the prelude to a mauling. Taking care not to react directly to the meat that had hit him—blundering instead in a slow circle—he glanced slyly towards the hangar’s opening.
There, sitting down heavily on a ragged tyre, was a massive woman in a blood-caked oilskin, with the raw eyes and waxy face of an overseer. Her hair, clumped into sodden grey locks by rain, gore and oil, fell limply from her brows and hung over what he took at first to be a respirator, then registered was part of her head. From the bridge of her nose downwards, starting in a brutal ridge of scar tissue, her face was a heavy brass grille, like the front of a bus or the mouth of an industrial amplifier. It was cushioned beneath by rolls of fat, angles drowned in softness.
Her hand reached over the lip of a tin wheelbarrow, piled high with waxy gristle, and pulled free a length of bulbous gut, which she threw dismissively across the hangar towards the zombies.
Reaching in again for the mucus-strung back half of an isopod, she issued a curt whistle and held it out at arm’s length. Skidding slightly as it lunged, a twelve foot thresher shark with an ugly gash in the side of its head snapped at the meat, twisted its head from side to side as she engaged in a half-arsed game of tug-of-war with it.
Pulling the rotten crustacean from her grasp, the shark loped off under the wing of a dead jetplane to gnash at its prize, while the brass-faced woman dug into the barrow for more gloppy offal. She emitted a piercing whistle from her faceplate: all across the pile of dead, flesh rustled on flesh and bandaged feet thudded on rust, as the hungry zombies made for their meal.
With a sinking sensation, Wrack found he too was edging towards the meat, as were the two former soldiers. The thought of iron-rich matter, rising up against his driving teeth, was too much to resist.
He crept forwards, careful neither to overtake the shambling crowd nor look too directly at the overseer, and kept his face empty with slack despair even when her radio began trilling.
“ Whēkau clearup three, this is Dakuvanga, what’s your status? ” crackled the dull box. “ Any stragglers? ”
“Yeah, DV, plenty. Just like I told you. But there’s a lot of shit back here too, over.”
The metal-faced woman thumbed off the radio to throw a stringy fish spine to the growing crowd, then raised it to her chin again.
“I mean it, DV. The most of these aren’t even good for refit. They’re not even getting up. You need to get Kaitangata back here. Soon. They’re clogging up the place. Not good to let ’em pile up.”
She flicked the radio off again, held it in her lap and, for a very long second, seemed to look straight at Wrack as he sank to his knees and fumbled for a sagging organ.
“They’ll get ideas,” she said dryly to herself, and huffed something that might have been a laugh.
A long pause of static followed, before a burst of pops and hisses heralded Dakuvanga’s croaking voice again.
“ Whatever, WK3. We’re busy up here. Nine pinnaces loaded already for the hunt. You have numbers or what? ”
“Fine. Probably forty functional, but you’ve got twice that on stumps and sticks, not even moving for guts.”
“ Ten-four Whēkau; stow it. Just get ’em fed and move the ones you can move. ”
Wrack pulled a shivering length of pallid tube to his mouth, felt it slide like cold jelly around his incisors. Thought seemed to slip backwards, somewhere deep under his champing jaws, as he sucked back mouthful upon mouthful of lumpy gut.
By the time he’d wrestled his mind back from the gelid orgy of consumption, the radio conversation had progressed. The thresher shark was close by, making slow circles of the mass of feeding zombies.
“Yes DV, I repeat,” snarled the woman. “Fed and ready, we’re almost good to move out.”
There was barely a second of static before the reply came back.
“ Well hurry the fuck up, WK3, ET just smelled the Bahamut. It’s
There, sitting down heavily on a ragged tyre, was a massive woman in a blood-caked oilskin, with the raw eyes and waxy face of an overseer. Her hair, clumped into sodden grey locks by rain, gore and oil, fell limply from her brows and hung over what he took at first to be a respirator, then registered was part of her head. From the bridge of her nose downwards, starting in a brutal ridge of scar tissue, her face was a heavy brass grille, like the front of a bus or the mouth of an industrial amplifier. It was cushioned beneath by rolls of fat, angles drowned in softness.
Her hand reached over the lip of a tin wheelbarrow, piled high with waxy gristle, and pulled free a length of bulbous gut, which she threw dismissively across the hangar towards the zombies.
Reaching in again for the mucus-strung back half of an isopod, she issued a curt whistle and held it out at arm’s length. Skidding slightly as it lunged, a twelve foot thresher shark with an ugly gash in the side of its head snapped at the meat, twisted its head from side to side as she engaged in a half-arsed game of tug-of-war with it.
Pulling the rotten crustacean from her grasp, the shark loped off under the wing of a dead jetplane to gnash at its prize, while the brass-faced woman dug into the barrow for more gloppy offal. She emitted a piercing whistle from her faceplate: all across the pile of dead, flesh rustled on flesh and bandaged feet thudded on rust, as the hungry zombies made for their meal.
With a sinking sensation, Wrack found he too was edging towards the meat, as were the two former soldiers. The thought of iron-rich matter, rising up against his driving teeth, was too much to resist.
He crept forwards, careful neither to overtake the shambling crowd nor look too directly at the overseer, and kept his face empty with slack despair even when her radio began trilling.
“ Whēkau clearup three, this is Dakuvanga, what’s your status? ” crackled the dull box. “ Any stragglers? ”
“Yeah, DV, plenty. Just like I told you. But there’s a lot of shit back here too, over.”
The metal-faced woman thumbed off the radio to throw a stringy fish spine to the growing crowd, then raised it to her chin again.
“I mean it, DV. The most of these aren’t even good for refit. They’re not even getting up. You need to get Kaitangata back here. Soon. They’re clogging up the place. Not good to let ’em pile up.”
She flicked the radio off again, held it in her lap and, for a very long second, seemed to look straight at Wrack as he sank to his knees and fumbled for a sagging organ.
“They’ll get ideas,” she said dryly to herself, and huffed something that might have been a laugh.
A long pause of static followed, before a burst of pops and hisses heralded Dakuvanga’s croaking voice again.
“ Whatever, WK3. We’re busy up here. Nine pinnaces loaded already for the hunt. You have numbers or what? ”
“Fine. Probably forty functional, but you’ve got twice that on stumps and sticks, not even moving for guts.”
“ Ten-four Whēkau; stow it. Just get ’em fed and move the ones you can move. ”
Wrack pulled a shivering length of pallid tube to his mouth, felt it slide like cold jelly around his incisors. Thought seemed to slip backwards, somewhere deep under his champing jaws, as he sucked back mouthful upon mouthful of lumpy gut.
By the time he’d wrestled his mind back from the gelid orgy of consumption, the radio conversation had progressed. The thresher shark was close by, making slow circles of the mass of feeding zombies.
“Yes DV, I repeat,” snarled the woman. “Fed and ready, we’re almost good to move out.”
There was barely a second of static before the reply came back.
“ Well hurry the fuck up, WK3, ET just smelled the Bahamut. It’s
Similar Books
