It’s a game rifle, complete with scope.
A very expensive game rifle.
And I stuff my jacket with round after round until I run out of pockets to take more. Jacking the first shell into place, I hook the webbing sling round my elbow and wrap it once round my wrist.
We swapped our Kemzins for weapons carried by the militia officers we killed, and now I’ve swapped my pick of those for this. Leona gets my previous choice, a light machine gun with curving clip.
Times like this I could do with having both hands.
Mind you, I could also do with my SIG-37, not to mention the sabre General Luc’s sergeant took from me when he removed my combat arm.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Let’s do this.’
Sergeant Leona wants to ask, Do what?
If I knew, I’d tell her. In fact, when I do know, I will tell her. Until then she’s going to have to wait.
Out on the street, four militia NCOs break down another door. They die silently; one after another in the time it takes me to sight. The last one goes down desperately trying to work out where my shots are coming from.
My next round blows half a fury’s head away.
The creature barely notices. Next time I see it, the fury is in an upstairs window, feeding from a girl who tries to throw herself into the street below.
Dropping to one knee, I centre the scope’s cross hairs.
The hollow-point takes the fury under its chin, spreads on impact and blows fragments of spine through the smashed mess I made of its skull earlier. My second shot kills the screaming girl. Like most people in this city she’s beyond saving.
Chapter 31
‘Sir?’ says Leona.
‘What?’
‘You think Anton will get through?’
How the fuck would I know? He’s wearing an armband, and he’s carrying a ring and a half-decent rifle, and he’s got enough rounds to start a small war . . .
But the city’s rioting.
At least, the bit south of the river is. No idea what’s happening across the river. Maybe nothing at all for all we know. But on this side, we have a mob on the streets, unprotected by armbands, but loaded for bear with kitchen knives, iron bars, broken bottles and anything else that looks like a weapon.
They freeze when the furies appear.
Sometimes that is enough.
Other times they die. The furies kill anything that runs. Unfortunately, the instinct to run when faced with something more dangerous than you overwrites common sense. Doesn’t matter how many times their friends scream, Stay still.
People don’t.
A few of the doubters being slaughtered are high clan. Slightly more are merchants or bankers, the kind of people who own houses along the river or around that square we left behind us. But most are poor, little different to those killing them. And the shout in the streets around us is changing.
At first it was Death to the doubters. Now it’s Death to the general.
The mob works to a pattern. Having watched the militia break down doors, they wait for the furies to go in, and then loot the place when the furies are done. Jewellers, bakers, chemists, computer stores. Doesn’t matter, the pattern is the same.
1) Steal anything valuable.
2) Destroy everything too heavy to move.
3) Burn the shop back to a shell when that is done.
Ash falls like rain around us. Already warm, the wind from the river grows hot as it takes heat from the fires and is sucked into new fires to heighten the flames.
We see a woman carrying an oil painting.
A man pushes a wheelbarrow full of painted china plates. One girl wears a priest’s hat. Another, a senator’s cloak joined at her neck by a silver chain. Both grinning and both blind drunk.
‘This way,’ someone shouts.
Excitement hisses through the crowd around us.
I follow, with Leona behind me, drawn by the word Jaxx. Our group streams into a bigger one, which joins a bigger one still. When the movement stops we’re standing in front of a huge house overlooking a small square. The coat of arms above the door is one I recognize. It’s carved on the general’s pinkie ring.
Two Death’s Head NCOs guard the steps.
Black uniform, silver braid, three stripes on each arm.
Their faces are impassive. They know they’re going to die. All the same, their pulse rifles are ported across their chests as regulations demand.
When they smell vinegar, they know how it’s going to happen.
The crowd freezes as a fury enters the square, herded by militia who wear armbands, and carry rags on sticks to stop the beast from attacking. The creature’s leathery skin reflects searchlights and torches as it approaches the door.
Another follows.
Both are puzzled by the stillness of their prey.
Away to the side, a looter claws a stone from the cobbles, and weighs it in his hand as his friends split their faces into grins. Opening her mouth to shout a warning, Leona shuts it again when I shake my head.
What will happen will happen. Legba’s rule.
Plus, I’ve no plan to get killed before I find Colonel Vijay. Actually, I’ve no plan to get killed after that either. Although that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Drawing back his arm, the man hurls his stone.
He’s dead, bullet through his skull before the cobble even lands at his killer’s feet. But the guard’s movement gives the fury its next target. As the creature lurches forward, the other guard sights his pulse rifle. The blast burns through the fury, fries a hole in the guts of a militia corporal behind and sets on fire the hip of a woman beyond.
Makes no difference.
Closing on the Death’s Head NCO, the fury reaches for his heart.
Blood pumps up the creature’s arm and pisses from the hole burnt in its gut. Staring death in the eyes, the NCO thrusts his rifle under the fury’s chin and pulls the trigger.
They fall together.
Scooping out the first guard’s guts, the other fury plunges its fingers into his ribcage and reaches for his heart. The man dies in silence. But he still dies.
Job done, the creature turns and the crowd falls back as it exits the little square. Pot belly protruding from under silver ribs as its minders with their armbands and rags on sticks lead it away.
‘Fuck,’ Leona says.
A corporal beside her nods.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t want their job.’
He’s noticed Leona’s ferox-skull armband, for all that she is out of uniform.
‘Which battalion?’ he asks.
Leona looks at me. The wrong thing to do.
‘Let it go,’ I say. ‘You don’t have the clearance.’
Those magic words. He nods reluctantly, checks out my coat and weapons. Probably without even knowing it. Not sure what he sees. A blood-splattered, one-armed ex-Legion sergeant clutching a hunting rifle, a dagger at his hip, an oversized abattoir revolver in his belt, and an official band wrapped round the arm he does have?
Maybe.
Alternatively, he hears the warning in my voice. Who knows how other people make their choices? Well, maybe you do. I don’t give it much thought.
At the top of the blood-slicked steps, a militia sergeant catches a crowbar, rams it between the door and its frame and dies nastily. A thousand darts dicing him down to chopped meat. What did he think? That the house of General Indigo Jaxx would be undefended?
‘Use explosives,’ someone shouts.
The militia corporal who likes Leona grins.
Pulling a grenade from his belt, he yanks the pin and hurls it at an upper window. I’m out of there, dragging Leona behind me, before his grenade has time to bounce from the bombproof glass and roll back to his feet.
A trooper next to him loses everything below her knees.
The corporal loses his balls. And they both lose their lives shortly afterwards, as their blood spreads out in little rivers from the cobbles beneath them. The crowd’s night of happy looting has just turned sour.