Hell Patrol

by R. D. Tarver

  Agostino returned a blank look.

  “I bet this one does,” Rick said, giving a knowing nod towards Rune as he continued. “What’s your pleasure, my bald brother? Maybe a little Minnie Riperton? Some Donny Hathaway or Teddy Pendergrass to get the juices flowing?” He covered the side of his face with one hand as he rolled his eyes towards Henry. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that your colleague’s taste in music isn’t quite as discriminating.”

  Rune doubled over in the midst of a silent fit of laughter.

  “I pegged him as a Bread fan from the moment I saw him.”

  “Actually, I prefer avant-garde industrial music,” Henry replied, stone-faced.

  “Fuck me.”

  Henry shrugged. “It’s good workout music.”

  Knowing someone’s musical tastes revealed more about that person than could be gleaned in hours of conversation. Jesse filed away Henry’s revelation into the back of his mind, feeling slightly more grounded about his present company in the process. Dealing with Agostino’s eccentricities was one thing, but it really added up when you brought his meathead brother and the Crypt Keeper into the mix.

  Agostino pulled aside the black cloth that lay draped over the cage next to the living hell hound. Inside, a red-eyed, white haired rabbit was strapped down in the center of the cage. An array of wires and electrodes covered its entire body.

  He pointed to one of the active monitor screens on the workbench where the rabbit’s biometrics were displayed in real time. “All organic beings produce an array of biochemical endorphins, especially when frightened. You may have commonly heard of this described as the fight-or-flight response.”

  “I think I’m having one right now,” said Rick.

  “When compared to humans, the relatively low biochemical output of the rabbit does not appear to register with the sentinel.”

  As if on cue, the hell hound rested on its haunches.

  “Rune, you’re up,” said Henry. He rummaged through one of the metal storage cabinets, and produced a large, elegantly framed painting.

  Rune strapped on a rubber skullcap outfitted with a net of electrodes that ran to the workstation displaying the rabbit’s biometrics. A second set of biometrics flashed on the adjacent monitor as Rune donned the skullcap and approached the hell hound tank.

  Henry held the portrait, depicting a regal-looking woman dressed in flowing medieval garb. She was standing in what appeared to be a stone courtyard with a rural village in the background. Her face was frozen in a scowl.

  Rune recoiled from the painting, physically trembling as Henry held it up to his face.

  “Who’s mommy’s little monster?” Henry asked, turning to face the bewildered group of newcomers. “He’s terrified of his mother. Works like a charm.”

  “Was your mom like a queen or somethin’?” asked Rust.

  Agostino lowered his voice as he stood next to Rust. “She was a prominent member of the Scandinavian nobility during the Middle—“

  “During the mid ’70s,” Henry cut in. “She locked Rune in the cellar for a couple years, and forced him to drink colloidal silver—hence the permanent smurf impression. She thought he was a vampire because of the alopecia.”

  “A very superstitious lot back then,” Agostino looked to the ground, shaking his head.

  A flurry of activity appeared on the second monitor. The hell hound suddenly reacted to Rune’s presence, snarling and snapping at the blue-grey spectre who lingered near the tank.

  Agostino stepped towards the cage. “Once this sonopod sentinel—or hell hound, as you prefer—detects the biochemical output from our friend’s induced hyperarousal, it will begin to emit a sonic beacon, marking Rune’s location for the drones to harvest.” As Agostino spoke, the bulbous resonating organ appeared to swell beneath the creature’s jaw. The hell hound appeared to call out, compressing the air-filled sac as it swelled and released again and again like a pair of fireplace bellows.

  “Don’t worry. His friends might have the ability to teleport through matter, but this one isn’t going anywhere,” Henry spoke, pointing to the cage. “These hell hounds don’t have the same arsenal of sonic weaponry as the rest of the legion infantry. They’re bred for recon.”

  The hell hound attempted to claw out of its cage as Rune drew nearer, backing away from the portrait. Agostino waved Henry off of Rune, who appeared relieved to remove the skullcap.

  “The degree to which these sonopods are able to manipulate matter appears to be relative to their function within the hive legion—an ordered hierarchy of duties similar to the division of labor that one might observe among a colony of ants or bees.”

  “And as it turns out, they aren’t metal fans,” Henry said, pressing play on a modular cassette deck attached to the state-of-the-art audio receiver.

  A looped sample of the opening chord of “Black Sabbath” by Black Sabbath, from their eponymous debut album, released on Vertigo records in 1970, blared over the receiver’s monitor speakers. As the sample played, the hell hound recoiled from the small speaker monitor mounted inside the soundproof tank.

  Like the lurker they had recently witnessed on the drive to Agostino’s farmhouse, the creature briefly phased in and out of being, flickering like an image shot from a stuttering film projector.

  Henry pressed stop on the cassette deck.

  “Who knew demons would be so fuckin’ square?” laughed Rust.

