Resistance (21 page)

‘Dave, there are a dozen snipers training their sights on these fools. One of the orcs pulls another move like that and you and I are going to be covered in blowback.’

Heath’s voice wasn’t shaking, but it sounded so tightly coiled that Dave was certain it would be shaking if the guy were not holding it steady by sheer force of will.

‘So,’ he continued in the Olde Tongue to the spokesmonster, ‘this is going well. But I don’t think I caught your name, big fella.’

There was no direct translation for ‘big fella’. What Dave actually said was much closer to ‘unusually large member of your nest’. The Olde Tongue was not what an engineer or an English literature professor would call elegant.

It did the job, though.

‘You have the honour and privilege of trembling before BattleMarshal Gurj im Sh’Kur ir Djinn, commander of Her Majesty’s 1st Regiment.’

The rumbling growl of the BattleMarshal had a calming effect on his subordinates, as though they could relax now the boss was taking names and kicking ass. Or chewing ass, as the case may be.

‘Well, not so much with the trembling,’ said Dave, ‘but pleased to meet you.’ He took a moment to look over Sh’Kur’s host. ‘So, you boys planning on hanging around long?’

The BattleMarshal growled back, ‘You talk with the urmin squeak of the Hunn clan, calfling. Perhaps you are their pet.’

Dave smiled.

‘No, I’m just the guy who comes in and kicks their asses for them.’

‘So you have contended with my old foe?’

Dave could hear the quiet, slightly tinny sound of electronic chatter leaking out of Heath’s headset. He was also aware of the officer muttering clipped phrases into his mic, although since Heath couldn’t understand anything passing between Dave and the BattleMarshal he wasn’t quite sure what sort of information the captain was sending back up the line. It was frustrating, but Dave found it almost impossible to talk with Sh’Kur in the Olde Tongue and still follow what Heath was saying. He didn’t know what that meant, and the talk he’d had with Zach on the plane, about needing to understand his new powers and, more important, their limits came back to him with an unpleasant feeling. Dusk was thickening around them and he became aware of how few lights burned in the countryside. The land hereabouts, beyond the edge of the city, was sparsely settled, but he should have been able to pick out a couple of points of light here and there. A farmhouse, a gas station, even the trailer of a determined loner in the gentle folds of the hills or parked near a bend in the river. But there was nothing, just the gathering dark.

He turned his attention back to Sh’Kur, who seemed content to wait for a reply.

‘Down in New Orleans, you mean? You heard about that? Nah, that was nothing. Just a little thing with some cocksucker called Scaroth.’

The BattleMarshal seemed to cough and wheeze and when the wheezing went on for a while, Dave realised he was laughing.

‘So this Scaroth gums his food like a nestling, does he?’

Dave frowned, wondering if he’d somehow mistranslated what the Djinn had said. And then he realised Sh’Kur was laughing because he’d called Urspite Scaroth ur Hunn a cocksucker. Given permission to laugh by the wheezing, hacking sighs of their leader, most of the Djinn officers did too. All of them, in fact, but the Kravakh. The one on the ground with inky dark daemon ichor leaking out of his shattered face. He probably wouldn’t have been in a laughing mood anyway. But nor were his two comrades. If they were anything like their aptly named Grymm counterparts, the Djinn clan’s fun police could probably only get the jollies from thinking up new ways to pull extra-long strips of flesh off prisoners in their dungeons.

‘What’s happening, Dave?’ asked Heath.

‘We’re telling the most awful homophobic jokes,’ said Dave out the corner of his mouth. ‘And I don’t mind telling you, Captain, I am appalled.’

‘Just get on with it. De Brito and Salas are locked and loaded. Let’s find out whether we have to pull the trigger.’

Dave listened to Lucille while he waited for the Djinn to stop wheezing. He’d never been one for listening to much besides rock music and maybe a little rap or hip hop when he was drunk. He liked the rhythm. One of his earliest dates with Annie, when he was still trying, he fell asleep in an opera. Or at least he thought it was an opera. They had a band there too, but in the larger scheme of things, the shrieking and caterwauling fatties on stage seemed more important. So that had to be opera, then.

