Killing Time

To the other inhabitants of the crumbling hab-block, old Gilden Mehlman seems like just another veteran of the 60 year-old war that liberated their homeworld. But Mehlman hides a dark secret from his neighbours, and his past is coming back to haunt him. A very dark story, this ventures into stark horror, and is another of my personal favourites. One for the Stephen King fans, perhaps. NOTE: This version is an edit of the version that is posted elsewhere. That means a shorter Gavrotte scene but the children's book is back. 22,000 words Go straight to:- Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Writing time :4 months Finished :6th July 2006 Download as Word file

PART 1

“Oi! Auld geezer at the door! Comin’ through, granddad. Move it or lose it!”

Mehlman flattened himself up against his hab door, cold, bare steel smoothing out the wrinkles in his cheek and matting his threadbare hair to his scalp as the young men rushed the trolley past him and off down the corridor.

He pushed back from his door as they passed, with only the whites of his knuckles showing his anger. The key was still sticking out of the lock, and as he turned it he looked at the retreating backs of the three men, their plunder teetering precariously atop the also-stolen trolley. There would be plenty of bargains to be had down in the “Saint Silvana” later that morning. The irony was that given where they and their colleagues acquired their loot, the chances were that they had stolen some of those battered-looking items more than once already, and no doubt would again.

It was only a matter of time, he knew, before one of them wondered just what a Guard veteran might have lying around his small hab, and came looking one night. Well, thought Mehlman, as he picked his water-cans back up and kicked the door aside on protesting hinges, he would be happy to show them.

As the men disappeared with their cargo into the lift at the end of the corridor, one of them turned, looking back. Looking at Mehlman. Gavrotte, wasn’t it? Yes, Edil Gavrotte, from 3rd, the guttering, yellow light in the lift giving a sickly cast to his sharp features. Mehlman paused, half-in and half-out the doorway, the heavy water-cans in each tattooed hand dragging his shoulders down. Gavrotte locked eyes, smirked and pointed right at him, head cocked with the contemptuous, easy strength of raw youth. He kept pointing as the lift-doors scissored closed, his grin vanishing just before the edges clanged together. A hollow laugh echoed down the grey hall.

Mehlman stared for a moment longer, his pale eyes nested deep in the crumpled skin of his face, before slowly turning and entering his home.

It only took a moment to store the water-cans with the others; the hab was very small, and smelled faintly of damp, but was neat and well-kept. Everything had its place, including what he had come to think of as his shrine. He topped up the resac in the tiny, silver tumbler sitting before the holo-image on the side table. Once surface tension was the only thing stopping it overflowing, he stopped pouring, put the bottle away and attended to his core.

Mehlman was finding it harder and harder to get through his core exercises every morning, especially in the depths of winter. The pains in his shoulder and elbows flared up quicker, now, and took longer to go away. Just a minute longer each week, perhaps, but it all added up. At his age, lots of things started adding up, started catching up, but the Guard had taught him many things, none of which he’d forgotten. Chief among them; how to be patient, how to be careful and how to be still.

Not physically still – that was practically impossible now anyway, even if he concentrated as hard as he could, one limb or another would betray him and start to tremble under the weight of the years – but mentally. Spiritual stillness. Stoic peace. The watchman’s resolve. The Guard taught a man that things could always be worse, that hoping for change was a young man’s folly, and Mehlman knew better than most just what that could mean.

Even through his red-faced exertion he could hear the myriad, overlapping sounds of the decaying hab-block around him, the ceaseless drone of human activity, circling around a drain of its own making. Try as he might he couldn’t shut it out entirely. It was like a suffocating blanket woven from the fraying threads of every dead-end life the hab held, a patchwork of scratching, whispered despair. It was the reason he couldn’t sleep at night, he told himself, but sometimes he wondered, suspended in those grey, spider-web hours after midnight, if there wasn’t another reason entirely.

He was struggling with his second series of repetitions when he heard the commotion from the hall. The voices resolved into clarity as he opened the door, the chill air fogging his heavy, heated breath, and he saw Inia Freyal standing at the entrance to her hab shouting to her two boys as they pelted off down the hall towards the stairs. She was dressed, but only just.

“- sure he knows I can’t pay, got it? Just needs some penny unguent. I don’t want him calling. You hear?” The kids had disappeared round the corner long before she finished, and she had simply raised her shrill voice to compensate.

Her pinched face snapped round to face Mehlman, red-rimmed eyes bulging, a permanent scowl aging her more than she knew.

“What you lookin’ at, V.A.?”

Mehlman said nothing, his mouth hidden under his heavy, peppered moustache. He saw a dark rash, possibly a bruise, covering the base of Freyal’s throat. He might not have seen it if he hadn’t been looking for it, and he felt his already racing heart pound that bit quicker. She caught his glance and tried to hike her top up instinctively, but there was far too much skin and not enough cloth for that to work.

It occurred to him that she hadn’t seemed bothered by his presence and her state of undress until he’d noticed the rash. Was he really so old? Time was when women like Freyal would have screamed bloody murder at him had he seen them dressed like that, while still checking to make sure he’d noticed. Not anymore, apparently.

“My man’s sick. Chucked his guts up, the useless pillock. Something going around. You want to watch out, V.A., winter bugs take the old first, you know, and you’re lookin’ a bit red in the face already. Shoulda’ left this dump when you had the chance.”

She backed into her gloomy hab and slammed the door with a screech of worn metal.

Mehlman stood still for a moment, turned and hunted around inside his hab. He found what he was looking for, and went out into the hall, stopping outside the graffitied door of his neighbour. He knocked.

After a couple of minutes he heard the sound of the cap being slid off the security-iris, and he nodded his head at the scratched lens set into the steel. The sound of bolts being drawn, chains bumping against the doorframe, before the door cracked open a few inches. A waft of sour, sweaty air breathed out. Half a pale face appeared in the dark opening, blinking in the low light. It took several more blinks before recognition finally dawned.

“Whaddya want?”

Mehlman held up the black sock he had taken from his hab, but kept it close to his body.

“Found this outside your door, Mister Narlus.”

Narlus blinked again as he looked at the featureless, black sock. Then a pale hand shot out, snatched it and disappeared again, along with its owner. The door slammed shut, and the ritual sounds of security repeated in reverse.

As Mehlman walked back to his open hab door, he pondered on the black bruising he had seen on Narlus’ face and arm. Drugs could account for that, and Throne knew Narlus was no stranger to illegal narcos, but Mehlman had seen bruising like that before. Thirty years before. Narlus and Freyal, and Freyal’s partner too, by the sound of it. Exactly thirty years. He’d hoped to spare them this. Better check the pipes again.

#

The basement levels were dry, which was unusual for a hab block of this age, and poorly lit, which wasn’t. The rolling thrum of the distant lift machinery started up again, filling the low-ceilinged halls with deadened white noise. It couldn’t quite smother the monotonous drone of the thermic furnace, the clanging of the warm air pipes, nor the echoes of Mehlman’s footsteps pinging back at him out of the gloom as he headed for the hydro-units at the far end of the hall.

Jerome’s flashlight, a blinding apparition, pinned him wincingly to the spot.

“Hey, Mister Mehlman, sir. Thought it was you, I did. Uhuh. Your shoes, see? Thought to myself, gotta use your ears in a place like this, like that time you told me about on Ventia, and those shoes sound just like—“

“Anyone been down here, Jerome?” Mehlman paused, anticipating the inevitable response. “Anyone ‘sides you and me, that is, son.”

“No, sir. Uhuh. I’d have put them in my log, if there was, like the committee said. You want to see it, Mister Mehlman? Oh, ‘course. Sorry.” In response to Mehlman’s waving hand, Jerome finally lowered his flashlight.

Mehlman strode off. “I’ll be—“

“Oh,” said Jerome, the beam from his flashlight sweeping over the walls as he waved at Mehlman’s back. “There was – there was a couple of repairmen from the Super’s office down this morning. Said they got water back on a couple of floors. I think one of them was yours, Mister Mehlman. Down to check up on them?”

“Sort of. Keep a good eye out, son.”

“I’ll catch whoever’s doing this, Mister Mehlman, you’ll see. I got ears like a hawk, and I’m getting a new flashlight next week, so the committee says. Uhuh.”

Mehlman pushed through the flimsy swing doors and they slapped against the sandcrete walls and began to shudder closed behind him. The isthmus of light around him that spilled from the hall narrowed until it met the edges of his shadow. He turned on his own cheap flashlight.

The ork’s-innards of piping and cabling that crowned the low set of rooms were unusually dry and quiet, and had been for the last two months. Mehlman’s thin, yellow-white beam picked out fresh sections of wet-looking pipe, reconditioned impellers and new-ish looking pump-units that hadn’t been there the last time he had been down.

The whole hab knew what was going on. An unknown vandal or vandals had been sabotaging the hab-block’s water supply for weeks now, and despite posting watchmen like Jerome – whose child-like eagerness to please meant he invariably wound up with more than his fair share of such a boring task – the hab’s committee was no closer to finding the culprits. There was no shortage of suspects, of course, and the usual ones had already been dragged before the Super himself, but if the local Vigiles couldn’t elicit more than a smug grin and a torrent of abuse from men like Gavrotte, the fat Super didn’t stand much of a chance. So the vandals worked their invisible work, and the Super repaired what he had the time, money and inclination to repair.

Tempers were rising, and already more than one person had confided to Mehlman that the Super was actually behind it all, trying to drive them out. Mehlman had, every time, just nodded silently and kept his own counsel.

Eventually the circle of his beam slid over, past and jerked back to what he was looking for – the distribution node for alternate floors. A new distributor assembly had been bolted in place. Jerome was right, water was getting back to his floor. Having sealed up his taps and outlets years ago meant he hadn’t noticed. He cursed himself silently. He hadn’t thought they’d notice that one so soon.

He stared at it for a few moments, considering his options, before lightly touching a pipe furred with oil and dust and following it with his calloused fingertips through the rats’ nest above him. Eventually he found what he was looking for, checked he was still alone and set to work.

#

A little water from the cans he had filled that morning helped wash the grime from his hands. He spent some time bent over the sink in his tiny kitchen making sure he got it all off, patiently and meticulously scrubbing again and again.

Finally satisfied, he activated his holo unit and checked his cred level. Just enough. Finger hovering over the call button, he gathered his thoughts, surprised at how fresh and raw some of them seemed, even after all this time. How painful. Time didn’t heal all wounds, evidently. Some it just hid, like a wicked child with a guilty secret. He smoothed his moustache, ran a hand over his sparse hair, then snorted at his own unexpected vanity, stabbing the call button before he could change his mind.

The screen winked shades of grey, bleeping softly for so long that he had already decided to try again later when the call was answered. A face condensed out of the static, and rezzed into life, the shoulders and torso following on a few seconds later.

Mehlman stared at his older brother’s face, and his older brother stared right back at him. He felt the moment slow, stretching into that peculiar, fragile pocket of personal time that no chronometer can measure. Decades’ long silence collapsed under a barrage of memories he thought long forgotten, as he watched Rosen watching him, and realised he had forgotten what he was going to say.

It was surprising, thought Mehlman, how some things never changed. Rosen’s down-turned mouth, the drooping, unlit cigar, the augmetic arm quivering faintly once every three seconds – part of him was right back in his old regiment with Rosen, Sergeant Geller and – and the rest; thirty, forty years just washed away like that. Part of him was even further back, when they’d all been young enough not to know any better. But time had not been kind to his brother. Time had gouged the slow years into his face, season by season, frozen one side of it in a perpetual slump, loosened the skin from the long bones and sunk his eyes beyond the reach of the light. He seemed smaller, or maybe it just seemed that the world had gotten bigger. Time was not a friend to anyone Mehlman knew, and he wondered just what relics of age Rosen saw in him.

Rosen took the cigar out of his mouth with his natural hand, but said nothing.

Mehlman broke the awkward silence. “It’s back.”

Rosen sucked his teeth, his pitted eyes never moving.

“Good.” He paused, as if considering his last remark. “Good. There still people there?”

“I stopped trying when they said they’d kick me out. Yeah, there’s still people here. Kids, some of them.”

“The water?”

“Yeah, same as last time. I’m clear so far, but some of the people are—“

“It’ll take me a few days, Gilden. I can’t afford to take the flyer.”

“I know. I’ll be waiting. Remember and pack the -“

“Don’t!” Rosen turned away sharply, then back, stabbing his cigar at Mehlman with surprising force. “Don’t tell me what to do, don’t - you’re not the only one been waiting for this. This time we’re going to do it right, understand? And if you get in my way this time, brother or not, I will fecking feed you to it. Are we clear? I’m doing this for him, not you.”

The augmetic arm was already jerking forward and the feed cut off as Rosen finished talking.

Mehlman yanked his cred-card out the slot hard enough to bend it, sighed and put it down carefully on the desk. He picked up the gritty holo-image, its footprint leaving a permanent shadow in the faded plastic surface of the desk.

“It’s payback time, little brother. Hope you’re watching.”

He placed the holo-image in its spot, wondering why his hand trembled just that bit more than usual, and went back to his core.

PART 2

“Tell Uncle Byn he has to stop splashing, Mummy, tell him! He’s got my clothes all wet.”

Inia Freyal didn’t bother turning round, nor did she stop chopping. With the water back on again she wanted to get these tubers washed and diced – it took hours to boil them soft enough to eat.

