David Gunn - Day of the Damned

Anton knocks anyway.

When that doesn’t produce results, he kicks.

The sergeant is looking at me. She knows there’s going to be trouble. Wants to know what she’s meant to do about it.

‘Sir?’ she says.

‘Take your lead from me.’

She grins and I decide I like her.

‘He’s shut,’ someone announces. Not, We’re shut or I’m shut. He’s shut. Tells me he doesn’t own the place. Doesn’t even work here.

Just likes interfering.

‘Stand back.’

It’s a cheap door with poor-quality hinges. After I kick it out of the frame, it’s a broken door with poor-quality hinges. And the weapons-detection system built into its frame is fucked. Either that, or it has the sense to keep quiet. Not a peep comes from it as I stamp my way into the room, side arm in hand.

My kick sent the man behind reeling. And door and man obviously hit the floor together. Something cracks when I climb over them.

Sounds like ribs to me.

‘Don’t want any trouble,’ says a weasel-faced man serving beer.

‘We don’t start it,’ I say.

Sergeant Leona grins. ‘No,’ she says. ‘We finish it.’

Definitely a girl after my own heart.

The tavern’s not that bad really. Music blares from a juke box. The air stinks of cigar smoke, beer, unwashed men and cheap brandy. For a second, I feel almost at home. The smoke hugs a yellowed ceiling like low-lying cloud.

A dozen men at the bar check out we’re not the law, the bailiffs or the husbands of women they’ve been screwing and most relax. I take note of the ones who don’t. One of them is field-stripping his Colt. The barrel sits in a puddle of beer. The gun is only semi AI, but still has enough smarts to complain.

Still swearing, a man crawls from under the door.

He’s clutching his side and swaying slightly. Could be pain, but it looks like drunkenness to me. When he lurches towards me, Leona’s boot finds its way in front of his. Probably bad luck she treads on his trigger finger as she walks past.

A dozen men stare.

Most have the eyes of those who’ve seen combat.

The rest have mirror shades. Whose reflection has seen villages burn, boys gunned down, and women offer themselves and see their daughters taken anyway. It’s two hours to dawn. Makes me wonder what they’re doing up this early.

Apart from playing cards, obviously.

A man with his back to me holds an emperor, two generals and a sniper. Unless the scar-faced man opposite plans to cheat he’s already lost.

A pile of coins sits between them.

It’s a large pile. Mostly silver, some bronze. A gold Octo glints in the lamplight. A few of the bigger coins look off-world. One is metalhead. I can see the medusa head of Gareisis, their hundred-braid, bug-eyed in the half light.

Only these two are still in the game.

It’s a large pot for the man with his back to me to win.

Makes me wonder if he’s going to see dawn at all. Or whether one of his colleagues will find him with his dick out, his throat cut and his pockets empty. And the village whore nowhere to be seen. Of course, she’ll turn up in a ditch, with her own throat cut, a few days later. When scar-face has left the area.

Old story. I’ve seen it happen.

Haven’t we all.

‘Food,’ I demand.

The weasel-faced man behind the bar shakes his head. He’s a slow learner.

‘And a room, three beds.’

He begins to tell me his inn is full and the kitchens closed and none of the rooms has three beds anyway, even if they weren’t all taken. His words trail into silence when it occurs to him I’m not listening.

The scar-faced man gets up from the table.

‘This is a private party.’

He’s definitely losing. Has to be. The speed he ditches his hand, tossing four cards onto the table so they slide into the discarded pile, makes that final hand impossible to call.

His coat is like mine.

Mesh-lined and double-stitched, with thin armour over the heart and wrapped round the kidneys. A pulse pistol juts from a belt that is studded with turquoise and fixed with a vast buckle that reads Let God sort them out.

The motto suggests he’s a mercenary.

His stance says he’s regular. And his side arm isn’t fancy enough for a mercenary. What with their pearl handles and ruby sights, you can usually see them a thousand yards off. Even on a dark day.

‘You hear me?’ He’s talking to Leona, thinks she’s the softest target.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘You say something?’

Someone at the bar laughs.

The eyes of the man hassling her tighten. ‘This place is closed.’

‘Not any longer.’

‘I don’t think you heard me.’ He frees the flap on his holster.

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘we heard you, all right. It’s just we don’t give a fuck.’

Very ostentatiously, the man puts his hand on his revolver. ‘One last time,’ he says. ‘The door’s behind you.’

Leona points. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s over there.’

That’s the second time someone at the bar laughs. As the man’s cheek twitches, I realize his position in this group isn’t secure. A corporal, a freshly made sergeant? Maybe not that battle-hardened despite his scar. It’s hard to gauge his age through cheap lighting and a haze of cigar smoke.

‘We’re taking a room,’ I tell him. ‘Get your men to bunk up.’

‘You’re not-’

A step takes me within reach and the palm of my hand connects with his chin, snapping his jaw shut hard enough to crack bone. As I hook back my elbow to drive it into his throat, Anton steps forward.

‘Sven.’

I knee the man instead.

Stepping over him, I bundle Anton outside.

Outrage floods his face, but it’s mixed with fear. I make myself unclench my fist. ‘What,’ I say, ‘is the fucking point of being in disguise if you’re going to shout my name all over the place?’

‘You were going to kill him.’

‘So?’

Anton looks at me.

‘He might have lived,’ I say.

In the darkness someone snorts. A flame flares, and a bald headed man touches a match to the end of a cigarillo. Smoke seeps slowly from between his lips. He’s leaning against the wall, staring at the sky.

The collar of his leather coat is turned up against the cold.

‘Want one?’ he asks, twitching his smoke.

Anton says no.

I accept.

The match he uses to light me is military issue. Well used and rubbed back to base metal where it’s been hung from a belt. He sees me look and nods approvingly.

‘NCO?’ he asks.

‘Ex-sergeant.’ That much is true.

‘What happened?’

Punched an officer.’

His eyebrows rise in the glow from his cigarillo. No one gets away with hitting an officer. I can see him wondering if I’m taking the piss.

‘No witnesses?’ he asks.

‘None . . . My lieutenant decided not to press charges.’

‘All the same,’ says the man, ‘I’m surprised you mention it.’

‘The lieutenant’s dead and I’m out of the Legion. So it’s just my boast against a dead man and no one gives a fuck anyway.’

Dragging deep, I let smoke trickle into the starlit sky. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a desert, but I hate city skies. I need to be able to see the constellations, like now. High above me are the howitzer, the whore and the frying pan.

Of course, on Farlight they look different.

I’m used to them looking sharper.

‘Off-planet?’ asks the man. Maybe he sees my surprise, because he nods towards the howitzer and smiles. ‘Always strange, when the sky’s not your own.’

His name is Toro, he’s ex-Legion. Invalided out after a battle I’ve never heard of, on a planet that means even less. He worked his way in-Spiral, before ending in Farlight. These days he’s sergeant major for a militia regiment in the capital. I ask him if he’s with the men inside and watch him try not to be offended.