Lucille wasn’t singing opera, thank God. But she’d opened her pipes and was kicking out the jams. It reminded him, when he listened close, of an Irish rock band Annie also liked. Hot bitches with nice voices, but really troubling lyrics. All about slaughter and mayhem and dark times. Lucille’s singing was just like that and she was doing her best to get Dave to sing along.

He had to pull himself out of the reverie with a physical effort.

The Djinn had finally had enough of the dicksucking jokes. Dave addressed BattleMarshal Gurj im Sh’Kur ir Djinn, commander of Her Majesty’s 1st Regiment.

‘So, Shakey, I don’t suppose you came to Omaha to check out their world-famous Reuben sandwich? It was invented here, you know. No? Is there something else we could help you with? Before you turn around and go back down where you came from without causing any trouble at all?’

‘I summoned you here that you might submit to the fearful power of the Djinn and negotiate terms for the surrender of this town and all the towns under your protection, lest we reduce them.’

‘I see,’ said Dave, slowly. ‘Let me just have a word with my captain, here.’

Sh’Kur’s lips drew back from the junkyard of his slitted mouth, but he did not object. He was probably used to having to consult with the Kravakh. A breeze blew, a warm breeze at the end of a hot day, but it chilled the sweat Dave could feel leaking through his shirt and he shivered.

‘Okay,’ he said, turning to Heath. ‘They didn’t come for Reubens. They’re not here for stock tips from Warren Buffett and I don’t think we can tempt them with a tour of the zoo either. They pretty much want me to turn over the keys to the city so they can roll in and get some dinner.’

Heath didn’t reply immediately, instead hitting the push-to-talk button on his headset and murmuring into the mouthpiece, ‘Arc Light this is June Bug. Confirm hostile intent. Repeat, confirm hostile intent. Stand by.’

Heath released the talk button and said to Dave, ‘You sure these things can’t understand what I’m saying?’

‘Let’s find out,’ said Dave, before turning back to Sh’Kur and asking loudly, in good plain American English, ‘Hey, Shaky, is the reason you guys wear pants because your nuts are so much smaller than the Hunn? Because my man, Scaroth, he had an impressive set of melons swinging on him and I can’t help noticing that you don’t.’

All eight of the Djinn warriors, including the injured Kravakh lieutenant, stared at him with blank, uncomprehending expressions. Some tipped their heads to one side, some furrowed the ugly knobs of weeping scar tissue they had instead of eyebrows, but none appeared to take offence. And taking offence was a natural state of being for these assholes.

‘I think we’re good,’ said Dave. ‘Want me to keep talking while we slowly back away and you launch the nukes?’

Heath did not.

‘Keep them talking, find out as much as you can. I’d like to know how they got an army into that field.’

Dave returned to the Olde Tongue.

‘Okaaay, Shaky, we’re having a little trouble with the whole submission thing, right now.’ Dave put up one hand to forestall any violence. ‘Now don’t go getting snippy on me, because I’d hate to have to kick your ass, seeing as how we have so much in common, you know, with you hating the Hunn, and me hating the Hunn. Perhaps it would help if you could explain exactly what submitting to you would mean. I’m just curious is all.’

He could see the giant claws of the BattleMarshal tightening around the shaft of the even gianter cleaver he was holding. Lucille’s song seemed to deepen inside him, to pulsate more powerfully through his body. Dave prepared himself to go to warp speed. But Gurj im Sh’Kur ir Djinn did not bellow a war shout and start throwing the cutlery around. If anything, he reminded Dave for just a second of Heath, having one of those Heath moments when the need to get something out of Dave overrode his desperate need to choke the living shit out of Dave.

‘When you submit to the Djinn,’ growled the BattleMarshal, ‘your lands and cattle become our lands and cattle. With your submission comes the protection of our majesty and, of course, a role of honour within her court for the Dave who would govern this realm in her stead.’