  “This can never get out,” Rick said. “All we need is for Hit Parader to catch wind of this and the industry will be in the toilet.”

  Agostino draped the cloth over the rabbit’s cage as he spoke. “Through the course of our experimentation, we have attempted to reverse engineer the stratified social order of the sonopods within their legionary hierarchy,” Agostino explained. “It’s possible that the sentinels’ lack of matter manipulation points to their own evolutionary origins, as Henry suggested—possibly bred for their purpose through millennia of artificial selection.”

  Rune audibly cleared his throat.

  “Yes—very well.” Agostino bowed to the pale man. “I’ll defer to Henry on this matter.”

  “Thank you, Vinny,” Henry started. “We’re operating on the theory that the lesser demons—hell hounds, and potentially other ranks within the sonopod legion—were themselves harvested from other worlds during previous visitations. Other than the horns, the lack of homologous anatomical structures provide no evidence of a shared, common ancestor, particularly one geared towards life in a subterranean habitat.”

  Rune closed his eyes and bowed to Agostino.

  “Is that why they set up base camp in the old mine?” asked Jesse.

  “They appear to prefer karst formations within the earth’s mantle—underground caves devoid of light, and therefore also lacking subatomic interference from the vibration of photons. These thin places also happen to be conducive environments for developing rifts in the spacetime continuum,” Agostino replied.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier if they just beamed down to the surface where all the Twinkies are instead of bein’ stuck underground?” asked Rust.

  “Humans haven’t always lived on the surface,” Henry said. He led the group to a large map cabinet stacked with rows of shallow drawers. “If I was a betting man—and I am—I’d put my money on the cave system beneath the mine sharing physical characteristics with the sonopods’ indigenous habitat. Not to mention that caves are natural acoustic resonators—a perfect environment for organisms highly adapted to sound.”

  Henry pulled out one of the rollout drawers and rifled through a stack of simplistic illustrations of human hands, crude animal drawings, and one image of a great horned beast surrounded by a pack of barb-tailed minions. “Caves were the Ritz-Carlton of early human hunter-gatherers.”

  Jesse examined the illustration depicting the great horned beast and its surrounding minions.

  “So somewhere around the dawn of time, these subterranean fear junkies got hooked on caveman bra
in, and now it’s time for another fix,” Rick said.

  “Pretty much.”

  “These samples of parietal art, namely cave paintings and petroglyphs, confirm this chronology,” Agostino said.

  “They were probably keeping tabs on the planet from the beginning, waiting until something appetizing came out of the evolutionary oven,” Henry said.

  All eyes shifted towards the shed entrance as Mazes returned with the lurker’s corpse. Rune excitedly directed him to an empty slab next to the dissected hell hound carcass.

  “Collect them all. Available at participatin’ restaurants now,” said Rust.

  “We came across this one on the way over here,” said Jesse. “A pack of hell hounds had just cornered this old farmer when this thing came along and somehow took control of his body.”

  Mazes slung the corpse down over his shoulders and laid it out on the stainless-steel slab.

  “Harvesters.” Henry marveled at the lurker’s corpse.

  “Incredible,” Agostino added. “We’ve been hypothesizing that these harvester drones have significant roles within the legion hierarchy, but now… to finally get to examine one in the flesh —”

  “Not much left on this one,” Rick interrupted.

  Rune shone a penlight into the gaping hole in the lurker’s skull carved out by the oak branch. The atrophied remnants of flesh and sinew creaked in protest as he turned the lurker’s mummified head to reveal the back of the skull. He then selected a pair of pliers from a set of mortuary implements that had been neatly laid out next to the stainless-steel slab and fished inside the base of the lurker’s skull.

  The taciturn technician’s eyes grew wide as he picked up a wand-shaped device from a nearby workstation. The cable that stemmed from the base of the implement was plugged into an oscilloscope and signal generator, similar to the setup from Mrs. Ford’s classroom.

  Rune pressed the device to the lurker’s fractured skull as the signal generator emitted a series of distorted tones.

  The lurker’s jaw quivered.

  As the volume of the signal increased, a viscous yellow discharge began to pour from the lurker’s ear canals.

  Rune’s smile grew wide as he pulled out a wet mass of organic tissue that had become dislodged from the lurker’s skull and placed it into an Erlenmeyer flask.

  The contents of the flask began to move, slowly, like a starfish crawling across the ocean floor. Long, hair-like filaments hung off the end of each slimy lobe. A large lesion perforated the center of the tangle of mucus and flesh, nearly splitting it in half.

  “This little guy has been through the ringer. Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’,” Henry chimed. “Looks engineered to me. What do you think, Vinny?”

  Jesse noted the excited look shared by Agostino and his brother Henry as they examined the organic deposit under the light. Rune selected a long metal probe and poked and prodded at the organism, causing it to squirm against the sides of the flask.

  “Symbiotic parasitic automatons!” the brothers called out in unison.

