Terminal Overkill by Justin D Hill

Author:Justin D Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, mobi
Published: 2019-07-22T08:52:37+00:00

VII

The Butchers

We found a safe place to sleep. We found niches away from the draughts and damp and rolled our packs up as pillows, threw our coats over ourselves like blankets.

Charon sat guard.

At some point I woke and saw him sitting in the tunnel mouth, Sphinx asleep by his side, his gun lying across his lap.

‘You want to rest?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said.

I was tired and I wasn’t going to argue. I turned and pulled my legs up, and fell back into sleep. But I was tormented by memories and in the morning I was awkward and guilty as we ate a bare breakfast of mushrooms.

‘What is wrong?’ Ozin asked.

‘Nothing,’ I snapped.

‘You seem on edge.’

‘I’m not.’

Ozin rubbed his chin. He said nothing for a long time, then said, ‘House Goliath, huh?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Think they’re renegades like Fargen?’

‘Probably,’ I said, though the truth was that fugitives didn’t start daubing their house symbols around like a sump jackal pissing on a wall.

‘Either way we’ll have to kill them,’ I said.

Charon had overheard. He scratched the stubble on his long, thin chin and nodded slowly. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Unless you were in the mines with any of them.’

I had meant it as a joke, but I was too tense and tired, and it came out wrong, and I saw Charon’s face harden as he looked at me. ‘We’ll see,’ he said.

We tracked the Goliaths along a long, arched maintenance tunnel.

At first Charon was cautious. There was always the danger of sentries or wardens or wire-traps.

But, of course, they had set up none of these. They were brutish, blundering creatures, as swollen with arrogance as their vat-grown bodies were bloated with stimms and genehancing. They relied on strength and brutality. Not cunning or cleverness.

After an hour we found the place where they had spent the night.

We always left our sleep-camps as spotless as we had found them. We carried our own scrape and water, and anything we did not eat we took with us. And, the truth of it was that we had so little, we didn’t have much to leave.

In contrast the Goliaths had fouled their camp and left the area strewn with burnt pans, screwed-up foil ration wrappers and other filth. Charon held up a hand to keep us back and inspected the markings. He pressed his hand to the embers.

‘Still warm,’ he said.

Half an hour later we were moving cautiously along a damp maintenance tunnel. There was glistening green scum streaking the walls and putrid algae coating the floor. At the end there was a yard-wide fissure. The algae dripped slowly over the edge. There was a long gap before the distant wet slap. It was a fall that would kill you.

I jumped over with barely a thought.

I was of the underhive now.

At the end of the corridor was an old iron doorway. The portals were now just slabs of rust, corroded into place. We squeezed through into a much wider thoroughfare, broad enough for three men to walk abreast.

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