Resistance (26 page)

21

‘Whoa. Dude. This upgrade was the money shot. These losers are toast.’

Lord Guyuk ur Grymm knew not what Thresh-Trev’r meant exactly, but the minor empath daemon seemed pleased with the results of the latest trepanning. A trepanning in the terminology of the Scolari Grymm. ‘Awesome fucking noms’ according to the testimony of Thresh-Trev’r. Three of the four captured human warriors – Guyuk still had to force himself not to think of them as calflings – had his acolyte consumed in this fashion; punching a hole through the thin bone of the creature’s forehead, while simultaneously opening up the rear of the cranium with the thrust of a single claw to create a small vessel out of which it could suck the animal’s thinking sweetmeats. The fourth human had been cut down when it somehow contrived to break free of its bonds and kill – actually kill! – its guard with a concealed blade.

Guyuk found himself as disturbed by this one small incident as by anything that had happened since that fool of a Hunn had blundered into the Above and had himself put down by the Dave. The human which had killed its Grymm attendant was no champion. The tiny thing had none of the Dave’s powers. The weapon with which it struck was in no way enchanted. It was a fine blade of tempered steel, if ludicrously small, but nonetheless, it was just a blade. It sang no hymn. It had no soul. And yet this mere
calfling
– he spat the word out of his mind – had struck at its captor, a superior being, and killed it with one hard strike to drive the point of the weapon in through the nasal cavity, burying it up to the hilt. All of the humans had been stripped after that, and thus they had arrived naked before him, the Diwan and Guyuk’s marshals.

After some initial delay, while the Lieutenant of the Guard reported the atrocity committed by the now dead human male, Guyuk excused himself from the marshals and the Diwan, promising to tell them of the success or otherwise of this next trepanning experiment.

The holding pits of the Lord Commander’s Keep were nearly full with captives taken around the far fringes of the battle between the human forces and the luckless and unbelievably stupid Djinn. The one pleasingly dark moment of this night was the way in which those urmin squirts had been so thoroughly humiliated and crippled. He very much looked forward to conveying every detail to Her Majesty. In the meantime though, Guyuk determined that these prisoners would not go into the blood pots like the last ones, not until they had been questioned by Scolari Inquisitors, with his personal Thresh in attendance. The Thresh had suggested this course, somewhat to the chagrin of the Inquisitor Scolari, but Guyuk had insisted on the procedure in the face of resistance from the Consilium. He had, however, agreed with the masters that it might be best to restrain the Thresh from gorging itself on all of the humans’ cranial sweetmeats. There could be no doubt now the Thresh was able to consume the human thinkings along with the soft grey offal, just as the Scolari had conjectured. But the experience of extended exposure to the conjoined mind of Thresh-Trev’r has been enough to caution Guyuk against overenthusiastic experimentation in this regard. Best that they restrict their underling to ingesting the brains and associated thinkings of a few choice subjects, all the better to interpret the results.

‘Oh man, that dude was like some premium shit. I mean, Guyuk, boss, don’t get me wrong. Those Navy SEALs, they were snacktastic and I can give you chapter and motherfucking verse on exactly what happened to those Djinn bitches now, and why they gots their shit handed to them by a motherfucking butler. On a silver platter, man! Zing! You see what I did there? By a butler? Oh. Okay. But this guy, oh,
this
is my guy.’

It held up the lifeless carcass of the slain
ienamic
. The Thresh’s forked tongue nipped in and out of fang tracks, as if seeking out every last morsel.

For such an apparently satisfying repast it was not much of a carcass. The other warriors at least would render fine lean meat when they reached the slabs up in the kitchens. The dead humans, of strikingly different hues – different clans, perhaps – were obviously well-bred animals and had been raised
. . .

Guyuk had to stop himself. He was thinking of them as cattle again. They were not cattle. They were, these ones at least, warriors. The lighter skinned corpses even boasted some quite elegant tattoo work, and the lord commander found himself wondering if he should have apprentice Scolari copy the designs before they were lost under the cooks’ knives. There might be great tales of these warriors’ clans and sects inked into their skin. To know the way of their battle doctrine would be to strike the first real blow against them.

He stifled a growl at how close the Horde had come to disaster. If the Hunn had been given their way on this matter, they would now doubtless lie dead and smoking in some field Above. He blocked out the screams and cries of the other captive humans in the holding pits and refocused his attention on the Thresh.