“What are you on about now?” she snapped. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“He’s soaked everything, Mummy!”

Freyal slammed the blade flat-side down on the grimy counter, splashing starchy water on her apron. She still didn’t turn around.

“Tell him yourself! And tell him to stop that Throne-forsaken singing, as well. Why he has to sing in the bath –“ she gritted her teeth and swore, “- I dunno. It’s driving me mad. Go!”

Why her fool of a man couldn’t even have a simple bath without ruining her day was more than Freyal could fathom, and she returned to her chopping with a vengeance.

A few moments later she heard small footsteps behind her, and her anger started to rise again.

“Uncle Byn’s soaked the floor now, Mummy, and–”

Freyal drove the point of the blade so hard into one of the larger tubers it pierced the counter-top underneath.

“For Throne’s sake, Dayha. If you bother me –“

“- and the blood’s got up the wall.”

In the sudden silence, Freyal realised that it wasn’t singing she could hear. It wasn’t singing at all.

She pushed past Dayha, stopping for a heart-thudding moment as she saw the bright red splashes on the front of the child’s faded dress. Then she ran across the living space into the dingy wash-room.

The blade in her hand, forgotten now, fell through her slack fingers and stuck fast in the cheap matting on the floor. Pink water pooled around the quivering metal.

Byn was lying naked, half in and half out the bath. Vomit floated in the discoloured water, mingling with the blood that flowed freely from his nose, ears and vacant, staring eyes. His right forearm was jerking backwards and forwards spastically, and with sufficient force to spray dirty water around the small room. The dark blotches on his skin that had appeared suddenly last week had spread now, and affected just about every part of Byn that Freyal could see.

The smell made her gag. Not just from the vomit and the blood; there was something else, some oddly sweet odour of putrescence and decay.

But it wasn’t the sight of the blood, the thrashing or the smell that had made Freyal drop the knife. It was the sound. The tuneless, droning noise Byn was making. His jaw hung slackly, blood and drool trickling out onto the matting, and from it came a soft, unending monotone of emptiness.

“Get the penny unguent, Dayha. The jar you and your brother got last week.” Freyal couldn’t turn away from the spasming wreck before her, but she could feel panic and fear rising in her, and her voice rose with them. “Go, you stupid girl! Now, dammit!”

Even as she knelt down, she knew that the unguent was going to do no good. Then she thought of the dark rash that had spread across her own skin in the last week, and her children’s, and started to retch.

#

“Hey, Gav – check it out, man! Done pretty good, this time, pretty damn good.”

Edil Gavrotte looked at Cathare by way of greeting, checked the dark hall behind him was still empty and slammed the heavy door. A faint dusting of plaster sifted down from the ceiling, bringing with it the damp smell of decay. Thin shafts of pale, winter light from the shuttered windows striped the room. A cracked lumen-panel flickered fitfully in the corner, the humming noise it made instantly raising the hairs on Gavrotte’s neck.

“Get the bolts,” he said to the hovering Lembert, and strode over to the groaning table where Cathare was brandishing pieces of assorted junk and grinning as if they were xeno artefacts. Gavrotte threw his coat onto the back of a chair and began to push the contents of the table around, cataloguing and appraising as he went. He could hear the whispered voice of Leskwin, thin and nasal, in the background. He was in the hab ten seconds and already Leskwin was annoying him. That was some kind of record.

“That’s him, so it is. Told you he'd be here. Me and him are like that. I'll shout him over in a minute.” Leskwin was hunched forward in a worn, greasy chair with his back to Gavrotte, talking in a hushed voice to a few of the junk-girls Cathare had brought. ”Anyways, back to Meatpie, girls. So the Carnies are coming for his old maw – this is a year ago, right? - and Meat, he decides to have a bit of fun. Did I tell you he was juiced, ‘cos he was flying, right? That was Meat in those days – always narc’d up. So he hides her body in the back room, and fills up the pauper’s box with chunks of sandcrete from the works in the basement. Takes him ages, and the thing’s a tonne weight when he’s done.”

Gavrotte looked up, and saw the door to the single bedroom was closed. “Is Roak still in there?” he said to Cathare as he turned his attention back to the table.

“Looks pretty sick, Gav. Not narcs, either. He had some –“

“Get him the feck out of here, then. I’ve got no use for him. Okay, that’s not bad. Get a good price for that at the Gables. That too.”

“So Meat lets them take the coffin – there’s eight of the Carnies finally, trying to get the thing moving. He’s wettin' himself, but he keeps a straight face. They get it in the riser, but the weight alarm goes off and they have to take it down the stairwell. Eighteen floors up, he is. He’s crying now, but the head Carnie thinks he’s tore up, puts an arm round him. ‘There son’, he says. ‘She’s with the Emperor now’. They’re bangin’ the thing off the walls, can’t hardly walk straight. Meat thinks they’re going to wake up his sister, Jayne, but she’s spent the morning doing lines and wouldn’t hear the end of the world. He’s just bursting not to laugh.”

Gavrotte glanced at Leskwin out of the corner of his eye, and continued rifling through the junk on the table.

“About an hour later the Vigs come calling on Meat, right? Man, the cops are not happy. He’s still flying up in the hab, totally baked now, nearly forgotten his old maw’s still assuming room temperature in the back room. They haul his arse down to the street, and the angrier they get the more he just cracks up. A different lot of Carnies arrive, right, and the Vigs tell them - ‘go up and get Meat's maw’ - so off they go. They come back with her in another pauper box, chuck her in the van and shoot off. Meat's taken down the House, roughed up a bit – doesn’t notice, does he, right? Vigs let him go after a bit and he comes back to his hab, still laughing.”

Gavrotte raised his voice and nodded his head in the direction of Leskwin. “Girls, ignore him, he’s talking through his arse. He wasn’t there and he doesn’t even know Meat.”

Leskwin didn’t miss a beat, his grating voice carrying on. “So Meat goes into his hab, and there’s his maw, cold as a side of meat in the back room. He thinks he’s losing it. He sees his sister’s door’s lying open. He’s bricking himself now. Goes in, shouting her name, ‘Jayne, Jayne’. Gear everywhere, but she’s not there. Her bed, blankets all thrown back. No Jayne. He’s sweating blood now, and then the holo rings. It’s the Carnies. ‘Mr Franks,’ they says. That’s Meat's real name, like. ‘Mr Franks, when do you want to collect your mother? We’ve got her ashes ready and waiting.’”

At the collective gasp from the girls Leskwin leaned back and stretched his arms along the threadbare back of the seat, snickering to himself. The girls joined in the laughter, but there was a chemical edge to it, a hunger that made their voices sound hollow. They were here for a hit, whatever it cost them, and Leskwin had yet to name his price.

Gavrotte shook his head, picked up a cup with days-old recaf in it from the sill below the shuttered window and tipped the contents over Leskwin’s head. The younger man leapt to his feet with a shriek, cold, mouldy recaf flying off him and splattering on the floor, the peeling walls and the girls.

“What the feck was that in aid of, Gav? Holy fecking Throne, man –“

“I told you to shut up. You were annoying me. And them.” Gavrotte jabbed the empty cup at the girls, who laughed nervously, glassy smiles pasted to their thin faces. Leskwin just swore another oath, shot a glare of impotent fury at Gavrotte and headed for the small toilet in the back, wringing the dark liquid from his greasy hair as he went.

Gavrotte wanted to say something, but couldn’t work out what or to whom. He knew the story, everyone did, but the version he had heard always had Meat's old neighbour being the one taken by mistake. Never Jayne. She had died last year, sure, but not like that, just some tainted narc. Why was Leskwin's version getting to him? It's not as if it was Gav's sister he was talking about.

Angry with himself, with Leskwin, and suddenly angry with the girls staring vacantly up at him through a fading narcotic haze, he tossed the cup on the ground and returned to Cathare at the table. He began handing him selected pieces from the haul, trying to calm himself by getting back to business.

“Is that the water back on?” he asked at the sounds coming from the toilet.

“Off, on, fecking off again. Who knows? I forget you’ve been staying with Rill. She’s a bit alright, isn’t she? Bit tasty?”

“More than a bit. Her hab-block might have hot and cold running water each and every day, but she is just the filthiest –“ Gavrotte stopped abruptly just as he was warming to his favourite topic, looking at a box of blank holo-cards. “Handy. Get Roak to run that round to Meat’s pal, Levy, see what he’ll give us for them.”

Cathare jabbed a thumb at the closed bedroom door. “Roak’s not going anywhere. Got these things look like bruises all over him, can’t hardly walk. Something’s going around.”

It was Gavrotte’s turn to mutter an oath. “Useless waste of space. Get shot of him. What’s with this bloody block, anyway? - sounds like the plague of ’Sixty Eight. No water for weeks and everyone getting sick while I’m away. Although try telling that to the Super.”

Cathare nodded mute agreement, packing away the items Gavrotte had given him.

“You know,” Gavrotte continued, frowning, “I saw something odd last week. That old guy, the V.A. up on 10th? - whatever his name is - saw him down in the hydro-units. Don’t think he saw me. It looked like he was – well, I’m going to need to have a word with him, is all. I didn’t much like being dragged before the Super, you get me? Didn’t like it at all. Just a little word in his ear.”

He grabbed his coat off the chair, feeling the familiar weight of the gun in it. “Get that stuff moved, and junk the rest. And,” he jerked his head at the silent girls, his face suddenly rigid, “get rid of them. They’d better not be here when I get back.”

#

The old, blue train sat in its shed at the top of the hill.

Every morning as the sun came up, bright, yellow light poked through the holes in the walls and woke the train up. Then it would sit there, its wheels frozen to the rails with rust, all day long. Waiting for the sun to go down. Waiting to go back to sleep.

The rails vanished under the shed door, and the old, blue train had been in the shed so long it had forgotten where they went. It had forgotten what the world was like outside its shed.

And so it waited, with dust in its boiler and spider-mice in its funnel and rust on its wheels, as the days and the years came and went.

And then, one day, the woodpecker arrived.

#

Mehlman knew exactly how long it took to get the riser from the lobby to his floor. He didn’t even need to check his chronometer. Two minutes and fifteen seconds after he had told the Super to let Rosen in he walked to his door, opened it, stepped back and clasped his hands behind him. And waited, staring expectantly at the open doorway.

The hall outside his hab wasn’t silent; it echoed with the many muted voices of the block, but there was no clanging of the lift doors, no footsteps of booted feet ringing on the hard, gritty floor. He waited a moment longer, until irritation and puzzlement punctured his deflating sense of occasion, and he looked out into the hall.

It was empty. At one end stood the lift doors where the hall split and disappeared off to either side, and where Rosen was obstinately refusing to appear, and at the other the steel grille stretching between soot-blackened walls that guarded the derelict North-West Tower. Beyond the steel grille were the habs gutted by fire a few years ago. The Super had upgraded the fire-suppression system since then, thankfully, but the habs themselves were a lost cause. Mehlman had put another padlock on the grille after Gavrotte and his lot had come barrelling out of there so suddenly last week, and already someone had snapped it off.

He walked part of the way down the hall towards the lift doors, just a few slow steps. There was no-one else there. The anonymous chorus of life around him seemed quieter than usual, and he paused, listening. A wracking cough, a woman sobbing – quite nearby it seemed, a crying baby, raised voices, a heated argument, mundane thuds and rattles; nothing out of the ordinary perhaps, but like an experienced musician tuning his instrument Mehlman could tell when sounds were playing subtly off-key. The rhythms of the hab-block were all wrong, and had got steadily worse since he had placed the call to Rosen.

He turned round and walked back to his home, shutting the door behind him.

A knock at the door a few minutes later brought him to his feet, and a thudding to his chest. The door screeched as he opened it wide, and then the sound stopped abruptly as he saw Edil Gavrotte standing there, his back to him. Red hair, black coat and an air of menace. As Gavrotte turned Mehlman saw the way his long coat moved, dragged down on one side. Something heavy, in an inside pocket. He had come armed. Mehlman’s reserve-issue lasrifle was oiled, assembled, loaded and standing four or five steps too far away.

Gavrotte grinned, teeth like a shark, taller than Mehlman, broader in the chest and much, much quicker.

“Who’s been a naughty boy, then?”

Mehlman saw how it would go if he tried to shut the heavy door, or if he went for his rifle. Things would get ugly. Correction: things would get ugly quicker.

“I’ve got no time for the likes of you, son. Get lost.”

The grin widened. “Just you in there, am I right? Gets a bit lonely? Start to remember the good times, back when the world gave a damn about you? If it ever did. Thought you’d try and liven things up a bit, maybe? Muck about with some pipes and get some good people into bother. See where I’m going with this?”

“Son, these old eyes have seen a lot of things, and believe me, they know exactly where a man like you is going. You’ll be popular too, with a pretty face like that.”

The grin dipped slightly, and Mehlman felt the hairs on the backs of his hands prickle.

“There’s exactly two ways this can go, granddad –“

“Three, I think,” Mehlman said, glancing behind Gavrotte.

Gavrotte reached inside his coat, all pretence gone from his face, his eyes glassy and hard. “Fine. You play crazy, and I’ll show you what –“ He stopped as he too became aware of the muzzle only inches from the side of his head.

“If I drop him,” came the rasping voice from the unseen end of the rifle, “you got somewhere I can stash him?”

