David Gunn - Day of the Damned

Struggling to her feet, she slides off my coat.

So I stand and turn her to face me. Wide cheeks, full lips and pale blue eyes almost lost in the darkness. The fullness of her body hidden under a shapeless skirt, washed-out blouse and thin jacket.

‘What do you want?’ I ask.

‘Told you,’ she says crossly. ‘Nothing.’

‘I mean from life.’

Mary looks at me strangely. ‘You’re not what I expected.’

Begs a sub-menu of other questions. That’s something my old lieutenant used to say. Although it seems right. ‘What did you expect?’

She gets embarrassed.

‘You know,’ she says. ‘You’re weird.’

Well, she’s got that right. My skull is broad, my eyes wide set. I’m a foot taller than most of the men in the inn behind me. My shoulders sometimes scrape both sides of a door. I heal faster and have a higher pain threshold than anyone I’ve met.

And that’s before we deal with my metal arm, my collection of scars, the symbiont slug that’s taken up home in my throat or the fact I get strange turns when the slug wakes, and information flows through me like water.

But I don’t think that’s what Mary means.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Weirder than you imagine.’

Mary shakes her head and wraps her arms around me.’ Sven,’ she says.

I’m surprised she knows my name.

‘Take me with you.’

‘Can’t,’ I say, watching hurt flood her eyes.

Turning her face to the moon, I wonder idly what I’m seeing.

A girl who sees me as a ticket out of here? Someone so unhappy that anywhere else is better than this? If so, I’ve been there myself. So I can understand how she might want to get out.

‘Now’s not a good time.’

She turns to go and swings back when I grab her wrist. Her other hand is already raised to slap me. She lets it drop when she sees my grin.

‘Listen,’ I say. ‘Weird shit’s going down.’

Mary looks around her.

‘Not just here. Everywhere. Farlight’s a bad place to go right now.’

‘How do you know?’

The answer is, I don’t know how. I just know that I do. It’s a feeling more than anything. Like static raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

‘Just do.’

She nods. ‘You’ll be back?’

‘Should be. If all goes well. In a week or so.’

‘Maybe I’ll see you then.’

She turns for the broken door of the inn, holding my empty plate and her unlit lamp, and this time I let her go. She’s on my fingers and I can taste her on my tongue. Some of the questions she’s asked are wriggling in my head like worms.

But I’ll deal with them later.

When I go in to breakfast, Anton’s at a table with Sergeant Toro. Leona is sitting opposite Anton, concentrating on her plate. It doesn’t look that interesting to me. Mary comes out from the kitchens, and puts a plate of cold chicken in front of me before I have time to sit.

‘You want coffee with that?’

‘If it’s not too much trouble . . .’

She scowls, then ruins it by grinning when I slap her arse in passing.

The next person to try it gets hot coffee in his lap. Since he, his boss and his oppos are on the point of moving out, and I’m looking over, he decides there’s not much he can do about it.

‘Sven,’ says Anton. ‘Our friend has a plan.’

I’m on the point of saying I’m not interested in plans. I want to get to Farlight, warn Colonel Vijay about General Luc and get Anton back to Wildeside before anyone discovers he’s missing.

Added to which, the idea of Debro having to defend her compound against stray furies doesn’t make me happy.

‘Toro,’ I say. ‘What do you know about furies?’

He looks up with a start.

‘Theoretically speaking.’ That’s something Aptitude says.

‘Theoretically?’ Sergeant Toro says it like he knows what it means. ‘Ugly bastards . . .’ He stops to consider his words. ‘I’ve met them in battle. Only once, Legba be praised. Don’t want to meet them again.’

‘Where was that?’

He names a planet even Anton doesn’t know.

‘They guard the Uplift temples at night.’ Swallowing most of his coffee, Sergeant Toro wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. As an afterthought, he wipes sweat from his bald scalp with his fingers.

I get the feeling this isn’t a good memory.

‘That’s what we were told. The metalheads wake them up when it gets dark and put them back to sleep come daylight. Use some kind of magic.’

He sees my doubt.

‘Just saying what we were told.’

I tell him about the Uplifted temple at Ilseville. I scalped a metalhead and used its braids as a disguise. He likes the story but doesn’t know the planet. When I figure I’ve made enough conversation, I get back to the questions that matter.

‘Can furies die of hunger?’

The sergeant’s gaze sharpens.

‘Just something that occurred to me. You know, maybe they could . . .’

‘Sven,’ says Anton. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I heard.’

Sergeant Toro glances between us.

And I see his point. This doesn’t sound like a conversation between a high clan member and his hired bodyguard to me either. ‘Maybe this is a bad idea,’ he says, scraping back his chair.

‘Wait,’ Anton says.

It’s only when I nod that the sergeant sits down again.

‘You’re right about the furies,’ he says. ‘Well, almost. They hibernate after three days without food.’

‘What wakes them up again?’

‘The smell of blood.’ He says it like it should be obvious.

‘Sven,’ Anton says. ‘If we could get back to the plan.’

‘In a minute . . .’ I’m trying to work out if giving the SIG to Aptitude was a wasted move or not. Aptitude uses wasted move, it’s to do with chess. If the furies are going to go to sleep then she doesn’t need my gun.

That pisses me off.

On the other hand, the furies might smell blood or attack before three days are up. That means she will need the gun. So then it was a good move. That’s why I need the SIG: it does this kind of thinking for me.

And I know what Sergeant Toro’s going to suggest anyway.

His version of Mary’s plan. Although his reasons worry me more.

Largely because he reminds me of myself. This isn’t someone who needs to travel in a pack. In all probability, this isn’t some-one who even likes travelling in a pack. So why saddle himself with an ex-Legion sergeant, a thinly disguised trade lord, and a militia sergeant, no matter how good?

The sergeant claims to know where Vijay Jaxx lives. This is more than we do. He used to work for the general, seemingly. I guess that means he did things too dirty even for the Death’s Head.

‘What do you reckon?’ Anton says.

He’s making it my decision.

Wise choice.

‘You know we’re on gyros. Single-seaters.’

‘So am I.’ Nodding to the door, he shows me a canvas heap in one corner of the courtyard. A new-model Icefeld lies underneath. A ground-to-ground missile system is bolted either side of the light. A stripped-down gearbox sits in the dirt. The flywheel of a gyro rests beside it. With a rat’s nest of optic.

‘Take me ten minutes. Fifteen at the most.’

A man after my own heart.

‘You’ve got until tonight,’ I tell him. ‘We travel in darkness and you’ll need to mask your headlights. ‘OK?’

He nods.

Sergeant Toro is as good as his word. His bike is back together, parked next to ours when I get downstairs, and its headlight is masked, and so is its instrument panel. Darkness has fallen, I’m buttoning my fly and Mary is waving from an upstairs window.

‘Sven,’ Anton says.