‘Tell me, Thresh. Why this one in particular? It seems a feeble specimen, and it showed itself to be possessed of far less
gurikh
than its companions.’

*

‘Oh, man, you got that right,’ Thresh-Compt’n chuckled.

That’s how it thought of itself now. Or Compt’n ur Thresh. The once upon a time Thresh was still in there somewhere, but buried deep. And Thresh-Trev’r, that charming devil. Oh he was still with us. There was something about your first human brain. Busting your zombie cherry. It imprinted
deep
on a motherfucker. So Thresh-Trev’r weren’t going nowhere, and Compt’n ur Thresh was cool with that. All the Threshies were cool with it.

Thresh-Trev’r was what he’d become when the dumbass Scolari had him eat that kid from New Orleans. And so it seemed Thresh-Trev’r was how he was fated to carry himself in the world. Still, better than spending an eon as Thresh-D’rryl the Doughnut Orc. But he knew this, he
understood
it at a molecular level, because no sooner had he sucked the goo out of the nobbled head of the supernerd they’d grabbed up at the Cracker Barrel, then he suddenly understood the shit out of everything! The dim, foggy sense that he sometimes had as Thresh-Trev’r, of not really following right on the hind-claws of events? That motherfucker was history.

History, bitches.

Compt’n ur Thresh was a grizzly bear for fucking history. Compt’n ur Thresh could tell those puckered asses in the Consilium to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and then lecture them on the whole damned history of human civilisation and exactly how and why the rise of that civilisation meant the entire fucking Horde was chopped liver. Yeah, that’s right, and more. All of the clans, all of the realms, every royal house. Every motherfucking Sect. Deader than fucking Elvis if they chose to mix it up with these dawgs. Unless of course, they were willing to take a little advice from an expert in the field. To listen to the personal genius ninja of the motherfucking predator of the United States of Kickin’ Ass.

To him.

To Compt’n ur Thresh.

‘Whoa, sorry, Lord Vader. Lost my Zen master focus there. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah. The Profs here?’

He threw the inert remains of the dead man to the flagstone floor of the dungeon. It landed in a heap on top of the others. Old Guyuk was right. The Profs hadn’t had much
gurikh
to speak of. No warrior spirit. Not like the wiry little SEAL who shivved that dopy Sliveen cocksucker on the way down from topside. Now that took some
cojones
.

Of course, they were gonna eat the SEAL’s nuts now in a delicious broth, but at least they’d sing the motherfucker a tune to send him on his way. He’d earned that. Crazy brave, treacherous little fuck that he was.

The Profs though? Meh. Not so much. All that crying and blubbering and begging for his life. Offering to tell them all about this Dave asshole, whom Profs totally did not think of as no fucking champion. Lucky thing, that alone in all the UnderRealms, Thresh-Trev’r had known what he was babbling about. Luckier still that the little weasel was smart enough to know that if Guyuk and his butt boys figured out Profs had such a low opinion of the Dave, then they might not need Mr T to help them understand the Dave and his mysterious motherfucking ways. Quite the advanced calculus our man Trevor worked out for himself there.

Guyuk needed him to explain the threat of the Dave and his human Horde.

The Profs, lieutenant to the Dave, thought they had this dude all wrong. He was more of a threat to his own kind and probably should have been put down, or at least ‘contained’ somehow. Profs had a hard-on for containing shit. Threats, problems, secrets. Like the secret Compt’n ur Thresh now knew because he’d gobbled it up at the source.

The Dave was not responsible for the slaughter of Scaroth’s remnant band at New Orleans. Profs was. And the Dave was not universally loved of his kind. There were many who feared him. Profs had even intrigued with the Agent Trinder, that they might contain the Dave together.

But that hadn’t worked out for Profs or for this Trinder asshole, had it?

Nothing had worked out for poor old Profs because, as smart as he was – and damn but his tasty brains were just throbbing with the thinkies – he was one unlucky motherfucker who got his sorry ass grabbed up and then woefully fucking ignored by the Dave when it came to rescue time.

Man, the Profs had been shitty when Threshy told him that.

But mostly he’d been terrified. He’d screamed and blubbered and soiled himself. He’d tried to bargain and beg and offered to help Thresh-Trev’r, who Profs seemed to mistake for the leader of the Horde, probably because he could speak English.