“Hey, now – easy, pal.” Gavrotte turned his head fractionally, trying not to look as if he was moving, his hand still inside his coat. “We’re all just talking here. This doesn’t concern–”

“Just let him go. It’s not worth the trouble, not now. Where’d you get to?”

“Watch the hand - slowly. Where I can see it, that’s it. Just drop the gun, carrot top – kick it in there. Took a look around, went the scenic route. Figured you’d be okay waiting a bit longer. Wanted to see if this place was like I remembered it.” A snort echoed around the dank hall. “It is.”

Mehlman stooped and picked up Gavrotte’s gun, hefting it in his hand. He glanced up at Gavrotte, seeing him steeling himself for a beating. Mehlman shook his head, put the gun behind his back.

“Not the way I do things, son. Now, get lost.”

Rosen stepped across the hall, lowering his rifle but still pointing it at Gavrotte, who turned and walked away. Rosen waited until he had disappeared, before looking at Mehlman.

“This place stinks of it already. You loaded up?” Rosen slung his rifle over one shoulder at the same time as he shrugged his pack off the other with practiced ease.

“It’s been getting worse. Quicker than I remember, too, even with me cutting the water off. It’s spreading every time they turn it back on. Won’t be long, now.”

“I said, are you loaded up?” Rosen asked as he walked through the open doorway into Mehlman’s hab. His augmetic arm twitched and his pack dropped into the corner of the vestibule as he passed.

“Yes, Rosen, I’m loaded up.” Come on in. Good to see you.

“Got anything to –“ Rosen stopped, and Mehlman turned to see him looking at the shrine; the holo-image and the tiny, silver tumbler.

“- drink?” Rosen continued, looking away and walking to the window.

“In the chill-unit.” How’ve you been? What have you been doing for the last thirty years?

Rosen janked the hatch open and took a bottle of resac out. His augmetic thumb popped the stopper off, and it tumbled to the floor. He took a deep drink, leaning back. His shirt tugged out of his trousers, exposing his thick waist for a moment.

“You get your cartridges blessed? Got ‘em handy?”

Mehlman nodded, and pointed to a box under the small table. “They’re in there.” Do you hear him when it gets dark? Can you sleep at night?

“You look like hell, Gilden. No offense, but you’re skin and bone. And you’re lucky I got here when I did. No, don’t mention it. I always have to pull your arse out the fire, remember?”

Mehlman shut the hab door, but just before it slammed shut the hall echoed with a piercing scream. He shot a look at his brother, who had frozen with the bottle half-way to his lips, and hauled the door open again.

Another scream rang down the hall and into the hab. Then another, from further away, higher in the block. And another.

Mehlman gritted his teeth, stalked over to the corner by the table and picked up his rifle. “It’s started.”

PART 3

“When’d you get it blessed?” Rosen asked as he holstered his pistol.

Another scream, longer than the last, echoed from far away. The shrill sounds were beginning to die out, and were being replaced by the myriad sounds of mounting panic; running, yelling, crashing thuds resounding up and down the many floors of the block. A wounded animal thrashing in the jaws of its predator, incomprehension blinding it to the inevitable.

“The water? Yesterday morning. The cartridges, slugs and promethium were last month. Yours?”

“Couple of months, three maybe.” He caught Mehlman’s look and anger swept across his face. “It’s expensive, and it’s not as if the damn thing’s gonna fade away, is it? We agreed every six months, remember, or are you thinning out inside that head as well as on top? You finished with that?”

Mehlman nodded, and handed the tiny, brass jar over. His brother took it with his natural hand, cradling it like a ogryn might hold a child, the anger falling from his face as he did so. Half of the precious contents were already smeared in a thin veneer over Mehlman’s exposed skin, lending a bronzed look to his dry, liver-spotted flesh. It made his rough Guard tattoos stand out on his forearms. He’d saved for nearly eighteen years to afford the miniscule quantity of dark grease; his thumb could barely fit in the jar, but here and now this was worth ten times what he had paid.

It came from three thousand miles away - the great city of Ebravil. Squatting at its centre was the immense Ecclesiarchy Basilica of Saint Vengerice of the Mail’d Fist, its swallowing shadow casting fully one third of the surrounding city into year-round gloom. Built after Fubris Majora had been liberated it had, for over forty years, served to wipe away the memory of the louring Chaos monstrosities that had so abominated this world for so long. These heresies of stone and other, more troubling, materials had been flattened and the dank soil under their ruins salted and poisoned in the aftermath of that glorious victory against the Great Enemy, the cleansed planet itself deemed a fitting prize for the victorious army. A prize that a returning population, initially grateful but soon resentful, had seen fit to legislate away piece by piece. Now, whenever one of the exalted members of the Most Holy Diocese of Fubris passed into the Emperor’s Light their fleshly remains were cremated in the Basilica amidst great and solemn ceremony, and public fasting. The Great Chimney of Ascension at the far eastern end of the Basilica was used solely for this sacred purpose, the rising tendrils of grey smoke gently wreathing the departed soul on its final journey. Once every ten years the faint residue left on the Chimney’s inner surface – the last trace in the whole material realm of these most pious of men - was painstakingly recovered by specially-anointed and adapted brothers of the cloth. Every ten years, tiny quantities of this rarefied unguent were sold by the Ecclesiarchy to the most fervent or wealthy of the faithful, and its properties were legendary and legion.

Booted feet, loud enough to almost be in Mehlman’s hab, rushed by overhead, followed by others from all sides. The shouts, cries and crashes were melding into one mindless litany of anguish and confusion, punctuated now by staccato bursts of pistol shots. Wounded animals had been known to chew their own limbs off to escape the teeth of a trap, but there would be no escaping this one.

“Ready?”

Rosen’s head came up, his face glistening darkly from the greasy unguent, and he reached out to put his augmetic hand on Mehlman’s shoulder. It twitched as he spoke. “For Osric, may he rest in the peace of the Emperor.”

“For Osric.”

Mehlman realised the holo of his younger brother was right beside him. Perhaps now was the right time, now in the calm before the storm they were about to unleash. He nodded towards the holo. “I was wondering, was thinking the other day after we spoke, you know, about that time on Gathis the three of us –“

Another faint scream chilled the air, but it was not the latest death-cry that had buried Mehlman’s words. It was the look in Rosen’s eyes. He’d last seen that look on the battlefield. It was the look that told you to watch who was behind you when the bullets started flying.

Rosen whipped his hand away. “I have only one memory of Osric. Only one. And I have only one reason for being here, brother,” Rosen whispered the word like some ancient curse, “and that’s not to remember the good old times with you.”

The lights flickered as something heavy thudded onto the floor of the room above, and Rosen’s face was draped in impenetrable shadow, only to be swept away again by the yellow wash of the returning light.

Rosen turned and walked out the hab. Mehlman smoothed his moustache and followed, shouldering his weapons.

The hall outside was empty, the air damp and cold, and scented with the ever-prevalent odour of decay. Some of the doors lay open, the darkened habs beyond mute witness to the horrors that had engulfed the block.

Mehlman drew in a deep breath. “Barbatus!”

Foul as the name was, Mehlman was surprised at the shiver that ran down his spine. It was not fear, it was something else. Something bold, and new. For some odd reason it reminded him of the time he had punched his old sergeant – Throne! – he had forgotten the man’s name it had been so long ago. A clumsy, artless punch spawned of righteous anger that had still knocked the sneering sadist to the ground. That had felt good, and so did this. He had been holding that name inside him, unspoken, for thirty years; a harsh shadow staining his soul. Now, at long last, he could let it out.

“Barbatus!” he shouted again, his voice stronger than it had been in a long time. “ Barbatus !”

Rosen was looking at him oddly. “Stop saying that fecking name. There’s no-one here.”

“Think so?” Mehlman shook his head, and smoothed his moustache as he glanced around. Just under, or perhaps beyond, the death-sounds of the block, there seemed to be a faint buzzing, a notion on the cusp of becoming a sound. “Barbatus can hear me. It knows we’re here.”

“Enough! What’s the quickest way down?” asked Rosen, raising his rifle. Handwritten prayer sheets hung from the blackened metal of the lasrifle.

“The riser’ll be a deathtrap.” Mehlman hefted his own rifle, dangling prayer sheets rustling softly. Babbling echoes of numerous distant voices rang off the walls. “Sounds like the stairwells are blocked. The east riser maintenance ladder should be clear though. Most people don’t even know it’s there. This way.”

“A ladder? We’re on the tenth floor!” The alarm in Rosen’s voice was all too readily apparent, and in other circumstances Mehlman would have laughed.

“Yes, a ladder. We’re getting a bit long in the tooth, but we’re not dead.” Mehlman started to walk down the hall. “If you’ve been keeping up with your core, it should be no problem.”

A man and a woman pelted across the far end of the corridor, vanishing again as quickly as they had appeared. Mehlman’s shout died in his throat as their footsteps faded.

By the time they reached the junction both halls were empty, but the cacophony of panic from the direction of the stairwell had increased. Mehlman led Rosen in the other direction, deeper into the block.

“V.A? M – Mehlman?” The shout came from behind them, and Rosen had spun, crouched and aimed before Mehlman had even started to react. It was Narlus, his neighbour. A few others joined him. “Guy, what’s – just put the gun down, guy, yeah?”

“Mehl– Holy Throne! Please, don’t hurt us! Don’t shoot!” Freyal had her daughter held tightly in her arms.

Dark rashes were visible on several of the people in the small group, even at this distance. Mehlman raised his own rifle, and a handful broke and ran. He let them go. Those who were left were starting to take in just what Mehlman and his brother were carrying. And wearing.

“There’s plague in the block. Like ‘Sixty Eight all over again. We have to get out.” Jubraille, from the East Hall; short-legged, barrel-chested and his lumpen face scarlet with either fear or rage. Mehlman could see bright blood splattered across one side of his face – probably not his own. “What the hell are you doing with those?” he said, pointing to the guns and the homemade flamer. “And – and – what’s with..” his voice tailed off in dismay as he took in the dense, spidery writing that completely covered the brothers’ old Guard uniforms, and the countless prayer sheets that hung from every available seam and braid.

“Are you here to – to help us?” Freyal was standing in front of her daughter now, desperation the only light in her eyes.

“It’s no plague, guy. I seen – guy, I don’t know what I seen, but - down that way.” Narlus jabbed a limp hand in the direction Mehlman had been heading. “S’no plague. Can you get us, like, out of here? You got to get us out, guy.”

“You can’t get out. None of us can get out.” Mehlman watched their eyes as he spoke. There was no sign of Barbatus in them. Yet. “You’re on your own. No-one’s coming to rescue you.”

“What the hell do you mean?” spat Jubraille.

Something inside Mehlman snapped in that moment, releasing an anger he had forgotten he possessed. “I tried to warn you all, years ago. Despite what you people did to soldiers like me and my brother, I tried to warn you. This place is unholy. Forsaken by the Emperor. You wouldn’t listen. Tried to get me kicked out. Said I was mad. Well, now none of us can get out.”

“You’d better stop saying that! I’m telling you all it’s plague, and we have to get out before the Medicae or the damned Sisters plug this rat-hole up and let us all die. I’m heading down, and out, and you’d all best follow me.”

“- holos are dead, they’re completely dead.”

“- only way out, but it’s jammed.”

“- put the gun down, guy!”

Narlus was edging forward and Mehlman fixed him in his sights. The razor-faced man stopped and held up his hands. “Easy, guy, easy!”

“Go back to your habs. Lock the doors. Lock them tight and pray that by the morning your souls are still your own. If you can’t reach your habs then go back that way,” Mehlman jerked the muzzle of his rifle, “through the steel grille and into the Tower. There’s stairs at the far end that head up. Get onto the roof if you can. If you can’t –“

“What use is the sodding roof? There’s plague and people dead – I heard the gun-shots. We’ve got to get out before they quarantine us.” Jubraille jabbed a finger at Mehlman. “I saw my son – my son - fecking melt in front of my –“

Mehlman fired into the ceiling, showering Jubraille and those near him in scorched plaster.

“If you can’t,” he repeated in the shocked silence, ”then get into the roof void, where the old water tanks were. Let no-one in who has the rash. Who has the mark. If they insist –“

“- kill them,” Rosen said.

In the stillness that ensued Mehlman could see the group looking at themselves, and at each other.

“He’s lost it, probably thinks he’s back in the war. Just look at ‘em both,” said Jubraille. “If you all want –“

“Listen well,” interrupted Rosen, taking his cigar out of his mouth and holding it as if he were about to pin a specimen to a sheet, “because after this, if I see any of you, I’m going to put you down. The stairwell is blocked because everyone down there is trying to get up here, away from – from...” He glanced at Mehlman, and his voice tailed off, but only for a moment. “They’re all going to die, and so will you, like as not. Me and my brother owe you people nothing. We’re not here to save anyone. We’re here to settle a score. Run, hide, whatever, but keep away from anyone with the mark. And us.”

“Mehlman, for the love of the Emperor!” pleaded Freyal. “Help us! Help my daughter. I saw what – what happened to Byn. Don’t let that happen to her. Please!”

