Furnace (16 page)

It was slim pickings, but I found a knife and the SX I’d been hoping for, although there were only thirteen bullets remaining in the clip and it was a smaller model than I would have liked. Once I’d re-holstered the pulse rifle in the half-busted slot on the back of my suit, I shuffled beneath a marble archway to the right of the heap and peeked around the corner for a better view of the street.

Just as before, it appeared deserted as far as I could see, but it
felt
different this time. I sensed another presence nearby. Something familiar, like the clown demon had returned to claim his prey, or like the hooded Watchman from the corpse fields wanted revenge after I’d slipped away. Either way, it felt like something was watching me, and there were seemingly endless windows and doorways along the main road where it could track my movements without exposing itself.

The foot-soldiers of the demon army didn’t seem capable of calculated strikes, so that was a small consolation. Everything I’d witnessed to that point assured me the prospect of psychologically torturing their prey didn’t hold much allure to them. However, I could easily imagine the clown demon lurking in the shadows, delighting in my imagined security and resourcefulness.

If he’s watching, there’s nothing you can do to avoid him, anyway. You’ll never find him if he doesn’t want you to, and you wouldn’t be able to kill him even if you did.

As if in confirmation, his voice spoke clearly in my head once again.

Wherever you go, I will find you.

That old mantra.

“I hope you do,” I growled spitefully, unsure whether or not he could hear. It was pretty big talk considering that I would probably die if I didn’t reach the
Hummel
soon even without further assistance from his disciples.

The moment the words left my lips, I spotted shadows moving beneath one of the larger Greco-Roman monoliths a few hundred yards away.

Stupid
, I thought.

Infiltrating the city had been a breeze up until then, and I’d just ruined an opportunity to slip through relatively unnoticed by addressing the clown demon aloud rather than in my head. That, too, I’ll write off as the by-product of pain and sheer exhaustion (and maybe a bit of concussion symptoms), but the fact of the matter is I’ve been trained to know better. I was fully aware of the stakes, too, which makes the slip even more surprising. Even now, I wish I could go back and keep my mouth shut, just to see how things would have played out. I probably would have been worse off, actually, and I certainly never would have learned the bizarre history of Furnace or why the clown drew souls from across the universe to eternal torment.

As the shadows drew nearer and I realized there were more of them than I could count, I scrambled to the other side of the corpse heap for cover. My careless movements unseated the top two bodies—both of them human but mangled beyond recognition aside from the armor plating wrapped around their limp appendages—and caused a chain reaction among the other corpses.

“Shit,” I said aloud. I figured tact didn’t exactly matter at that point, since anything near enough to hear the curse would surely have noticed the crumbling tower of bodies I’d set in motion.

I’d thought I was completely dry of adrenaline and numb to the all-encompassing fear which would otherwise have been a normal human response to the sight of flesh-eating monsters, but I rediscovered both necessary evils when I heard the howls, growls, and shouts echoing down the city streets when the horde spotted me.

After that, I didn’t even attempt to hide. The main road through the city was long and wide with about a hundred empty buildings where I might have ducked inside and prayed for the best. The soldier in me recognized the chances that I could outwait them were extraordinarily slim, though. My instincts also insisted that, if I was going to die regardless of my next move, I should go out in a blaze of glory. So help me God, I would take a few disfigured bastards down with me and end my
own
life before I would ever submit.

Wherever you go, I will find you.

Rising painfully to my feet, I darted between the closest buildings, not knowing whether or not there was an outlet at the end of the alley or if I was backing myself into a corner. All I knew was every demon on Furnace seemed to be descending on me at once and I needed to break their eye-line as quickly as possible. If I was lucky, they wouldn’t be able to tell which alley I’d taken from the main road. It helped that most buildings in the city were relatively low to the ground, owing both to age and architectural style. Nearly all of them were in some state of disrepair, and I don’t think renovation was high on the list of priorities for the citizens of Furnace.

Leaping onto a fallen block from the building at my right, I managed to climb onto the roof of an empty chapel and scurry across it until I found a better view of my pursuers.

About a hundred of them were still charging straight for me. They knew exactly where I was. I didn’t see any Watchmen among them and felt minor relief at that realization, but these hideous beasts were more akin to the lava demons, and that wasn’t necessarily good, either. Their mouths curled back in snarls or flapped wild tentacles and external rows of razor-teeth. Those capable of salivating dribbled uncontrollably. Their eyes were lit with unbridled, self-conjured rage.

Leaning over the edge of the roof, I strapped the SX pistol to the remnants of my utility belt, opting for the pulse rifle instead.

“So much for subtlety,” I muttered.

The front line of attackers cut through the storm-cloud so quickly that even my training as a marksman struggled to catch them in my sights. They’d nearly reached the building entrance already.

I flipped down the pulse rifle’s safety and propped my leg against the decorative column to steady my trembling arms. It didn’t help much, though, because my legs were trembling, too.

“Come on, fuckers!” I shouted.

I started unloading into the onrushing horde, thinking to myself that I wouldn’t wind up using the SX at all unless it was to off myself. It wouldn’t do any good against the bastards from that distance anyway, and I didn’t want to risk running out of ammo without all options at my disposal. I’ve always sort of thought suicide by pistol was a weak way to go during battle when you could easily spare a few fleet brothers and sisters by dropping another enemy soldier with the extra bullets, but Furnace forever changed my opinion on that. Some combat situations are just so fucked up, you need to make absolutely certain the enemy doesn’t catch you alive.

