The Relentless Dead, page 22
‘Pull… pull back,’ he spluttered, ‘back between the tombs.’ If only I am able to myself! He battered his attacker against the hard stone wall. He must have reduced it to a pulp, yet still he couldn’t shake it. Cracked fingernails dug into the nape of the lieutenant’s neck, into his flesh.
Blindly, he fired his bolt pistol over his shoulder and, Emperor be praised, struck true. The zombie disintegrated into carrion fragments, but two more were already coming at him. Dropping his shoulder, he charged through them, bowling them out of his way.
He joined with three comrades, backing into an alleyway between tombs. The lieutenant and a single Korpsman filled its width between them, so that only two zombies could reach them. More were squeezing up behind them. This evened the odds, as he had planned, allowing him to concentrate on one foe at a time.
As one zombie slumped, neck severed by his bayonet, another trampled over its remains to continue the assault. Step by hard-fought step, the Krieg gave ground, but with a lengthening trail of bones and viscera before them. The Korpsmen in the rear could do little but prepare to take a comrade’s position should one fall – until they reached the corner of a tomb, another narrow passage running alongside it, into which they stepped.
Now, as the zombies strained forward, they were cornered, two enemies striking at them from ahead, two from their left.
‘Stand your ground here,’ the lieutenant ordered, and the Krieg did. They hacked and battered at one zombie after another for uncounted minutes, each absorbing incalculable punishment before it fell at last, each relentlessly replaced by one more like it.
The lieutenant’s muscles ached and his scratched neck felt hot and stiff. He wondered how his other squads were faring. He only knew that none had come to his assistance. What if some have been overrun, allowing these horrors a route to the Grand Mausoleum?
How many more? he asked himself. How many buried in those fields? The tremor, he realised, had ceased, its damage done. He was horribly aware of noises from the tombs around him. Bare fists hammering on solid gates, which for now were holding. Until, suddenly, that changed.
A crash came from behind him, from the shadows, as a heavy gate was flung from its hinges. A zombie staggered out of a redbrick tomb, another close behind it, and one more. From what remained of their clothes, apparently a lord and lady and an attendant buried alongside them.
He reached for a frag grenade, remembered that he had used his last. ‘Can’t let them surround us,’ he grunted to the Korpsman at his side. ‘On my mark, make for the–’ A zombie lunged at him, and his gloved fist broke its jaw. ‘Make for the passageway behind us, to our left. Go! Go!’
With a final burst of bolt rounds – meant to give his zombie pause, which it did not – the lieutenant turned and ran. He felt hands clutching his greatcoat’s scruff, pulling him back, but he tore free of them. He outpaced the zombies behind him, closing on those ahead, turning before he reached them. The closest Korpsman, he was pleased to see, remained beside him. The other two, he didn’t know about. Hopefully, they still held their side passageway, though harder-pressed now.
The passageway ahead of him, past six more tombs, was empty. He made a decision: ‘Keep going. Best thing now is to find another squad and–’
A patch of earth in front of him erupted. A gloved fist burst through the soil, its fingers clutching at the air.
‘Keep going!’ the lieutenant yelled again, and he and his Korpsmen cleared the flailing limb with a prodigious running jump. They’re tunnelling out of the tombs! he thought.
Haring around another corner, he came upon a melee in progress, involving six Death Korpsmen and twice as many zombies. In unison, four of the latter turned, sensing fresh prey behind them, easier reached than those in the crush ahead. The best he could do for his comrades, the lieutenant judged, was allow these four as close as he dared, before drawing them away.
At the critical moment, to his horror, bony fingers clapped around his ankle.
A second hand dug into his calf. A zombie was pulling itself out of the earth at his feet, using him as a support pole. Its head surfaced, near-fleshless, pearly teeth set in a rictus grin. He and his Korpsman battered it with weapon butts, but the zombie kept gripping, kept rising. It took hold of his greatcoat’s hem. The zombies before and behind them were closing in.
