Thumbing shells into the breech of the shotgun, Brother Omar backed towards his squat-set vehicle and re-mounted. Thumbing the gimbal lock on the handlebars, the Scout pulled the triggers on both grips. The belt-fed boltguns mounted on the front of the bike jerked to rhythmic life.
Omar swept the next line of gall-fevered crazies, aiming low and chopping through knees and groins with his automatic fire. The wretches tumbled and fell, creating a hurdle upon which much of the next wave faltered, falling themselves. Omar swept back across the line. The maniac cemetery worlders had looked up at the Excoriator with red eyes and hatred as they scrambled to pick themselves up. The Scout replied with bolt-rounds to the head as one by one, along the line of the prone and fallen, he split skulls and blew off faces. A verger, still wearing his cocked-hat and smashed spectacles, cleared the corpse mound with a half-naked hearsier close behind. Twisting the handlebars, Omar cut the pair in two with a savage stream of bolt-fire.
With the first few waves of maniacs put down and the darkness beyond giving birth to an unending horde of murderous unfortunates, Brother Omar secured the gimbal lock on his handlebars and revved the bike’s heavy engine. Wheel-spinning around and spraying the livid masses with blood and grit, the Scout tore back across the crossroad at the source of the screaming. A curtain of sodden cemetery world earth followed the bike as Omar shot across Little Amasec, swerving shacks and hovels before blasting through the black and burning remains of the cenopost’s tiny market. With flames licking at his wheels, Omar hit the crowded lychway.
The cavalcade of Certusians were fleeing. Some were heading into the deserted hamlet but most were climbing for their lives across headstones and graven sculptures. Like a spooked herd they had bolted off the lychway together, away from a roaring horde of degenerates who were scrabbling across the crowded cemetery architecture on the other side of the road like animals. Several fossers tried to stand their ground with picks and shovels, but went down under sheer savagery and weight of numbers. With the fossers having their eyes gouged and throats torn out by their fellow Certusians, Omar resolved to give the escaping cavalcade every chance to get away from the berserk and blood-crazed.
As the cemetery worlders he was escorting were melting into the burial grounds, Omar had the luxury of the lychway largely to himself. Clutching at the triggers and with muzzles flashing, the Excoriator cut down the degenerates throwing themselves mindlessly across the road at the fleeing cavalcade. Bodies and body parts bounced off the Scout and the front of the bike as he surged through the bloody mist he was creating. Slamming home the brakes, Omar turned and skidded around, taking the legs out from two more crazies. As the bike came to a stop, he slid his shotgun from its side-holster and began blowing growling wretches from the prone forms of the felled fossers. The neophyte was too late to save the gravediggers, however, the fevered degenerates having already ripped their victims’ bodies to shreds.
Holstering the emptied combat shotgun, Omar surged up the lychway at the hordes spilling out onto the grit. Once again the Excoriator let rip with his twin boltguns, cutting a gory path through the mob and providing a barrier of explosive firepower behind which members of the cavalcade could flee for their lives. The neophyte thought about voxing for assistance. One of his brother Scouts could not be more than an hour’s ride away. He also considered calling for one of the Fifth’s Thunderhawks to provide air support and an evacuation for the fleeing cavalcade of cemetery worlders. He discounted the thoughts almost immediately. He would not be a burden to his squad, his whip or his company. The cavalcade’s safety had fallen to the Scout and the Scout alone. The wretches about him were mindless savages; they were great in number but only mortal, and they were his enemy to vanquish.
Rather than the Certusians, the seething rabble were now very much intent on venting their quenchless wrath on the Space Marine. A whippet-like child leapt from an angelic statue with thoughtless abandon, landing on the Excoriator’s shoulders and clawing into his carapace and face with her sharp nails. The momentum almost unbalanced the Scout who took to snatching at his back with one hand. This cut his firepower in half. Although the single, mounted boltgun continued to acquit itself in ploughing through the lean bodies of the savages, it failed to stop a stonecutter who dashed his head with the opportunistic swing of a recovered shovel or a pair of madmen running an abandoned cart into the path of the oncoming bike.
The bike’s front wheel began to waver, and with only one hand on the handlebars and blood streaming down into his eyes from the gash on his forehead, Brother Omar strayed onto the burial ground verge. The bike smashed through two headstones before striking a sarcophagal monument at high speed. Omar flew off the bike and over the stone architecture. He felt his legs pass over his shoulders and the back of his head smack through the top of another grave marker. The Scout finally struck the base of a saint’s statue with a bone-quaking jolt before coming to rest, upside down – his head askew and shoulders on the ground, while his back and legs rested against the side of the plinth.
Taking a few moments for himself, Brother Omar blinked sense back into his being. He could see the broken body of the crazed child nearby. She had not survived the crash. Shapes were moving in the darkness about him. Blood-mental savages, intent on slaughter. Within seconds the Excoriator was buried in pummelling fists, eye-scratching claws and stamping boots. There were lank bodies everywhere. The horde – like a school of predatory fish or a flock of raptors, redirecting their path – were upon him.
The frenzy continued. Rolling around and getting his boots firmly on the ground, Omar pushed for the sky. Degenerates rained about him, tumbling from the blood-furious mound they had formed. Shaking a ragged usher from his shoulder, Omar brought up his bolt pistol – freshly drawn from his belt. Single bolts thudded through the foreheads and faces of the savages. He spun around, felling the mob gathered about him. As a chorister scrambled to right himself, the Scout shot his jaw off before turning and grabbing the usher – who had flown back at the Excoriator with his bad teeth bared – burying the bolt pistol in his stomach and sending the last of the bolts through the unfortunate.
The pistol was empty, but it had bought him a few moments. In the distance, Brother Omar could hear fresh screams of the dying. The screeches and calls for help were coming from the cavalcade, who had escaped the horde that had come down on him but had seemingly ran into another, prowling the necroscape and moving in like wolves on the commotion at the cenopost. Omar couldn’t imagine how many groups of cemetery world refugees had wandered into the bloodbath trap that was Little Amasec.
There were degenerate Certusians everywhere, in front and behind. Omar had stirred up a nest of stingwings in announcing his bombastic resistance with the shotgun and bike. Wretches from both the burial grounds and the crossroads were coming at him. All Omar knew was the gnashing of blood-stained teeth and the thuggish barrage of fists and feet that the mob threw at him. The savages even came from above, with maniacs so desperate for a piece of the Scout that they climbed up the backs of their compatriots and leapt at him. Taller than all of them, Omar commanded a view of his enemy, a sea of madmen and mayhem as far as he could see into the darkness. Omar was angry at himself. He’d underestimated the mortals’ numbers.