‘Okay. That sounds cool,’ said Dave. ‘You’re just going to have to give me a second to tell my friend here about it. He’s like my scribe. Or my Scolari,’ he added quickly with a flash of inspired bullshitting. ‘He might need to jot down a few details.’

Dusk had darkened to full night and they were illuminated by the sickly yellow glow of the overhead lights of the bridge, the only points of brightness in the world. Dave could not even make out where the army had dug in back up on the hill, although that could be because he was looking from light into dark.

‘You got like a notebook or something, Heath?’

‘Sure,’ he said slowly taking a small camo-fabric-covered pad from a pocket. He unzipped it to reveal a perfectly ordinary notepad. ‘You need it? Why?’

Dave waved away the offer of the pad.

‘No, I just need you to look like you’re writing down what I’m about to say to you. Hell, why don’t you write it down? Maybe someone can pull it off what’s left of our bodies later on.’

Heath’s expression told him he thought Dave’s schtick was less important than taking care of business. He held a pencil over a new page.

‘Okay. The deal is if I submit to them they get everything, and I get to be the royal buttboy at the palace. I’d rule over all the Earth, probably select who went into the blood pots – I can’t help thinking of Compton for some reason – and the Djinn will “protect” us from nasty accidents. Like going into the Hunn’s blood pots, I guess. It’s your basic shakedown racket.’

‘Very feudal,’ Heath muttered. ‘Figures.’

The pencil scratched across the page but Dave wasn’t sure if Heath was writing it all down or just pretending. Dave was peripherally aware of drones circling hundreds of feet above them, probably recording everything. He wondered if they were armed.

‘Why offer it, though?’ said the SEAL.

‘Word gets around, I suppose. They heard about New Orleans. Might have even had a couple of Sumateem scouts spooking about to report on it. I dunno. Lemme see if I can find a few things out.’

The BattleMarshal waited for Dave to finish consulting with Heath.

‘Well, Champion?’

It was the first time he had called Dave that, but it came freighted with a heavy load of irony. Monsters do irony? Who knew?

‘Shaky, we’re making progress. I can feel the chances of an ass kicking receding with every moment. And I’m excited by your offer of selling out my fellow cattle, of condemning them to perdition and slavery and the occasional all-you-can-eat buffet for your homeboys there.’

The other Djinn snarled and growled. The Kravakh merely glowered at him.

‘Still, coupla details I’d like to nail down about this protection you’d be offering. Because, you know, New Orleans was a hell of a close-run thing. Old Scaroth really had us by the nuts there. Just good luck really that we beat him. So yeah, protection is good.’

‘The Hunn will not walk my fields or take my livestock, be assured of that,’ Sh’Kur rumbled, his voice sounding like an idling bulldozer. ‘Nor will any others.’

‘None shall pass, eh? That’s awesome. But, how you gonna do that? What if we wake up one day and there’s half a dozen Hunn legions knocking on my door. I mean, how’d you get the regiment here? Scaroth only took a talon.’

One of the Kravakh stepped forward to try to whisper something to Sh’Kur but the BattleMarshal drove an elbow into its eye. The elbow was armoured and spiked. The creature dropped twitching and dead at the Djinn leader’s feet. Or his hind-claws, to be anatomically correct.

‘When you broke the capstone separating the UnderRealms from the Above it was but a small crack at first. But now that fissure widens and spreads. More fractures open. Other realms press against the barrier. Soon now, calfling, we shall take dominion over all your world. I offer life. Others will not be so generous.’

‘Yikes,’ Dave deadpanned.

‘But now it is time for the Dave to kneel and submit.’

16

The BattleMarshal hefted his cleaver in a way that made Dave suspect that if he knelt down, he wouldn’t be getting back up. He almost laughed. How big a chump did this tool think he was?

‘Haters be hatin’, Old Navy,’ he said out the side of his mouth. ‘And any second now, we be rollin’. Get ready.’

Heath started murmuring into his headset again but Dave was already back with Sh’Kur and couldn’t spare him the attention. Lucille was no longer singing. But her silence was voluminous. It was the pause that swells and swells in that forever moment as the conductor holds aloft his baton. She was waiting for the symphony to commence.

