He doubted it.
Six days. Six days of sneaking about in the corpse of a city, observing, transmitting. Inquisitor Horn has better be getting something out of all this. Tyllman had rarely slept more than an hour or two - and then, only in the most secure bolt holes he could find. He was tired and twitchy. He was hungry from self-imposed rationing. And his underwear was annoyingly sweaty.
Six hours ago, Horn had sent him the signal to get clear.
He drew in a breath and peered out across the open rockcrete space. A shipping yard from the looks of it. Abandoned now. Abandoned and empty. Fifty meters straight across. Then a few outer habs, and out into the woods. Tyllman could make it.
Except he couldn't. He saw the single, stumbling mutant wandering out into the glass-strewn wasteland just before he began to move. Irritable, he sank back into the shadows of the looming septic tank. He watched as the shambling, diseased creature wandered into the open, shouting disjointed half-sentences.
Just wait it out, thought Tyllman, wait it out and -
He jumped at the sound of a sudden, gurgling roar coming from the left. He ducked quickly behind the septic tank's supports as he saw the nightmare crash into the open. It was a massive thing, Ogryn-tall, loose threads of flesh and organ swaying as it moved unsteadily. The monster moved deceptively fast, and within seconds, great snapping mandibles closed on the head of the plague mutant.
Tyllman watched grimly from the shadows as the monster crouched and began to messily eat the rotting thing. He struggled to identify what it could be. It had the general shape and outline of the Plague God's lesser daemons. But it was much bigger and more aggressive...
Which was when it occurred to him. It was a Plaguebearer. A Plaguebearer which had emerged from the mortal ruins of an infected Ogryn. Silently, Tyllman activated his body-mounted pict-stealer and made his way back, further into cover.
He wasn't going to get to leave yet.
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