He stared at her, looking through her, looking thirty years into the past. He saw the basement as it had been then, when Barbatus had returned for the first time. When three brothers who mistook ignorance for bravery had tried to undo the follies of their youth. He saw himself and Rosen, injured and bloodied both, and how they had tried to reach Osric; Rosen had fought like a banshee to reach him, but it had been futile. They had both seen him fall, in that moment that had frozen their lives in the unforgiving ice of revenge for thirty years. Seen Barbatus take him, take him and ruin him with seething pestilence before their eyes. The past swam before present tears. Should he have spared Osric? He could have taken the shot, for a heartbeat there he had Osric in his sights, but he couldn’t bring himself to shoot his brother, even as his flesh boiled with corruption. Not his brother. And Rosen had gone crazy when it happened, when Osric charged, alone and outnumbered. When he had shouted those fateful words to them – “Better the broken steel of a hero than the whole cloth of a coward,” – and fell, writhing as his soul was consumed. Rosen went mad; mad with grief, mad with fury and when Mehlman had pulled Rosen away, literally dragged him screaming to safety out of the pit, he had gone mad with rage at Mehlman. Had never forgiven him. For what, Mehlman never really knew; mere words could not bridge the gulf of pain and anger that had existed since that day. For letting Osric charge into that pit alone? For not taking the shot that would have saved Osric’s soul, if not his life? For not letting Rosen try and reach Osric, even though it would have been suicide? For all of it?

He would spare Freyal’s daughter, as she asked. Perhaps that was the right thing to do. It was becoming hard to tell these days; his heart grew ever heavier. He raised his rifle.

“Step aside then.”

Freyal screamed, reaching behind her to clutch her child. Jubraille charged, slamming into a back-pedalling Narlus and both men tumbled to the cold, hard floor.

Rosen calmly fixed an oiled bayonet to his rifle, while fixing Jubraille with a pointed look. “We’re wasting time. They lost the right to ask anything more of us sixty years ago. Move out.”

Mehlman backed up, and then turned without a word and walked off deeper into the block. A few moments later Rosen followed after him, covering the terrified group until they had passed out of sight.

#

The sounds from the stairwell slowly receded as Mehlman led his brother through the branching hallways, empty of people but not of their effects. Scuffed factory shoes, deep-winter hats, children’s plaswood toys and other detritus of evacuation spotted the longer halls, snapshots of panic, personal items forgotten in the chaos as Barbatus finally awoke and assembled its body from among the worst-infected. Most hab doors were open; only a few remained closed, but Mehlman and Rosen passed by them all. All but one.

The peripheral buzzing evolved into distinct sound as they entered this particular gloomy hall, a low, penetrating drone like ranks of distant machinery that soon resolved into something more organic. More numerous.

The ubiquitous dark circles and shadowfalls of damp on the sandcrete walls were joined by blotches of rust-orange mould, excrescences of pus-yellow fungal spores, miniature forests of decay that no Super, no matter how indolent, would have tolerated. Ahead, an open doorway was blackened, as if clouds of soot had erupted from within, spilling out onto walls, floor and ceiling.

Mehlman paused about a dozen steps from the doorway, and he and Rosen whispered short Litanies of Absolution. Whatever that dark matter was, it wasn’t soot. It was very definitely moving, rippling in the cold, still air like the windblown surface of some oily lake.

A loud crack broke the silence and a pale, blue flame danced at the end of Rosen’s makeshift flamer. He lit his cigar from it, as a man walked into the hall ahead of them.

The man stood there, limbs oddly crooked like a poorly crafted mannequin, dark blue overalls stretched over his distended belly. He stood directly under one of the few working pendant lamps in the hall, and the overhead light hid his eyes in pools of shadow. He seemed to ignore the two brothers and walked towards them, towards the open doorway.

The man stepped casually into the dark material around the door, and his booted feet sunk into it slightly. He turned his head, as if noticing the two men for the first time. His eyes were still black, and had the same glistening, rippling sheen that came from the stuff at his feet. As did his mouth, when he opened it in a mechanical mockery of a smile. The pale flesh of his face puckered and seethed as if disturbed from below and then he walked into the doorway and vanished from sight.

Rosen stole forward, signalling silently for Mehlman to follow.

A tearing sound came from the doorway, cheap cloth, but also something else, something thicker and wetter. The buzzing was much louder now, assaulting Mehlman’s ears, driving into his head. The stench that clung to the air, that seemed to seep from the walls like dye into water warned of putrid flesh and writhing corruption. Stopping short of the stuff on the floor he peered into the inky blackness within the hab, but could make out nothing. Then his eyes started to adjust to the gloom and, at almost the same time as Rosen, he drew back.

The walls, floor, ceiling and everything else in the hab were covered in rot-flies, a thick insect mat that shimmered and shifted, crawling and flowing over itself endlessly, countless millions of legs, thoraxes and wing cases rattling against each other in a susurration that somehow rose above the buzzing. A million compound eyes regarded the brothers; a million mouth-parts twitched in anticipation.

“Barbatus,” Mehlman breathed. He raised a hand to stay Rosen, but the muzzle of the flamer came up anyway.

Swift flashes of wings like ripples in a pool broke over the mass of insects, starting at the doorway and sweeping away through the teeming hordes towards what Mehlman realised was the man standing at the back of the hab. The dark mat of insects had covered him completely, turning him into a pillar of flies. He turned, his torn belly hanging loose in flaps of dessicated skin, his hollowed insides thick with feeding rot-flies. Numerous heaps of varying sizes around him suggested the earlier fates of other block dwellers. This was where Barbatus was gathering its unwilling offerings, and Mehlman knew it was only one of many throughout the doomed block.

Then it spoke to them, the voice coming not from the man but from the walls, the floor and the ceiling in the beating of countless filth-ridden wings.

“ You waited. You grew old, waiting. You should know, then, the gifts time bestows on the living .”

Mehlman slung his rifle over one shoulder and pulled the shotgun from his back, aiming it at the disembowelled man. “You know us?”

“Don’t talk to it,” Rosen snapped. “We have a mission. We’re here for Osric. It ate his soul, and the only –“

“ Did I? Are you sure ?” The susurration ramped up and down rapidly; Mehlman realised it was laughing. “ Have you come to worship me properly? You should know how to by now .”

Mehlman spat into the carpet of flies. “We’ve come to hurt you. This is just for starters.”

He stepped forward and pulled the trigger. The shotgun blast swept the midsection of the figure clear of the swarming insects. Mehlman could see, for an instant, bone and tissue deep within before the figure collapsed. At the same time the buzzing rose into the scream of a hundred chainswords, fury beyond measure. He knew the sound of pain when he heard it.

“Saltpetre.” He fired again, and was rewarded with a renewed rattle-scream of anguish. “From the waste heaps and nitre-beds of the Basilica. As close to holy rocksalt as I could get.” And again. “Hope you like it. There’s worse to come.” He fired again and again into the seething chamber, as the sound got so loud it began to hurt his ears.

He racked the slide, but as he did so the slick of rot-flies swept inwards and the hab door slammed shut in their wake. Rosen roared with anger and kicked the steel door, but it held firm. The one thing in their splintered community residents paid any attention to was security. He kicked it again and rounded on Mehlman.

“I could have torched it! If you hadn’t been in my way I could have torched it! Dammit! That bloody saltpetre didn’t do anything to it. I could have burned it!”

“I hurt it. That’s enough.” Mehlman banged the butt of the shotgun against the door, knowing it was futile but doing it anyway. “You’ll get plenty of chances to watch it burn once we get to the basement. Burn for real. Save your flames for then.”

“I warned you about getting in my way. Just try it again. I lost an arm - and a brother. I won’t shed a tear and I won’t wait an instant if you’re standing in the wrong place next time.”

Mehlman regarded his brother coolly, part of him surprised at his own composure. For the first time he was starting to comprehend Rosen’s real reasons for being here. He wasn’t here just to face Barbatus, there was more to it than that, something hidden that Rosen didn’t want him to know. Despite the electrifying feeling that had run through him since he had bellowed the daemon’s foul name into the empty, chill air, since he had been released from his self-imposed hibernation, he felt, in some way he could not fully articulate, older than his elder brother.

Something in Mehlman’s grey, sober face calmed Rosen, who stepped back and stared at the closed door, letting his flamer fall to his side. They stood there for a moment, side by side, until Rosen turned in amazement as he heard Mehlman singing.

Mehlman sang in a hoarse whisper at first, the words coming to him from decades ago, rising from the depths of memory perfectly formed like some sunken vessel surfacing through dark water, untarnished by the submerged years. The old battle hymn of their regiment, the one that the twisted forces of the Great Enemy had once learned to fear.

“Kill, kill, kill, until the world runs with blood,”

Mehlman began to walk on down the hall, reloading his shotgun. His voice grew more steady as he sang.

“ We are born upon the battlefield, and forged in the flood.”

The words faded away, and the buzzing sound rise to drown the faint echoes. And then Rosen sang, his throaty voice coming strong and clear as he started after Mehlman.

“When the banners flying above our heads are stained with our fresh blood–”

Mehlman paused, waiting for him to catch up.

“Our faith in Him will shine.”

Both voices soared above the buzzing, and the hall seemed to echo with their words long after the brothers had departed.

#

Like all woodpeckers, this one had a bright yellow and brown shell, and row after row of sharp, pointed teeth.

At first the woodpecker ate only the roof, chewing holes that let the warm rain in. Fresh streaks of rust soon appeared on the old, blue train, who thought nothing of them.

Then the woodpecker decided that the shed was a good place to stay. It started on the shed door, tearing the wood to form its nest in the old, blue train’s firebox. The old, blue train didn’t mind this either. It was glad of the company and, as time went on and the woodpecker took more and more of the shed door for its nest, it was glad of the view.

The old, blue train could now see through the holes in the shed door, and the view from the top of the hill was wonderful. The tracks led down the green, grassy slope to join the main line where it ran along the edge of the cliff. Beyond the cliff, glittering in the sunshine, was the sea, its waters as crystal blue as the old, blue train had once been itself. The sea stretched on to the very edge of the world.

And then, as the days grew warmer, the storm came.

#

PART 4

The sound of the lift motors clunking into life made Mehlman pause momentarily. Above him on the ladder, Rosen stopped with a grunt, his breathing heavy and hoarse. The maintenance chimney around them trembled as the lifts began to move up the shaft toward them.

“What’s the hold-up!” hissed Rosen. “Keep moving, dammit!”

Mehlman started down the ladder again without a word, his shoulders already aching and his hands gritty with dirt and oil. As the lifts in the main shaft rumbled upwards, he thought of the people of the block, crammed into those same lifts barely fifteen minutes ago, confused and fearful, but perhaps relieved they had avoided the panicked crush on the stairwells. He thought of what would have greeted them on the ground floor. Of them trying to get the lift doors to close again. Pushing their friends and neighbours out into the killing ground of the lobby to try and get the doors closed. The frenzy, the screaming, and then the realisation that the doors were not going to close, no matter what, and that the vision of hell the lobby had become was waiting for them. The images arose unbidden, dark tableaux of past failures, and he found he could no more dispel them than dismiss the new-kindled anger his sense of purpose had become. He gripped the steel rungs of the ladder tighter, banished the insistent pain in his shoulder and allowed the dark-remembered images to drive him on, down the ladder towards the waiting basement levels.

The lifts passed in a gust of warm, damp air, tinged with the reek of hot machine unguents, burnt dust and something else. Something sweet, but sickly, like ripe fruit left in a dark attic. Mehlman knew there was no-one alive operating those lifts; the products of the feeding rooms were doing that, collecting material from the upper levels.

Mehlman rested for a moment, letting Rosen catch up. Below him the maintenance chimney dropped straight down another three floors to ground level, and then drove thirty feet or more into the cold, dead dirt under the block that entombed the basement levels.

As Rosen descended nearer, Mehlman whispered up to him. “Quiet from now. No sounds. You need to talk, tap the ladder three times.”

Rosen drew in a deep breath, keeping his voice low. “Going all the way to the basement?”

“Yes. Come up under it. Might not expect that,” whispered Mehlman.

He could hear Rosen sucking his teeth before he answered. “That means going through the breeding rooms.”

“Yes.” Mehlman leaned his forehead on a rung, as if the cold, hard metal could distract his thoughts. It didn’t work. “Yes, I know.”

“You sure that’s such a good idea?”

“No, but it knows we’re coming for it. Simply charging in the front door might not be the best idea. What if it has its Kinder ready and waiting?”

“That’s what the breeding rooms are for, remember? And you want to stroll right into them?”

“No, but if you have a better idea, tap the ladder three times. We’re moving out.” Mehlman started climbing down again, slowly and carefully.

He heard sounds as he passed the ground floor. Buzzing, like before, but also heavy, dull liquid sounds, like slowly flowing slurry. The sounds intensified as he passed scant metres from the closed lift doors, his breath held, burning like lava in the caldera of his lungs, the cloying stench pushing into his nose and throat, making his eyes stream. Then he was past, on down the ladder towards the basement levels, Rosen following on, agonisingly slow now. Above him the sounds began to fade.

#

Mehlman stood in the pitch black water at the base of the maintenance chimney, detritus floating atop a layer of greasy dust that clung to his boots. His arms and shoulders felt as if they were bound in barbed wire, and his chest as if someone were holding a lit match under his lungs. Slowly his breath returned as Rosen descended the final few rungs.

“You remember Uberkinther Prime?”

Either a gasp or a snort from Rosen. “Chasing those Orks? Down the sewers? Damn…could they…run!”

“Heh. You remember what –“

“- Fraven. Right. Feckhead Fraven. Thought he was over a bottomless pit. Got everyone to stay back.”