‘Kneel, human,’ the BattleMarshal ordered.

Dave gently placed the back of his hand on Heath’s chest and pushed, just enough to get him moving away from the immediate danger of that enormous, glinting blade. Heath did not resist, taking one, then two steps in reverse.

‘The thing is, Shaky, it’s my knees,’ Dave explained. ‘They’re not what they were. And I don’t like to kneel.’

The Djinn leaned forward slowly and said, ‘Then you shall die.’

‘Go!’ Dave yelled at Heath, as he got ready to stomp on the accelerator and sidestep the carving blow from Sh’Kur. But it never came. Two things happened, one of which he understood, one of which he didn’t, not at first.

He heard the crack of a rifle shot passing close by his ear and saw the head of one of the lesser Djinn commanders disintegrate in an explosion of bone and brain.

The snipers.

That he understood. More rounds came cracking in, but only one scored another headshot, one of the Kravakh taking a round in its nasal cavity that blew it shattered head over horned heels, and sent it toppling off the side of the bridge. The other Djinn were moving so quickly that glancing rounds sparked off heavy plate armour, or missed entirely. The daemons weren’t ducking for cover from the human fire, however. They were diving and rolling left and right for no reason Dave could understand until he finally punched warp and found himself in that strange, suspended state where everything moved with glacial slowness. Everything but him, and the flight of harpoons whistling down the bridge toward him.

He stood, stupid, flat-footed and confused as dozens of Sumateem arrows came at him and Heath.

‘What the fuck?’ he mouthed, and in the time it took to do that, the war shots had advanced another two car lengths along the bridge toward him. And toward Heath, who was currently suspended in magical gelatine, and not likely to move much faster given the handicap of trying to do so on one leg. Dave doubted he’d been fitted with one of those blade runners the Paralympic guys used.

The need to start swinging Lucille with psychotic abandon, to smash her deep into the ugly skull of Gurj im Sh’Kur ir Djinn, was a deep-body lust, but if he did that he would die. The volley was only a hundred yards away now and moving as quickly as a speeding car. Ignoring the song of murder in his head, in his limbs, down in his meat, Dave pushed off and away from the Djinn who were finally dying under a second burst of sniper fire. The bullets, which he saw as bright super-heated blurs of movement, punched into the creatures as they lay prone on the road surface to let the arrows pass safely over them. Some rounds spanged off armour with great slow showers of red and white sparks, but most hit the Djinn straight on and in, blowing huge gouts of monster meat out the other side.

Dave caught up with Heath just as the first of the arrows, as long as a javelin, shot past. As quickly but as gently as he could, he wrapped his arms around the SEAL officer and dragged him down out of the flight path, taking the impact on his own back as they hit the road surface. He felt the CamelBak full of Gatorade burst apart and his brand new tactical vest
shred itself on the bitumen. Mass and speed, he thought, uselessly. The centrifugal force of the slow motion/hyper-accelerated tackle threw Heath’s legs up in the air and Dave winced as he heard an arrow smash into the artificial limb, utterly destroying it, tearing it off at the knee and carrying the wreckage away. It did not take long for the arrows to pass over, however, and within a few seconds of his own subjective time he was up and running with Lucille gripped tightly in one hand and Heath thrown across his shoulder like a bag of garden mulch.

He could hear a high, keening sound and all of the muscles in his back tensed up waiting for the tearing pain of an arrowhead driving in deep between his shoulder blades, or into the back of his neck, or skewering the two men together in a shish kebab for the Djinn to eat at their leisure. But it was not another spear-sized arrow splitting the air as it raced toward his spine. It was just Heath, starting to scream in super slo-mo. The individual thunder cracks of large calibre sniper rounds disappeared under a deeper, rolling thunder that washed over them as Dave raced for the comparative safety of the dark hills where the army was dug in. The uproar grew into a slow, thumping storm of concussive detonations and impossibly slow strobing lights that flashed in the night but took long, long seconds of stretched time to fade.

