Day of the Damned by David Gunn

Author:David Gunn [Gunn, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-05-23T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 30

ON THE CORNER OF A STREET SOUTH OF THE RIVER, LOCAL militia smash a jeweller’s door from its frame with a sledgehammer. They’re drunk to the last man. Cheering the corporal with the hammer to keep their courage up.

‘Fucking heretics,’ one says.

Two of the others spit. Doubt they even know they’ve done it.

The door goes down and the jeweller dies in his own doorway. I see it happen as we walk past, protected by our ferox-skulled armbands from the militia and the furies. Fuck knows what’s on the bands to make the furies docile around us.

‘Pheromones,’ Leona says.

She has to tell me what these are. They’re animal stinks that trigger fucking or fighting. Leona says humans don’t produce pheromones. I ask her if she’s sure.

A woman drops a baby from an upper window. The child is still alive after hitting the sidewalk. It survives as long as it takes an NCO to stamp on its head.

The woman doesn’t know it’s dead, because she’s trying to lower herself by her hands, but she slips and lands badly. Slamming her face into the sidewalk, the NCO holds it there as he pulls her nightie to her hips and spits on his fingers.

She keeps trying to look round.

Wants to see the kid on the sidewalk behind her.

The NCO cuts her throat a second before he pulls out. An accidental kindness, since she dies with the dead baby unseen.

Leona has never seen a city sacked before.

At least, that’s what I assume. She looks outraged at my suggestion. Seems she’s seen cities sacked, just never seen one sack itself. Have to admit, that’s new to me too. And the crowd around me is getting bigger by the minute and more out of control. According to my old lieutenant there’s a sliding scale for these things.

You get people, crowds, mobs and riots.

I’m wondering where we are on that scale . . .

A grinding of gears announces the arrival of a scout car, complete with machine gun, searchlights, a dozen militia hanging from the back, and a freshly painted and still wet stencil of a ferox skull. It’s obviously been allowed over the bridge.

‘Over there. Doubters.’

Three men freeze in the glare of the searchlight.

A fury flicks its gaze towards them. In its grip is an old woman, whose head flails from side to side as she screams. As the fury hesitates between the meal it has, and the larger one it could have, a group of youths swagger from the shadows into the brightness of the scout car’s light.

They’re not militia. But they are organized.

One holds the torch, now redundant. The rest have knives stolen from a food stall. Crudely painted skeletons drip from their clothes. A single white line for the lower leg, a blob for the kneecap, and a thicker line above. The hips, ribs and arms are equally crude. Whitened faces and darkened eyes make them look as though they’re celebrating the Day of the Damned.

Blood splatters their ankles and boots so thoroughly it looks as if they’ve been wading through puddles of the stuff.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.