‘Leave me,’ the lieutenant barked, and when his Korpsman hesitated, yelled, ‘That’s an order!’ No point in risking a second life!
The Korpsman ran. To the lieutenant’s surprise, the zombies behind them, all of them, turned to follow him. The four ahead kept coming, but he had a second’s reprieve. He didn’t stop to question it. Three more blows splintered an eye socket, and the zombie clinging to him collapsed. Too late.
The four were upon him. He didn’t have time to turn his bolt pistol upon them. At least, he thought, I had the chance to add one more to my balance. Perhaps he could slit another throat or break another skull against a wall before he was dragged down. He braced himself.
The zombies lumbered past him. Dumbstruck, the lieutenant gaped after them. It was as if he had been invisible to them. As if… God-Emperor, no!
In that moment’s stillness, he realised that his muscles weren’t just tired but cramping, and the burning sensation in his neck was spreading up and down his spinal column, into his brain, making his vision blur.
Infected! A mere scratch had sealed his fate. The zombies are ignoring me because they sense that they have done their work. I am already dead!
No, worse than dead.
How long did he have left? From the speed with which symptoms had taken hold, he suspected only minutes. His rebreather unit was already lacing his air with antibiotic agents, in vain. How may I best serve in my time remaining? He realised that his random travels through the necropolis had brought him almost back to where he had started.
His command post. With its vox-caster unit. Upon realising the scale of the zombie threat, the lieutenant had sent two Korpsmen back to warn command headquarters. To call for reinforcements. He could not know if they had made it, if the message had been sent, but now he could ensure it.
He proceeded at a measured pace towards his destination. His heartbeat, elevated by exertion, wouldn’t settle. Given a chance to listen, he heard fighting from every direction and glimpsed some between the tombs. He saw the remnants of it everywhere he stepped. He encountered crippled zombies, left behind, which turned their heads to glare at him but made no attempt to approach him on their broken legs. He saw few fallen Krieg. Does that mean few have fallen or…?
He saw the command post, the sundered tomb. It seemed the fighting had not reached here yet. A lumen-globe blazed inside. The lieutenant stepped through a broken gate, out of the night into the cold white light. His desk was as he had left it, with dataslates awaiting his attention. He would never read them now.
He didn’t fear death. None of his people did. Death was a fact of life, its most fundamental fact, and he had served longer than many, served his purpose. One of those dataslates, however, one he had had time to peruse, had told of another battle, fought by Graven underground. Another battle with the walking dead, including four clad in Krieg colours.
Stiffly, the lieutenant stooped over the old vox-set. Command headquarters not being far away, he quickly raised an operator. In a studied monotone, he laid out his situation.
‘A Korpsman already reported in, lieutenant,’ he was told. ‘A general order has been sent to all units in range to make haste to your position.’
So, that was that.
He slumped into the seat behind his desk. His heart still pounded as he sweated into his mask. His muscles were starting to lock and his head felt fuzzy. He drew his pistol, checked it was still loaded. He prayed a single bolt would be damaging enough. He believed it would be.
Across the stone chamber, a receiver flared again. He recognised Colonel Graven’s voice. ‘Kill Team Alpha approaching mausoleum, two more squads behind us. Estimated arrival, twelve to fourteen minutes.’
The Krieg lieutenant felt contented as he raised his pistol to his temple.
Graven had hoped for more time. Time to get his forces into position before he had to join them. He had known he would likely not get it.
Once the witches saw the Krieg gathering, realised that he had found them, a pre-emptive strike had felt certain. He had kept Korpsmen close by his Chimera overnight to monitor vox-chatter. He had been woken by the unsurprising news that the Grand Mausoleum had been attacked. Untrue, he had thought. It is not being attacked, but defended. Defended against us.