‘I can help you. I can negotiate. I can put you in contact with the top people,’ he blubbered, and Thresh-Trev’r almost had trouble understanding him, his words were so thick with fear. But he had no trouble understanding the implications of Compton’s mistake. This Compton, this lieutenant who shared the counsel of the most senior human war lords, thought Thresh was the leader of the Horde. Not Guyuk or that Diwan bitch or any of those dumb Grymm mopes.

Nope.

He just assumed that little ol’ Threshy was the boss man.

And who was to say he was wrong?

Certainly not Compton.

Because when Thresh’s mandible jaw shot out and punched through Compton’s skull as easily as cracking open a new-laid urmin egg, he sucked out the contents and
. . .

‘Whoa. Dude. This upgrade was the money shot! These losers are toast.’

22

Igor was stepping into the medical tent as Dave was stomping out. They almost collided, but at the last minute Dave instinctively accelerated around the chief petty officer. He didn’t think before doing it. The reaction was becoming instinctual. He’d thrown back the flap of the tent, carried through it on the surging wave of his anger, and found his way blocked by a big gay man mountain coming at him with almost as much speed. They each pulled up, facing the other, Igor with his back to the entrance now, and Dave facing it. He had a clear view of Emmeline glaring at him before the flap of canvas dropped down again.

‘Hi,’ he said, not sure what else was appropriate under the circumstances. Not even sure what the circumstances were anymore.

‘I see you came through with your ass intact, again,’ Igor grunted. ‘Nice work if you can get it.’

‘Hey, fuck you, buddy. You got a problem with what I did, you can tell me straight.’

Igor squared his shoulders. The temporary lighting the army had rigged up threw his expression into unforgiving relief, his face a flat combination of grey planes, deep lines drawn too long and an essence of something leaching out from beneath them. Contempt.

‘I got a problem with what you did, asshole. I’m telling you straight. You got people killed.’

‘I didn’t get anybody killed, you fucking jerk. The orcs did that. And they’d have killed just as many, maybe more, if you’d got off your asses and gone after Emmeline and those two girls.’

He had that unpleasantly familiar sense of having said exactly the wrong thing, until he saw that it had brought the SEAL up short, and he was suddenly glad he’d said it. And so, of course, he took it too far. ‘Emmeline said you killed five of them yourself.’

‘Yeah, so what?’

‘Well, what the fuck was everybody else doing then?’

And he knew, he knew in the same way he’d known every time he pushed it just that little bit too far with Annie or his bosses, or some drunk in a bar, or with Marty Grbac the time he’d ribbed him about spending so much of his time at revivalist shows, he knew he’d gone just that one step too far. He knew because Igor’s fist cocked back and then described a short, vicious arc into his face to acquaint him with the truth of it. Dave found himself starting to accelerate, to dodge the blow, and to strike back with his own fists, or an elbow, or a head-butt. The way he’d learned fighting in bars when he pushed it just that little bit too far with some drunk who was an even bigger asshole than he.

But he caught himself before he did that. Before he killed the man standing in front of him for no good reason. Instead Dave Hooper took the hit. He was not unfamiliar with the sensation of another man’s fist smashing into his face. He felt the blow land as a train wreck of sensations piling one on top of the other; the first dull impact of knuckles on flesh, the sharp biting pain as a ring Igor wore torn open the skin on the side of his nose, the brief, blinding white light and soaring pain as the cartilage in his nose collapsed, and the roaring agony exploding into and then out of his head in a violent red spasm.

Then, nothing. Or rather, nothing more. He didn’t fall. He didn’t stagger. The wound he’d been done was undone, almost as though a switch had been flicked somewhere and the last half-second had run in reverse, drawing out the force of the blow and the damage it had done like poison sucked from a snakebite. He was momentarily groggy, and then he shook it off.

Igor still stood in front of him, his fist cocked again. It was smeared with Dave’s blood, so Hooper knew it wasn’t some new form of time-warp trickery. He had been struck a blow in the face, and he’d shaken it off. His nose was blocked, and probably bleeding. He could feel something hot and wet running down into his mouth, seeping in between his lips, and he recognised the coppery taste of his own blood. But when he wiped it away, and wrinkled his nose, it merely throbbed with discomfort. He could already feel the cartilage and crushed tissue resuming their original form, like a rubber squeeze ball bouncing back into shape.

‘Sorry,’ he said, spitting a stream of blood onto the grass at their feet.

