David Gunn - Day of the Damned

He nods, glances at me and goes to tell his niece the bad news.

Leona heads inside with my warning in her ears. She’s ex-militia if anyone asks. Invalided out. I’m her boss and Anton’s my boss. That’s all she’s allowed to say. No one in that bar is really going to believe her.

But then we don’t believe they’re mercenaries either.

Senator Cos’s own little private army, is my guess. This prompts several questions. Like why does he think he needs an army firstly? And what is it Anton’s not telling me?

The Icefelds are where we left them.

Sergeant Leona’s armed all their security systems. So I stand these down and go over each bike. No new bugs that I can see. No little transponders telling anyone where we are. The clips are full. Our batteries are charged. The gyros work perfectly. We’ve even got the right pressure in the tyres.

‘Haven’t seen one of those for a while,’ says a voice. ‘Didn’t know that model was still in service.’ Sergeant Toro drops to a crouch beside me, and runs his hands over a fusion unit.

‘They’re not.’

‘Where did you get them?’

‘Stole them.’

He looks at me. ‘You serious?’

‘Yeah. Completely.’

‘And their owners didn’t object?’

‘Hard to object with your neck broken.’

Leaning close, I watch him trace Anton’s optic to the S amp;Ps, and smile. When I sit back on my heels, it’s to discover he’s offering me another cigarillo.

‘Thanks.’

‘No problem. You happy in your job?’

‘Why . . . You offering me another?’

Maybe he hears something in my voice because his face stills. ‘It’s possible . . . I have friends looking for . . . experienced operators.’

‘You mean assassins?’

‘I mean anyone who’s seen real combat.’ He sees me grin and nods. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I know. We’ve both seen that. So, what do you think?’

‘Already got a job,’ I tell him.

He jerks his thumb over his shoulder towards the bar.’ Babysitting some trade lord in disguise?’

‘There are worse ways to earn a living.’

‘True enough,’ he says. ‘And there are better ones.’

Not sure what he’s got me pegged as. But it’s got to be more than Legion. You can pick ex-Legion up cheap, pretty much anywhere.

‘Why isn’t your boss flying anyway?’

Most high clans own copters. And you could make Wildeside to Farlight in five hours using a high-speed hover. Of course, you’d need decent roads to do that. As for a ramjet . . . Probably take you longer to buckle in than it would to make the trip.

‘He’s being . . . discreet.’

The sergeant smiles at my choice of words. ‘Thought it was something like that.’

It is so cold that the innkeeper’s niece nods when I offer her my coat. She’s carrying a plate, plus a fresh bottle of beer. The plate has a lump of goat’s cheese, a slice of bread and a dollop of chilli jam.

‘What happened to the stew?’

Her scowl says this is better; then she realizes I’m teasing her and blushes in the light of the lamp she’s carrying.

‘Put that out.’

She kills the light.

‘No point making yourself a target.’

The girl glances round the courtyard and resists the urge to tell me it’s locked and all of its windows are shuttered. In turn, I resist telling her that once you’ve learnt combat skills you keep practising them, even when they’re not necessary.

‘This should do,’ I say, settling myself against a wall.

It takes me a few seconds to struggle out of my coat. And the girl’s eyes widen when she spots my metal arm. ‘Lost it to a monster. Bigger than me, with slit eyes and armour across its chest.’

She thinks I’m joking.

‘I’m serious.’

‘Must have hurt.’

I hide my grin behind the bottle of beer.

Truth is, shock carried me back to the fort, and the lieutenant poured so much brandy down my throat that the entire week after I lost my arm is still a blur. He could have used battlefield morphine.

But we didn’t have any.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Sit down.’

She begins to settle herself next to me. Pouting when I pick her up bodily and put her on my lap. Now we can’t see each other and it’s hard to wrap my coat round her shoulders. So I swivel her towards me, by which time I’m definitely interested and she’s grinning.

‘That’s better,’ I say.

Her name’s Mary. She’s nineteen.

Maybe twenty. She’s not sure.

Mary’s father died and then her real uncle died and her aunt married the innkeeper, who isn’t really her uncle. She calls him that because it keeps her aunt happy. She stops to check I’m following.

I am, I’ve known families like that too.

‘So life’s OK?’

She’s not sure she’d go that far. But it could be worse, she agrees.

The bread is stale and the cheese so hard it cracks rather than crumbles. The chilli jam is so hot that sweat breaks out across my scalp.

Just the way I like it.

When I’ve eaten enough I offer her what’s left, and watch as she chews her way through the bread and wolfs down the remains of the cheese. She giggles when I wipe chilli jam from her chin with my thumb. And she doesn’t protest when I take the plate and put it on the ground beside us.

Guess we both know what’s going to happen.

Not surprisingly, her kisses taste of chilli and goat’s cheese and what was left of my beer. She raises her chin and opens her mouth and locks one hand round the back of my head. I like a woman who knows what she’s doing. As the kisses get harder, my hand drifts and she opens my coat to make access easier.

She shivers.

Unfortunately, her shivering is from cold, and not excitement.

There’s undoubtedly a point at which fucking becomes impossible because your brain simply can’t deal with your body being that cold. This isn’t it, and I suspect for me that it’s not even close. Mary, on the other hand, shivers so hard her teeth begin to chatter.

‘Here,’ I say. ‘Let me.’

Fastening her blouse, I wrap my coat tight around her and button it all the way up, ending with the storm fastening at the collar. Then I lift her slightly, until she gets the idea and kneels over me while I undo my combats and snap free her panties. One yank at the hip is all it takes.

Stuffing them into her pocket, I spit on the fingers of my good hand and find one place where she’s definitely still warm.

This time there’s a grin to match her shiver.

Positioning myself, I grip her broad hips through the coat, and then I position her in turn, lowering her onto me.

‘Fuck,’ she says.

The grin on her face is looking less certain. So I hold her frozen in place until she nods, and then lower her more slowly. She takes her weight on her knees. Very slowly, she comes to rest and then lifts away.

I can see the shock in her eyes.

A second later she slides down again and winces.

It takes another three goes before she can drop onto me without gasping. And then she’s away, and her hand comes up to grip my skull and her kisses become fierce and she buries her head against me to muffle her cries.

‘Oh shit,’ she says finally.

I like women who enjoy themselves.

There was a time when I bought my sex in brothels. In the Legion you get the women no one else wants and the ones everyone else has already had. The whores hate us because fucking us tells them how far they’ve fallen.

Mary doesn’t want the coin I offer.

‘It’s not like you asked for it,’ I say, returning the silver to my pocket. Her eyes watch it disappear, but she doesn’t change her mind. Asking for money is my definition of payment. Anything else is a present.