The mausoleum’s spires were lit by night, a beacon for his driver. Attendant tombs lay huddled in its shadows. Approaching from the east, he expected to see Death Korpsmen holding the perimeter. Their absence augured badly. Even so, the last stretch of the way was strewn with broken zombies. Some perked up at the approaching sound of engines, scrabbling to reach them. Graven kept his driver on a direct course, crushing bones beneath caterpillar tracks.
Two more Chimeras followed, one Krieg, one Vostroyan. The latter’s commander had voxed Graven as their paths converged, and had doubtless immediately reported in to Petrakov.
The Vostroyans peeled off to the north, where fighting was still fierce and Graven made out the shapes of wheeling horses. His own Chimera, maintaining its heading, probed into a gap between two tombs, scraping their walls. A hundred yards along, a T-junction loomed. He saw for himself, before his driver yelled up to him, that they lacked space to make the turn.
They ground to a halt, Graven ordering his squad to disembark. The other Krieg Chimera braked behind them. Poking his head up through its turret hatch, a lieutenant called, ‘Colonel, should we back up and seek a way around?’
‘No. From here on, we proceed on foot.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The junior officer didn’t question his orders, simply relayed them to his own squad inside the vehicle. Nineteen Death Korpsmen poured from the two Chimeras. Graven led them through the dense necropolis, the watchmaster by his side. Of course, the lieutenant’s suggestion had made tactical sense. Useless in these confines, the Chimeras with their armoured hulls and heavy bolters could have been effective in the fields. Effective in the short term.
The only way to stem the tide of zombies was to cut off the source of their blight. Graven considered explaining this – perhaps preparing the lieutenant for the shock to come – but there was no time and he would have seemed uncertain, raising greater doubts than he assuaged.
The staggered passageways between the tombs took them on a meandering path towards the mausoleum’s lights. Where Graven heard fighting ahead of him, he turned to avoid it, much as it pained him to do so. He thought about the Korpsmen who might die when he could have saved them. He thought about the many more lives, not only Krieg, that might be lost if he delayed.
Then, suddenly, he had no choice. Barely had he registered another tomb gate as he passed it when, with a high-pitched screech, something sprang out through its bars. Another cadaver, but the smallest he had seen – that of an animal. It landed on the shoulder of a Korpsman behind him, clawing, spitting. A feline pet, thought Graven, interred with its master for irrational sentimental reasons.
The Korpsman, with help from her nearest comrade, tore the creature off herself. She made to batter it against a wall, but it wriggled out of her grip. Dropping to the ground between their feet, it scratched and nipped at Korpsmen’s shins. They stabbed at it with bayonets, but it was fast and nimble, darting between their stamping boots, and they were getting in each other’s way.
An observer might have seen the black humour of the situation, that such an inconsequential pest could so impede two elite Astra Militarum squads, let alone two made up of Death Korpsmen. Graven felt only frustration, boiling over into anger, at the feeling that some dark god was mocking him.
He stepped back from the melee, dropping to his haunches. He snatched the glove off his left hand. The cat zombie was a blur of matted fur and jutting ribs, glimpsed through his comrades’ legs. He showed it his palm, baiting it with exposed flesh. Stiffening, it spun its head to fix Graven with a cloudy-eyed glare, and then came at him like a rocket.
The colonel held his stance, levelling his pistol. He would only get one shot. He waited until the creature was inches from his face. Then he put a las beam through its eye. He was gambling that one would suffice to destroy its smaller brain. Momentum kept it coming. At least, he hoped that was the only reason. He snatched his bare hand away and the creature smacked into his chest. It burst open like a ripe fruit, entrails spilling out onto the ground.
Graven stood and was about to give the order to proceed when several Korpsmen in unison warned him, ‘Behind you, sir!’
Whirling around, he saw that three zombies had appeared at the far end of the passageway. They had seen him and were lumbering towards him. He took a second to replace his glove as he weighed up his options. Easy enough, he thought, to find a way around them, but what if we run into others? And he was so close to his goal, only these three standing in his way.
