Читать книгу Darkmouth - Shane Hegarty, Shane Hegarty - Страница 22

Broonie walked through the gate and emerged into a world of rain.

What he noticed first was not the scenery, but the air. It had a purity that was invigorating. At least it had a purity once he sniffed his way past the many impurities that were layered over it: fatty foods, burnt fuels, seaweed, decaying flowers, all overlaid by tons of perfume-doused sweat. It carried in the breeze and through the light rain.

But, underneath all that, the air was so fresh that he wanted to drink it.

Everywhere he looked there was a vibrancy that he had never experienced. Each colour was divided into shade upon shade – even the greys exploded across a spectrum.

This was the Promised World. This was what centuries of war had been waged over. He understood it now.

He was on a Darkmouth street. So orderly, he thought. Flowers growing from baskets in the air: novel. Numbers on doors: curious. The ground is painted with rectangles and vehicles are abandoned in them. Odd.

Broonie felt grubby in his dull rags crusted with his own blood. He saw that he was covered in a fine layer of dust that seemed resistant to the rain. Instead, it shed from him as he nervously shuffled on the spot, trying to decide what he had to do next. He had been told his mission. He still didn’t understand exactly what it was.

“When you see them, you can attack,” the Fomorians had said.

“Attack?”

“Attack.”

“Shouldn’t I take a bigger weapon with me?” he had asked, holding up the small knife they had given him.

“Your best weapon is your ingenuity,” they told him.

“While I appreciate the compliment, I’m not sure it will be entirely sufficient to—”

At which point a boot kicked him through the rippling gateway.

There was an incessant ache where his finger had been removed and clumsily replaced with a new digit made of crystal. It already felt loose at the knuckle. Even in his disbelief and pain, he was annoyed at the Fomorians’ shoddy workmanship.

An older human in a headscarf crossed his path, pulling some kind of square bag filled with provisions. When she saw him, she screamed and scuttled away, leaving her bag to spill at his feet. Broonie rummaged through its contents. He was desperately hungry, and slurped from a carton of milk, then bit into an egg and sucked its contents. They tasted so fresh he shuddered in delight. He rifled through the bag some more and recoiled. Inside a clear package was meat. Bloody. Sliced neatly.

These people must be more vicious than it is taught. Even the elders carry the raw parts of their prey.

It was time to run.

He struggled through Darkmouth’s maze of dead ends and blind alleys, continually failing to find a clear path.

Turning on to a wide street, he ran into a bustle of humans moving through the town. One noticed him and his shriek alerted the others. A small hairy animal at the end of a leash went wild, straining and snarling until Broonie thrust his knife at it, pricking the creature in the paw so that it squealed and withdrew, bleeding.

Its owner kicked at him and Broonie stabbed impulsively at him too, nicking his ankle, before jumping backwards on to the road where there was a horrible squeal of machinery as an oncoming metal vehicle braked only an ear-hair’s width from his face.

Adrenalin coursing through his raised black veins, Broonie darted through the nearest doorway to crouch inside its large window while he tried to figure out an escape route. Outside, the scene was chaotic. Some ran off straight away, while others stopped first to stare at him with mounting disgust before following the others.

Broonie became aware of something above him. And behind him. And around him.

Carcasses, stripped down to their flesh, hung on sharp hooks. Torn and cut and placed on display. Ribs, livers, tongues, all manner of sliced hunks of animals were neatly laid out behind a glass compartment. Broonie guessed they must be the fresh kills of the fat human currently standing behind the glass counter in a bloodstained overall, with one hand on a large cleaver and the other on a half-sliced body laid out on a table beside him.

If Broonie had opened his eyes any wider, they would have popped out and rolled across the floor to the butcher’s feet.

On the street, there was the squeal of metal, a great roar and another vehicle arrived through the crowd of humans that was heading in the opposite direction. A figure emerged from it, tall and imposing, fully armoured and wielding a gun.

Broonie immediately knew who this was. The Legend Hunter.

“A Hogboon,” he heard the Hunter say clearly. “Hardly a challenge, especially if it’s carrying little more than an apple peeler.”

Broonie sprang at the butcher, wincing at the blood smeared on his clothes, and wrapped himself tightly round his head, grasping firmly at the man’s face until he dropped the cleaver with a clang. Broonie then slid down on to the human’s shoulders, holding his bloodied knife to the butcher’s neck as the Legend Hunter burst into the shop, gun raised.

“Hugo …” whimpered the butcher.

“Don’t worry, Leo, we’ll soon have this sorted.”

From his dry throat, Broonie summoned the best rasp he could. “You’re a cruel species. Let me go or I will show you how cruel I can be too.”

“You want me to drop this Desiccator?”

“Now,” said Broonie, pulling tighter on the knife. His fear of having to carry through with his threat was outweighed by the thought of his insides hanging in this window while his outsides spent the rest of eternity as a comfortable pair of shoes.