The SEAL stared at his fist as though it were not his own. The blood glistened bright black, like spilled ink. He shook it out, a man drying his hands after washing them.

‘Go fuck yourself,’ said Igor, before turning his back on Dave and disappearing inside the tent.

‘Yeah? Well you hit like a girl!’ he called after him.

Dave’s nose had stopped bleeding, and wasn’t even hurting much anymore, but he knew he must have looked like shit with blood smeared all over his face. He couldn’t go back into the tent to clean himself up. Not after that confrontation. Instead, he checked the time, or started to. The watch he’d been wearing was gone. He looked around to see if he could spot Zach Allen anywhere nearby, and resolved not to make the same mistake with him as he had with Igor and, if he cared to admit it, with Emmeline. He would find the young chief petty officer, make his apologies, even if he didn’t feel he should have to, and then go find Heath. Dave had no illusions that meeting up with the angry cripple would be the highlight of his night.

And it was still night. He could tell that much. The moon had moved into a different quarter of the sky, and he couldn’t see any stars because of the light pollution from all of the army’s spotlights and overhead rigs, but looking back toward the city it had the appearance of a metropolis at slumber, many hours from waking up.

Hard to believe people were in bed. You had to think that anybody who’d stayed was probably up, glued to the TV, watching the news coverage. The networks and cable channels would be gorging themselves on this. Even so, he thought as he searched around, he couldn’t see any news vans or choppers like down in New Orleans. Maybe the military had learned something about media management down there.

Still looking for a set of clothes he could change into, Dave stepped down off the wooden pallet that served as a makeshift porch in front of the medical tent, remembering then that he was barefoot. He was walking on trampled grass and mud, avoiding the tyre ruts in some farmer’s field not far from the Cracker Barrel. In the hours he’d been out, the military appeared to have brought in great masses of men and war machines. He could hear the rumble and clank of tanks in the fields to the south, and frowned, worried that an Abrams or something might run over Lucille. He doubted she’d be damaged – it was just possible she’d trash the tank somehow – but she could be lost out there if the ground got churned up.

Jet aircraft flew high overhead, their engines a steady roll of thunder. Closer to the surface of the Earth, helicopters hammered and thumped through the sky in all directions. The lanes of the I-80 remained open, with enormous trucks and long lines of armoured cars and Humvees rumbling east and west, but mostly west, toward the Platte River. Tents stood everywhere, as well as prefab huts and even modified shipping containers that appeared to have been dropped into the field by heavy-lift choppers. They reminded him of the flight ops centre on the Longreach. Generator trailers joined the cacophony of noise, providing light and power to the growing military presence. Dave stepped gingerly on his bare feet, but they seemed to adjust to the discomfort as quickly as his nose had recovered from being punched flat by Igor. He was soon able to walk as freely as if he were wearing a favourite pair of old boots.

His ass was still hanging out in the breeze though. So there was that.

He walked through the dumbfounding chaos of the military with no sense of where he was heading, or even where he should go. After a few minutes of drifting this way and that, he struck upon the idea of walking over to the motel, when he might be able to find a suitcase with some clothes left behind in the scramble to evacuate. For sure the army or even the air force could probably rustle up some clothes for him, but he didn’t much feel like asking and having to explain why he was wandering around half naked like an escaped mental patient. In this state he stumbled across Zach by accident rather than design. A small group, six men and two women, were standing in a circle, holding hands under a lone tree, their heads bowed in prayer. A soldier stood in the circle with them, much older than the rest, with an embroidered cross on his uniform. Dave could at least recognise a cross when he saw one. He felt like a bit of a dick, standing there undressed, looking on while they made their peace or their pleas or their confessions or whatever, and he thought about walking over to the Countryside to search for some new clothes while they finished up. But he didn’t want to lose track of Zach Allen, so he stayed.

‘Almighty God of Battle,’ the chaplain continued. ‘Be our strong right arm in this test of our faith
. . .’

Dave tuned the man out. His brother had been into that sort of thing and all it got him was a flag-draped coffin.

The service dragged on, as they do, even though he got the impression the chaplain was moving things along at a fair clip, cutting corners and getting to the good bits as quickly as he could. Dave worried that there would be communion or some other elaborate ritual that would drag the process out even longer.

Maybe they were Protestants, he hoped. They were quicker, weren’t they?