‘Fix bayonets,’ said Graven, ‘and charge!’
The sight of nineteen Death Korpsmen thundering towards them would have shattered the morale of most living things. The zombies did not baulk, but nor could they withstand such a powerful advance. Graven felt their brittle bodies breaking as he and his watchmaster hit them like Earthshaker shells. Scattered like skittles, the zombies swiped at their prey but couldn’t slow them down. One was skewered by the watchmaster’s blade and driven back before him, until it too lost its footing and slid into the mud, and Graven found himself clear of them.
Behind him, his Korpsmen lashed out at the flailing zombies as they trampled over them, ensuring that if not destroyed they would be crippled. Before him, the lights of the Grand Mausoleum beckoned.
The sounds of violent clashes rose from among the tombs.
No combatant had yet been seen, but the sounds were demonstrative enough. Serafina itched to join the fighting, but she knew her duty. Her ten-strong honour guard ringed its sacred charge. The Sister Superior herself blocked the mausoleum’s entranceway. Behind her, across the small forecourt, up the steps, the great gates had been bolted from within.
She rested her hand on her Godwyn-De’az-pattern boltgun, entrusted to her at the conclusion of her training, blessed by the Canoness of her new Order. The single chainsword available she had allocated to her most stalwart Sister, an obdurate presence at her elbow. Elvana’s muscular frame – enhanced, as were they all, by power armour – made her best suited for the heavy weapon. The wirier Serafina preferred to rely on her bolter, and to employ her martial arts skills unencumbered.
Of course, these Battle Sisters had no weapon stronger than their faith.
When first Serafina had met the Krieg Colonel Graven, she had thought this an attribute they shared. Having heard his people called fanatics, she had wished that more deserved such praise. Like Petrakov. How disappointing, then – if not entirely a surprise – to learn that Graven was a weak man after all.
She sensed him out there somewhere, in the night. She sensed that he was close. At first, the motive for the zombie attack had puzzled her. If the witches, through their spectres, controlled Graven, who controlled the Krieg, then why was there fighting at all? The witches must know that, no matter what their orders, no soldier of the Emperor could suffer such aberrations as they had unleashed here to exist.
The lieutenant yesterday spoke true, she had concluded. The Krieg don’t have their orders yet – meaning that this is but a distraction!
Time and patience proved her right.
Serafina heard the scattered battles edging closer, then, detaching from the tumult, a purposeful tramp of boots. Shadows parted to disgorge two columns of black-clad, masked Death Korpsmen. She recognised their commander’s crested helmet as he marched before them. Since last she had seen him, Colonel Graven had also acquired a set of tears across his facemask.
Around her, Serafina felt her Sisters tensing, drawing weapons. Graven’s own power sword and pistol remained holstered – an obvious deception – as he halted ten feet before her with a dozen or more Korpsmen at his back.
The Sister Superior addressed her own smaller but assuredly greater force. ‘So, now,’ her voice rang out, ‘the time has come. The Emperor reveals to us our purpose on Oleris III. A spiritu dominatus, Domine, libra nos. Prepare for battle, sisters. Our enemy shows us his face, at last.’
XVI
‘In the name of the Emperor–’ Graven began.
‘Dare not invoke His name!’ Sister Superior Serafina spat.
‘–and by my authority as an officer in His Astra Militarum–’
‘You have no right!’
‘–I require that you let us pass.’ He had no expectation that she would accede to the demand, having already signalled her intent to fight, but he had to say the words, had to try. More for his Korpsmen than himself.
Ten Battle Sisters stood in the harsh white glare of the mausoleum’s light. Those who had watched the building’s rear were edging up along its sides. Never had Graven faced a more intimidating sight, the worst of it being the fleurs-de-lys on the Sisters’ crimson robes, symbolising his own faith.
Doubt makes me weak and I reject it!
‘Check your orders,’ said Serafina icily, ‘with Colonel Petrakov. He carries the Emperor’s authority on this world.’
