Tyre! (28)

Guk fought his way through three flights of stairs to the fourth floor, trudging through a swamp of viscera that sloshed beneath his feet. He could no longer remember how many ghouls had fallen at his feet. Many people must have hidden here before, trembling beneath the protection of solid buildings.

Then something had happened in the middle of it all, just as Guk launched his attack on the square.

So Guk instinctively judged that it must have begun at the very top of the building, because the number of ghouls increased the higher he went.

The stench of money, enough to make an ordinary man submit, assailed his nostrils, but Guk suppressed the sensation and closed in on the enemy.

"Get lost!"

He cut down a charging ghoul, severing its breastbone before beheading it with a backhand sweep of his mechanical claw. The metallic roar of his big shoota filled his helmet and echoed inside it.

These creatures were everywhere in swarms, and they quickly surrounded him.

The intermittent flashes from his weapon's muzzle lit up the dreadful destruction he had wrought. The shriek of his warhammer led a soaring chorus of explosive fire.

He felt something trying to press against the edge of his consciousness, probing his mental defenses with tentative psychic tests. He knew what that thing was.

He struggled through the contemptible rabble, pressing toward its source—and it was coming toward him as well. He could feel that connection.

"Boss! There's too many of these things! How about we hold on? Grak's already finished up, and he'll bring the boys over soon!"

Kundraka tore free from a creature clutching his arm, then smashed it apart with his warblade—the metal sliced through its brittle bones as though cutting air.

He then raised his pistol at another one,