“And slipped and fell all of four feet into a pile of –“

“Shhh!” Rosen stepped off the ladder, making almost no noise as he sought sound footing. He paused, looking up.

Mehlman peered up into the shaft, disappearing into gloom above them, but could see nothing. “Problem?”

“We’re being followed. I can feel someone on the ladder.”

“Kinder?”

“Can’t tell. We should move.”

Mehlman nodded as he glanced about and saw the access hatch, then began easing it open. He could feel Rosen’s glare burning into his back as the corroded hinges howled in rust-laden protest, but he quickly had the way clear. Lifeless, yellow light sagged out and he ducked through, Rosen close behind. Mehlman dragged the hatch shut, wedging some loose electrical cable in the toothed gears.

They were in a tall but narrow concrete corridor leading to a single door marked “Maintenance”.

Both men waited in silence. A faint scratching sound came from the closed hatch. The gears twitched but the steel teeth bit the cable and locked.

Mehlman was halfway to the door when the hoarse whisper came through the bare metal behind him.

“ I know it’s you in there, VA. Bygones, man. Got to help a habber out, huh? Lemme in. .”

It was Gavrotte.

“ You and your one-armed relic know what’s what, am I right? I know you can hear me, VA! What the feck is going on? What’s happened to everyone? Lemme the feck in! ”

Mehlman could hear the desperation rising in the young man’s voice, but a sly edge crept in as the next words came.

“ The guy in the holo, he’s your younger brother, yeah? You know, he looks more like feck-head there with the cigar, but I see the resemblance, V.A. Well, I’ll give it you when you let me in .”

Mehlman froze, an emptiness opening in his stomach. He’d left his hab door open and unlocked, and the holo had just been sitting there. He swore, and a soft chuckle came from the hatch in reply.

“ I heard that, VA. See, I went back when the block went crazy, found your place empty, got my gun back. Thanks for that. Saw the holo. Nice frame. Worth a bit. I’m guessing it’s worth more to you, though. We all got guns now, so we know there won’t be any funny business, yeah? You let me in, you get the holo, that’s the deal, old man .”

He had left it behind - why? Some stupid wish-fulfilment that he and Rosen would be returning from this? After having seen Barbatus’ feeding room he harboured no such illusions, if he ever had. This was one-way. Throne! - Rosen hadn’t actually lit one of his cigars in living memory, and there the smoke was, curling up in blue fronds to wreath the ceiling lights; a silent last request. Why leave the holo behind?

But he knew why. It was a shrine, had been for thirty years; a headstone for a body he had never found, and in some way it would be a headstone for all three of them, a silent memorial once the events of this day were done and outsiders came. Here they were, it would have said, the brothers Mehlman, brothers-in-arms, right to the end. It was all that would remain, pitiful though it may be. And Gavrotte had it. Mehlman crouched down in front of the hatch.

“Sergeant!” hissed Rosen from behind. “We have to move on.”

But things between them had changed outside the feeding room. The resolute vengeance that burned within Mehlman was what drove them now; something else had been driving Rosen, and it had shrunk from the light of Mehlman’s implacable purpose. Ignoring his brother, Mehlman tugged the cable free of the enmeshed gears and cranked the handle. The hatch popped open and he stepped back, rifle at the ready. A shadow shifted in the liftshaft, water slopping faintly.

“I got your word, VA? Bygones, yeah? The holo for your way out? Don’t want to start a shooting match, give us away, huh?”

Telling him the truth now would be pointless, Mehlman knew, but he choose his words carefully nonetheless. “The holo and I let you in, son. No harm done. You have my word. As long as you keep yours.”

Gavrotte appeared in the hatchway, crouched low. Mehlman could see no marks on his face, sense no sign of Barbatus, but he kept his rifle steady nonetheless. “Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? That’s the trick. You keep your dog away from me, we’ll get on like a party.”

Mehlman lowered his rifle, and Gavrotte slid through. Mehlman motioned him away from the hatch, and shut it behind him.

“You sure are loaded for Ork, VA. You planning to start an uprising with all that?” Gavrotte smirked, the veneer of self-assurance restored in the blink of an eye. “Throne! My boys could use a guy like you.”

“Get in our way and our deal is off, understand?” Mehlman pointed at Gavrotte’s large-calibre slug gun. “Now. You’ve twelve rounds there, son. When it comes, count to eleven and then stop. The last one’s for yourself. Remember that.”

“You’re assuming he can count. Don’t worry, carrot-top,” growled Rosen. “I can spare you one of mine any time.”

“I told you to keep your dog on a leash, VA. Don’t make me put him down.” Gavrotte squared up to Rosen. “Unless you want to pop your teeth out and let’s us settle this now, granddad.”

Mehlman saw the shadow of a blackened blade shifting in his brother’s sleeve, and knew that Gavrotte, with his eyes fixed on Rosen’s, hadn’t. Still, the younger man was fast, and Rosen might not get in a killing blow. This could turn messy, fast. “Enough,” he snapped. “Stand down, both of you. I made a deal, I intend to keep it. Stand down, Rosen. Son, don’t make me shoot you in the back of the head.”

Gavrotte didn’t budge, but he did snort. “If I stood still and you fired the whole clip, yeah, you might get lucky, I guess.” He took a step back, tucking his gun into his long, black coat. “You want to calm down, both of you. Dodgy tickers at your age. I ain’t doing mouth-to-mouth, you know.” He grinned. “So, let’s go-go-go. We’re not getting any younger.”

Mehlman met Rosen’s murderous glare with all the cold certainty of purpose that burned within him. Eventually his brother shook his head, spat on the concrete floor and headed off in the direction of the only door.

“So,” Gavrotte said, holding out the holo of Osric, his look of confidence slipping just a little, “this where you tell me what’s going on?”

Mehlman pushed past him, taking the holo as he did so. “No.”

#

“- just unlock it.”

Inia Freyal leaned up against the door, not to brace it but because she was afraid she no longer had the strength to stand. Behind her, dozens slumped or stood in the half-light of the roof void, and Dayha sat silent and still, arms hugging her knees. Several men were grappling with the vents that gave onto the rooftop itself, but she could see they were getting nowhere. Something more than old bolts and rust was holding them in place.

She put her mouth to the doorframe. “I can’t. Please, I’m so sorry, I can’t.” She wiped her eyes, expecting to find tears, but there were none. Perhaps she had none left. She snatched her hand away when she saw the black stains that almost covered it now. “I just can’t, is all. The Vigiles will come. They’ll come. Just wait outside.”

Another voice. A woman this time. “You don’t understand. You need to unlock the door.” Other voices were raised, but Freyal couldn’t make them out. There seemed to be a buzzing sound that made it hard to hear.

“I can’t let you in. Please, I’m so sorry. I can’t let you in.”

The woman again, her voice soft and dry, like early autumn leaves. “No, you don’t understand, Inia. It’s not so we can get in. It’s so you can get out.”

Freyal’s heart seemed to collapse in on itself. “What? What do you mean? Why would I want to – how do you know my name?“

“He knows everything about you, Inia, he has always been with you in this sacred place. He is about to call you to him. All the sweet cancers of the flesh are about to be yours, Inia, forever.” The buzzing was louder, now, but low, the kind of noise that is not heard but felt in the bones. “We’re all so happy for you.”

Freyal felt the black stains on her skin itch and crawl. She felt them move, bursting into her. She screamed, but not for long.

#

Mehlman stood in the open doorway, finger stroking the trigger of his lasrifle. He tried not to breathe.

Behind him Gavrotte gasped. “Oh, sweet fecking Throne. What is this?”

“The breeding room,” replied Mehlman through gritted teeth.

Ahead of him stretched a broad hallway, normally used to access the various lift engines. The walls on either side were lined with people – women, Mehlman realised, no men – all of them naked. Immobilised too, he saw; the bones of their hands and feet seemed to have grown like ivory weeds, erupting out of their blackened flesh and driving into the dank brickwork of the walls like masonry nails, anchoring them in place. Thick, fleshy tubes entered eye-sockets, mouths and elsewhere, each slowly pulsing as they delivered their pulped contents to the still-living hosts, whose swollen, buzzing bellies were testimony to the corruption brewing within.

Mehlman tore a panel off the lining of his uniform jacket and wrapped it around his mouth and neck, in a vain effort to try and keep out the dizzying smell. He could hear Gavrotte being sick behind him. Rosen was muttering a prayer, the holy words coming fast and insistent. Mehlman joined in, gagging on the words under his breath, but they seemed to be stripped of all meaning in this most abominable of places.

The grotesquely distended body of one woman partly blocked an open door off to the left. Mehlman signed for Rosen to take a look, while he went to the opening at the far end of the hall.

The ground underfoot was snaked with pale coils like spilled intestines, lazy contractions rippling along their lengths, one following the other. The tubes wound from the stricken women to a shattered waste-pipe in the ceiling. From there they would reach to the lobby, Mehlman guessed, where the sustenance was coming from.

As he reached the end of the hall he saw one of the women had been opened from breastbone to groin, skin draped like a burst sack, the feeding tubes withered and still. At least one Kinder was loose, then.

Rosen returned to the hall, and joined him, his face ashen and slick.

“More breeding rooms?” asked Mehlman.

Rosen nodded, his bloodless lips close and narrow. “Children. Mostly.”

“Kinder?”

Rosen shook his head, and then followed Mehlman’s gaze to the dead woman on the wall.

“Come on,” Mehlman said.

“I – I can’t –“ Gavrotte still stood in the narrow corridor outside the hall, his arms braced against the doorframe. “Sweet Throne! I can’t –“

“Keep your voice down, dammit,” hissed Mehlman. “As for whatever it is you can or can’t do, I don’t care. Come or stay here. I don’t care . But raise your voice again and I will kill you where you stand.”

There was panic in Gavrotte’s eyes, a white-rimmed trembling that threatened to take Mehlman back to the frontlines and trenches of his youth. “Don’t go! I, I mean - aren’t you – aren’t you gonna at least help them, man? I mean – shouldn’t you help them? Maybe we should stay here and help them, huh?”

“We could kill them, but it would take too long.” Mehlman tossed his bayonet at Gavrotte’s feet. “Unless you want to stay and do it.”

The look in Gavrotte’s eyes changed, just a fraction, but it was enough to warn Mehlman. He spun, raising his lasrifle, finger already tightening on the trigger. Lasrounds spat out, full-auto delivering a steady stream of sizzling energy into the torso of the man that had appeared in the opening behind him.

The man screamed in agony, a sound that brought a vicious smile to Mehlman’s face. More shots, these ones from Rosen’s rifle, thudded into the man’s chest and slammed him back against the far wall. He slumped to the ground, arms raised over his head.

Mehlman stopped firing, and few moments later his brother followed suit. “Feck! I thought it was a Kinder,” muttered Rosen. “It’s just one of the infected.”

“But it’s not dead. Torch it.”

The man lowered his arms, revealing a pallid, puffy face. Empty eye sockets seethed with rot-flies. He opened his mouth, so wide Mehlman could hear his jawbone snap.

Once again, the voice came like the rustling of a million, paper-thin wings, the susurration of the hive. “ Leave now, my children, and live .”

Rosen opened a plastic drinking canister and began splashing liquid promethium on the man, slowly and deliberately. Each spout of blessed fluid hissed on contact, filling the air with the stench of burning flesh. The dry voice screamed as the man writhed on the floor.

“ If I give him back to you, will you leave me the others? ”

Rosen froze. Mehlman glanced around, suddenly wary, but there were no others in sight. They were still alone. “What do you mean?”

“ Your brother. Osric .”

“It’s lying –“ Rosen began.

“ His body. It is what you want .”

“You don’t know what we want. You don’t know anything about us,” growled Mehlman. “We’re here for you, not him. He’s – he’s gone.”

“ His body joined mine, his flesh is my flesh. You gave him to me, and I showed him the way. And now you have brought me another .”

“Burn it, now!” growled Mehlman to Rosen, but his brother kept his flamer low.

“Can you give him back his life, filth?” Rosen said, kicking the slumped body again and again. “Can you give him back his soul?”

The rustling rose and fell, but the seething eyes of the man never left Mehlman’s. “ I am the corruption of the flesh, the sweet ruin of all that lives. To worship me for so long, and not know this? What need have I of souls? They do not decay. They do not know disease or age. I ran time itself in your brother’s veins. In that glorious moment I gifted him the heavenly despair it has taken you a lifetime to learn, and he thanked me for it. Ah. He still does .” It laughed again. “ His flesh is my flesh. See .”

The man’s face rippled and seethed, the necrotic skin stretching and warping. With loud reports bones snapped and shifted, until Mehlman realised he was looking at a facsimile of his brother. With a horrified cry he raised his lasrifle again, but the face looked up at him, the face he had seen frozen for thirty years, a face he had known he would never see alive again. And when the voice came back, it had changed as much as the face.

“I knew you would come for me, Gilden. I’ve waited so long. We should be together, after all this time,” the Osric-thing said, and inside Mehlman something started screaming. “Until the world runs with blood, right? Do you remember what I said to you? My – hah – last words? Like it was yesterday, I bet. How’d it go, now? Ah - better the broken steel of a hero than the whole cloth of a coward.”

Mehlman mouthed the words along with the corpse of his brother.

