What he saw in front of him chilled him to the marrow and etched itself forever onto his mind in the split second it took him to realise what he was looking at. A pack of abominations, like the one Katsulas had just brought down, were huddled over a bundle of rags. As Gloss's flamer immolated one of the overall-clad workers, Vessig took in the horrific nature of the things before them.

They were all still partially dressed in their torn manufactorum uniforms, dirty brown overalls with large numerals on their left breast denoting that they had belonged to the District XII workforce. Through tears in the fabric Vessig could see pallid grey skin, tinged with a green discoloration like mould. Even more horribly, in places discoloured purple-black viscera bulged through raptured flesh. Their flesh also bore the stigmata of plague. It was obviously not only the Plague of Unbelief that had taken hold within this polluted hellhole.

One of the abominations raised its head and bared broken, blackened teeth in a vicious snarl. Its eyes met Vessig's. They seemed to glow with a malevolent intensity. Its face had been scarred by the acidic rainfall and even by rodent bite marks. On the half of its head that had not been gnawed down to the bone was an unkempt mess of hair and weeping sores. These abominations looked more like living, rotting corpses than men.

Vessig's shot took the creature's head off at the neck, and its body crumpled into an untidy heap on the road.

It was then that Vessig realised what it was that the zombie-things had been fighting with the rats over. The rags partially disguised the remains of a tech-worker, the gleam of chrome visible where the vermin and plague-infected zombies had eaten the flesh from around the dead adept's augmetics.

It was all over in a matter of moments. The pack had numbered only seven; against ten highly trained Guardsmen armed with lasguns and a flamer the zombie workers didn't have a hope.

Saul, the most devoutly religious of the squad, made the sign of the aquila over his chest. The pack was now nothing more than smouldering corpses and dismembered body parts. But the horror of the situation alone could have been enough to overwhelm the squad.

The threat neutralised, Vessig broke vox silence for the first time since they had lost contact with Squad Servius, to assess his squad's condition.

'Report in.’ he ordered.

Each man in turn responded to say that they had suffered nothing more than a bad dose of horror in their encounter with the plague zombie pack -Closs, Ranpol, Dundas, Palno, Saul, Malone, Hacker, Irving.

But not Katsulas.

Guardsman Katsulas was doubled up on the ferro-crete of the access road, Malone helping him reattach the rubberised mask of his rebreather to his helmet.

'Malone, what's Katsulas's condition?'

'First signs of chem-poisoning.’ Trooper Malone reported. 'He's puked up his rations and the acid air has burnt the inside of his throat I think. There was blood in his vomit.'