We don’t have time,’ he insisted. ‘We don’t have time for any of this crap. I can hold these guys. I can hold them off on my own for a few minutes, guaranteed, if you can get yourselves set up around the intersection two blocks north of here.’

‘Why?’ Heath asked. Allen also looked as though he’d appreciate an explanation. Dave had to shout over the uproar of orbiting helicopters, the crackle of gunfire, and the growing screams and cries of alarm to the north.

‘There’s some sort of school up there,’ he said. ‘Flood-damaged, I think. A lot of open ground out the front or maybe the back. Whatever. Two blocks north of here and then another block back east.’ He pointed up the street along which he’d warped to take out the Sliveen. ‘If I can get them in there, packed in tight, and you can keep the ground clear of civilians, does it give you enough space to use the gunships?’

Ashbury ran up, handing over the ruggedised tablet she was carrying. Heath had a quick look at the map onscreen and passed the device to Allen, who examined it and nodded.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked. ‘This isn’t contained at all, Michael.’

‘I’m going to make them an offer they can’t refuse,’ Dave answered. ‘Literally.’

The two navy men and Ashbury exchanged a couple of brief, largely incomprehensible sentences in the jargon of their trade before Allen turned on his boot heel and began barking orders at both his men and Ostermann’s. The SWAT commander, who had been tending to the body of his slain comrade, looked worried.

‘We moving?’

Heath handed him the tablet, pointing out the intersection where they needed to concentrate their forces.

‘We need to get as many civilians away from the blocks around that intersection as possible,’ Heath said. ‘Civilian non-combatants,’ he added. ‘Your man T-Qube and his crew just saved our asses up at the McDonald’s. If they’re willing, we can always use the extra firepower.’

‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any question the Qube’s boys are willing,’ Ostermann said. ‘Probably best if the request comes from one of your guys rather than mine, though.’

Dave cocked an ear to the north, where he was certain he could hear things getting worse. More gunfire. More screaming. Screeching tyres and the crash of metal on metal.

‘Clock’s tickin’,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Heath snapped. ‘Dumb it down for me. What are you going to do? And what do you need?’

*

The thresh felt better in both its thinkings and its feelings as soon as they charged into the outskirts of the village. Although, it told itself, it really had to stop thinking of this place as a village. Nothing it had ever been told of men had prepared it for the grandeur and scale of this settlement. Straight lines and hard angles ran off toward a vanishing point. It was possible that some of these streets ran true for a bow shot or more. Grand structures, some of them towering more than two or three times the height of the BattleMaster himself, loomed over them. It was almost, though not quite, like running into a canyon.

And dark, so blessedly dark when the accursed flying beasts suddenly left off the chase. The thresh searched its thinkings for some clue why, having wounded their party so grievously, the ferocious insectivores would simply disappear like that. But as its eyestalks scanned the Above, it realised that not all of the wretched creatures had departed. Some of the larger, heavier beasts still circled high above, their eyes flashing red and, it suddenly realised, with men hanging suspended from the bellies of the beasts. Under the wings or
. . .

Around it the earth thundered with the charge of the Vengeance. It was a charge, the thresh told itself. Not an ignominious retreat and headlong flight into the relative safety of the human village. Shaking its head at the confused and contrary thinkings, the thresh gave up on trying to understand what was happening. How could this strange species of Drakon ally itself with these animals? How was it that men rode in the belly of these Drakon? Where the thresh could see them standing, waving and gesturing with the staffs and wands it now recognised as the source of their killing magick. So many confused thinkings. So few satisfying answers. It was all so very different from how the thresh had imagined this might turn out.

They had meant to storm into the village in the first place. To kill the elders, eat a few nestlings and spread an exemplary terror among the calflings. As the dirt and sharp stinging stones kicked up around its pounding claws and the air about its head cracked and buzzed with the magick fires of the human wizards, the thresh kept telling itself that this would all end well. It had to.

*

Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn was vexed. As the remnants of his force stampeded toward the human village, which he now conceded appeared to be somewhat larger and more impressive than any human settlement he had ever read of in the scrolls, the BattleMaster was uncertain whether he should be leading the charge from the fore or from somewhere in the rear ranks, driving it on as though it were a chariot so that he might best wield the whip of command and direct his thrall in such a way as to recover this situation.

Not that there was much chance of recovery, he thought bitterly. The surviving Grymm sprinted along on either side of him, bellowing orders – Orders! The hide of them! – that they storm into the village square and laager up, forming a defensive perimeter to hold off the attacks of the wizards while a messenger returned to the UnderRealms to bring back reinforcements. A full legion should be enough, they agreed.

A third Lieutenant Grymm had been adding his snarls and barks to the argument when the bizarre human lightning that flew as straight and true as a war shaft struck him at the base of his neck, causing his head to fly off. The corpse kept running for a few steps before collapsing and almost tripping a leash of Fangr coming up on the Grymm’s tail. It was heresy, but the BattleMaster sent a silent prayer of thanks to whichever human wizard had been responsible for the favour. The other two lieutenants, however, redoubled their efforts.

If Scaroth had not been short of breath already, he would have laughed in their snouts. Bad enough that he should have come here with a Dread Company only to have it mangled by wizard men who not only refused to flee (the fools!) but who hid behind whatever cover the battlefield might provide (the cowards!) and then continued to fight from that same hiding place. With vile magicks (the fiends!). His enthralled war band was broken. His Sliveen scouts were lost somewhere beyond trumpet call. And for all these losses he had not one shred of man meat on his fangs to show in mitigation. It was a disaster. There was no chance of quitting this accursed realm unless he would be able to place before Her Majesty such tribute as would erase the shame to be forever attached to his name upon the scrolls.

As they entered the boundaries of the village, however, Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn was faced with another conundrum. His thrall maintained something that might pass as good order and discipline while hemmed in on either side by the surprisingly large shelters and temples of the settlement. But that cohesion was already fraying as Fangr and Hunn on the flanks of the sortie scented fresh man meat and heard the screams and cries of the villagers. Defenceless villagers. With their wizard mercenaries falling behind, even as the dangerous magicks continued to lash at his rear, the village lay open before them.

But just as he had been vexed by the question of whether to lead from the fore or the rear, the BattleMaster now found himself roaring over the heads of the Grymm to impose some form of discipline on his host, which was disintegrating as the bloodlust took hold of it. Entering the village would not be the deliverance they sought if the war party fell to pieces in an orgy of singular slaughter and mayhem. Two Fangr and one Hunn fell to his slashing blade, and he was forced to race to the head of the column, cutting the legs out from under another Fangr before the great heaving, panting mass of daemonum slowed and eventually stopped.

‘You will hold,’
he roared. ‘We will reduce this village when the time for its reduction has come. But now you will hold and –’

But they were not attending to him. All of them – Hunn, Fangr, thresh, and even the Lieutenants Grymm – stood staring past him, over his head. Their jaws were agape, their features mute with confusion and stupidity. Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn tightened his grip on FoeSunder and turned slowly in place, wondering what fresh hell could possibly await him.

When he saw the lights of the city – it could only be a city – his jaw dropped, too. He realised that they stood not in some small, isolated village but on the very edges of a great metropolis. A human metropolis. How was such a thing even possible?