Contents

Cover

Runner – Extract

A Black Library Publication Imprint

eBook license

Runner

By Alan Bao

The runner fled across the tundra under a humbling sweep of stars. His breaths came in gasps, the filtration unit in his teeth cutting grooves into his gums. An artefact from home, so long ago; an old keepsake that he’d physically outgrown, kept for sentiment, not field-use.

The runner wiped the salt and spit from his chin as he kept his pace, tasting the gunmetal of the antique rebreather. His regiment-issued mask had been destroyed when he’d made his escape from the battle, just as the death-fog caught them. Every time he stretched or contorted his face, he could feel where the material had melted into his cheeks, turning the skin into unfeeling leather, chemical calluses that traced rivers down the sides of his jaw and onto his chin and neck. The hive behind him was almost certainly gone, along with whatever was left of his regiment. He wondered who’d get the blame, when the news got out, if there was still anyone left alive to blame.

Nobody had thought much of it when the long-distance comms first went out, regimental equipment being what it was. Even on the second night, when their repeated queries to command went unanswered and rumours began to swirl about wet, inhuman mutterings on the vox-channel, most of the men had written them off as ghost stories cooked up by bored conscripts. Trenches were dug by the book. There was a perfunctory doubling of the night guard. The men whittled away the time playing cards and swapping dirty stories, and the city was mostly quiet.

But then the dead came to life.

The runner had never seen anything like it. The waste disposal chutes were the first to go, as dumped bodies clogged up the system with their sudden, newfound volition. Dead hivers crawled, shambling and jerking, out of the corpse-pits, overwhelming isolated positions, adding those unfortunate souls they caught to their twitching, shambling throng.

On the first day of fighting, the runner had been on rearguard action, fighting for access to a waste disposal pit. He’d got a first-hand glimpse of the vats of garbage and suddenly moving bodies before they flipped the switch for the incinerators – a blessing and a curse, since the living dead that were not incinerated outright staggered from the flames, heedless of the fire and rot that spread around them.

And then came the mist, and the other things.

In his years of service, the runner had fought and killed men of all stripes, on dozens of different worlds. But those other things – they were something else. Man-shaped, maybe – but not men. It was their stench that struck him: like some awful memory made solid, vague shadows in green mist, stumbling halfway between fugue and waking, absorbing las-shots with an apathetic softness that was not entirely flesh. They came and went in inexplicable fog blooms, one of which had caught up with his unit on the third day, while the runner was rotating in with one of the heavy bolter teams – Bigwum and Tinker-man hauling gear, Bullard watching their backs. When the fog bank fell upon them, the runner almost went blind from the stench. He couldn’t see through the tears and the thick, green air, but he remembered the sound of gunshots and Bullard screaming.

And then, as fast as it came, the stench disappeared, along with the mist, the shadows and the top half of Bullard’s body.

On his last day at the keep, the runner was given a water flask and a map to the next regimental command, two hundred miles to the south-east.

He was then relieved of his lasgun.

‘We’ll need the ammo,’ the old sergeant had snapped when he protested. ‘That’s ten pounds of gear that’ll slow you down, and you’re dead anyway if you can’t outrun this. Go and tell command–’

There was a whistle and a blast. A voice called out a belated heads-up as a dead hiver crested the makeshift trench line, exploding in a volley of las-fire. The sergeant swore as he was splashed with viscera, spitting and gagging at the rivulets of fluid that ran down his face and into his mouth.

‘Augh… Tell command we can’t hold. Tell them… tell them the keep’s fallen. Tell them those things are coming to them quicker than–’

Another arc of las-fire, followed by the crack of grenades. The runner and the sergeant stood a moment in silence, watching the rolling green mist bear down upon their position. Deep in the fog, barely visible to the human eye, there were shadows upon shadows, faint suggestions of writhing figures.

The short-range vox-comms became a symphony of gun cracks, pleas and screams. The long-distance comms were as silent as ever.

The mist rolled on, and the roar of heavy bolters and lasguns reached a crescendo. Over the stench and noise, the sergeant screamed, in a tone that the runner had never heard before from the grizzled veteran. Before the mist closed in and everything went green, he could hear the old man screeching, his voice cracked in panic, almost in tears.

‘Go! Go! Tell them!’

Click here to buy Runner.

Warhammer horror

A Black Library Publication Imprint

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Runner © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Runner, Warhammer Horror, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78999-756-9

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

See Warhammer Horror on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop and the worlds of Warhammer at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.