My first two shots tore the heads off onrushing attackers, which owed more to the congestion among their ranks than my actual shooting prowess. I’m pretty sure the third pulse found a body somewhere, too, but I didn’t spot that one once it left the chamber. I was too distracted by the savage ease with which the clawed monsters at the front of the line began to scale the walls around me.

Damn
, I thought.
So much for sniper detail.

I quickly abandoned my perch as the demons flooded the alleys on either side of me. Others started climbing the walls.

“Shit shit shit shit…” I inhaled sharply.

A rear escape was already blocked. Without hesitation, I sprinted directly toward the front of their line in the nearest alley and pushed off the edge of the roof as hard as I could, throwing myself clear onto the next rooftop in a leap that ended in a paralyzing thud.

“Not now,” I gasped, clutching my ribs.

The jump had seemed short but I’d forgotten about the damage to the gravity-equalizers in my suit, which were only functioning at about a quarter of their normal capacity. I hadn’t carried as far as I’d hoped. On top of that, Furnace’s gravity had increased the severity of my impact. If I’d thought I was in pain while climbing the hill, it was nothing compared to what I felt then. And yet, I remained conscious, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.

The sound of the screeching demons spurred me back to my feet even before breath returned to my lungs. I didn’t bother looking back to see how close the mob was to catching me. It only would have slowed me down, and the weighted growls were incentive enough to continue.

If I was honest with myself, there was really only one option left for escape. The pulse rifle was relatively effective against the creatures, but I didn’t have enough time or enough ammo to pick them off one by one, and I didn’t have any grenades to carve a huge swath from their ranks. The buildings were close together, though, and the next three or four stretching back toward the
Hummel
were each roughly the same size. It would be difficult to negotiate the gaps with the extra gravity and the damage to my suit’s internal systems, but I thought I could manage. I had to, knowing the alternative was being eviscerated by a hundred demons rather than just a couple.

Grinding my teeth, I pushed to the edge of the roof and leapt to the next building just as the first demon scrambled within a dozen feet of me. I felt its footsteps shake the building on the platform beside me just before my own legs pistoned forward to the next roof.

This time, I was better prepared for the violent pull of gravity and landed with a little more grace. Enough, at least, that I only felt a minor flare in my ribs when my legs braced against the impact. I didn’t pause on that roof at all, though. I just used the momentum to leap to the next one, and then the next. By the time I reached the fourth building down, I was too winded to keep it up. I turned and steadied the pulse rifle again, figuring I could at least buy a few moments to catch my breath since there were only three rooftops remaining before a gold-domed church that was two floors taller than I could reach.

Things were looking pretty dire as it was, but then I spotted a whole new threat. Above my attackers, about a dozen giant bat-creatures were flying toward me in a scattered formation. They may have been drawn by the commotion initially, but they had clearly picked up my scent and chosen to join the frenzied mob.

You did the best you could
, I told myself,
but it’s over.

After all, even if I made it from one rooftop to the next, I knew I still couldn’t outrun or out-climb the bats.

So I did what any good fleet soldier would have done facing insurmountable odds with an enemy army advancing toward their surviving crewmates (assuming, of course, that anyone was left alive on the
Hummel
). I planted my feet on the stone surface of the crumbling rooftop and unloaded Salib’s pulse rifle into the motherfuckers’ faces.

One by one, I blew off their heads as they approached me, still trying to come up with any alternatives for escape I hadn’t yet considered. I drew a blank, but that was fine as long as I had the satisfaction of seeing their brains explode when the energy bursts struck. The shots nearly blinded me as they rippled out in succession, but I heard the outraged roars among the demon ranks and felt the wind beat against my face from the wings of the giant bats, which assured me I was at least making progress. Angering them, if nothing else. I wanted to be sure they remembered me for centuries to come, if not forever. Maybe only a day. There’s no accounting for the memory-life of demons.

I fired until the clip ran dry and then I let the rifle drop. It was useless to me then. The only place I could find more ammunition was aboard the
Hummel
, and the ship had far more bullets in its cargo hold than bodies to fire them. The crew would die of starvation long before they ran out of ammo to defend the ship.

The demons finally reached the roof where I braced for my last stand. They began pouring over the edge with incredible, savage grace. I backed away until my boots touched the edge of the roof columns then dropped to one knee, more out of pain than despair. A beast with the muscle definition of a Kalak warlord and the head of a piranha was first in line. It seemed to sense that I was out of ammunition and charged gleefully ahead of the others for a few moments. A cruel smile formed on its otherwise expressionless face as it closed in on me. Behind the piranha-thing—and eventually overtaking it—was what I came to think of as a classic demon, or at least the way they are depicted in classical art. This one had horns, cloven feet, dark red skin, and yellow eyes with black fur dotting its face. Among creatures that either barely resembled beasts from old Earth mythology or fell completely outside my sphere of physiological reference, it was especially jarring to see such a familiar visage bearing down on me.

This is it
, I thought.

I drew the SX pistol and placed the barrel against my temple.

Nothing else to do.

The two lead demons were within ten feet of me with the first bat creature visible above their heads. It was time to pull the trigger, I knew. But at the last second, I hesitated. My finger tensed and I pulled the gun away with a trembling hand.

Fuck this
, I thought.

Against my better judgment, I turned the SX around and fired through the piranha-thing’s mouth, blowing out the back of its head just as it opened wide to tear into my face. Acidic blood and brain matter splattered against me. And just like that, suicide was out of the question. I wouldn’t have time to pull the trigger again. I wasn’t sure I’d even have time to pull the trigger on another demon before it killed me.