Unholy Tales Of Horror & Woe From The Imperium by J C Stearns

Author:J C Stearns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror and supernatural fiction; Science fiction
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2022-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Swallow the bullet

Kharata saw the gate to uphive ahead, an immense ferrocrete ­barrier than had more in kind with an ancient fastness than a border wall. Distant figures moved along its battlements too far away to discern any details. They faced a mass of desperate humanity, the crowds before the gate swelling like a living sea. A riot of bodies, made anonymous by its sheer number, hammered at the unyielding metal to be let through, but the monolithic gate stayed firm.

As the gun-cutter came in low under the smog layer, specifics resolved at an accelerated rate.

A thicket of razor wire crowned the walls, which were marginally lower than the gate itself and bridged the relatively narrow causeway between low-hive and uphive. Watchmen in up-armoured proctor garb manned the ramparts, a garrison stationed for the express purpose of keeping people out. Flamer teams stood at the ready, poised before murder slits, prepared to douse the region directly in front of the gate should there be an unauthorised breach. Heavy stubbers angled low on their pintle mounts, piled on threat, but didn’t fire.

Not yet.

Kharata counted eight gun nests from where he crouched by the gun-cutter’s side hatch. He watched as a dozen canisters jetted out into the crowds trailing vapour. Tear gas erupted in bulbous mushroom clouds, quickly blanketing the rioters, who recoiled like a single organism. He heard distant screaming and imagined the stampede below.

‘Hail them,’ snarled Fharkoum, peeking at the carnage through a vision slit as he dabbed the sweat from his lips.

Kharata used the hold’s vox to contact the pilot, who did as bidden. The reply from the wall was terse. It mentioned the phrases ‘restricted area’ and ‘turn back immediately’. Two of the gun nests had two-man rocket tubes. One lined up on the gun-cutter’s trajectory.

Fharkoum swore, his fear and arrogance bleeding from his pores in a sickly-smelling sweat.

‘Offer to pay,’ he said, ‘any amount.’

‘These are gate watch, master,’ Kharata offered, still hanging out of the side hatch. His eyes narrowed. Behind the milling crowds, he saw movement, an army on the march. ‘They do not accept bribes.’

‘I don’t fucking care. Do it!’ Fharkoum roared, spittle flying, a hacking cough erupting from his corpulent body.

No, not an army, Kharata realised. A horde. The pallid.

Urgent requests for clarification hissed through bouts of vox static, as the pilot started to get nervous. They were still on course for the gate, and now a second rocket tube had angled towards the gun-cutter.

Kharata barely registered. He watched in morbid fascination as the pallid scurried below like a greasy flood, the tendrils of the horde reaching like talons. Panic rippled through the crowds at the gate as they slowly realised what was upon them. The rear edges, those too afraid to get close or sent reeling by tear gas, disappeared first. Absorbed. Consumed. The hungry tide spilled on and now the crowds fled or fought. Not that it mattered. Two opposing poles met in the middle and were crushed. Confusion took hold, abruptly dissipating as the realisation of what the rear ranks were running from became apparent.

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