“Fighting talk, huh? I always wanted to be the soldiers you and he were, just never got the chance, way it turned out. ‘The broken steel of a hero.’ Bet if you’d heard me say that sooner, you might have stopped me. Might have been able to save me. Bet that’s been on your mind for – hah – some time.” Osric’s head turned with the crepitus of grinding bone to face Rosen. “Bet if you hadn’t said it to me, big brother , when I asked you what to do in the face of the Great Enemy, I might not have gone charging off like that. Bet that’s been on your mind, eh, Rosen? Been able to sleep much?”

The thing that was screaming inside Mehlman stopped dead. His lasrifle clenched in bone-white fingers, he too faced Rosen. “He got that from you? Tell me he didn’t get that from you.”

A million flies rustled their wings in laughter.

Mehlman grabbed his older brother’s jacket-front, hauling him around. “Tell me, you son of a bitch. Tell me he didn’t get that from you,” he barked, but Rosen’s pitted eyes just stared past him. “You tell me or, so help me Emperor, I–”

“Burn me.”

Mehlman’s head snapped round; the broken face of Osric looking up him, pale as sin, eyes frantic.

“Burn me!”

“Osric?” whispered Rosen, and then louder, “Osric?”

“It won’t stop eating me! For pity’s sake, I don’t have long, burn–”

Rosen’s flamer coughed and the body on the floor was engulfed in crackling flames, the sticky, liquid promethium splashing in red-orange gashes. Mehlman staggered back, hands raised, only just keeping to his feet as the fireball the Osric-thing had become flared and threatened to consume him. He heard Rosen screaming in rage above the savage, primal noise of the inferno, and backed off further.

The sound of the makeshift flamer ceased as greasy clouds of black smoke surged upwards, obscuring the weak light coming from the ceiling. Rosen appeared out of the soot, shuffling as if half-asleep, face slack and distant.

Then, over the sizzle of the combusting gel and melting flesh, Mehlman heard a rapid series of distant click-hisses, one on top of the other, getting closer and closer. Click-hiss. Click-hiss. Click-hiss. He looked around, puzzled.

And then it hit him. The Super’s new fire suppression system. A system he had forgotten about. A system that was linked to the water supply, and that led throughout the entire building.

Click-hiss. Click-hiss. Closer and closer.

“The water!” he shouted, grabbing Rosen’s arm. “Barbatus is in the water!”

He started running towards Gavrotte, dragging Rosen behind him. He had no doubt that as soon as the water touched their flesh, the infection would start to take hold, fast. He could hear the water clearly now, pouring out of the eyelets in the ceiling throughout the basement as it sped along the unused pipes. It would reach this hall in seconds.

Click-hiss. Click-hiss. Much louder now.

Mehlman barged a panicked and confused Gavrotte out of the way. Glancing up he could see the water-pipes in this short stretch of corridor. The thing inside him was screaming again. The maintenance chimney.

“Through here. We have to get out of here!” he shouted as he hauled the hatch open and pushed Rosen in.

Gavrotte stared at him, and Mehlman saw the moment when incomprehension gave way to self-preservation. The young man hurled himself along the corridor and dove head first through the hatch. Mehlman followed him, flailing as the pipes in the ceiling spat into life and drenched his uniform sleeve and shoulder.

He kicked the hatch shut behind him as fine spray jetted out, tore his jacket off and threw it away. His chest burning once again with the exertion, he stood gasping for breath, hands on his knees.

“You wanna tell me what’s what, VA? What just fecking happened, huh? What’s up with the water all of a sudden?” Gavrotte was soaked head to toe in the filthy soup that filled the foot of the maintenance chimney.

Mehlman looked up, realising that no water was falling on the three men. Through the concrete partition he could hear the streams of water sluicing down the adjoining lift-shafts, and he could hear it splattering on the other side of the hatch, but it seemed that the corrupt Super had made some off-the-book savings when the system was installed, and hadn’t bothered extending it to the maintenance chimney. They would be safe here till the torrents subsided, but the rest of the hab block was doomed. If they weren’t infected already, they were now. And Barbatus, who could have set it off at any time, had made them do it. He could almost hear it laughing.

There was some water on Mehlman’s hand, but the holy grease he had applied in his hab was making it bead and run off. He offered a silent prayer to Saint Vengerice of the Mail’d Fist, then strode up to Rosen and punched him in the face as hard as he could.

Rosen staggered back, slipping and splashing and slumped heavily against the chimney wall. His flamer fell, forgotten, and the pilot light went out with a ghostly hiss.

Mehlam stood over his brother, his anger ignited and burning like he had never known. “You. You could have told me.” He grabbed Rosen’s lapels as his brother wiped blood away from his nose and mouth, his gaze settled on the dark water at their feet. “All these years, wondering. You didn’t speak to me. Not one word. All these years, you made me think it was my fault. And it was you, you piece of bleep. You fed him that line about heroes. What did you think he would do?” Mehlman dragged Rosen back to his feet and away from the wall. “What did you think he would do?” he shouted inches from his brother’s stricken face.

“I – I told him – told him what I would tell any – any recruit–”

“But he wasn’t just any recruit, was he?” Mehlman slammed Rosen back against the glazed-tile wall. “He looked up to you. He wanted to be you.” Another slam. “What did you think he would do?”

“He wanted to know what I thought, and I – I–”

“He wanted to be like his big, fecking brother. The hero . What did you think he would do? ”

“It was all going to hell. I could’ve reached him if you hadn’t–”

“No!” shouted Mehlman. “You couldn’t! You’d be dead, just like him. You’d be part of it, just like he’s been, for the last thirty years. Hell, maybe I should’ve let you try. Maybe you deserve it.” He let go of Rosen’s faded, grey uniform. “Maybe it should have been you instead of him.”

Mehlman pushed his brother back against the wall, and then splashed away. Behind him, Rosen slid once again into the black water.

Mehlman sat on some rotten wood piled against the filth-streaked tiles, and began reloading his lasrifle. He ignored Gavrotte’s angry questions and the hiss and gurgle of the water still deluging the hab-block around them. He ignored Rosen’s rasping breath as his brother stood. He ignored the splashing as he walked unsteadily over to the hatch. He ignored the creak as the hatch opened, and the hiss as the spray misted out.

“I’ll come back. When I’ve killed it,” Rosen said in a thick voice, “I’ll come back.”

Mehlman didn’t look up. “That water’s black with ruin. You’ll be infected in minutes. You’ll be his.”

“Not with the unguent, I won’t. It’ll protect me. We – we did it right this time. It’ll protect me.”

“Not from me, it won’t. I see you – see you infected – and I’ll put you down. Emperor help me, I’ll put you down.”

“If that’s the way it has to be.”

“You go through there, and it is.”

The hatch creaked again, and Mehlman looked up. His brother had gone.

PART 5

The chimney echoed to the dripping water.

“So,” Gavrotte said, crouched and listening at the closed hatch, “is there a way out? Huh?”

Mehlman’s eyes bored into the grime-encrusted tiles on the far wall.

“C’mon, V.A.. Talk. There’s gotta be a way out. The one-armed bandit wants to get hisself killed, fine by me. Fine by you too, by the looks of it. Am I right? But we can get out. There’s gotta be a way.”

“It didn’t want me to leave. It was toying with me. It wanted me to stay. To choose to stay.”

“Well, okay. That’s just great, V.A.. There’s a way out of here, there has to be.” Gavrotte stopped at the foot of the ladder, craning his neck up. “How ‘bout the roof? Get out, signal for help? You couldn’t make the climb, old man, but you could stay put, watch my back, make sure nothing follows me.” He glanced at Mehlman. “Bring help, you know. You’d be safe here, probably.”

Mehlman stared straight ahead for a long time before he spoke. “But I already chose. I chose sixty years ago. Chose to wait for it.”

“What you on about? I’m talking about a way –“

“I found it. Me.” Mehlman’s voice was louder, gruffer. “Sixty years ago, buried deep –“ he splashed the butt of his lasrifle in the greasy water at his feet, “- during the War of Liberation. Killed most of my squad. Found out it would come back, and we waited for it. Me and my brothers. Finish the war on our own terms; for honour. You’re not a soldier, you wouldn’t understand. Waited, and watched this world we’d saved turn to shit around us; turned over to people like you. Watched it forget about us. But we waited. And it came back – thirty years ago. It killed Osric.”

“The, uh, the Great Plague – that was thirty years ago, right? Throne! Was that -?”

“Barbatus. We failed. Nothing for it but to wait it out, kill time for another thirty years. If I don’t get it this time…”

Gavrotte laughed, quietly. “And you thought two old geezers with three arms between them could kill a – a daemon? That’s what this Barbatus is, right? You’re nuts, old man, fecking certifiable. There’s people do this kind of thing, you know? People who don’t wash themselves in engine oil and make their own flamers.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t about defending the Imperium any more. Sod the bloody Imperium, I’ve done my bit. You – you’ve no idea. Sod them, sod the lot of you! This is revenge; cold, look-you-in-the-eyes-as-I-gut-you revenge. For me - my brother. You wouldn’t understand.”

Gavrotte shrugged. “I get revenge, old man. Revenge is something I can trust –“

“Spare me.”

“No, V.A. You listen to me. My sister – took an overdose. Bled out something nasty. I went to see her dealer after, you know? Got her some payback. If you was down here ‘protecting’ everyone, I’d say you were simple, but revenge? I get that.” He looked up the ladder again, sniffing in the cold air. “What I don’t get is chucking your life away waiting for it. I’ve seen you. Go nowhere, talk to no-one. If you’d started offing people with a rifle up in a tower, I woulda just changed the channel – another vet gone loco. But if you knew it was coming back, you could’ve done anything you liked between now and then. You’re damaged goods, V.A.. You been acting dead for thirty years.”

The sounds of the dripping water were fainter now, the fire suppression system nearly exhausted.

“Your sister. I heard about her.”

“Yeah, well. She had it coming. So did her dealer, pushing cut narc like that. Wasn’t me, would’ve been someone else did him. Old news, now. Bygones, man.”

Mehlman stared at the closed hatch. “But you tried to save your sister, right? Tried to get her clean?”

“Yeah. Sort of. You know, what business is it of yours, V.A.? No, alright? I didn’t stop her. How do you stop a junkie? It was her choice. Her fecking choice. I just – I just – you know, who cares? It’s bygones, man.”

Mehlman rose to his feet, leaning on his rifle for support. “I’m going after him. It’s taken one of my brothers. It’s not taking the other without a fight.”

“Your funeral, V.A.. Me, I’m heading out.”

“Barbatus has sealed the block. There is no way out.”

“Auroch-shit! I’ll get on the roof –“

“It’s a daemon, son, and we’re in its private, little hell. No-one leaves, unless it says so.” Mehlman pulled the hatch open, scum-laden water dripping off it. “You have a gun, and if by the Emperor’s grace I somehow kill Barbatus, the people who have the mark but haven’t become infected might live. Maybe. I dunno. You could find some of them, and try and protect them. You could try and do some good.”

“You really have lost it, V.A.. What makes you think you can kill a daemon?”

“Because it went to some pains to split me and Rosen up. It didn’t have to - it’s a daemon for Throne’s sake, and we’re just two ex-soldiers. So it did it for a reason.”

“And what’s that?”

“I think it’s afraid.”

#

Mehlman eased the door to the laundry facility closed behind him as quietly as he could. The buzzing noise of the breeding room faded, though the stench still lined his nostrils like tar.

Tall laundry machines stood either side of the long hall, facing each other like sentries. Behind them the walls were lined with rusting shelves.

Mehlman fixed his bayonet to his lasrifle, and checked his ammo again. Plenty of cartridges left. The inscribed parchments on each were still intact as well.

“Gilden.”

The voice snapped his head up like a drill-sergeant’s command. A group of men and women stood at the far end of the laundry, faces slack and lifeless under the weak, yellow sodium lamps that dangled from the long, low ceiling

“I have him.”

Mehlman knew he had to move fast. He strode forward, took aim and started firing. Cold, certain, deliberate; every shot took one of the infected in the head or the chest, burning smoking holes in their ruined bodies.

“I have your sacrifice.”

That was behind him. A fleeting glance told Mehlman the other end of the laundry facility was blocked now as well. Flanked, but not surrounded. No matter. He knew where Barbatus was, he was close enough to feel it now, and the door he needed was between him and the group he was firing on.

He switched to full auto and charged, firing from the hip. The infected met him half-way.

The Guard had taught Mehlman many things, none of which he’d forgotten. In a melee, the bodies of the dying can block the living. Turn your enemy into your shield. Slash with the bayonet, don’t stab. Use the butt of the rifle. Keep firing. And keep moving.

He wasn’t as young as he’d been when he’d last had to do this, but his enemy had never had to do it, and that was what counted. Mehlman knew how to kill, and this was a time for killing.

He shot two of the infected in the chest, the force of the impacts knocking them backwards into the crowd behind. He moved aside, a tall laundry machine to his left. A man lunged for him. Mehlman drove the butt of his rifle into the man’s face, breaking bones, releasing clouds of rot-flies. The man staggered back, knocking others over. More confusion.

He ducked a swinging podshaver-bat, heard it smashing cheap plastic on the laundry machine. Every movement hurt now, the years would not be denied their toll, but he no longer knew how to stop. He shot the legs out from under a woman and a young boy, then scythed his bayonet in a half-circle, lacerating more dried flesh.