Dave risked a glance over his shoulder and saw massive blossoms of fire blooming little by little, but unstoppably, amongst the Sumateem archers who had been hidden in Sh’Kur’s yurt. The daemons came apart, gracefully, like ballet dancers; or the disarticulated limbs and torsos of ballet dancers, seen though a veil of acid. A few, just a few more arrows flew out in a second volley, some of them released when the creature holding the bow was blown apart. Most flew extravagantly high and wide but Dave dodged to the right of the bridge to get out of the way of one that seemed well aimed at him. The thunder rolled on and on, the bridge vibrating under his feet in a strangely measured, unhurried cadence.

He decided to field test his limits, rather than waiting for the chance to sit down with a bunch of clipboards and white coats as Zach had suggested. He felt, rather than knew that his control of the warp thing was improving, even though he had no idea how. Or even what it was, yet. He’d felt that way since Vegas. Dave sucked air deep into his lungs. He didn’t just run harder, but
concentrated
for all he was worth on pouring more and more of his strength into speed. It worked. He passed through the world as pure acceleration, holding onto Heath just a little more firmly, lest the rough passage break every bone in the poor bastard’s body. Rifle fire started to crackle past, sounding more like the long tearing of a great carpet or curtain than the crisp snap of a gunshot. Dave flew off the end of the bridge and down the road, covering half the distance back to their lines before he dialled it down. As he slowed and threw another look over his shoulder he saw the bridge swallowed by fire. Human fire, chemistry and physics, not magic; high explosives and hundreds, maybe thousands of rounds of small arms fire, long ropey arcs of green and yellow tracer. The whole world seemed aflame and he realised that nothing could have followed him off that bridge. The narrow structure served to channel any pursuers into the confines of a killing field. Calflings may have been puny to the swaggering giants of the Daemonum, but they had been busy this last eon or so. They knew a lot about killing.

He heard a scream as he dropped out of warp, and realised it was Heath. The cry was strangled as the SEAL gasped into his headset. ‘Danger close. Danger close.’

‘Copy. Rolling in,’ a voice said.

‘You okay?’ Dave asked, feeling like a fool. ‘Your leg’s busted.’

He started to put the captain down then realised Heath would probably just fall over.

‘Get to cover, Dave,’ Heath grunted, as though somebody had just gut-punched him.

Dave could hear the shriek of jet turbines in the distance, getting closer, fast. At the very edge of perception he sensed something falling through the sky, put his head down, took a deep breath and started running again. Moving fast this time, but without slipping into the otherworld where he was the shadow that flickered between the statues he made of normal men. He was worried he’d damaged Heath with that last jump to warp.

A double crescendo erupted behind them with a muffled, slightly delayed one-two punch that blasted the Platte River Bridge out of existence. Tight formations of aircraft howled in from the northeast, passing over him on their way across the river, to drop their bombs on the other side. He felt the heat roll over him as an unexpectedly strong pressure wave, like a giant hand. When he thought they were well beyond any chance of being bombed by accident, he slowed and put the captain down. It took a moment for him to comprehend they were standing a few metres from the Octagon, where the soldiers had penned in the talking dead.

They weren’t talking anymore.

*

Sergeant Ryan Mecum came running down toward them, with Zach and Igor not far behind. Zach called out for a medic, but needn’t have bothered. Two teams bearing stretchers appeared out of the dark.

‘Whoa, Mr Hooper,’ said the ranger, now visibly impressed. ‘That was awesome.’

‘You get used to it,’ Igor said as he dropped to one knee next to Heath. ‘Hazmat team took over the site, thought we’d come see if we could get in on the party. Glad we made it in time.’

Heath nodded and clapped his hand to Igor’s arm.

Dave wisely did not enquire after Igor’s significant other.

Zach stood over them, scanning the night, his weapon ready, his boyish features decorated with the dancing light of high explosives and tracer fire. Bright flashes followed by concussive waves blasted apart the tree line on the southwest side of the Platte River. Helicopter gunships were hovering over the riverbank, hammering away at targets on the other side with chain-gun and rocket fire. They piled
it on until Dave couldn’t believe there was anything alive on the far bank, and sure enough the choppers soon peeled away. But not because the violence was done.

