Dozens of the enemy animals would be packed into ‘The Drum’, the old playhouse in the east quarter of the under-slums. It had once listed up-and-comers and has-beens on its cheap hoarding, but now it was a kind of freak-show. Anyone could tread the worn, battered boards of the raised platform stage while the baying crowd took potshots at them, with coin or curses, often with the food in their paws, but rarely with live ammo. A beast might saunter onto the stage to strike or strangle an act that didn’t satisfy; two or three might rush the platform to tear some hapless dancing cripple limb from limb for looking at them the wrong way. The risks were high and the rewards scant, but people still came to try their luck. Troops on R&R were generally discouraged from carrying weapons as mortality rates among the basic grade had been very high in the early days of the occupation. Without enemies to fight, they made enemies of each other.
Shuey and Ailly hauled the barrow into the kitchens at the rear of The Drum, and waited. The streets had been buzzing with the enemy, two, maybe three times as many of them as usual, but The Drum was quiet. Perhaps it was too early for it to fill up.
Bedlo looked towards Mallet, under the weight of their camouflage. Mallet’s eyes were only centimetres from his, but Bedlo could read no expression in them.
‘Boss?’ asked Shuey, trying to see through the skins and canvas-covers to get instructions from Bedlo.
Bedlo didn’t answer, not yet, but kept looking into Mallet’s eyes, trying to appraise the situation, trying to work out why it was so quiet.
‘I’ll see if I can find someone,’ said Shuey to the other boy. ‘Keep guard.’
Keep guard, Bedlo thought, lying on his belly with his lasgun poised. He’s not armed, and he’s never done this before, and Shuey tells him to ‘keep guard’.
‘Yo!’ shouted Shuey as he disappeared through a swing door.
Then nothing.
Several minutes passed. Then there was an odd, bestial roar.
Shuey pushed through the swing door that he felt sure would lead him further into The Drum. He’d expected to be stopped on the way through the under-slum. He hadn’t been with the cell for long, no one lasted long in an active cell that took risks, but he knew that nothing ever went to plan, that something always went wrong. The barrow wasn’t stopped and the four men travelled all the way to the playhouse without drawing any attention. Odd.
Shuey began to whistle, low in his throat, in an attempt to make his breathing even. He was nervous. Why was he nervous? Why was it so quiet?
Shuey found himself in a large, dark space with a low flight of steps to his left. He wanted to get a view of the room and assess where the enemy would enter from, how easy it would be to hide in the space and pick the animals off, one at a time, or mow them down with the flamers.
It was good that they were early. They’d have time to recce, to set up. They’d be in and out, safe and sound, in no time.
‘Yo!’ shouted Shuey, again.
He stepped out onto the boards, his knees soft, his body bent over slightly in a classic sneaking-about pose. He didn’t have a gun. He should’ve armed himself before coming through that door.
Shuey’s eyes adjusted to the light and he turned to look out into the room. He thought he spotted something, maybe ten metres away at the back of the room. Then he thought he heard something, a shuffling, grunting sound.
Shuey blinked as they came into view, five metres away, walking towards him. There were a couple of dozen of them at least. They weren’t drunk, and they weren’t partying. They hadn’t left their weapons at home to keep their hands free for slapping men, feeling up women, and grabbing at any food that passed within a metre of them.
They were tall, hard, dirty creatures with distended bellies and arched backs, wearing stained, mismatched fatigues; many of them also wore the masks. They carried blades and cudgels, and lasguns and flamers. The angular excubitor in the middle had a flamer strapped to his back that was leaking a clear, pinkish drip of promethium from the hose that was pointing at him, and a heavy brass collar around his neck, pierced for plug-ins.
Shuey tried to make himself smaller, caving his chest in and pushing his knees together as the fresh smell of his own urine assaulted his nostrils.
The creature with the flamer spat a gob of lumpy phlegm onto the floor in front of him. Shuey’s eyes moved involuntarily to inspect it; it was frothing and purple and smelled of infected lungs, bad breath and stink-pods.
‘Voi leng atraga,’ said the creature, and thumbed the trigger on his flamer. The brute next to him elbowed him in the side, indicating that he shouldn’t set fire to the little pute, and stepped forward, bouncing a flattened, club-shaped cudgel off his high, narrow shoulder.
Shuey saw the first swing come as if in slow motion. He wanted to duck, but didn’t, because the blow was coming at his waist height, not around his head. If he’d had his wits about him, he might have stepped back, out of range, but his wits were currently evacuating his body via his backside, so there wasn’t a hope of relying on them for anything.
The first blow winded Shuey with a faint boof! And he thought he heard a couple of his ribs breaking. His eyes were very large and his feet were still planted on the boards. Why hadn’t he fallen over?
The thought struck him that he was on the stage in The Drum. He knew what happened here. All the world crossed that stage, and plenty of it never made it to the other side.
He looked hopelessly out at the enemy troops gathered around the skirts of the stage. It didn’t matter what he did, Shuey was dead. He tried to purse his lips and blow, but no sound came out. He tried to dance, but his feet wouldn’t move. His eyes grew huge as he saw the lasgun aimed at him. The aim lowered and a shot was fired.
Shuey’s knee buckled, and he clutched at it as he went down.
‘Ut dreh!’ said one of the guards.
Shuey placed his hands flat on the floor of the stage and tried to take his weight, but his left hand had landed in the pool of blood and slid out from under him.
‘W-what... magir?’ gasped Shuey.
‘Get up,’ said the trooper again.
Shuey stood on his one good leg for long enough to have that shot out from under him.
He didn’t live for long once the enemy beasts were on the stage with him. No one on Reredos had died with dignity for three years, but few had perished with less than Shuey could muster on that stage.
Finally, Shuey’s broken body was tossed off the stage, and a whoop went up. Their appetites whetted, the foe wanted more, and they wanted it now.
They started to stamp their feet and jeer, and a fight or two broke out among the couple of dozen blood-hungry beasts.
Ailly stood next to the hand-barrow not at all sure of what he should do next. His face was white and his eyes huge as the whoop went up. The last thing he had heard was Shuey calling out ‘Yo!’ as he left the kitchens, but that was minutes ago, and this was bestial, aggressive and frightening. The boy had never heard the like before. He was still standing, aghast, when Mallet handed him a weapon.
The boss had a flamer on his back and a long-las in his hand, and appeared to have stuffed several grenades into the front of his jacket as hard-looking lumps bulged there. Mallet carried his faithful autogun and the long-las was slung over his shoulder.
‘What about...’ Ailly began, finding his voice for a moment.
‘They’re through there,’ said Bedlo. ‘It’s time.’
‘But...’ the boy began again. He was trembling, and he didn’t think that he could move his feet.