Something heavy crashed into his side, driving the breath from him as fractures of white pain lanced across his ribs. He lurched back behind the machine, firing again, clip nearly exhausted. Two more men leapt at him. One had his guts opened up by the rifle’s blade, and the other got his hands tight around Mehlman’s throat.

The man’s eye-sockets boiled with insect filth as his pallid face loomed. Mehlman’s rifle and right arm were trapped across his body, and he struggled to free his combat knife. The man opened his mouth, and kept opening it, the dessicated skin of his cheeks tearing apart. Within, corruption seethed, and surged in mindless hunger.

Mehlman brought his knife up in a wide arc, driving it into the man’s ear. It sunk in right up to the handle, and was all the leverage Mehlman needed to jerk the blackened head back. He heard its neck snap and he was free of it, the body dropping to the wet floor as rot-flies poured out of its ruined mouth.

The rest were coming at him around the laundry machine, and Mehlman scrambled up the rusted storage shelves behind it, leaving them snatching at his feet. He saw the door on the other side; the way was clear.

He jumped down, landing badly on his ankle, and ran for the doorway, limping. He chanced a look back; they were right behind him. Then he was through the doorway, slamming it after him, feeling the weight of the infected crash against it. He grabbed the handle, looking around for something to wedge the door shut with.

There was nothing. The hall was narrow and empty, just a bare-walled corridor linking the two main laundry facilities. Then he saw the lines of corroded pipes running up the wall beside the doorframe. Taking the weight of his spent lasrifle with his teeth, he used his free hand to work the strap loose. The hammering of the infected on the other side of the door increased, and he could feel them heaving at the handle. His grip was almost gone.

He got the strap free, hooked it round the pipes and then lashed it to the door handle. He let go. The handle immediately turned, the door jolted open and then stopped. The strap creaked, but held. The pipes shuddered under the strain, but held.

It was as he bent over, gasping for breath, that Mehlman realised who he had seen in the throng of the infected chasing him to the door. His neighbour, Inia Freyal, or what was left of her. There had been something – someone – clinging to her shoulders; the briefest glimpse of a child’s arms and head.

Mehlman looked along the grey corridor, the door at the far end lying open. He could block that with one of the laundry machines easily enough once he was through. If he could reach it in time.

He took a deep, ragged breath, and sighed, shaking his head in disbelief. This was madness. Then, before he could change his mind, he slashed the bayonet blade through the strap holding the door closed.

The door sprang open and hit the wall with a bang, and the infected at the front spilled out, falling over and blocking those behind them. But not for long.

Mehlman saw her, rot-eyed and soulless, just another plaything for Barbatus. He took aim.

“Step aside, then,” he whispered.

It was probably just the jostling of the many bodies, but for an instant what had been Freyal turned aside. Mehlman took the shot, and took the head off Dhaya, clinging lifelessly to her dead mother’s back. Freyal turned back towards him, her sightless eyes black as pitch. His next shot hit her square in the face, and then he turned and ran.

#

Gavrotte stood in the doorway to his hab. His door, reinforced and bolted against his many enemies, lay buckled at his feet. Beyond, the main room was a sodden mess, and the stench of decay and blood filled the wet air. The flickering, failing lumen panel threw the glistening corners and edges of the room into stark, staccato relief.

He glanced down the dark hallway behind him, empty and silent. The hatch to the maintenance chimney beckoned in his mind, the ladder to the roof and possible escape. Feck that fool in the basement with his revenge and his brothers. What in the seven hells was he doing here?

It was her fecking choice…

A noise startled him, his gun coming up with accustomed speed. Nothing stirred, no matter how much he willed the darkness to move – to move and give him something to aim at. Something to kill.

But you tried to save your sister…?

The noise again. A scrape of boot on wood. There was a cleaner’s storeroom just down the hall. Empty, of course; nothing lasted long unguarded in this block. The lock was gone so he simply kicked the door as hard as he could.

He froze, the four junk-girls cowering before him in the shadows, the door wavering drunkenly on broken hinges. He lowered his gun, noting the dark rash that covered their faces, necks and arms. They were wet, soaked to the skin, although the storeroom was dry inside, and were looking at him through eyes that did not yet belong to any daemon.

The old fool didn’t have a prayer, he knew. He was as good as dead, just like…

But you tried…?

He heard another noise from the long hallway. Footsteps, several of them. Some were running.

“Feck this! Come on, then, if you’re coming. You girls aren’t safe here.”

#

He heard the Kinder before he saw it, the sound freezing his feet mid-splash.

The cries chilled him to the core. It had heard him, too, and it was coming this way, but in the maze of halls and doorways Mehlman could not tell where the nerve-shredding sound was coming from.

The stairway to the upper basement was close, and Mehlman started running as best as his ankle would allow, the ruin-laden water sloshing around his boots.

He limped out of the last of the breeding rooms, the screams of the Kinder’s many mouths echoing off the glistening, grey walls, closer now. Much closer.

Along the next hallway, shoulder-charging the double doors open in twin waves of black froth. There were the stairs, water still cascading down from above.

And there was the Kinder, waiting for him.

The babies’ sightless eyes churned with the rot flies, and their tiny limbs reached out for him, twisted bone-hooks gleaming white. They screamed again, a barbed tower of hunger and agony, as the Kinder began to drift towards him.

The cries drove into Mehlman like a wall of nails, skewering him, driving gasp after gasp of pain from him. He fell to one knee, Rosen’s flamer slipping from his grasp as he clutched his head.

Still it came on; fresh, infant bodies struggling weakly into the cold, wet air at the horror’s apex, flesh already fused to their neighbours, while the decaying bodies of their tiny brothers and sisters dripped in stalactites of corruption from its base. A hundred blood-soaked mouths screamed their need to feed as the power of the Kinder that bound them all birthed them and ran them to ruin in the space of a dozen breaths.

Still it came on, the slipping, writhing skin of babies it wore ripping their cries into Mehlman, black threads of despair worming into his mind.

He saw himself, young and raw, firing into the profusion of madness his squad had become after he broke Barbatus’ seal. He saw Rosen, sipping slow years from a bottle in a far away place, his face wet with sweat and more.

But…

He saw himself, screaming again and again in the middle of an empty hab, the uncaring night swallowing his pain as if it never happened.

…it…

The threads wove tighter and tighter around him, into him, suffocating now, as the Kinder drew closer, fresh, pallid bodies vomited into being to add their agony to his.

He saw himself, Osric in his iron sights for one endless heartbeat, forever and always unable to pull the trigger as pestilence and ruin tore his brother apart. He saw the murderous look in Rosen’s pitted eyes. He saw himself fixing lock after lock to his hab door, carrying out his daily routine, his rituals of quiet despair, day after day, year after year, blurring into a grey nothingness of existence.

…was…

His mind struggled beneath the smothering blanket of night, but he was growing weaker and weaker as the threads burrowed into him. Bone scraped on bone; a child’s touch.

He saw himself sitting alone, on his cot, his service pistol locked and loaded, his eyes fixed on the holo of Osric. Night after night, scraped-out and hollow inside. He saw his hand on the pistol’s grip in those sunken, lightless hours where sleep would not come. He looked into his own heavy, bloodshot eyes to whom every dawn was another drip of acid and saw him screaming soundlessly in his invisible prison.

…afraid!

He opened his eyes, gasping for breath as the web of despair frayed and dissolved. The hands of the decaying infants gripped his face, their gnarled bone-claws slicing deep into him. The toothless maws of the dead infants opened wide, the rot-flies at their core desperate to consume him.

“Your master. Is afraid. Of me,” he gasped through gritted teeth. “And I will give him good reason.”

With an anguished cry he braced his arms against the mass of the Kinder and pushed. The bone-hooks dug deep all over his body, and he cried louder and pushed with all of his strength and rage and hatred. In a crescendo of pain the hooks tore free and he lurched backwards against the wall, blood streaming from dozens of wounds.

The towering abomination came forward again, its many mouths screeching its anger. With a shrug Mehlman’s shotgun slid off his shoulder and into his waiting hand. Dragging himself to his feet, he pushed the muzzle into the crimson maw of one of the screaming infants and pulled the trigger. Cold blood and tissue sprayed across his face and chest. The stench of rotting meat nearly forced him back to his knees, but he set his jaw, pumped the slide and fired again.

The Kinder’s many screams transformed into howls of rage as Mehlman fired again and again, driving it back, each blast sending wet clouds of pink flesh and black decay into the chill, basement air.

“I will look into your master’s eyes when I kill it!”

The holy rocksalt blasted the unholy, un-living skin from the daemon-brood.

“And it will know true despair at my hand!”

He fired into the seething core of the thing.

“It will find all hope dead and buried!”

The Kinder’s shrieks rang off the slick walls.

“And it will scream as it dies. By my brothers, it will scream as it dies!”

The path to the stairs was clear. Mehlman grabbed for Rosen’s flamer, but a skeletal arm at the base of the dying Kinder had grasped the promethium tubes. The baby’s withered face hissed abomination and spat thick blood, clotted purple with disease. Mehlman tore the flamer free, wrenching the stick-like arm off at the shoulder with a sickening pop.

He fired his last, consecrated cartridge into the exposed core of the Kinder and ran for the stairs.

#

When it comes, count to eleven and then stop. The last one’s for yourself…

The heavy-calibre slug tore the man’s jaw and most of the side of his face off. His withered tongue flapped in the clouds of rot-flies that billowed out. Eight.

Gavrotte’s next shot went wide, tearing a chunk of sodden plaster from the wall, but the partially-beheaded man was already collapsing to the floor. Nine.

He grabbed the last remaining girl and pushed her into the bathroom, then hurled chairs at the mass of the infected, trying to block their path through the tiny hab. A brace of shots tore a buzzing, angry hole in a woman’s chest, before he retreated into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Ten.

There was no way out. The single window was on the second floor – in theory they might survive the drop, but Gavrotte had already learned that something was keeping the windows closed and unbreakable. He knew its name, now, at least, and it knew his.

The girl screamed and he whirled, knowing what was coming. The other three had already gone like this. She was clawing at her arms, nails tearing crimson gouges in blackened flesh. He had seen junkies do that before, but the daemon in them then had been chemical. This was something else.

The black rash seemed to writhe as the girl continued to scream, corruption spreading out over her skin like the coming of night. He raised his pistol and fired. The scream died. Eleven.

Behind him, the flimsy bathroom door rattled and shook. That tiny bolt-lock would hold for about ten seconds, less if any of the bastards out there had the presence of mind to just kick the door in.

“Famous last stand, Edil, going out like a nova, man,” Gavrotte muttered to himself, then shouted, “Feck you, V.A.! And feck you too, daemon! You don’t win this one.”

As he put the pistol in his mouth, he felt a knife of ice skewer his guts. Throne, how many rounds had he fired at that woman outside? One or two? Was it one or -?

As the door burst open and the hands lunged for him, he pulled the trigger.

#

Mehlman leaned back against the doorframe, feeling his strength draining along with the blood that was soaking into his uniform. The cries of the dying Kinder echoed weakly up the stairwell behind him.

He dropped the now-useless shotgun to the ground with a splash. The sharp, oily smell of promethium stung his eyes and, with a resigned sigh, he took a look at Rosen’s battered flamer. The combustion trigger had been torn off; there was no way to ignite the fuel. He turned it over. The promethium tubes had been torn, and the blessed liquid was leaking out in drips and spurts to form dark rainbows on the water’s surface.

Even if the igniter was intact, it would be suicide to trigger it, but without Rosen the consecrated liquid in the tanks was the only weapon left to him that the daemon might remotely be afraid of. He watched the fuel spill out over his hands. It was the fuel that was important, after all, the flamer was simply a means of delivering it.

He stared at the flamer a moment longer and then slung it over his shoulder, wincing at the pain. It might buy him some time. It was all he had left. The pink fuel mixed with his red blood as both stained the holy parchments fluttering on his uniform.

The darkness at the end of this last, short hall beckoned to him. Barbatus itself awaited. One last stretch and then it would be over; one way or another.

He wiped sweat and blood from his brow, smoothed his moustache and his Guard lapels and limped towards the welcoming gloom.

#

The carpet of insects moved aside as he approached, slick waves of jet slipping outwards with each footstep.

His blood splashed red on the floor, and the churning mat closed in behind him as he walked.

There was no light at all; just an inky darkness full of whispering and rustling and the tangible, sweet smell of utter decay. And then he saw it.

Barbatus. It sat in the centre of the boiler room, still and small and withered atop a throne of hands. Emaciated flesh like boiled leather clung to crooked bones, flesh that gave off a necrotic half-light, glowing weak and sickly in the dark. Its head creaked up to look at him with sightless, seething eyes; liquid rot like blackest pitch oozing from the cavities. Its arms without hands and its legs without feet were gripped tightly by the throne, and when it opened its mouth it spoke on a breath of flies.

“It was written that you would release me, Gilden Mehlman.”

High-pitched cries came from off to the side, and Mehlman stole a look. Another Kinder, barely visible in the corpse-light; the sprouting, ivory bone-hooks of its mayfly offspring anchored into the body of a man, held cruciform, his boots dangling two or three feet above the insect-mat of the floor. Rosen.

His brother’s head came up, sheets of blood covering his aged face, but even they couldn’t hide the black rash that spread over most of it. Rosen’s mouth gaped, but no words came. The mangled skein of babies holding him up wailed softly, and dug their finger-hooks in deeper. Mehlman heard the blackboard-scratch of bone on bone.