A blade ripped through heavy cloth, a small sound in the crashing din of battle. Igor cutting away Heath’s trouser leg. The stump of his amputated limb was bloody and raw, but no bones showed through, and although he gritted his teeth and the muscles in his jawline writhed in the orange-yellow glow of the fires, Heath did not scream or pass out. He hauled himself up into a sitting position, his hands clawing up Igor’s thick arms until the giant commando relented and helped him up.

‘I want to see this,’ said the officer. Their officer. The one Dave had walked with into harm’s way and brought out less than the man he’d taken in. He followed Heath’s gaze across the river into the inky blackness where he knew the 1st Regiment of the Djinn would be moving, charging toward battle. It was all they knew. The loss of BattleMarshal Gurj im Sh’Kur ir Djinn would not deter them, it would only enrage them. The fire would not stop them. They knew
dar Drakon
and many would even have battled the dragons. To them, helicopters were just another foe, or prey.

‘Pick me up,’ Heath said through his teeth, which were stained with blood that looked blacker than his skin in the night. ‘I want to see this.’

Igor and Zach helped him to his feet.

His foot
, Dave thought, and had to suppress the most inappropriate snort of laughter of his adult life.

High in the sky, Dave could see them, outlined by blinking wing lights. Attended by smaller escorts, a quartet of B-52s passed overhead with a lack of hurry or bluster that was positively regal. He wondered how high they were. What the pilots could see. The burning ruins of the bridge, certainly. Perhaps the army units’ positions, outlined in some sort of heads-up display. They probably had all sorts of Star Wars shit up there. Would the Djinn show up on infrared or some sort of low-light vision system? If so they’d present as a great mass of tightly packed iron and flesh, lumbering forward, gathering speed and energy like a stampede. They would charge the enemy, the human ranks, holding their formations as best they could. Four bands to a talon. Eight talons to a legion. Four legions to a regiment. Ten thousand stampeding raptor-orcs, clad in chain mail and boiled leather, in heavy steel plate that could probably turn a light rifle-round, all of them thundering toward the thin line of men and a few women, Dave supposed, spread out on the gentle hill overlooking the river.

The river.

It hadn’t looked especially deep to him when he’d walked down there with Heath. He didn’t suppose it was tidal, this far inland, but it was low. Low enough that the 10,000 sentient beasts screaming toward him would probably just splash across.

And then the very earth cracked open and the Apocalypse exploded out and up as thousands of tons of high explosive ordnance dropped into a precisely defined and moving kill box. The ground jumped beneath their feet, and the two SEALs were forced to brace themselves while they held their commander, lest all three be thrown to the ground.

‘Holy shit,’ said Dave, as a new day dawned over eastern Nebraska. A day of fire and death and utter negation. In less than a second the wave of destruction swept away from him at insensate velocities, atomising all of those war bands and talons and legions and the 1st Regiment late under the command of the great BattleMarshal Gurj im Sh’Kur ir Djinn.

‘Fuck me,’ Dave breathed out.

‘Maybe in your dreams,’ said Igor. ‘Not mine.’

‘Squirters,’ said Zach, pointing at the edge of the vast area that had just been transformed into an infernal maelstrom.

‘What?’ said Dave, who thought the CPO might be hazing him, like Igor, but no. In spite of the seemingly inescapable scale of the violence a handful of men had visited upon the Djinn and their bonded clans, some still lived at the very edge of the slaughter. Some dozens, maybe even hundreds of surviving Djinn warriors tried for the river, some of them burning, diving in, trying to swim across. Still heading toward the thin line of soldiers between them and a city they could not yet see. Rifle and machine-gun fire raked at them and Dave heard the familiar shoop-chunk of mortar rounds going down range. Familiar from the movies, anyway.

‘Looks like some of them are trying to exfil to the southwest,’ Sergeant Mecum told them. ‘Heh. Those teddy bears are going to be in for a big surprise if they go down to the woods tonight.’