David Gunn - Day of the Damned

‘Or what?’ I demand.

A third slam of my arm rattles the door in its frame.

‘Lieutenant,’ he says, ‘I’m warning you . . .’

‘I want food,’ I tell him. ‘Proper food. Meat, bread, beer.’ Glancing over my shoulder I meet Shil’s gaze. ‘And fruit . . .’

She’s always eating fruit.

‘And I want it now.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘Yes it is.’

The captain makes the mistake of stepping closer.

Think he’s planning to do something stupid like jab his finger at me, while telling me to behave. He doesn’t get beyond the first word. My hand slicks through the bars, and I grasp him by the throat. After that, he can’t say anything anyway.

‘Release him.’

‘Not a chance.’

When the sergeant reaches for his side arm, I introduce the captain to the bars as a warning, hard and fast. I do it twice for luck and the NCO decides to leave his gun where it is. The blood on his CO’s face probably helps. Or maybe it’s the metal sheen of my fingers gripping his throat.

‘Sven . . .’ That’s Vijay, obviously.

‘What, sir?’

‘I gave my parole.’

‘Which means what, sir?’

He’s going to say I know what it means. Then it occurs to him that I don’t. We didn’t have things like parole in the Legion, and I haven’t been Death’s Head long enough to understand the ins and outs of it.

‘We don’t try to escape.’

‘In return, sir?’

‘They treat us with respect.’

‘See?’ I say, bouncing the captain off the bars. ‘Respect. That means you feed us properly . . .’

‘Lieutenant Sven Tveskoeg?’

The officer who asks introduces himself as Major Whipple. He’s followed by an ADC and a handful of staff from the castle canteen. He knocks on our door, which has me grinning.

‘Please . . .’ Colonel Vijay invites him in and our food is delivered. It seems Captain Fowler took his smashed jaw to General Luc, and the Wolf decided to feed us after all. The captain is on a charge for being generally useless.

Major Whipple salutes Colonel Vijay.

On his way out, he stops. ‘Hekati,’ he says. ‘Is it true you talked to her?’

The man’s face is impassive but there is something in those eyes. Something turns on my answer. But it turns for him and not for me.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Right at the end.’

‘She killed herself?’

‘And took an Uplifted mother ship with her. It was like watching one of the gods clap her hands.’

The major fingers a medallion around his neck.

‘And they say . . .’ he hesitates, ‘you once ate human flesh. A woman . . .’

I’m grateful for the food, but this isn’t a conversation I’m interested in having. ‘Oh you know what they say. I like women as much as the next man, but I couldn’t eat a whole one . . .’

He raises his eyebrows.

‘But if I was going to, I know where I’d start.’

The major snorts, despite himself.

‘An orderly will come by to collect your trays,’ he tells me. Then he’s gone, in an abrupt turn and a clatter of boot heels on stone stairs. His ADC has left our door unlocked. I wonder if that is intentional and decide it is.

‘A trap?’ I ask Colonel Vijay.

‘Maybe a sign of trust.’

Fucked up, the lot of them.

Only I’m coming to realize something else.

That major in the Wolf Brigade has more in common with Colonel Vijay than either one has with a civilian. Doesn’t matter we hate them, or our troopers beat the shit out of theirs in every available bar, and the other way round. Makes me wonder if a Silver Fist has more in common with us than our own civilians.

I decide that’s a thought too far.

Ripping a chicken apart, Neen gives half to Iona. She finishes her half in a couple of bites, watched by Shil who can be odd about food. As for Rachel, she fills her fist with salted almonds and returns to her window.

I think she’s working on distances. Turns out, she’s watching a man bolt lengths of scaffolding together. ‘You know what he’s doing, sir?’

‘No,’ I l ie.

She goes back to watching.

‘Certainly,’ Colonel Vijay says, when I ask if we can have a word. That’s one of his phrases, but it’s beginning to stick. He makes space for me to sit and offers me a plate of chicken breast.

‘I’ve eaten, sir.’

‘It’s about Shil?’

I stare at him. ‘Why would it be about her, sir?’

‘Thought it might.’ He nods to where she sits in her corner. There’s a darkness round her eyes, and a hauntedness to her face that I haven’t seen since the siege of Ilseville. There’s an air of barely restrained fury as she watches us watch her.

‘You realize,’ the colonel says, ‘she loves you?’

‘What?’

It was a fuck against a wall, and a couple of conversations since.

As far as I’m concerned we called a truce to her low-level grousing. If she sees it differently that’s her problem. Not mine, because I don’t need more problems. I have enough of those with the fallout from what happened in Farlight.

‘You serious, sir?’

‘Yes, Sven.’

My sigh sounds like bellows emptying. Fuck it, twice . . .

Is she that smart? The answer is yes, she’s smart. Probably the smartest person we’ve got in the group now Haze is off being important somewhere. But I don’t think it’s a plan. Maybe I just don’t want to think it’s a plan.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘She wins. I’ll have to throw her out after all.’

He stares at me. ‘You mean that, don’t you?’

‘Afraid so, sir.’

An orderly comes to collect our trays.

He says nothing as Neen piles what’s left of the fruit onto one plate and puts it near the wall. We get a fresh bucket as a latrine and a sheet for Vijay’s mattress, although a blanket would be more use.

Something occurs to me.

‘Why aren’t you in a better room?’

Colonel Vijay shrugs.

‘Sir,’ I say. ‘When we were on the move, you messed with the Wolf Brigade. Suitable accommodation and proper food.’

‘I asked to be with the Aux.’

‘Why?’

‘The company.’ Looking round the cell, Colonel Vijay smiles slightly. ‘You’ll look after them?’ he says. ‘If you can?’

‘Sir . . .’

‘We both know what they’re building, Sven.’

‘A scaffold,’ I say. ‘They’re going to hang you.’

‘Behead me,’ he says. ‘I have that right.’

‘To be beheaded?’ My voice is louder than I’d like. Don’t know what the others heard, but my scowl is enough to make them look down again.

‘General Luc intended to shoot me.’

The colonel’s voice is calm.

‘Through the head, obviously. He doesn’t want a bullet ruining my heart. But I’ve insisted on the sword.’ He nods, his blue eyes meeting mine. ‘And I’ve demanded he wield the blade himself.’

‘You have that right?’

Colonel Vijay smiles, almost angelically.

The night retreats in a crunch of boots and the clank of ratchets, as sappers work through to build the scaffold on which Colonel Vijay will die come morning.

We hear chainsaws, and the flat slap of a nail gun, which sounds enough like small-arms fire to comfort me and keep everyone else awake.

Apart from Colonel Vijay, who sleeps curled in a ball. One arm folded under his head, the other wrapped round his knees. He looks too young to take the weight of General Luc’s hatred for Indigo Jaxx, and whatever warped need for revenge makes the Wolf want Aptitude because he couldn’t have Debro.

Shil’s shocked when I mutter this.

Sitting up, she peers into my face. There’s enough light coming through the slit window for us to see each other’s eyes, and I don’t know what she sees, but she leans forward and kisses me carefully on the cheek, while the others pretend not to notice.