  Agostino reached into his wallet and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill which he grudgingly gave to his older brother.

  “Anyone care to explain?” asked Rick.

  Agostino smiled as Henry transferred the bill to his wallet. “Henry had posited a theory that the worker caste of the hive legion might be comprised of symbiotic parasitic automatons—”

  “Mindless slaves, hand selected from the sonopods’ interplanetary menu. When infected with this clever little beauty here, they are somehow able to control the host behavior,” Henry finished.

  “Thus the task of transporting the human battery cell to the nexus is fulfilled by the host itself,” Agostino said.

  “Sort of like forcing someone to dig their own grave before murdering them,” added Rick.

  Agostino nodded. “In a manner of speaking, yes. And in exchange, the parasite is rewarded with sustenance as it moves between hosts.”

  “And, by the looks of it, the symbiosis could span hundreds of years or more,” Henry said.

  “Until somebody shoots you with a sound gun and you get shish-kabobbed,” said Rust. “And you’re welcome by the way.”

  “I would guess that only a small number of harvester drones such as this are created from elite sentient hosts during the sonopods’ feeding cycle,” Agostino said, motioning to the lurker’s corpse on the slab. “The harvesters likely serve as the dispensing mechanism of the parasitic organism, which is then able to quickly replicate through some type of spontaneous parthenogenesis when they encounter a bio-energy source, such as humans.”

  “High price for immortality if you have to spend it being controlled by this runny little snot ball,” said Rick.

  Agostino lightly touched the tattered frock that hung off the edge of the table. “Judging by the garments, it would appear this specimen is a remnant from the sonopods’ last feeding on Earth—nearly three centuries ago.”

  “Looks like he’s about to serve us up some Quaker

  Oats,” Rick said.

  “Agreed,” Henry said, craning his neck over the slab to inspect the lurker’s corpse. “I’m thinking late-seventeenth century colonial Massachusetts. North Shore region perhaps? Maybe Salem or Wenham?”

  “Might have been someone important—magistrate or vestryman by the looks of all that brass.”

  Rune nodded in agreement with the brothers’ assessment.

  “So what’s going to happen to Farmer John after he got Night of the Creeped?” asked Rick.

  Henry returned his attention to the parasite specimen, tapping his index finger on the glass. “So this little beauty here takes control of the host’s nervous system, delivers it to the nexus. And then… ”

  “And then what?” asked Jesse. He suddenly felt a knot growing in the pit of his stomach.

  “Eventually acts as a catalyst to some sort of bioenergy transference that converts the biochemical essence of the host into a palatable form of energy that will sustain the sonopods’ passage into our world for a mass feeding,” finished Agostino.

  “Jesus Christ, where’s Ripley when you need her?” asked Rust.

  “What I wouldn’t give,” sighed Henry. “Which brings us to the upper echelon of the hive legion… the monarchy.”

  Agostino nodded. “The sonopod hierarchy presumes the existence of an ultimate authority—a leader being who alone possesses the ability to open the door between worlds.”

  Jesse began to synthesize the information. “The horn blasts.”

  Agostino uncovered a large leather-bound tome from a nearby workstation. The words Ars Goetia were scrawled across the cover in an ornate script. “As I mentioned before, the infestation that presently occupies Macomb Springs has plagued our world before.” He opened the book to a marked page that depicted an image of a unicorn-headed, humanoid beast who wore an ornate crown and carried a trumpet in one of its elongated, clawed hands.

  Jesse felt the blood drain from his face as he pored over the image.

  “That’s the thing from our album cover,” Rust blurted out.

  “This one is known in the Lesser Key of Solomon as Amduscias,” replied Agostino.

  “We’ve taken to calling it the Rift Lord,” chimed Henry. “Sounds cooler, right?”

  “Amduscias is considered by early occult demonologists to be a Great Duke of Hell, commanding several legions to do his infernal bidding. This particular demon is directly associated with music and sound, and is believed to have the ability to summon thunder and bend the trees to his will with his voice.”

  “Well, at least they got that right,” scoffed Rick.

  Henry nodded. “Like the old man always said, ‘Hell was a warning.’”

  Agostino carefully closed the book and patted its cover. “Despite the lack of scientific objectivity, there is much to be gleaned from these early descriptions.”

  “Demons are just a human construct,” Henry agreed. “We co-opted these early sightings and wr
ote them down in our big, black books.”

  “That’s great and all,” Rick said, “but in the meantime, what do we do about the fact that these constructs are about to make a buffet out of our town? And you’re sure this dislocating frequency is gonna work on the Rift Lord?”

  Rune mimed what could have been confused as laughter at Rick’s inquiry.

  Agostino gestured to the Hand of Doom. “Because of the success of the prototype against the varied orders of the sonopod legion, both sentinels and drones, we can infer that there exists a common resonating frequency among them, despite the potential for disparate evolutionary origins.”