He turned back to the shrivelled corpse-thing on the living throne. “Prophecies, eh?” Mehlman spat into the flies at his feet. “Don’t believe everything you read.” Mehlman hefted the flamer, and aimed it at Barbatus. “Let him go.”

Without taking his eyes off the daemon he took a step towards Rosen. Fresh cries from his brother rooted his feet to the floor.

“Consecrated promethium. Use it, and he enjoys the same death as the other.”

Rosen grunted again, his stifled pain simply a backdrop to the sound of ripping flesh. Bone rasped on bone. Mehlman lowered the flamer a fraction, and stole another step. Another cry of pain made him grimace, and freeze.

“The hands,” said Mehlman, gesturing at the throne. “You’re trapped, daemon. For all your power, you can’t leave this place.”

“You awoke me, as it was written, but you did not free me. You must complete what you began. Sacrifice your brother to me, give me the strength I need to leave.” The myriad hands of the throne gripped Barbatus tighter, knuckles whitening, pinning the daemon’s arms and legs, fingers digging ruts into its dry and rotten flesh.

“You are afraid. Prophecies can be tricky things.” Mehlman jerked the muzzle of the flamer in the direction of his brother. “I guess you wanted to be holding all the cards.”

A gasp came from behind him. “My arm –“

Mehlman glanced at Rosen. His real arm had been flensed by the Kinder’s abominations, and skin and muscle hung in tatters. Bone hooks gripped the steel of the other tightly. His cigar was gone, but a faint coil of smoke rose from the carpet of insects below, ghost-lit red by the embers beneath.

“I could take him, as I did the other, but sacrifice would give me what I need.”

“The only sacrifice today will be one of my choosing, daemon.”

Barbatus laughed in a churning cloud of flies. “Do you think it co-incidence that you found me? That you are drawn to me, like a worshipper to a pealing bell?” It strained forward, the dry flesh of its neck creaking. “Because you already worship me, Gilden. It is what you have been doing for years, rotting alone in your hab. Waiting for me while time consumes you. I could ask for no more devout high priest than you.”

Mehlman bit his lip, the memories the Kinder had torn lose from his mind rising once again, but he fought them down, as he always had. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re trapped. Trapped and old. You’re dying down here, daemon. Let me end it for you.”

“You trapped above and me below, both of us old and getting older. Everything grows old, Gilden, even the gods.” Barbatus hissed, and sores opened across its body, thick, black ooze seeping out. Swarms of insects descended on them to feed. “Put down the flamer.”

“Not happening. Last chance. Let him go.” Behind him, Rosen screamed anew, but Mehlman hefted the flamer again anyway, aiming it straight at Barbatus.

“Consecrated promethium. You are soaked in it. It would kill you simply to use that weapon. It would not be enough to kill me. It is over. Put it down.”

Mehlman shook his head. He heard gobbets of flesh spattering to the soft floor behind him as Rosen choked back another cry.

“My…arm…”

“Put it down. I will give you what you want. The real reason you waited for me.”

“You know nothing about –“

“His flesh is my flesh.”

“Stop!”

“Osric is here. You’ve seen him. Soon Rosen will join me. Already I run in his veins.”

“You don’t get to say his name, daemon!”

“Soon he will run in mine.”

“No!”

“Their flesh is my flesh. They will be together again. In me.”

“No…”

“And you can join them both. Forever.”

Mehlman was silent. Behind him, he heard Rosen struggling to speak, but his words were cut off in wet, bubbling cries.

“One is dead and the other will not last the hour. Without me you have nothing but death. It is the only way the three of you can ever be together again –“

“No…” Mehlman shook his head again, but he was no longer looking anywhere but into the darkness.

“It is what you want. It is what you have always wanted –“

“No…it’s not…it’s not…”

“It is what you have waited for, all these years.”

“Osric…”

“You’re not here to avenge him, you’re here to join him. Finally, to join him.”

The muzzle of the flamer dipped.

“It is what you have always wanted. So take it.”

Mehlman stood, his shoulders bent, his head bowed, staring at Barbatus for a long moment.

“It is the only way.”

The flamer hit the concrete with a heavy clunk, the mat of flies rushing clear of the leaking fluid.

“Now. Go to him. Sacrifice him to me. Release me.”

Mehlman slowly turned and walked back to the towering form of the Kinder, whose many mouths were howling their pain and glee. Rosen grunted again as his body was stretched by the hooks impaling his flesh, readying him for the kill. Mehlman stopped, the smoke from Rosen’s cigar curling upwards inches from his boot. He wiped his hand on a dry piece of uniform, bent down and carefully picked it up.

He looked up at Rosen, and took his service pistol from its holster.

“I am sorry, brother. It is the only way.”

Rosen gasped through white-stretched lips. “Just…do it.”

“Daemon,” said Mehlman, looking deep into his brother’s eyes. “Is the lifeless arm a sacrilege?”

Behind him, and then all around him, Barbatus laughed in an insect chorus. “Well spoken, high priest. The corruption of the flesh is all.”

Mehlman didn’t take his eyes off Rosen’s, even as he heard the infants’ hideous shriek, the tendons’ snapping retort and Rosen’s augmetic arm clanging heavily to the floor beside him. His brother hissed out his agony through grinding teeth, and never took his bulging eyes off Mehlman for an instant.

“Now.”

Mehlman reached up and pushed the lit cigar between Rosen’s teeth. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Do it now.”

“Bet you wish you’d thought of something else, Rosen.” said Mehlman, stooping again to pick up Rosen’s augmetic arm, “But I don’t suppose there’s any other way to hide four pounds of det-block from Customs.”

The sussuration of the flies stopped dead. The mouths of the Kinder fell silent. In one movement Mehlman spun and threw the arm at Barbatus. It landed across the daemon’s chest, and instantly the hands of the throne gripped it tightly. Barbatus writhed, flies like smoke billowing in a howl of rage from its gaping mouth. Mehlman raised his pistol, looked into its eyes.

“Now. Scream for me.”

He fired.

#

When the pain surged out of the darkness like a tidal wave, Mehlman was glad, because it meant he was alive.

He tried to move, roll over, lift his head – anything, but every effort brought only more surging tides of pain. He felt submerged, as if everything was coming to him through cold, dark water that pressed against him.

He heard something else moving in the darkness with him, and then it spoke.

“Gilden?” The voice was weak and very hoarse.

“Rosen?” Mehlman felt thick, hot blood spill out on his chin as he spoke. The cold brickwork of the boiler-room wall pressed hard against his head and back. He felt something like grains of wheat covering the floor under him. The stench of death mingled with the tang of cordite in the damp air.

“You - you’re alive then.” A bubbling gasp. “Good. Thought I was alone.”

Mehlman saw a faint, red glow in the dark. It flared briefly, illuminating his brother’s ruined face. Mehlman laughed and then convulsed with the pain. When it died down, he said, “If you have a spare one of those, I’ll take it now.”

A wet cough answered him, echoing in the pitch.

He reached into a uniform pocket, brought out a light-stick and snapped it against the floor. Cold, harsh, blue-green light dawned between his fingers.

Once he’d tested his legs he struggled to his feet, leaning on his rifle. He saw Rosen lying on his back, cigar clamped in his mouth, scant feet away from the dead form of the Kinder. The grains of wheat he had felt were the flies, all dead now.

At the centre of the room was what was left of the throne of hands, lifeless now and mouldering to dust before his eyes. Lying mangled before it was the desiccated body of Barbatus, torn open by the consecrated det-block concealed in the arm. The throne had swarmed over Barbatus at the last moment, the hands covering him, and they must have directed most of the blast inwards. The room was remarkably intact.

He hobbled over to Rosen. He was a mess. Most of his left arm had been stripped of flesh, and he was covered in his own blood. Rosen looked up at him and gave a weak grin. “You look like hell, Gilden –“ he managed, before a wracking cough cut off his words. More blood trickled down his cheeks.

“Can you stand?”

“Maybe. But don’t ask me to dance.”

Mehlman got both arms under his brother’s upper back, grimacing at the tattered flesh he felt there, and hauled him to a sitting position. He paused until his breath returned and his head no longer swam then, with a loud cry from both of them, he dragged Rosen to his feet.

At the centre of the boiler room, the corpse of Barbatus twitched.

“I released it,” grunted Mehlman. “Prophecies can be a bitch.”

“Burn it,” Rosen muttered, and Mehlman nodded. The flamer lay not far away, and despite its leaks it still had plenty of fuel. Mehlman kicked the valve off and then poured the contents over what was left of the daemon’s corpse. He tried to ignite the pilot light, but nothing happened.

”Allow me,” Rosen grunted. Mehlman realised what he had in mind, and staggered back. Rosen spat his cigar onto the impromptu pyre, which erupted in pale blue flame. As they watched, the fire turned orange and then deep red with streaks of black, as large, greasy clouds of smoke began to rise. The heat filled the boiler room as the fire danced and crackled.

Mehlman helped his brother to reach the far wall. Both of them slid to the ground, and sat side by side, watching the daemon burn.

#

The wind blew and the storm raged, but the old, blue train was not afraid.

Rain poured down through the many holes in the roof, running down the funnel and filling the train's boiler.

Lightning flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, and then a fork of lightning leapt all the way down and struck the woodpecker’s nest in the firebox.

As the spark grew and the fire spread and the water in the boiler began to warm, the old, blue train looked down the track ahead at the dark, blue sea, and smiled.

The fire raged, the water boiled, the steam hissed and the old, blue train pushed with all its might. With a creak and then a snap the wheels began to turn. Ever so slowly, it started to move.

The train nudged through the shed door, and started to roll down the track. Faster and faster the wheels turned, building up speed, faster and faster as the train flew down the hill, tooting its whistle into the night.

The train blew its whistle one last time as it sped across the main line, wheels jumping the track. For a moment it seemed to hang in the air and then it plunged head-first off the cliff.

As the old, blue train came to rest at the bottom of the dark, blue sea it knew that its final journey was over at last, and it smiled.

#

The wall was warm, the air was warmer, but Mehlman felt colder than he ever had before.

“Is that – that your blood or mine?”

In the dying light of the fire he looked down, saw a black slick on the floor between him and Rosen, slowly spreading. “A bit of both, I think. Bit hard to tell the difference.”

Rosen nodded, wheezing. “We did it.”

“We did.”

“We got that fecker. Took us a while, but we got him.”

“Yeah. Took us a little while.”

Rosen drew in a deep breath, and Mehlman could hear the bubbling in his drowning lungs.

“Kill, kill, kill, until the world runs with blood;
The galaxy resounds to the Basilisk's mighty thud–“

He joined in.

“In storm and wave we steel ourselves, we're brothers till the end;
Our faith in Him will shine.”

Rosen’s coughing fit lasted nearly a minute. Mehlman tried not to watch. He didn’t feel so cold now. He felt as if he was floating, but he knew it was just blood loss. The explosion had ruptured something inside him.

“I let him down,” said Rosen. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to say that. To you, to me, to anyone. I let him down. I got him killed.”

“It was his choice, in the end, not yours. We all made our choices, good and bad.”

The fire hissed and spat, and settled down again.

“You had me going at the end, there. I thought, for a moment, you might just do as it said.”

Mehlman listened to the crackle of the fire, almost out now, and watched the sparks rise into the thick sea of smoke at the ceiling. He felt as if he was drifting in his own sea, the warm water all around him. “Never in any doubt.”

Rosen’s head slumped forward, and Mehlman grabbed the gore-soaked hair at the back. “Stay with me! Come on. There’ll be help. They’ll find us.”

Rosen grunted, and gave a crooked smile as his head lolled to one side and then came back up. “I’m fine. Tired, is all…very tired. Hey - you remember that sergeant you punched out? Tyrell, wasn’t it?”

Mehlman shook his head slowly, and then nodded as it came back to him. “Tyrell. Right. Sadistic, weaselly bastard. That was a good punch.”

“He’s still around.”

“Really? Hoped he’d be dead by now.”

“No. Still a…bastard, though.” Rosen coughed again. “Write his name…on the wall.”

“What?”

“When they come…when they find us – you know who. They'll find all this…” Mehlman started to laugh, even though it hurt. “Us two…right here…and that…bastard’s name…on the wall.”

“Written in our own blood. You are one vengeful son-of-a-bitch.” Mehlman shifted around. “Two ll’s in ‘Tyrell’?”

When he’d finished he reached inside his uniform and took the holo out, and put it on Rosen’s lap.

“Hold it…for me…” Rosen muttered. “My arm…can’t move…my arm…”

Mehlman took Rosen’s hand in his own, and carefully put his brother’s fingers on the frame of the holo. They left dirty smears of blood.

After a few minutes, when the pyre that had been Barbatus was simply glowing embers, he reached over and closed his brother’s eyes, took the holo and placed it on the ground between them.

“Brothers till the end,” Mehlman whispered. He smiled. He could feel the sea all around him now, dark and warm and welcoming.

And then he leaned back, and waited, but not for long.

THE END

NOTE: Many thanks to all who have commented on this story, and in particular to Robert Frazer at the Relic Forums for his incredibly indepth critiques

Comment Links

You are welcome to add your comment on this story here or:- at the Black Library fiction forum or at Imperial Literature or at Relic Forums Note you will need an account to post at these sites.