Dave was annoyed to find himself anxious, but whether that was from worrying about what he might say to Zach and what Zach would say to him, or because, you know, he was stood out here with his ass in the breeze, he couldn’t say. He had just decided
– fuck it –
that he was gonna go get dressed, even if he had to warp into town and ‘borrow’ an outfit from an Eddie Bauer, or something, when the chaplain blessed the tiny congregation. They said their ‘Amens’, and the circle broke apart.

Zach was talking with a young woman in a flight suit. He smiled sadly and nodded as she patted him on the arm. It wasn’t a scene Dave felt comfortable interrupting, but then again he didn’t feel comfortable with much at that moment. Also, it really wouldn’t help if she got a sniff of his super-powered man mojo and suddenly reached in under his hospital gown to give his dick a friendly squeeze. So he kept his distance. Zach was still talking to the woman when he noticed Dave standing on the verge of the grassed area, waiting for him. He didn’t scowl like Emmeline or snarl like Igor, but he made no move to approach Dave or break off his conversation. He eventually parted ways with the woman, apparently agreeing to call her again in the future. At least that’s what it looked like to Dave. They didn’t pass each other notes, or bump phones or anything, but to his eye she looked like a woman who was satisfied she’d put the hook in. He wisely resisted the urge to say as much when Zach walked over.

‘Captain will want to see you,’ the SEAL said before Dave could speak.

‘Figured as much,’ said Dave. He noticed that the second woman from the service was standing a short distance away, staring at him, looking as though she wanted to come over and say something, but was fighting the urge. She had brushed past him a few moments earlier and he realised he was going to have to move away from her before she made a difficult scene even more so.

‘Look, man, I’m sorry
. . .’
he started to say, taking a few steps toward the motel and away from his new biggest fan. Zach Allen did not follow him.

‘I know you are, Dave. You’re always sorry. And it’s always too little, too late.’

That hurt way more than Igor’s fist in his face. It was an old wound. Annie had said the same thing to him so many times he’d lost count. He’d heard those words, or variations on them, from his mother, his brother, and a long line of teachers, professors, sports coaches and friends. On every occasion Contrite Dave had tried to fix the situation by throwing more apologies in on top of the first one, stacking them up for a bonfire of the apologies. But it never worked, and eventually Resentful Dave turned up to tell them all what they could do with their goddamned guilt trips and their bullshit accusations.

‘I know apologies are crap,’ said Dave. ‘I know they don’t change anything
. . .’

Zach smiled that same disconsolate smile again, and shook his head. ‘Have to be made though, Dave. Apologies, confession, whatever you want to call it. But it’s not me you should be talking to.’

‘Heath?’ Dave asked, withdrawing a few more steps as the woman in the flight suit took a couple of halting paces toward him. ‘Zach, do you think we could talk somewhere? I mean somewhere else. Private like. It’s just
. . .’

‘Dave, some people are angry with you. Some others, some of them friends of mine, don’t have that luxury. They’re dead. They’ll never be angry again, or happy, or anything.’

Dave fought not to cringe as the softly spoken surfer dude served up his sermon.

‘But it’s not my place to judge these things, man. Those two young ladies you brought back, the waitresses from the restaurant? I’m sure they’re grateful for what you did. I’m sure their parents will cry actual tears of joy and thanksgiving because you saved their babies.’

‘I could only save one,’ he said. It sounded like a confession, and a poor one at that.

‘One soul saved is a good thing, Dave.’

‘That’s what I told Igor,’ he exclaimed, and before he could stop himself he added, ‘before he tried to punch out my lights.’

‘I’m sorry to hear you couldn’t help both of them,’ said Zach, ignoring the petulant outburst. ‘But Dave?’

‘Yeah?’

‘You did the wrong thing.’

Dave Hooper didn’t get angry, not the way he had with Emmeline, but he wasn’t ready to shrug it off the way he had with Igor either. The air force woman had moved a few steps closer and the closer she got the more determined she seemed to come on.

‘I didn’t kill your friends,’ he said, and hated himself for the miserable weakness of it.

‘No,’ said Zach. ‘You didn’t. The demons did that. And there’s no saying who would have lived or died if you had done it differently. Just that some would have lived, and some would have died.’

‘Yes, exactly,’ said Dave. Finally, someone was seeing it his way. ‘I heard you got a bunch of them. Killed like half a dozen or so?’